Several hours passed since I sent my first message, through [Urgent News], to Yoshitsune.

  She hadn’t responded after the first hour. But, that was to be expected. It’s Hell, you don’t drop what you’re doing just to answer a message. Somewhere in my ego, I had felt like she was into me enough to do just that. Unearned disappointment had filled me when I had that thought, but it didn’t stay for long.

  I sent a message after another hour to no response.

  It had been close to half a day since I sent the first message. At least five more were sent out since then without any notification whatsoever. I couldn’t even check if they had been read.

  What happened to Yoshitsune? Did she get herself caught in another death loop? Charles didn’t use any of them as a threat to my participation, so either they were inaccessible or already dealt with. I almost hoped that Charles put her in that situation. If she hated him, then she would be more willing to accept the atrocities that I wanted to inflict.

  Of course, those private thoughts would remain private forever.

  It’s possible that she had already moved on to the next rung, it sounded like every able-bodied person was being sent up to the next region. If she was participating in the biggest war known to man, would she have the time to respond to me?

  It could be that she was just in a Dungeon and wasn’t able to be reached. If she was in a position like I had been with Control, I might not hear from her in years.

  Or possibly, time apart had allowed her to fall out of love with me. I had been gone for five years after only a single occasion of romance.

  Bizarre, how I preferred her in a cycle of dying endlessly than her losing interest in me. More bizarre still is how I had [Urgent News] open again to draft a new message. I started writing up some sort of apology; it’s what I used to do professionally with Miranda every time I canceled a date and I had grown accustomed to treating Yoshitsune with the same strategies.

  Feeling like the kind of hopeless lover that Terry once accused me of being, I sent out the apology for not talking and explaining the circumstance. If this didn’t work, she was either unavailable or she hated my guts.

  I pushed my mind away from thoughts of Yoshitsune; it felt like my pride as a man demanded it. Instead, I focused on my current situation. I had flown up the slide of the cliff to find no familiar scenery. I hadn’t spent much time on the coast; I hadn’t spent much time anywhere outside of the school and Control’s subspace, now that I thought about it.

  If I rose higher, I could follow the sky to where it turned dark over Styx. I could go back immediately, but it wouldn’t accomplish much at all.

  Instead, I did a little wandering. If for nothing else but to clear my head. There were a lot of thoughts swarming in my mind like snakes suffocating each other with their constricting grasps. They wriggled and fought to vie for my attention.

  Charles was holed up in Desire behind a vault door. I knew enough about him to know that he had no desire to risk himself until every other resource has been exhausted. While it eliminated immediate risk to himself, he was continually feeding me fresh bodies to grow stronger. Maybe I should wait and let him completely serve his buffet before enacting any plan to go after him. Keeping him on the back foot would only give me more chances to outmaneuver him.

  Did I need to outmaneuver him? Couldn’t I easily just move on from here and face off against the camps of Wrath? I could get rid of my enemy and beat Charles to the top in one go. The only downside is that there would be an undisputed gulf between us.

  Beating up Charles when I already conquered Hell would make for the world’s most pathetic dick measuring contest. Of course I’d win in that context.

  I supposed that the question was: Is dealing with Charles worth it?

  Getting one up on the man who made me a modern day slave would read well to someone that viewed my life from the outside. But, it was never Charles that I hated for that and the one I did hate for it was now nothing more than a worm in a cage.

  But, why did I want to work with him? It was stupid to ever try to win a partnership with someone who didn’t see anyone in life as a peer. I was doing little more than teaching a dog to lay an egg. Sure, his assertions left a bad taste in my mouth, but our last encounter made it clear that we were at a stalemate.

  So then, what did I want? I got his acknowledgement as a killer. It always felt good to be acknowledged by a fellow killer that you’re good at it. But, at the same time, it also felt like a jab. I felt like he was telling me that it was all I was good for. I’m not worthy of a crown because my victory wouldn’t have anyone alive to call me king.

