Emma stared at her fingers where the slimy smoke had dispersed. She felt a lurch in her stomach that she suspected had nothing to do with her admittedly precarious mental state. Her breathing in her chest felt sticky, as though the soul of the creeping thing had coated her ribs in slime.

“What do you mean, ‘leech soul +1?’” she asked the orb.

“The souls of slain enemies,” said the orb, “can be collected and used as special crafting materials, magic spell resources, or currency at special vendors.”

Emma’s stomach was tossing. The notion that the leech’s soul was inside of her was only partially responsible. Well, no more putting off facing the horrors surrounding her.

“Ball-thing, do you have a name?”

“No, but it is customary to give us a name.”

“Okay. Well, I’m going to call you Wilkes. Is that okay?”

Wilkes was the name of her long-dead hamster.

“Spectacular,” said Wilkes, to Emma’s surprise. She hadn’t expected it to have an opinion.

“Don’t you mean ‘affirmative,’ or something?” said Emma.

“Affirmative.”

Emma sat down again (wary to look underneath her for more leeches - not that they’d be easy to miss) in the grass by the pond and caught her breath using Kara’s technique again. Three seconds of inhalation, three of exhalation, and three seconds in between both. She did this a few times until she felt light-headed enough to be distracted from the swirling chaos in her head. Now that she was fed, and she had some time to rest, it was time to get some answers.

“Where am I?” she asked Wilkes.

“You are in Aporia.”

“Right, let me rephrase,” Emma said. “What is this place?”

“Aporia is a realm where the dead are sent to suffer for eternity.”

“Ah.”

Emma sat back and looked at the purple-and-red sky. It had grown darker. Far off, over the mountains, she supposed the sun - which apparently existed in Hell - was sinking over the horizon.

A scream built in her stomach and caught in her throat. She suppressed its release by clenching her teeth.

She wasn’t safe enough to be making loud noises and advertising her location. She wasn’t in a dream, or hidden in some billionaire’s Idaho compound. That would probably be better than Hell, though she supposed she had no way to compare. In any case, she was in a place where she wasn’t safe. No: she was in a place where she would never be safe again.

Where she could never see Evan, or Kara, or her mom ever again. Were they looking for her murderer, even now? Doomed to never find out who had killed her, or why, just like she was doomed to wonder for eternity why her father had been murdered?

None of this made sense. Actually, it was worse than that: in terms of nonsensical scenarios, it seemed she had been placed into a realm of some of the worst nonsense imaginable. And why? By whom?

Her eyes fell over the sharp end of her tree branch. “Wilkes,” she said, her voice small, “what happens if you die in Hell?”

“Is ‘Hell’ what your native culture referred to as something like Aporia?” Wilkes asked.

“Yeah.”

“Then death results in a respawn and a loss of all memories, items, and progress.”

Her nascent idea already dead, Emma turned her gaze back to the surrounding landscape. It looked very similar to Earth, if Earth were a little fucked up. The colors, the feelings, and the shapes one would expect were just a little bit off. Leaves of blue-ish green grass around her feet were bent over, like tired bodies.

“Respawn,” Emma whispered. The darkening fingers of clouds were retreating over the sky above her. She wondered if there were stars and a moon in Hell as well as the apparent sun.

“Wilkes,” she continued, “why are you using language like we’re in a video game? You’ve been describing everything I’ve grabbed or - or acquired -” she thought she felt the leech thrash in her chest for a moment “- as though you’re my own, er, special stats screen. You can display things, and I guess quantify them. But this can’t possibly be a video game universe, can it?”

“My function is merely to describe the mechanics of Aporia,” Wilkes said, “as well as serve as a quick means by which you may access your acquisition sheet. Would you like to see the rest?”

“Sure.”

Maybe inducing a mental break would make eternal torment more manageable.

Wilkes turned from yellow to blue as a large square formed along the circumference of his body. The simple box was subdivided into many smaller squares. In the top leftmost square was a small avatar of the giant leech she had killed, its body growing bigger and smaller as it apparently inhaled and exhaled.

“That’s your inventory,” Wilkes said. “Presently the only item in your possession is the soul of the leech. Next is your equipment.”

Wilkes switched from a blue glow to a brownish one as the shapes and words along his body changed again.

This time he displayed nine or ten boxes arranged in the rough shape of a person: a box for the head, two or three for the torso, two for her feet, and so forth. The only occupied boxes were on her torso and around her hips, representing the loincloths, and the box representing her right hand, which showed the perfect scaled-down image of the tree branch she was holding. Despite herself, Emma found herself wondering what sort of other equipment she could find laying around Hell.

“Next is your Acquisition Sheet.”

Wilkes turned white this time. The light of it stung Emma’s eyes with moisture. Another, much larger box replaced the previous one. In this box, there were countless tiny words written next to small images and a number. A cursory glance revealed that the words, consistent with the absurd video game logic of this world, were displaying hundreds of skills, covering the orb’s entire body.

