Simon drew his sword before he began to advance, even though there was no immediate threat. He didn’t o see the man standing amongst the fmes grow horns or brandish cws to know he was bad news. He might not have the red skin that Simon would have expected, but there was no way two ways about it. Every movie he’d ever seen had taught him that that dude was a demon, and after the zombie level, he was taking no ces with getting his soul sucked into hell or whatever it was that the demon had pnned.

  “Easy,” the man said, holding his arms in a gesture of surrender. “I’m on your side here.”

  “My side?” Simon asked skeptically as he studied the demon. He was dressed like what he presumed a noble in this era would dress like, with a white tunic, a dark doublet, and a purple short cape along with an eborately curled hair-do that. “You don’t have any idea who I am.”

  “It’s true,” the demon agreed, “but I know your type. Only one kind of hero shows up in this pymore. The gods made sure of that.”

  “And what kind is that?” Simon asked suspiciously. He stopped when he was still te from the man and didn’t pn to get much closer. From here he could see that the boundary that defihe shattered, fming uy that the demon occupied from the normal looking cathedral the Simon stood in was a thin yer of runes drawn in white chalk.

  Even from here they were difficult to read, though. Ihey looked like they’d been stretched and tortured beynition, and though it looked like it had started out as a circle, something had deformed it.

  “The kind that are just as trapped out there as I am in here,” the demon said suctly. Simon had just started to imagine what kind of force could make the underlying spader the boundary runes like some kind of bck hole phenomena, when the demon’s words pletely halted those thoughts iracks.

  “Excuse me?” Simon sputtered, not pletely sure he’d heard him right. The demon couldn’t possibly know that.

  “I said that you’re just as trapped in your pit as I am by this bsted circle,” the demon said, smiling. It could see that it had caught Simon’s i now.

  “And how is that you know about the pit?” Simon asked, sweating now. This was eoo meta for his taste.

  “e now, you think you’re the first hero Hedes has sent this way?” As the demon spoke, it gestured expansively from the door Simon had e in to another door that stood amidst the shattered ruins of the floor, and far too close to the boundary line for fort. “She’s sent hundreds, no thousands, of heroes this way, though I doubt any of them ever found what they were looking for.”

  “Why do you say that? Did you kill them all before they could advao the level?” Simon asked, leveling his sword warily as his gaze flicked bad forth between the demon and the path he retty sure he o take.

  “Kill them?” the demon ughed. “My boy, you are free to leave any time I want. You’ll be back. They always e back, you know. Over and ain, until they finally e to me for answers.”

  “And why would a demon like you have any answers I need,” Simon asked. His tone had lost much of the bativeness it had held until now because he was genuinely fused. He had no idea what this thing could want from him. “You’re just a monster in this pce. A challeo be defeated and overe.”

  “Take a look at this,” the demon said, ign what Simon said, turning around and fag the fiery curtain behind him. With a gesture, he pulled them aside like they were no more than heavy drapes, revealing a fiery hellscape that definitely looked like it was from something straight out of Dante.

  For a few seds, Simon was overe, and all he could do was stare at the infinite ndscape that assaulted his eyes. It wasn’t just a fiery pce of suffering, that would have been too simple. It was fractal and endless, and even though he could feel her its heat nor its torments, he still felt himself tearing up at the sight.

  “Notiything?” The demon asked expetly, “Aing patterns?” Simon shook his head and looked again, even if he didn’t want to.

  The volic pits of fire and shit were full of writhing souls just like he’d expected, but her those nor the rivers of blood were probably what this thing wanted him to notice, so he tried looking for something that didn’t belong. In hell, that retty tall hurdle to overe, so he tried looking for something that wasn’t mindlessly awful.

  He found the first example floating not far away above a crooked tower that was far too damaged to stay standing in the real world. It was a set of strangely familiar floating stairs made out of stone fragments. Seds ter he found another example, and another. Only when he saw them all lined up, in a strange fractal pattern that was nearly identical, did he realize that they were all pretty much identical to the stairs that stood in front of him.

  He also noticed that outside of ead every one was a small army of demons just waiting to i was like the hellish version of the beaches of Normandy.

  “That’s right,” the demon said. “The goddess you work for is making this se py out a thousand, thousand times. Those are just the ruptures that are open now, too. Not the ohat haven’t opened yet, or the ohat have been closed”

  “But why would more than one version of the pit be open at once?” Simon asked, not prehendily what was going on here.

  “Every one of those rifts is another her in vain to save the world, just like you are. There are thousands of versions of the pit trying to aplish that, but no matter how many versions of a world yoddess makes, there will only ever be one version of hell,” the demon answered. “None of them will succeed, of course. How could one ever succeed at an impossible task.”

