Not hot in the sense of how I’d accustomed into becoming. This was like in a suffocating crush of bodies that were far too close for comfort or care of personal space. I had only ever experienced a sensation close to this when stuck in a tightly packed elevator, but instead of the brush of fabric on the outfit I wore that day, here I felt flesh against my exposed body.

My head bumped into something --

-- then another over my shoulders --

-- and more of these things around me. There were things stretching and encircling every crook and cranny around me.

What freaked me out more was that I couldn’t see. I was in a darkness that could only be created when blinded by cover. As if someone had a hand over my eyes. That was possible as I felt the brush and stroke of so many of these things pass by my face.

Instantly creeped out, I shook my head violently to throw off whatever was on my face.

If I was back in this Hellish world, then I knew where I was, but I didn’t know how I got there. Somehow I had awoken within the tower of limbs.

The more violently I thrashed around to escape, the more these sinuous limbs were determined to restrain me. If they could not pull me back, down, and further into their nest, they piled upon me with their great mass until I was pinned. It took me biting, scratching, tearing, and beating, and strangely burning them off of me to delay their intent.

In the next instant, I was definitely proven wrong in believing my mouth was their only interest.

My back arched upwards and my legs were yanked downward into what I thought was the ground. I had no idea where I was within the tower, but I certainly didn’t feel like it was at the base. Wherever I was within, I felt their probing to get in me however they could.

Right next to my left ear, I heard a very familiar noise: hissing. By instinct, and a bit of hope, I reached out to that sound --

-- and felt the touch of flesh at a temperature much hotter than I believed these limbs could tolerate.

It was her.

Before I lost the chance, I fought and scrambled towards her direction. I had no sight, but I didn’t need it. I simply felt and followed her heat. A few times, I had to back off when she had let out these bursts of hot air. As if she was letting off great gouts of steam from her fiery hot flesh.

Most likely, with the both of us in this tower, we shared the same danger of being violated and worse. She certainly sounded pissed with her hissy-fits. But if I hadn’t known any better, it sounded like she directed that steamy noise at me.

Despite the dire situation we were in, I wanted to yell at her to stop it or have asked what was her problem. I wasn’t at fault for taking a dive in this squirmy pit of perverse vipers, let alone whatever reasons she had for being here with me.

But she kept hissing right in my ear!

Having I had heard enough of her misdirected attitude, I hissed right back at her --

-- and an intense cramp rippled throughout my entire body. With that pain, I sense the heat dramatically increase between us and these things. And for some reason, a few of those limbs had dislodged themselves from me.

Unsure of what just happened, I had noted it occurred after I mimicked her hissing. So I repeated myself, cramped up, and sensed the flare of heat around us spike up too.

Without being able to see what had happened, I could only assume hissing caused my temperature to rise and peak above these serpentine limbs’ tolerance.

This discovery kept those invasive digits from exploring further from where they were not welcomed. Even though I could play with fire with her, we were still trapped.

There were so many constricted around me that I felt entirely covered. Each time a new one wrapped around, I hissed and became fiery hot enough for it to hesitate looping around me another time. It was the only way I could discourage them from doing more to me. My gnashing and clawing had done very little in comparison to searing their flesh off of me.

I worried, panicked and thought, ’How much longer can we hold them back?’

Frantically, I yanked on her as I was struggling to climb. I didn’t know which way would be out, but I had to head in some direction because remaining where we were would be worse than suicide.

As they grabbed me, I snatched them to pull my way through. When they became bold, I returned their bravery with a ferociously primal and igneous response.

Through my gritted teeth, I hissed heavily to breathe without offering them an opportunity to violate me orally. They became more aggressive as I meandered through their thick coiling cluster. At times, I was pulled back by greater limbs, to only be freed when either I or she focused our attention on them until I escaped. 

Together, we burned our way out.

A light.

I paused long enough to be jerked back by the deformed arms. I aggravated them and struggled to reach that light.

Blue... An ice-blue illumination.

This coloration confused me as I knew what the Hellish landscape looked like. Even though his was not right, it had to be better throwing ourselves out there than us being stuck in here.

For a split second, I had heard the oddest noise come from right behind me. In the next half of that second, I knew it came from her, but I had no clue what it was until my ears popped.

She screamed.

Not only had she shown me the first sign she could be afraid, I felt her tug me away from the blue light. I had no idea why she would desire being in this serpentine trap, but I was not having any more of it.

Whatever was out there, I knew we could find some way to deal with it. Right here, right now, I knew if we would both stay in the tower, we’d be lost. And when I considered our struggle with these things, there was also the possibility of us being mutilated.

