The back of her head throbbed as she struggled to come back to herself, recalling the wind that had been knocked out of her stomach and counting on herself to breathe even when the attempts left her throat burnt and parched. Seraphina brokenly flopped onto her side, still clinging to the grimoire like a damned lifeline as her eyes strained against the desert light, scorching and arid and bleak. And when the befuddlement subsided and she could take in her surroundings, she quickly distinguished that she was no longer in the forest, at least. Groaning softly, she overworked atrophied muscles and hauled herself up, blearily expanding her field of vision and assessing the situation carefully now that her mind had begun to clear as well.  

A wasteland. It was like a twisted reinterpretation of the grove. Leafless desiccated trees lined the peripheries of her eyeline with gnarled sinister boughs that carried the remnants of shriveled carcasses. A droplet of blood flecked her cheek as she craned up her neck, beholden to a vast sea of scarlet in lieu of the sky, ejecting the faint and iron-scented rainpour. Seraphina strengthened her hold on the book and cautiously circumnavigated the dread, sidestepping a suspended corpse, attracting swarms of gluttonous flies who have already long had their fill, ashen, decrepit bones picked clean of every last morsel of flesh.  

When she approached the edge of the withered hillock, she found herself overlooking a steep, chilling revelation, entrapped under the purview of that same weeping willow albeit reversed, suspended upside down among thick red waters, elongated, crooked branches canopying the firmament. A flipped image not unlike the view she had witnessed in the Gallery of Recollection, and she watched as hundreds, thousands— an indiscernible number of fidgeting lights, fairies crazily scampering around its lopsided roots; a fuzzled hivemind.  

“Another reflection,” Seraphina noted attentively to herself as she mentally cataloged the facts. “... But this isn’t like before... The air here feels... forbidding. Huh... then this must be what he mentioned before... the other side of the Witch Realm that lies sequestered beneath its mantle...”  

Her attention inevitably snagged on the elephant in the room per se: a giant crater, girdled by a dense mound of deteriorated carcasses, safeguarding the contours of a pedestaled altar like a protective moat around a stronghold. A lordly foundation of bone; she could make out an indistinct figure reclined thereupon: the alleged king, posture listless but confident; their elbow lifted atop the armrest, skeletal scaffolding that did not look the least bit comfortable, mind you. Alongside long, viridescent hair, pallid skin, and dark garments. Seraphina also noted the giant vertebrae that enwrapped the circumference of the canyon, its impressive aura backdropping the marrowlike shrine: the rejected husk of a dragon, she guessed. Of course, she had a feeling that the “king” was the one who had dragged her here, and also doubted that there would be any convenient exits nearby since it was hardly ever that easy, right?  

Seraphina took a second to regather her courage, then cautiously skidded down the rocky slope. The moment she reunited with solid ground, she sent a cursory look in the direction of the altar before sprinting around to duck behind a wall of sunken ribs, partly retaken by the earth, invasive moss lodged between moldering ridges and grooves. Seraphina briefly reinterrogated her surroundings before retreating within again to peruse the shaking tome, quietly strategizing. Contrary to before, she located words, but they were jumbled, sporadic like chicken scratch, slapdashedly jettisoned across the pages, and she frustratingly gritted her teeth. 

“Shit, come on! You need to cooperate with me, here... at the very least, can you help me find a way to notify Malphas? If he’s honest about upholding our pact, then... but didn’t he say that he’d be virtually useless in combat until I learned how to control my abilities? If this is the Inferno, then... that person, wouldn’t they also be...”  

The Lord of the Flies. The Plateau of Famine, hidden between the garbled lines; Seraphina was able to signal out the truth, consistent syntaxes of repeating phrases. The Third Layer, she shut the book. Hiding was pointless because she had no doubt that its eyes and ears encompassed however far these infernal bounds stretched, but also reconciled with the fact that if they intended to kill her, they surely would have had the means to do it without resorting to such roundabout methods. Furthermore, Seraphina could only rationalize that she was dragged here for something akin to a discussion, or more so— it was as clear as day that in comparison to the sacred instrument she carried; her own life was negligible. But if prizing it off her pummeled corpse was not their main intention, then...  