  “It’s not impossible, it’s just…” Simon started to say, stopping himself when he realized he arroting one of Hedes’ lines.

  “It’s just really difficult, right?” the demon smiled sardonically, letting the fiery curtain behind him fall bato pce. “They all say that too, at first.”

  Simon ighe demon’s words and studied the runic boundary, as well as the chaotic path to the door. “I don’t think you reach me,” he said finally. It wasn’t going to be the easiest walk to get there, because Simon was no fan of ptformers, but the way that the stretched lines of the summoning circle were id out, the path to the door was clear enough.

  “I ’t,” the demon agreed. “But you’ll be back. You’ll be back over and over and ain, and maybe after you get tired of pying her games, you’ll decide you’d rather py one of mine instead.”

  Simon ignored him and walked towards a swirling debris field that was somewhere between an asteroid field and a set of stairs. For ohe Pit finally had some brilliant level design and art dire, and Simon found it terrifying. Not that he thought it would be hard to stay on his side of the white line, or that things were moving so quickly that he thought he might lose his bance, but because in the empty spaces betweeones he could see straight down into hell.

  “Watch your step,” the demon said, suddenly much closer to Simon than he’d been before, as he suddenly teleported to the closest he could get to and still stay on his side of the line.

  The sudden shock terrified Simon, but he was able to suppress the scream, and with a dirty look at the demon that was toying with him, he gingerly stepped down onto the first piece of debris. He was worried that any moment they would all fall out of the sky, but the stohat had once made up the cathedrals floor, and perhaps still did, felt rock solid to Simon.

  It took five minutes of very careful steps to reach the door, and the whole way there he was focused as mu all the pces he could fall to his death as he was at the slow crawling movements of the lines on the blocks he could see.

  When he finally reached the doorway, as he pced his hand on the knob, the demon began g somewhere behind him. “Excellent work,” he gratuted him mogly. “You’ll do eveer I’m sure the ime you e back, and the time after that, and… well, you get the idea.”

  Simon turo tell him off, but when he did, there was no ohere. He shrugged. The demon disappearing was by far the least weird part of the whole enter, and he had been right about ohing at least, Simon would eventually pay him another visit whether he wao or not.

  With that thought in mind, he very slowly turhe knob and eased the door open, wary of some kind of demonic trap. Instead, he found a dusty hallway lined with oil paintings, and lit debras that danced with little blue fmes.

  “Ghosts, huh?” he asked himself, turning around to take o look around the hellscape that surrounded him. “I’ll take it.”

  Simon stepped through the door without looking bad shut it behind him. He didn’t know how he was supposed to kill ghosts, but he’d take a little e or whatever over the risk of eternal damnation.

  Simon turo the right this time and began walking. This felt less like a fantasy video game level, and more like something from the survival henre, or maybe even the haunted mansion at Disneynd. The jump scares started small, too.

  At first, it was just the eyes on the portraits following him, but the further he went, the weirder things got. In the first door he opened was a library where books randomly floated from one shelf to the . Shortly after that, he found a ballroom, where random articles of clothing danced with one another like the dancers were still wearing them. This was discerting enough, but some of them were doing it high above the rest, he gilded roof of the ballroom.

  Simon shut that door immediately a going. The weirder things got, the more he felt like he was being watched, though. That wasn’t Simon’s biggest problem, though. The biggest problem he had was that he was pletely lost. Even though no one was trying to kill him, the pce was huge and seemed to go on forever. Sometimes the rooms had windows, and he could see that he was on the sed or third floor of some kind of deg pace, and that the grounds were just as dipidated as the building itself.

  The calm, quiet demeanor, lulled him into a false sense of security. Nothing had happened, but that didn’t mean that nothing was going to happen, but he was halfway down a hall dispying the rusting ons and bahat were trophies before he figured that out.

  Simon heard one of the banners rustle a bit, and raised his shield towards it, just in time to deflect a m star that was heading towards him. The thing bounce off his shield and shattered the window as it went flying outside.

  The force of the blow staggered Simon and smmed against the wall, and a pair of daggers followed, embedding themselves oher side of his head.

  Simon forced himself to his feet, warily watg a hat had floated off the wall, and started to take aim at him. He backed up slowly, looking for somewhere he could escape to that didn’t involve a two-story jump through a broken window.

  The never reached him. Instead, a sword suddenly thrust through him from behind. He watched in horror as the pain slowly spread through him as the sword bde slowly slid out of his chest covered in blood.

  It was a blow to the heart, at least, were Simon’s st scious thoughts before it all went bbsp;