They were far from being gentle. I was not going to be raped by these fucking limbs. And as much as I hated this bitch, I didn’t want her to be stretched and torn open by them either.

As she kept trying to tug me away from our only escape, I thoughtfully vowed, ‘This isn’t going to be our Hell.’

Planting and bracing my bare soles on the larger limbs, I pulled her back towards the light. In order for me to keep these things from hindering our progress, I took a deep breath, and through my frustration, I gritted my teeth and hissed.

As I used every ounce of my strength, I cramped far worse than I had before. The greasy flesh of the limbs my feet were braced against were slippery as Hell. While I made a bit of a comeback, I had to keep adjusting my position and shifting my hold on her.

Every second that ticked by, I was losing steam. In fact, I believed that might’ve been what I was orally venting. It didn’t make much sense, but then again, I wonder, ‘What truly had this week?’

Despite how well I was doing in that breathtaking moment, it wasn’t any good. My joints had locked up and this constantly heated hiss I dealt was causing my lungs to feel mutually inflamed.

Being out of breath, I went into a fit of coughing. I then thought, ‘So much for my last ditch effort.’

One look behind her and down into that dark recess, where the squirming mass reached and awaited our surrender or defeat, I gained an apprehensive secondwind. Baring my teeth and hissing my defiance, I ignored the everything my body was going through with a surge of adrenaline.

The more I tried to fight back and pull her with me to our freedom, the more they retreated from me. How overheated I felt, I didn’t have to wonder about their decision -- that was, if they had a conscious thought.

Just as I emptied myself for a second time, I felt my stomach lurch up and my sense of balance go haywire. In a shade of ice-blue, I caught the collective of limbs recoil from us.

A sense of overwhelming vertigo overtook me. As I felt the quick embrace, I had only enough time to respond to her hug by reaching out and behind my frightened she-demon.

An instant later, I was engulfed in white powdery ash, and so was she, but I felt a stunning impact behind me. Under me. 

That was when I realized I hadn’t thought over how high up in the tower we climbed. We’d fallen from a great height. I was amazed I hadn’t died, let alone blacked out.

In a frozen shade, I watched the infernal girl above me tense up her face until it was flush and open her mouth in a silent scream. As steam rolled off of the both of us, she scrambled off of me.

Having no clue what was going on, I simply watched from my paralyzed perspective. Unlike her, who had most recently fought against me in our escape from the tower, I wasn’t in a position to recover so quickly from our struggle and fall.

Being honest with myself, I might’ve been paralyzed. I couldn’t feel anything.

...Correction: I felt cold and numb all over.

While she was throwing herself bodily around the floor of ashes, I flexed my fingers and toes. I couldn’t feel them over the numbness, but I was certain they had moved. I tried raising my knee up, then the other until I had both balls of my heels digging into the more solid ground beneath me.

Considering what I had just been through, I took a much needed breather. And I wanted to calm down and relax after her reluctant bullshit.

Before I could lower my temper by a degree or two, pale-blue sky had been blocked by a copious obscurity of newly formed clouds. She was venting a seriously huge amount of steam.

In my own reluctance, I gradually sat up and the scanned search hadn’t taken me long. Her silent screaming from earlier was finally audible.

By the time I managed to stand -- which took me a moment longer than expected with my sense of balance out of whack -- I realized what we landed in wasn’t ash.

Snow. We were on a field of fluffy white snow.

Except for the living tower, I had yet to spot any kind of distinguishing landmark.

At first, for what she had done and almost caused back in that tower, I felt I had every justification to throw her off of me. But I didn’t go forward with it.

For a human, touching fire or being too hot was damaging. In contrast, for whatever she actually was, I began to believe freezing her was probably just as harmful.

Right in the crook of my shoulder and neck, I felt her chin jab me. As her head was resting there, I glimpsed at something peculiar in the corner of my eye.

Her ears were different from mine.

A series of noises behind us had broken my train of thought. Louds thuds that were accompanied with crashing and thrashing. I regretted the time I took to turn and look.

The base of the tower had shot out its limbs to retrieve us.

With the burden on my back, I lost my balance in my desperation to turn around and flee. On all fours, I scrambled back up onto my feet and tried to run.

The chase wasn’t going in our favor. Her additional weight to my upper body was throwing me off balance, but not to put the entire blame on her, it was also becoming difficult to kick through the deeper snow.

Just as I felt the touch of those limbs stretching around us, I felt a gust of bitingly cold wind. It was the first time I experienced the gales of this frozen world.