Seraphina slinked out, aborting the safety of the trenches for open fire. She immediately noted, however, that the king had forsaken his throne, and when she looped around the perimeters of the skeletal wall, she discovered wide phosphorescent wings fulgurating in the nonexistent sunglow before reclosing, twitching against the curvature of a muscular back. A skintight, cropped black shirt exaggerated said proportions, fine musculature and a bold pale build. Hands gauntleted with knifelike accessories for fingers and a spiked collar that was fitted snugly around their throat, alongside a spiked belt and headband to match. Shiny black trousers and platformed shoes. Pointed ears studded with gold spikes and messy emerald hair with parroting viridescent irises that were accompanied by long eyelashes and slit pupils. Enthroned atop the decomposed skull, one leg corkscrewed around the other complete with an aura of smugness and a fanged grin.  

“Well, well, well. Aren’t you a smart little cookie,” a deep voice underscored by unapologetic snark. The demon uncrossed his long legs and hopped onto the ground, chaperoned by a score of agitated fairies, drawn to him like a funeral pyre. “... But that at least saves me the trouble of needing to introduce myself,” he snuck a perfunctory glance in the direction of the gold-inlaid grimoire.

 “A real beauty, ain’t she? The penultimate incarnation of the Eld Witch’s legacy... the fact that you mortals managed to make contact with the lower levels and contracted them to aid with your research is one thing, but to think you were able to conjure a device capable of usurping the heavens themselves... all these grueling years of playing nicely with those hoity-toity assholes in the Consortium... this story might actually have a happy ending.”  

“... When that man mentioned that some of his… colleagues were fighting for the empty throne,” she started, meticulously monitoring the vaguest body language, trying to reveal chinks in the polished glass and viable openings. “... I presume that you’re one of them, Lord of the Flies? Or... Beelzebub, Prince of Gluttony.” 

“Don’t word it like that. Unlike those filthy impoverished fiends crawling along the edges of the foothills, I am a distinguished member of the royal bloodline. The overseer of the Third Layer,” Beelzebub broadly outspread his arms for additional effect. “Ah, but,” they slackened as a moue of discontent bullied away his overconfidence, limply shrugging his unclad shoulders. “Evidently, after years of rigorously maintaining order as the primary keeper of the emaciated, the voracious, and the forgotten... punishing the unworthy and being on my best behavior... the minute I try to seize my long-awaited, deserved chance at glory, I’m seen as a no-good renegade!”  

He twined his hands together to emulate a halfhearted prayer, lips pulled into a downtrodden pout. “It’s a complete and utter disgrace! I assure you that all I wish for is the betterment of my beleaguered kindred, forced to hide ourselves in the crevices of the underground, locked under the iron thumb of a one-sided concordat that only benefits our enemies!”  

“... I have an inkling that you aren’t as magnanimous as you insist you are, Lord Beelzebub. But this isn’t my war to fight; I’m not interested in your civil rights movement,” Seraphina stated bluntly. “But if it’s the power of the book you desire, then... sorry, I don’t think we’ll be able to reach an impasse.”  

Beelzebub clicked his tongue like a jaded teen. “I don’t think you’re quite aware of the danger you’re in, girlie,” Seraphina did her darndest to internalize her uneasiness, managing an unbothered front as the green-haired devil paced around her with his arms crossed; his shadow robust and intimidating. “You’re in my domain. In the Plateau of Famine, my word is law. I had to obey the treaty... which means that I was in no position to drag you here without your consent.”  

“So, you chose to trick me.”  

“Harsh way of putting it. I only nudged you in the right direction, that’s all. But my point still stands,” Beelzebub came to a standstill and looked down on her like she was but the scum smeared under his elevated sole. When she was entitled to elude his haughty gaze; his features twisted into a foul grin as a gauntleted hand reached out, clawed digits eliciting a small whine of pain as they roughly dug into the arch of her chin, forcibly lifting her head. “Don’t make this needlessly hard on yourself,” Beelzebub chided, laughing lowly at the heat that burned in her eyes. 

“Contrary to popular belief, we demons are negotiable creatures... give me what I want, and I’ll happily look in the opposite direction, hm? Though, I suppose I can’t say the same about the flies,” edged fingertips wandered southward, tickling the length of her throat, a thumb catching a stray bead of sweat. “... They feed off the residual resentment of those down-on-their-luck paupers who’ve let themselves waste away within the alleys while loudly cursing the world and the lucky few it pities... and here, the intensity of their starvation and their suffering is only amplified a hundredfold: an endless vacuum of grief.”  

Seraphina rasped when a fist closed around her windpipe, and she clawed at it desperately with one hand, albeit to predictably little avail. “... I wonder if your sins will be exposed when you take that final breath of yours as well, Miss Elf?”