  If that assertion wasn’t incorrect, if I didn’t care if there was a Hell left to rule over, why did that statement bother me so much?

  In the end, it’s because I want to prove myself.

  “Isn’t that how you’ve always been?” A playful voice broke my thoughts. “Doesn’t it remind you of every other time you found yourself overlooked and undervalued? Your life is a tragic play for validation.”

  I jolted to attention and whipped my head to the side. A pond sat near a grove of trees. Crouched down on the shore was a child. They moved their hands and frogs made of mud were spat out to the surface. A chorus of wet croaks serenaded the child in appreciation for the life that they brought.

  The child looked my way and smiled at me with a wide enough grin to close their golden eyes.

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  “Hello, Nostalgia,” I greeted.

  “Boring,” the Folly said with a pout. “Why is everyone acting in such a boring way? It’s like they are prisoners of their own thoughts.”

  “I have a lot to think about,” I responded, subconsciously treating this ancient being as though he were my son’s classmate from school. “I like your frogs.”

  “Thanks,” Nostalgia sighed. They moved their fingers in a beckoning motion. One of the frogs hopped out of the water and croaked merrily on the shore. “I like that they can go on land but always have to go back to the water or they die. It’s like they never left the womb. What better embodies me than that?”

  The frog that made it to the shore rapidly dried. Its skin ossified and it let out one pained belch to the world before it became nothing more than a rock. Nostalgia lifted the stone and tossed it back into the water where it quickly dissolved into the pond.

  “What are you doing in the middle of nowhere?” I asked. “Was it to meet with me?”

  “Our meeting is incidental,” Nostalgia answered. “Nor were you the first one to walk by me since I’ve been here. But, demons down here are too afraid, too reverent, to be all that entertaining. I have seen the hunched backs of demons bowing before me more than I have seen of their face on this rung.”

  Nostalgia dragged their finger through the pond water. Long stalks of vegetation rose from the sediment and sprouted out of the surface. The grasses detached themselves before twisting and folding into insects. Soft buzzing emitted from their rapidly flapping wings.

  “I’m bored, Ishmael,” Nostalgia said plainly. “The demons on the highest realm aren’t interested in playing with me. They are looking to the throne, engrossed with fighting each other and asking for boons as though we care who wins. Worst still, my siblings are too engrossed in the impending future to enjoy the present. Their struggles stem from the past, but they are not intoxicating reveries of the past. It is trauma that drives them forwards.’

  “You guys feel trauma?” I nearly guffawed.

  “You are but a slug, Ishmael,” Nostalgia said bitterly. “No, while insulting, it’s not good enough. You’re worse than that, Ishmael. You are an amoeba. You don’t comprehend a multi-celled organism. If an amoeba could worship, it would probably see an ant as god. But, if an ant could worship, it would view a human as a god. Humans can create floods and fires and all sorts of disasters that would show you as a vengeful god worthy of sacrifice and appeasement.”

  “And humans have their own gods,” I finished the cycle.

  “You are the amoeba,” Nostalgia repeated. “And we Follies are the ants that know of the god beyond humans. They are terrified of both the human and the god. They are terrified of the possibility of a god beyond god. Once your brain reaches that point, there is no stopping until you’ve fully spiraled.”

  “Should I be worried?”

  “If you were to be shot in the back of the head and not even know you had been shot before dying, would you care?”

  “Probably not,” I said with a shrug.

  “Then, there is nothing to worry about,” Nostalgia said. “If the worst comes to pass, you will exist and then you won’t before your brain could even process that anything had happened.”

  “And you aren’t worried?”

  “I embody fear of the future,” Nostalgia answered with a giggle. “There is no one more terrified than I am. While Control and my siblings face forward, I am designed to only be capable of looking back. Instead of looking for a solution, I can only cling onto the desire to return to a time before we knew our place in the world. For there is no greater peace than ignorance. As that is my purpose, I am expected to contribute nothing. And so, I have been temporarily cast aside.”