We fell back into the tower’s grasp. As we were being secured, I tried to hiss, but I was completely drained and out of breath. I could only huff and watch my frozen breath fade away.

The light… I thought, ‘Did the light just blink?’

As the light intensified, those limbs barring us from the light opened a fraction more. They became wider open, and the light brighter as they turned to us.

Eyes. Ice cold blue eyes.

If my fiery touch caused the limbs to retract in pain, they fled in fear of the frozen mist that poured down over the two of us. I felt every inch of her body, from the top of her breast against my back, down to the curling of her legs around mine, all of her pressing against me for warmth.

Whatever it was that had those eyes could breathe a breath of glacial chill. I had fallen for only a moment as the limbs retreated from the spread of coating ice.

A strong icy arm shot out at us.

I recoiled and would have retaliated against the frosty creature, but I was drained from my endeavor to reach this point, and I knew my hanger-on had nothing.

Once this new creature managed to reach us, it would have us at its mercy.

Bitterly cold, clenching fingers gripped my naked shoulder and ripped me out from the nest of limbs. Whatever it was had thrown me clear of the tower and behind itself onto a familiar blackened concrete highway.

Any comprehension I could’ve had of how this world functioned was submerged in crazy. We were practically stranded in the middle of a frozen nowhere, and now, back on the Hellish highway.

...I didn’t feel the clinging body heat.

Lying vulnerable on the ground, I turned around onto my back to see what it was that pulled me out and where my devilish companion had been thrown.

I paused my search for her when I processed what that icy creature was: a woman.

A giant woman.

One that had a complexion like the Earth’s permafrost. Her hair appeared white, but I saw the tips of them had the traces of fair gold. Aged, but still very beautiful and powerful.

All she did was stare at me over her shoulder. Then I saw in the crook of her arm the steam. She had her.

Once I established who was where, the frost giant faced the tower of limbs again.

Slowly, as I sat up, the giant blindly set and laid the steaming figure down behind her.

In seconds, the frozen layer was like morning dew over the snaking violators. They reached out for the frost giant in a frenzy. Without the surrounding snow, even the smallest of limbs sallied forth from the tower’s base.

It was like time froze for me to witness a lone warrior staring down an advancing horde.

A shield of solid ice had been punched downward into the charging mass of tentacular horrors. There was a loud smack of flesh against the solid barrier, but it wasn’t nearly enough to stop them.

In fear, I stiffened as if fear, rather than the cold, froze me in place. They flooded over the single plate of ice for her.

Then she flashed brightly.

I was blinded. I had no idea what had happened, but I couldn’t see for a few moments.

When the otherworldly light came back to my sight, I saw arcs of electricity, but black. Black lightning was instantly striking around the entire tower.

My center of attention diverted back to where the giant had stood, but she disintegrated like dust in the wind. A once giant statuesque figure of ice, then with the baleful gale frost, she vanished.

On the ground was the unmoving figure of my Hellish companion. I couldn’t tell from my perspective if she was alive or not.

In another instant, my perspective no longer had mattered with another blindingly bright light impairing my vision. I blinked until I could again see --

-- and I saw a dark flame lowly lick at the blackened concrete until it reached her. The pitch black fire appeared to have covered and consumed her. I blinked out the spots from my eyes, but when I could clearly look, I saw no one in that spot.

She was gone.

And yet more light hindered my vision. Each time I recovered from the blindness, I noted the flashes of light drove the tower back and upright into a slender spike reaching for the sky.

Before the light came again, I heard cackling laughter. A nightmarish laugh that I remembered.

The flash came again and again. As I was blinded, I tried to break out of my paralysis, but the closing in laughter was not being of much help to me.

The next time I could see with clarity, I caught sight of the more demonic woman. She was there where the frost giant and the my fiery partner once were.

Unlike last time, when I was being pulled and pushed toward the other side of the highway, I had a good look at this pale skinned demon.

Lithe and small, nubile and wild, whipping a thick long tail around herself ecstatically, she smiled and maniacally cackled as she darted her gaze in every direction she threw the bolts of lightning.

Reflecting back on the last time I saw her, I was wrong about her skin being as pale as the moon. White as snow naked flesh.

There were horns curving backwards from behind her ears along to frame the great length of her jet black hair. In a funnily strange way, I was surprised that her hair wasn’t sticking up with a static charge.

At last, she glanced back at me with eyes the color of coal. I wondered, ‘Was I wrong about that too?’ No whites in them at all.

Then I caught the whites in her eyes contract the dark the pair of dark pits as she narrowed her gaze. I could sense her recognition of me… or my imperfect fiery copycat.

