This time, the abyss took the shape of a large hotel corridor.

The sides of the hallway were lined with portraits of famous actors and singers and poets, with the quality of the pictures gradually moving from three dimensional holograms to sharp digital photography, all the way to charcoal etchings and eventually caveman scrawling carved into the walls with sharpened stones.

Also very noticeable were the dozens and dozens of hellions; a species of tiny, hideous primordial demons who looked like children with elongated limbs tipped with venomous claws, swollen bellies, and mouths filled with razor sharp teeth.

Oh, and the tops of their heads were on fire. Can’t forget that part.

“Run, run, run, run!” Everly shouted as she bolted for the exit with Sloth following closely behind her as the hellions shrieked with mindless fury and chased after them, determined to tear the pair of them apart.

“I told you this was a terrible idea! I told you! Why didn’t you just stay put?” Sloth whined as the horde of bloodthirsty demons drew nearer.

“Don’t blame me for this! You ignited my curiosity! I’m supposed to feel guilt for having a precocious and childlike sense of wonder?” Everly yelled back as they drew closer to the glowing golden door that marked their escape from this section of the abyss.

“Haven’t you ever heard about curiosity killing the cat? That’s a slogan based on grim reality! There are so many dead cats in the multiverse!” Sloth snapped back.

When they reached the door, Everly hurriedly pulled it open and whooped with victorious glee when they managed to slam it shut behind them just as the first of their hellion pursuers came crashing into it. “Later suckers!” she yelled triumphantly as the door shook beneath the pounding of many fists before gradually fading from sight.

“Everly, quiet down!” Sloth said while gesticulating wildly for her to quiet down. “Just because we escaped that bunch doesn’t mean there aren’t others on this side who won’t hear you yelling! We have no power in this realm, we must be careful!”

They now stood in what appeared to be the edge of some manner of wetlands, with long grass jutting out of muddy, dank water, and massive trees with low hanging branches and vines covering the area.

“Yeah, yeah, all right,” Everly said blithely as she took stock of their new surroundings. “You know, for a literal demon king, you sure like to emphasize your limits a bunch. We can’t do this, we can’t do that, we’ll be eaten alive if we attract the wrong sort of attention, blah-blah-blah. The whole point of kinghood is that you don’t have to follow any rules but your own.”

“That is the exact opposite of responsible kingship, you utter maniac,” Sloth said as he slid to the ground to catch his breath.

“Well, why do we have to be responsible?” Everly asked him as she took a moment to get some stretches in for herself. “That’s what people like Carter are for.”

“Who?” he asked.

“Carter. He’s my goblin majordomo,” Everly said. “Why? Don’t you have one?” she asked.

“Do you even know what a majordomo is?” he asked her with a raised brow.

“I assume it’s something Japanese,” Everly said.

“Why?” Sloth asked her with an exaggerated sigh.

“Well, it says domo at the end, doesn’t it?” Everly asked innocently.

“You’re not representing the multiverse’s blonde population very well,” Sloth said with a disappointed frown.

“The hell I’m not! I have an entire nation at my beck and call,” said Everly in mock offense.

“Which we’ll never return to if we don’t escape from this place!” Sloth said irritably. “Which is completely your fault by the way. Why the hell did you attack me while I was casting my teleportation spell?”

“To catch you off guard, obviously,” Everly said with a sage nod. “And behold! It worked! Now I’ve escaped your clutches and have begun a new and exciting adventure.

“It worked, did it?” Sloth scoffed. “Thanks to you, my spell misfired and threw us into the lower abyss! The primal lands of torment! A place where neither of us have authority or power--”

“Because it borders too closely to the elemental plane,” Everly concluded for him, having heard this rant more times on their journey than she cared to recall.

“—because it borders too closely to the elemental plane!” Sloth continued, oblivious to her words. “Don’t you understand how much danger we’re in?”

“Haven’t you ever heard that danger and opportunity are the same word in Chinese?” Everly asked him.

“No, because that’s completely untrue,” he replied.

“Yeah, but are you sure?” Everly asked him.

“Yes,” he said without hesitation.

“Yeah, but are you really sure?” she asked again.

“YES,” he repeated impatiently.

“Yeah, but are you really, really sure—”

“EVERLY! I’m sure, okay?!” he bellowed at her.

“Hey, there’s no reason to yell, Ace, we’re just having a conversation,” Everly said. “Honestly, you’re so high strung. You’d think the embodiment of sloth would be a lot more chill or something.”

“How can I possibly relax when I’m around you? You’re completely out of control!”

“Which I’ve repeatedly been told is my most charming trait,” she said as she took a seat on a rock beside him.

“Told by whom?” Sloth asked as he rested his face on his palms.

“Lots of people,” Everly said. “Too many to count.”

“No one,” he said. “No one at all.”

“Nah, everybody loves me too much to say otherwise. It’s the curse of charisma,” Everly said confidently.

“So, what made you decide that you needed to deliver a surprise attack to me? I’ve been nothing but cordial to you,” Sloth asked after taking a few deep breaths.

Everly smirked at him playfully but there was a slight hardening of her eyes as she spoke. “I wasn’t going to take the chance of you keeping me as a prisoner. Especially since you’d already lied to me earlier.”

