I was retracing my steps through Hell. Whether more of those odd flashbacks or a result of studying the new map in my mind, I wasn’t sure. It almost felt like I was seeing it from one of those drones that adrenaline-junkies use to follow them on their mountain bike rides or surfing videos. Watching my steps through Hell from a slightly higher perspective.

Tartarus.

The white arena.

The black forest.

The ocean of blood.

Staring into Anubis’ face as I felt a faint humming in the air, but heard no sound. Since I couldn’t read his motionless lips, I just got to see him for a solid minute, staring back at me intently. I saw his fingers tighten on the throne a few times, but that was it.

I woke with a groan, my eyes crusted from the dirty air. “Need to replace the air filters,” I muttered, climbing to my feet. I ached from sleeping on the stone floor. Even using my coat as a pillow – although I didn’t remember taking it off – hadn’t helped much. My fingers also ached from gripping the stupid spear, which I had apparently slept with like a security blanket.

I walked the room in an effort to alleviate my tight muscles.

Also, to make sure I was still alone and that no one else had moved in.

I realized I was staring at the opening to the darker cell. “Or moved out,” I said out loud.

No one answered. “Hello?” I asked, peering inside, but not taking a step closer. No one responded. I scanned as much as possible from the safety of my own cell before taking a deep breath. In an intimidating shuffle, I scooped up the War Hammer and bravely ran away from the opening, breathing nervously as I glanced over my shoulder. No one attacked me.

I studied the War Hammer in my hand, sitting down where I had gone to sleep. I hefted it curiously, trying to sense it with my mind. But I gave up with a grunt, because I had no magic available to me. It was just a rock on a stick to me. A pretty one, but that was it.

The word carved into the side mocked me.

Birthright.

With an angry sigh, I set it down so the hilt stuck straight into the air.

I soon pulled out the Hourglass from my satchel, the one my parents had stolen from the Fae Queens so long ago. It controlled, or at least prevented time slippage between the two realms – earth and Fae. So that one didn’t have to worry about spending an hour in Fae and returning to find a month had gone by. I set it before me and stared at it, replaying everything my parents had said. All the cryptic shit that didn’t matter anymore since I was trapped down here, in Hell, with these oh-so-important things that somehow needed to help protect the world upstairs.

To protect my friends.

And the items were locked up here with me, Anubis’ new enslaved Uber driver, working only for tips, thank you very much.

I set it down beside the Hammer. No magical solution appeared.

Just to be thorough, and because my calendar was pretty open, I pulled out the Hand of God. A glass pyramid with the crumbled sand from the original stone Hand of God I had stolen from Athena. I lay on my stomach, lifting it up occasionally to study it from every angle. I tapped at the glass with a fingernail, making sure different sides didn’t have a different sound or something. I even shook it lightly and made a wish like a magic eight ball. I stared at the sand inside, scowling as I imagined a response.

Ask again tomorrow…

I almost hurled the glass pyramid across the cell at the imagined response. Instead, I calmly set it down beside the other two items my parents had left for me.

I waited, studying them one after another. I even rearranged them in all possible orders. I stacked them. I spoke nicely to them. I cursed them.

They stared back at me with pompous sneers.

I found a sharp rock and began drawing on the wall. Thinking of my parents, I drew an H. Then a letter A. I stepped back, studying them. I glanced back at the three items on the floor and then back to the letters on the wall.

I continued writing the letters, hoping that repetition would yield the desired answer, like with sports, dribbling a basketball for hours every day paid off in the long run. I wrote the letters in different sizes, fonts, and angles, peering at them studiously. I found myself very angry after half an hour or so of this when the piece of rock suddenly broke in my hand, halting my very important analysis.

I stepped back to inspect my work, and realized I was staring at a wall that said…

Ha hahahahahahahahahahahaha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Hah!

The wall was laughing at me. I sat down with my back to the laughter so I wouldn’t see it and lose what little sanity I had left. The three inherited items before me laughed anyway.

I closed my eyes, thinking on my conversation with my parents. Because I needed it, I spent the most time remembering those first few moments. Hugging my mom. My dad. Carl asking my mom about her vast experience with the D. I felt myself finally smiling, so moved onto the rest of the conversation. Their words had been so freaking cryptic. They knew we were being watched and, finally, had wanted to tell me everything. To come clean.

But because of whoever was watching us, they couldn’t.