She smiled at me. Through her black-lipped smile, something long and sinuous slipped out. I first thought it was her tongue, but it did something strange. It split. If it was a tongue, then she cleaned her row of sharp teeth in wide opposite directions with a bifurcated tongue.

As the black lightning flashed and blinded me, I heard her approaching at a painstakingly slow pace. It was as if this moment was being maliciously savored.

The memory of the humanoid creature she had ate came back to me. I knew then what about to happen and here I was laid in wait for her to come.

This time around, I screamed. After all I had endured, my sanity was on the brink of collapse.

Turning around onto all fours, I tripped and scraped at the ground to stand up and run in the same instant. I was too focused on my escape to efficiently stand and run.

Almost upon me, I heard a vicious growl --

-- but then right behind me came a shushing noise.

Midnight black arms came from the direction I stumbled to run away from. In my peripheral vision, I watched them slide over my shoulders until they hooked and caught me. I was pulled up close against a gracefully slender body.

Still screaming, I fought to be free.

Through my voiced terror, I heard that noise above me again. She really was shushing me.

In a whimper, I remained silent, but I didn’t look up. Not after what I’d seen. I expected her to bite my head off or sink her teeth down into my shoulder. To consume me. That she just wanted a quiet meal.

Looking down at the arms around me, I had thought they were black limbs. These were long sleeve gloves.

Something wasn’t adding up here.

The black lightning lady had been completely nude with snow white skin. That meant someone else had a hold of me.

Glancing over my shoulder, I saw the bare skin of the one who held me. The ball of their shoulder was exposed, but the long sleeve gloves connected with a black shirt.

Drifting my gaze away, I trailed my sight down and saw that it was a black dress they wore. It was large enough to have spilled around my legs as I was pulled tightly against the figure behind me. Despite the fact I felt a large bosom squeezed onto my bare back, I wasn’t sure I could call her a woman because I felt something very masculine under that dress being pressed up against me.

My anxiety was gradually calmed, but I still cried in fear of whatever was to happen next. I looked back over my shoulder and caught her shoulders relaxing. The pallor of her skin reminded me of grey ash.

A new wave of terror filled me. I jumped nearly out of my skin as I screamed again. I hadn’t an idea where this fear came from, but I knew the instant I looked that I should be instinctively afraid of this person.

At first, I thought those limbs had regained their courage and come after me again with some ill intent. And I did not believe I was entirely wrong.

When she shushed me again, holding me in place, I saw what was slithering around my legs. Looping around my ankle and up the back of my calf was a smooth serpentine tail as powdery soft as the ash, but firm and solid as flesh and bone.

Hyperventilating, my head felt as if it spun around and I nearly fainted from the dizziness.

No. She couldn’t.

It was more accurate that she faced down at me because the upper half of her face was masked. It was black and skintight, and she was entirely blindfolded by it.

As I looked at her, the black-masked upper half and the pale lower half of her face, she appeared to be a gorgeous woman. In her beautiful fashion, I had been given the impression she was plucked out of some Victorian masquerade ball to be here.

Startled again, I struggled to get out of her embrace as the pale tail raised up to my knee to start encircling my joint for the tip to tease the back of my thigh. A rhythmic drumming was beating inside of my head in sync with my pacing heart.

Funnily enough, I would be surprised to find that what she wore were clothes rather than what I suspected to be a body’s length of hair. I had witnessed stranger things here.

My impression of what she said was that Adam needed to get me pregnant, so that her ailing daughter had a baby body to be born into my world. It sounded far fetched, but regardless of how it sounded; I never chose Adam for anything.

I was worried about what she would do to me, but I was ever more concerned by what I thought she meant; that my dad couldn’t come back.

It felt like she pierced my tongue… but there was no precise pain to clarify she had damaged my tongue. It was just a tapped pressure had gone through and beneath my tongue. How her thumb kept stroking over the middle worried me. I felt it pass through my tongue.

The darkness continued to spread and she grew. And grew...

When her temple reached higher than the tower of limbs, her dark figure was engulfed in the black flames in the sky. Just like her daughter, she was disappearing into it…

My eyes widened when I realized she wasn’t the one being consumed, it was the other way around. Like a vortex in a storm, the whole fiery roof centered onto her to reveal a charred ceiling. As I was watching, I felt as if I had fallen deeper underground. Right where the fiery illumination receded until I saw nothing.

No more light. Only the darkness remained where I stood.

Except for the bright smile. I was covered, wrapped up, in her black fire.

Warm. Maybe a bit too warm...