If she had known that the afterlife was so like Shehannam, Hafsa Azeina would not have bothered dying. The mist that swirled about her feet, the shadowed sky overhead, even the flat nothing-smell of the air was the same. She sighed, and set foot upon the path that appeared before her, shining softly in the—
She froze, and looked down at her feet.
Her feet.
Her feet were feet, and her hands were hands. She clutched the staff she had held in life, and her wizard-locked hair was heavy and warm against her back. No claws, no fur… she tested her teeth with the tip of her tongue… no fangs.
Well, that was interesting.
The path split before her. One way led down and to the left, a dark road and choked with blackthorn. The other rose up and to the right, a wide and shining path, gently sloped and neatly paved.
I know this story, she thought, I know the way.
Then she thought, to Yosh with it. I am tired of pain. Life was hard. Let my death be easy. So she turned right and strolled up the path, taking her time, breathing deeply out of habit if not need, and thinking that the air should smell of roses. Would it be so much to wish for roses? It was not as if planting them would harm anything here, and a hint of color would be welcome. She smiled at the thought.
* * *
She had been walking for hours, for days perhaps, or had she only taken a handful of steps? She could not have said for sure, and she did not particularly care. The road had ended, and she had come to a small hill with two doors set into the stone. One was twisted, misshapen, and looked as if it had warped in the heat of a hellish fire. The other was round and green, and looked as if it might lead somewhere pleasant.
I know this story, too, she thought.
But she was tired of fighting monsters, tired of trials and travails, and so she pushed against the green door and it swung easily before her. On the other side she could see a hall with a wooden floor, brightly lit and welcoming.
“I see you have grown wiser.” The voice was near her feet. “It took you long enough.”
Hafsa Azeina nearly dropped her staff. A small cat sat on the path between her and the door, sleek and black with enormous tufted ears set above a delicate face. Those eyes, more familiar to her than her own and more beloved, regarded her with bright and emerald amusement.
“No,” she whispered. “No. I killed you.”
“As a matter of fact, you killed yourself,” the cat said, and lifted one tiny paw so that she could clean between her toes with a bright pink tongue. “But I forgive you.”
“Basta—”
“You have chosen your path,” the cat interrupted. “Best get on with it. He is waiting for you.” Before Hafsa Azeina could ask any more questions, Basta faded away. The long green eyes were last to go and winked at her in the gloom like a pair of lost stars.
She had forgotten how annoying that could be.
I forgive you…
Hafsa Azeina shook her head, bemused, and stepped through the door. As she did so, she caught sight of her staff, and started so badly that she almost dropped it again. No longer black as charred bone, the wood had turned a soft gray-green with a silvery sheen, and in place of the hideous skull the carved and painted likeness of Basta’s head winked at her with emerald-chip eyes.
If she had a heart, it would have broken. If she had tears, she would have wept. But she was dead, ash and dust, and had none of these things.
The door closed behind her as she walked down the hall, ducking her head and peering about for cobwebs. Her hand gripped the staff—not a source of shame, now, but of comfort. After she had been walking for some time the hall narrowed, the wooden floor gave way to cold, rough stone, and she found herself in a confusion of low tunnels.
Ah hah, she thought, I knew that was too easy to be true.
But she had chosen her path, and the way back was always shut in these stories, and besides, she was dead. So there was nothing for it but to push forward and make the best of things.
Down and down she went, deeper and deeper into the womb of the earth, or so it seemed to her, a lost and comforting place out of time, out of mind. The walls grew warm and close about her and she trailed her free hand over the rock, enjoying the feel of it, and she could not help but feel that she was loved in return.
Eventually the walls fell away and she stood at the mouth of a wide, round cavern. The walls were smooth and round as the inside of an egg, or a bubble trapped in glass for all time. The better part of it was filled with a lake, and this lake glowed with a million million lights, as if it held a distant sky turned upside down beneath the still water. Stepping-stones as wide as tables led to a small island.
There was a figure waiting for her there, or figures perhaps, but who or what they were, she could not have said.
I know this story, too, she thought. This is the last trial before the end.
It seemed to her that it would be good to get this over with, and to rest, so she lifted her staff and gathered up her robes and stepped upon the broad gray stones. They were good stepping-stones, too. They did not twist under her feet, or sink into the starlit waters, or reveal themselves to be the knobbed back of a sea-thing child or a row of skulls. They were stones, nothing more, and stayed just where they were.
As she set foot upon the island, the waiting figure turned and revealed itself to her, and Hafsa Azeina knew then where she was. She had come back to the beginning of things, after all.
“I know you,” she whispered. “Nightmare Man.”
“Do you?” A voice like rotting parchment growled at her. “Do you really? You know nothing, Princess of the Seven Isles.” A dark light blazed from his robes, it crawled across his mask in a craze of black lightning, and filled his mouth with death. “And now you never will.” He raised his great war hammer in both hands, and as he did so his robes slipped back along the ground and revealed everything.
The island’s dull black rock had been broken away to expose an expanse of smooth scales the color of glass, of rainbows and waterfalls, the color of a hummingbird’s wing. Blue and green beneath the surface, swirls and whorls of white tinged with seashell-pink, the heartbreaking beauty of a dragon could be mistaken for nothing else in any time or place.
Hafsa Azeina lunged forward and swung from the hips even as his dark hammer fell, even as her heart broke. Triumph burned in his face like bloody coals as the weapon arced down.
It met the swing of her new-souled staff.
And all was lost in a blinding light.