  I just raised my eyebrow at Nostalgia’s words. I had more questions for Nostalgia, but I held my tongue. I wouldn’t answer if a slug asked me about religion.

  “Is there something that you want to play?” I wondered.

  Nostalgia’s golden eyes peered out from underneath their sleeves. I had to consistently remind myself that this child was perfectly capable of removing me from existence with a snap of the fingers.

  “What do you know how to play?”

  “You have all my memories, just pick one of them.”

  “It is fine,” Nostalgia said, rising to their feet. “I need to get moving. Besides, I know you have your own problems to deal with and less and less time to accomplish it. Shouldn’t you be focusing on that instead?”

  “If I knew what I should be doing, I’d be doing that instead of wandering the countryside.”

  “I guess you’re right,” Nostalgia chuckled. “You made yourself a box, crawled in it, and now you’re crying for someone to let you out.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re only cornered by yourself,” Nostalgia continued. “Your friend from life won’t prevent you from leaving. If you can’t get them, are you going to freeze yourself in time waiting until somebody else wins the game of Hell instead?”

  “Say, do you know who put in the rule in Styx to stop killing?”

  “A demon that won the game of Hell previously,” Nostalgia answered. “You would have hated them. In fact, I’m sure that there aren’t two demons that are further from each other in terms of ideologies. While you march around leveling the world with a swipe of your solitary hand, that demon was carried to the top by powerful friends and allowed to rule over people stronger than them. They put many rules in place, many of which were overturned. The only major one that remains is the no kill rule of Styx. It was the only one that others could exploit.”

  “If there have been other rules of Hell in the past? Why aren’t any still ruling today?”

  “They deemed themselves unworthy of the responsibility. I wonder if there is anyone that is worthy.”

  Nostalgia rose to their feet. They brushed the dirt from their pants and emitted a melancholic sigh. A wooden door that looked like it had been ripped off the average suburban home sprouted from the ground and swung open.

  “So long Ishmael,” Nostalgia said. “We’ll play next time.”

  “Before you go,” I said, stopping Nostalgia.

  “You want to know about your woman?”

  “If you could tell me, I’d appreciate it,” I said with a nod.

  “She’s not dead,” Nostalgia answered. “I would know. One of my most potent followers leads her. She’s also quite far from here. Even if she came running right this second, she wouldn’t get to play with you.”

  Dungeon or out of love it is.

  “I see, thanks.”

  “Don’t you have other friends that you can play with instead? It’s boring if you only play with one person over and over again. You don’t have any fun that way.”

  Nostalgia marched into the door. It slammed into the wooden frame behind them. For a second, I thought I heard a soft maternal voice come from the other side.

  Other people to play with? If Yoshitsune is too far away, it’s hard to not believe that Vendetta is also quite far away. Who else would I contact? Capitaine?

  “No,” I audibly said.

  Who else is there? Admittedly, making friends wasn’t high on my list when I got here. But, after what Nostalgia said, I almost felt like a loser that I didn’t have anyone to call on. Even in life, I at least had a few guys I’d go out for drinks with. We had a fantasy football league together. Not that any of my fucking superstars would stay healthy the whole season.

  And, even if I did message them, they didn’t have any way of contacting me back. I could send them a map and wait, but how would I know if they sent me a message back? Only Yoshitsune, Herzblatt, and I had [Urgent News].

  Herzblatt.

  The dog priest seemed to be going the right direction, losing his deterministic personality in exchange for something a little more bloodthirsty. Would he have made it here by now?

  There was only one way to find out.

  I sent a basic message in the ether, asking Herzblatt if he made it to the third rung yet and if he wanted to catch up.

  Not even a minute passed before a message came back. I grinned and started flying in the direction Herzblatt said he was in.

  “Looks like it’s your turn to give me an opportunity, you crazy little fuck.”