Sloth’s jaw dropped open dumbly before he corrected himself which in turn caused Everly to feel some pity for the dope. Yeah, he’s gorgeous, and he’s older than recorded history, but man, he sure is light on gray matter, she thought uncharitably.

“Why would you say something like that?” he asked her unconvincingly.

“All the time I’ve recently spent with my father,” Everly said matter-of-factly. “He’s so good at lying that it doubles back on itself and becomes a kind of perverse sort of honesty. Compared to his anti-truth, your dishonesty is easy to pick apart.”

“What do you think I lied about?” Sloth asked her with a poor attempt at a nonchalant tone of voice.

“You told me Seraphine was conspiring with your brother, Wrath. That was complete bullshit,” Everly said scornfully. “Seraphine is a temple traditionalist. She’s the sort of girl who wouldn’t say oh my God, during an orgasm. You really expect me to believe someone like her is going to risk her soul consorting with a demon king?”

“But I told you, I can hear my siblings’ thoughts—”

“Wrath is the sin of anger, right?” Everly asked him.

“Yes, obviously.”

“So, that means he’s the sort who’d get pissed if say his little brother had just spoiled a deal he had going on the side, right?” Everly continued. “And being that his name is Wrath, I expect he’s not the kind of big brother who’d settle for an apology and an admission of guilt, is he? It’s more likely that he’d walk over to your castle and stomp your ass into the ground.”

“Uhm…” said Sloth.

“And considering that you’re a lazy bastard who doesn’t believe in taking risks, that means you’re extremely unlikely to want to set him off. After all, getting beaten up is too much of a hassle for the king of sloth. Ergo, you lied to me about Seraphine, probably to get me to kill her, all out of some petty-ass need to avenge yourself after I humiliated you back in Bremburg. Does that sound about right?”

For a moment, a shadow seemed to darken Sloth’s face, leaving his expression unable to be read. When it passed, a look of genuine anger remained as he raised his face to glare at Everly’s amused gaze.

“You murdered me,” he said bitterly. “And you killed my attendant. The closest thing I had to a friend in that world.”

“That big spider? That’s what you’re so knotted up over?” Everly asked.

“He saved my life. He kept me warm, fed me, nursed me back to health. He even tried to protect me from your rain of sharp metal. He deserved better than the ending he was dealt,” Sloth said.

“So, your idea of avenging your friend was getting me to kill someone who had nothing to do with any of it?” Everly asked. “That’s pretty disappointing for a monster of your caliber. Why didn’t you just challenge me to a duel? Any friend worth mourning is worth avenging.”

“Because I’d lose!” Sloth said hatefully. “I can’t beat you, one-on-one.”

“Damn right you can’t,” Everly said. “But at least I’d respect you for making the effort.”

“Did your respect preserve the life of Countess Anne?” Sloth asked with doubt.

“Of course, not. But we followed a warrior’s code. We had an obligation to see our fight through to the end,” said Everly.

“God, listen to yourself talk. You’ve really taken to that shithole planet, haven’t you?” Sloth said in disgust. “A warrior’s code, you say. What kind of backwards fucking thinking is that? It’s just an excuse to kill.”

“I don’t need an excuse to kill anyone,” Everly said frostily as she crossed her arms.

“Of course, you don’t because you don’t see any value in human life. Because you’re a psychopath. Because you can’t feel genuine emotion,” Sloth said. “You’re just some broken thing that fell out of the womb, with the body of a human and the mind of some prehistoric insectile beast that only knows how to feed its urges.”

“Shut your fucking mouth,” Everly said. “I have a code, I have rules, I don’t just…do whatever I want. I have reasons behind my actions. I’m not a freak!”

“Ha! Now who’s the liar?” Sloth said spitefully.

Everly flexed her fingers and felt her tendons popping. She had a sudden urge to beat Sloth to the ground. To tear his eyes from his face and replace that smug look on his face with an expression of suffering and fear.

It would feel good.

So good…

But she didn’t give in. Not because she didn’t want to. But because she was too prideful to concede his point. To prove him right. She wouldn’t humiliate herself like that.

“Whatever,” she growled. “Get up, we’ve rested long enough. Time to find the next exit.”

“Everly, we’re going in the wrong direction, I keep telling you!” Sloth said as he rose reluctantly to his feet. “Beings as tainted as you and I can’t be this close to the elemental plane. If the higher elementals discover our presence, we’ll be roasted alive.”

“So, I should just go back to your realm and either wait around to be rescued or spend the rest of my life in a coma?” she asked him. “Yeah, thanks but no thanks. It sounds like the elemental plane is exactly where I need to be.”

“But why?” Sloth asked in genuine confusion.

“Because, my girls have been sleeping for over a year, and I’m sick of waiting around for them to wake up,” answered Everly. “Titania and Eris can easily absorb all the residual power that’s keeping me unconscious. If they were awake, they’d have done it by now. But they’re still hibernating, so I guess I’ll have to go to them.”

“If Mohamad won’t go to the mountain?” asked Sloth.

“Precisely,” Everly nodded. “See? You’re not as dumb as you look.”

“Mountain analogies are stupid,” he muttered as he began to follow her.

“You’re stupid!” she yelled angrily in response.