After going over it what felt like a hundred times, I came up with no new answers. At least, no answers that would help me now. These items were important, and I needed to do something with them. To stop something from happening on earth – or in Fae, possibly. But now they were trapped down here with me. Untapped potential.

I spent some time studying the spear, but other than being exquisitely pretty and well made, it was just metal and wood. I could sense nothing special about it. Probably due to the wards on my cell, since I had failed to touch my magic – about a dozen times now so far. It looked like one big feather from Grimm, and the two feathers hanging from the blade were also identical to my alicorn. I again considered Talon’s spear. It was very identical in style to this one.

I reached for my necklace and unclasped it, staring down at the coin. I closed my eyes and tried to feel something. Anything. The metal disc was cold in my fingers, not even a flicker of response. I didn’t need magic to use it, at least I was pretty sure, so it should have worked.

I tried imagining it into looking like one of those Candy Skulls. Maybe I could use it as a disguise. Changing it from Mask to a random item that could be concealed had never taken magic before. It simply changed if I needed it to. Like the other Horseman Masks. A way to conceal what it was. Also, so they didn’t have to walk around with those frightening Masks on all the time.

The coin sat in my fingers, unchanging.

“Looks like Anubis was right,” I muttered. He’d said he had blocked my Horseman’s Mask, but then again, Death had warned me not to even attempt using it, so it was probably for the best. I might accidentally end up letting some other poor bastard out of his cell.

I reached inside my satchel, pulling out a large, black feather. Grimm’s feather. It was a perfect match to the feathers on the spear. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and deciding it couldn’t hurt, I called out to my friend again.

“Grimm.”

Nothing happened.

“Grimm, Grimm, GRIMM!” I shouted.

I waited ten seconds before cursing, tossing the feather on the ground as I bumped the back of my head against the rock wall. I felt nothing. Heard nothing. Sensed nothing. Grimm’s arrival was always… climactic. Black lightning, murderous scream, sparking hooves, enemies dying…

Looked like the architect of this place knew his stuff. Either these things didn’t work in Hell, or they didn’t work in this cell. Seeing as how I had been able to use magic as I traveled with Dante, Talon, and Carl, it must be the cell. If I could only find a way out…

A whole lot of nothing happened for a few hours.

At one point, I glanced down at the spear to see that Grimm’s feather had landed beside the other two. I frowned, studying them, but gave up. It didn’t really matter if I couldn’t find my way out of this fucking cell, did it?

More hours went by.

I spent a good two hours stacking rocks in aesthetically pleasing piles around the cell in an effort to establish some Zen in my afterlife.

Then I spoke to the rocks, asking how long they had been down here. What kinds of things they had seen. What their favorite place to visit was. How old they were…

Realizing what I was doing, I spent ten minutes kicking them all down as I cursed up a storm.

Good grief, I wasn’t good at this whole solitude thing.

I realized I was staring at that open cell again and looked away angrily.

“Not a good idea. Only bad things can happen from going in there…” I told myself as I climbed to my feet. “What if it closes up behind me?” Maybe I would be able to spot something from the outside, from a safe distance away, of course. I flung out my hand to cast a fireball of light inside. Nothing happened. “Right, no magic, you dumb boob,” I cursed myself.

With a sudden thought, I went back to my satchel, reaching inside in hopes that Anubis hadn’t shaken it out in his search for… whatever he had been looking for. The keys.

With a triumphant shout, I brandished three glow sticks, courtesy of raiding Yahn’s sock drawer – rave accessories. I snapped the tubes, the cavern suddenly glowing with neon light, and tossed them into the open cell, spaced apart for maximum light.

My eyes widened in disbelief. The hole was… tiny. Maybe ten paces across and six feet deep. “Heh. Six feet deep. Hell…” I sighed, refocusing back on the walls. The green light cast strange markings on it so I took a few steps closer, not enough to let anything grab me, but close enough to squint.

I froze, blinking several times. The same few words were written thousands of times on the entire wall. The reason I hadn’t at first recognized them was because – as the occupant had used up the last clear space – he had begun to scratch the words in a second layer over his previous etchings. My skin pebbled, both in confusion, curiosity, and amazement. To do this… thousands of times… he had either loved or hated these things. Since we were in Hell, I was leaning towards hate.

Camelot.

Arthur.

Merlin.

I stared at the wall for a very long time, wondering if I had just made things upstairs one hell of a lot worse – even from my locked prison cell.

I closed my eyes and said a prayer. “Help me, Brothers…”

I spent a long time waiting, but no one came to do so.