What never dies?

I asked Wag that question at Ianites funeral. He answered with greed because for as long as he's seen humans be alive they have always been greedy. Greedy for food - so they domesticated animals. Greedy for pride - so they made war. Greedy for everything - so they made a currency to show who deserved to be greedy or not.

And then they get greedy about the damn currency and the whole world burns into a black pulp because they're to busy being greedy to realize they're destroying everything.

I used to think gods couldn't die, and then we killed a god. I used to think a universe couldn't die and here we are.

I then asked everyone else what they though could never die. I got basic answers like "Water or air or feelings or rocks." Tom said rocks could never die.

I then asked Dianite what could never die, and he almost said nothing when I saw his eyes light up. Then he looked at Mot who had some sort of common potty for Jordan at that moment. Dianite didn't look that bright anymore.

Dianite glanced back at me, his eyebrows arched. He seemed angry at the world. He seemed angry because there was a rule that the God against all rules couldn't brake.

"A lack of," He answered simply. "A lack of something can never die."

So what was Dianite lacking? What was I lacking? If the lack of something could never die would the want of something always be living.

"Hope!"

I flickered back into existence. I had been sitting on the damp wood floor of the porch. The ongoing noise of wind and tree leaves hypnotized me in some weird way.

I felt better lately. I had an imagination. I could hide in my mind and ponder and wonder again. It was refreshing. I never realized how exhausting my reality was.

"What?"

Andor hadn't heard about the way I acted when Ianite died, and I was glad about that. I think he would of been disappointed, or not trusted me. Or both.

Andor started talking, but I zoned him out. I knew whatever he was saying I could just read on my watch because Jordan's a control freak.

A crypt. Another one.

I was still half dazed in my imagination. I couldn't tell if what I was reading could possibly be true or not. We had got the crypt of every element of magic, and we had everyone of them but air in our possession. If there was a crypt there must have been a new element. A new element of magic.

And me never believing in the impossible, grabbed my bow and my bag. I didn't question the plausibility in Jordan's idea. I didn't mull over the fact that maybe this was a trick or a trap. Half of it was my sheer trust, and the other half was me wanting the idea to be true.

With more truth comes more answers, and I needed so many questions to come to an end and die.

They were always so late. It's not that hard. I mean what could possibly be so difficult about getting to the exact spot I told you to go to exactly after I send the message. You have five seconds! Sprint it!

Or maybe I was too excited. Anxious is maybe a better word. Either way I wanted things to happen: may it be the event or the end of the event.

The crypt of death. Think of a more badass name I dare you.

Death wasn't at simple as fire, air, water, or earth. It didn't just say plants or h20 or light or breathing. It said fear. Fear of the infinite fate of it. It said peace. Peace of the living world being gone. It also said life, because without life they're would be no death.

But they're could be life without death. That was possible, and with that reassuring thought I was able to walk to this crypt with excitement. I wanted the event to take place - not just the end.

Hell. We had to go to hell. Hells not under the world literally, more metaphysically. 3,958.8 metaphysical miles to be exact.

I'm not sure why the crypt of death decided to plop itself in hell, because if anything is more residential to dead people it's heaven. Then again live people can go to hell and not heaven - as I have yet to be to heaven alive, so maybe the crypt was purposely in a place where we could grab it.

Hell was as normal, filled with dirty cobble and red glowing fire all around.

"Did you purposely make hell look like this?" Hope asked. I didn't realize that gods could make the world look however they wanted, but I should have guessed.

Dianite smirked. "I never go down here. I thought it would be good use of the space. You know if I ever need a good laugh."

Sonja gave Dianite a funny look. "What's so funny about this?"

Dianite untucked the conners of his suit. "That people think I would live in this dump." He then walked forward on the charred cobble, his shoes making a click click sound as he walked forward.

We followed him. The red sky made everything feel dreary and dead. I could only imagine Dianite having a white palace instead where he would be hand fed and have a black leather sofa. That sounded more like him.

Instead we had a palace made out of blood, not marble.

In the middle of the most desolate part of hell it decided to place itself.

The castle wasn't complete blood. It also had tissue and muscle holding the structure together. I could tell by the way it beat. It beat like a heart. Up and down I could see every movement as the white veins pulsed the moving blood. The liquid part that was dripping off of the structure like a waterfall would bubble do to the heat.

The smell suddenly hit me. Waves of sour then sweet. A mix of rancid milk and rotten beef. It was the smell of death and rot and decay. Everything that could and would destroy. The smoky smell char from fires that burned down villages didn't lead far behind from every other ingredient. The acidity smell of bleach that reminded me of a hospital.

"Welcome to your last crypt," Dianite said, trying to sound as jubilant as possible. His incredibly positive mood wasn't helping us.

"How do we get in?" Tucker asked. I could see his face starting to get paler. He was inadmittingly the most squeamish of all of us.

"Well blood is liquid. Humans are solids," Dianite raised his hands as his eyebrows followed. "Last time I checked solid went through liquid."

"Oh god," Sonja muttered out.

"Yes god!" Dianite exclaimed quickly. "Now hurry up and get in there before my brother can get his little weasel hands on it!"

I realized then that the only reason Dianite was being so positive was because he didn't have to travel through a waterfall of blood.