She pushed herself upright and squinted. She made out the word “knitting” in the middle of the storm of words and statistics, next to a very rough black depiction of a ball of wool and number one. She squinted near the upper leftmost area of the sheet, guessing that the most important skills would be there, and saw “ranged,” also next to the number one. “Ranged” was grouped slightly apart from the rest of the skills in a smaller group in a category of their own. Other stats grouped with it were, Emma soon discerned, all combat-related, some of which she had seen earlier: Stamina, Arcane, Strength, Combat, and many others.

At the very top of the sheet were written the largest letters:

Emma Goodworth

Level 1

Rank: Bronze

Class: TBD

“As you grow more adept at these skills,” Wilkes said, “your numbers will improve. As you acquire new skills, items, and equipment, they will be added to your Acquisitions.” Was that excitement in Wilkes’ voice? “The object of Aporia is to make it as far as you can. Acquiring new things will allow you to advance. As you advance, you will be awarded increasing honors, badges, and ranks, allowing you to unlock further Acquisitions.”

That probably explained the bronze medallion around Emma’s neck. That meant it probably spawned on her body, rather than someone having given it to her. She wasn’t sure which explanation would have been more relieving.

“And you do that for all eternity?”

Yeah, this sounded like Hell.

“Technically,” Wilkes said, “you could choose to start a farm or something instead.”

Emma wondered what she’d done to get sent to Hell. Her mind cast vaguely into her memories and pulled up a tangle of them - petty theft, hurling insults online when she had been younger, taking more than her share of food - though none seemed to constitute a reason to send her into eternal torment. Not according to any sane ethical system, anyway.

Then again, who said any of this was sane?

But as soon as Emma began to question the ethics of her actions, the image of her mother swam up from the depths of her gibbering memories. She was leaning over the kitchen sink, a bottle in one hand and her other hand covering her face as her shoulders heaved up and down. Emma was looking at her from behind, with Evan clinging to her leg.

In the interest of stopping that memory in its tracks, Emma turned her attention to another, less important matter.

“Wilkes,” she said, “does this mean God is real?”

“I don’t have that information,” said Wilkes. “I come programmed with only a basic manual of information and gain passive knowledge as new items and experiences are encountered. I was born at the exact moment you arrived in Hell. I have no answers to metaphysical inquiries. If I did give an answer, I would probably just repeat your own beliefs back to you.”

“Shame.”

“Indeed, shame.”

She suppressed a smirk. Had Wilkes’ personality changed a bit, or was she imagining that? Well, no use in pondering metaphysical nonsense with a magical orb apparently capable of learning on its own just yet. There were other things to attend to, such as basic bodily necessities, remaining sane, and coping mechanisms.

Emma stood up uneasily. The warm breeze had turned cool rapidly as night had fallen, and seemed to have become stronger. With rising alarm, she realized she’d need to find shelter and - ideally - clothes, food, and an antidote for her poisoned leg, and soon. A light, worrisome throb had developed in her leg, spreading from the epicenter of the bite. Emma swatted some more fruit from the tree with her branch, gathered as many as she could carry in her arms, left the cozy pond and started off around the edge of the hills. Wilkes’ light was visible and oddly reassuring just behind her as he followed.

Maybe she could find a cave, at least, that she could spend the night in. Assuming it wasn’t occupied by something else.

As though to punctuate this ominous thought, something howled in the distance, its echo creeping along the grass and rocks of the hills and black mountain. Only it wasn’t a howl - it sounded like the sound a furious cat makes, but from the mouth of a person. It sounded far enough away, but a chill went up Emma’s spine, joining the gooseflesh associated with the dropping temperature.

“So, Wilkes,” Emma said, taking a bit of the fruit and hoping to get her mind off of her surroundings as something hissed a few dozen feet away, “do you come with a personality? I’ve noticed you becoming more well-rounded in the short time I’ve known you.”

“Well, I am a sphere.”

“You’re charming, but you know what I meant.”

“It does seem to be the case that I am weighing my words a little more carefully as more input is added to my experiences.”

“Why?”

“Invalid input.”

Emma couldn’t help but smile.

As Emma rounded another hill, her walking stick held out and ready to semi-uselessly bludgeon any threats, she noticed a light. It was nearby-ish, located only a few large hills away and a manageable climb up the black mountainside. The light flickered unsteadily, and Emma thought she saw it casting shadows along the illuminated rocks.

Emma stopped and hugged herself, rubbing her skin for friction. The cold was descending rapidly. A campfire sure sounded nice. She imagined approaching a stranger in Hell would be at least as dangerous as it was in her previous life, but her options were slim. The worst case scenario, she imagined, was that she could jump off the cliff and spawn elsewhere. She didn’t have much to lose aside from Wilkes’ burgeoning quips.

“Scorpion-panther,” Wilkes said suddenly, and Emma jumped and thrust her stick out in front of her, feeling stupid. “Level thirty.”

Emma backed up, her heart a hammer in her throat, looking around wildly, trying to see movement through the darkness among the large rocks. She didn’t have to look long. From between two small boulders crept two glowing, yellow orbs, the slits of their pupils visibly narrowing even in the near-total black of night.

Before Emma had time to think or plan, a sharp flash of white in the darkness joined the yellow.