In an instant, Dodd’s ticket to the underworld splintered into seven tongues of flame. They coiled around her, singed her, and swallowed her into Hellfloes. Nothing was left behind but char in the carpet.

Felicity, who'd been sitting at the other end of the room, smelled a hint of underworld smoke, slid her eyes open, and sighed. Interrupted. “Goodbye to you too,” she groaned.

Dodd was spit out into a howling inferno. She went tumbling into a world where there was no sky, no land, and certainly no sea—just the floes of magma travelling endlessly in all directions, flaring now and then like sunspots. It was all one, and if Dodd hadn’t been a fire demon, it all would’ve been unbearably hot. Few beings on Gaia or even in the underworld could stand to exist here for even a moment. They’d be not just burnt, but obliterated to the smallest atom.

The way in was a lot like the way out. Dodd yelped at first, but after a minute or so, she calmed down. In the process, she slowed down, too.

Dodd came to a neutral position in the magma-sky, a floating state. She came to a complete halt. Gathering herself, she looked around. To her this was a familiar, comforting void. She’d missed this warmth and she hadn’t even realized it. And she knew now for the first time in her life that home had a smell—whereas what mortals perceived as a scent-rich Gaia remained almost nothing, to her demon senses.

She steadied herself even more. As if on command, solid ground emerged beneath her feet in the form of a chunk of magma-rock. When she touched down and looked at her legs, she remembered how things glowed here: everything and everyone shone as star-bright and burning as the magma itself.

If she didn’t hurry, people and creatures would come out from the brightness. They’d pounce on her like she was expected prey. That was just the way the underworld worked. People who didn’t move fast were grist for anyone’s mill. And while the weak got away sometimes, the slow would always fall.

Now that Dodd had steadied herself physically, she needed to do the same mentally. She did so by holding her star-bright hand before her eyes and imagining that the Impostor card was there. She told the vision of the card, “I need to know who you are, Lord Nightfall. I’m going to learn who you are.”

The underworld doesn’t just operate on different moral laws, but different physical laws as well. There is no human metric that accounts for it, and if any humans were to study it, whether from Gaia or Earth, they would hardly believe their findings. One way to put it is, it’s as much a tangible space as a psychological one. Another way is that fate and faith are observable phenomena.

But here’s the bare truth: Dodd could get to where she wanted as long as she moved forward with conviction. She also needed to hope that somebody with a competing interest—someone who, for instance, wanted another imp as property or free resources or experience points—didn’t come forward with a stronger conviction. Convictions attracted and repelled like magnets. Ask a question and pray you receive the right answer.

Better, convince yourself you’ve got the question answered already. This is exactly what Dodd did by talking to herself in declarations, not inquiries, and walking off the edge of her platform. More rocks rose up to meet her, forming themselves into a pathway that curved down and away. They led into an image that formed before her eyes: a black-rock town, pulsing with bright aura. Down there, the demons roaming between buildings were so charged with heat that they glowed like irradiated ghosts.

It was no place for an imp to go. She went in.

Setting foot in the town was like setting off a tripwire. The eyes of all the ghostly figures—the demipeople, beasts, slugs, flying things—were on her. The moment she set foot was the moment she began to exist in their perceptions, for their senses. This is, again, how the underworld worked. There was no such thing as night, day, or horizon.

And then they started pouncing on her.

A claymore’s edge ate into the rock behind her. She dove.

Then she fell into a vast dark, heard a demon rabble bark and argue around her. Two massive hands surrounded Dodd and nearly crushed her. She squirmed, but couldn’t budge.

A new voice came from between the fingers. It was only a whisper, but whatever scaly demon this was so large that a whisper could shake a room. “I’ve been looking for a pet,” the voice rasped.

Dodd shut her eyes tight and filled her head with thoughts of Lord Nightfall, but that was no use. Thoughts and will were not enough when another’s thoughts and will competed.

She would have been trembling if the grip wasn’t so tight. “I-I’m sure that can be arranged,” she trilled.