We all felt absolutely sick. The castle almost looked alive. It beat like it was alive, like it had a heart. It was unnatural, and wrong.

I had that deep pit in my stomach feelings. The mix of fear and anxiety that makes you want to rip out your own stomach, and the "I sneaked out of my house for the first time and drank a bunch last night" sick that made you want to puke up your stomach.

"Hold hands?" Tom said more than asked.

We all silently agreed. The last time we had done this we had jumped into the abyss of the universe. To be fair this was about as horrifying as that.

Hope was the first one to step forward, making us all move with her. Then Sonja, then me, then Tom, then Tucker. Hands clutched together, we all took this one big breath in unison because we were a team. We had to face death, and if that was the truth, we would face it together.

It's easy enough to dig yourself out of a pile of dirt, or kick a wall down so you won't drown, or stomp out a fire, or cover your face from the chill of wind. But how was a mortal supposed to defeat death.

We all took another step, and I could feel the waterfall of blood fall on me - lukewarm and thick.

Blank empty vastness. I was completely alone.

No one at my side. Not a Jordan, or a Tom, or a Sonja, or a Tucker, or a Wag to see.

My senses didn't know what to do with themselves. I couldn't hear anything because there was nothing to here. I couldn't see anything because there was nothing to see - just the darkest black. More dark than when you close your eyes.

That other sense that gets shouted out by the others was alive. I could feel things in my heart, in my core. Not in the traditional way that you would feel something soft or cold. I felt a presence. Something bigger than what a god could even fathom to make. I felt a presence darker than dark. It was powerful.

Then laughing. Way to familiar laughter. It echoed in my ears, mimicking the sound of my blood pumping through my body. I knew the laughter, think and low. Female - seductive. I know it the way a child should know their parents voice. It had been with me through day one and would be with me until it or I died.

I reached for my bow on my back, but it wasn't there. Only the clothes on my back were still with me. The rest had disappeared just like my friends.

I had a spin shivering feeling that I had something bigger to worry about.

The laughter grew louder in my ears, eventually taking over the rapid base drum beat of my heart. The laughter was mocking me and circling me. Waiting for the correct moment to pounce.

And like a tiger ready to catch its hunt. Ready to sink its teeth in my and rip me into pieces. Th tiger lunged.

Out of the shadows came a women. Her skin - paler than mine - like a sheet of paper - blocked out the darkness of the blank background. Her hair was as dark as coal, and her eyes were all pupils. Dark circles staring at me, with a red lip smirk, and hands that were strong enough to choke me.

Her boots clicked and clicked as she walked closer, and the closer she walked to me the more I could feel. I could think. When I thought of happy moments again I was happy. When I thought of dad moments I could brake down and cry, and as she walked closer and closer to me I felt fear. A strong relentless fear that I never felt before.

She may have given me back feelings, but she took away my fearlessness that I had built up over the years of living.

"What do you feel?" Her voice came out long, dark, and silky. They could wrap around my neck and hang me if they wanted to.

I could sense the power pulsating off of her. She could kill in a snap. She could destroy in the blink of an eye. She would decay whenever she felt like it.

"It's different isn't it," She started to circle me like a prowling cat. Strutting around with her hips swaying. "I got rid of your superpower darling."

She was darkness. She was death. She was the fear of everything - especially the unknown. She was the shadows. She was telling me through my sixth sense. I believed it.

"Your feeling fear for the first time." She stopped, right by my face. She blood red lips stood right beside my ear. "The truest form of it." She whispered.

I had never felt more mortified in my life. Petrified in fear I had to stand still. For the first time in forever I was scared to die. I didn't want to leave. With the lack of my fearlessness came selfishness. Then something pulled me out of my fear. It made me want to question. It made me want to wonder. My curiosity.

"Why choose me?" I asked.

The women in black didn't pause. She didn't question me. She knew I would ask that. She knew all because darkness was everywhere.

A grin slunk on her face again, and she had a bit of red flow in her colorless cheeks. She had been following us, since day one. She knew us about as well as we knew each other.

Her icy cold breath hit my ear. "I wanted a fair fight." Her head tilted a bit, and she moved away from me.

I could see all of her. Tight black pants on her long legs that looked more like spray paint, pointed black boots that could stab a man, and a black shirt with a recurring cut out that showed almost every part of her cleavage. Her skin popped out from the top like the rare stars on a stormy night sky.

"Everyone else isn't as fun." She pouted.

An idea started to form in my head, but as soon as I spoke her words stopped me dead in my tracks.

"Oh and don't think about trying to use me to get to the crypt of death." A smile formed on her face. "There isn't one."

I wasn't as shocked as I should have been, but I still had the impulse to ask. "Why?"

She let out a guttural laugh that could have broke windows in the mortal world. Her smile was genuine and evil. "You couldn't have seriously thought gods could make something as powerful as death." She then got serious, standing right in front of me. "Darkness and light are stronger then gods. Especially darkness."

I wasn't on guard in the moment. I couldn't have been. I was amazed in the most horrible way ever. I was being told things the mortal brain should never be told. I leaned knowledge that had been right under our noses. It was capacity overload.

"-READY FIGHT!"

I screamed out, landing on the cold black ground. She had hit my legs out from under me. I had hit my head and it was pulsing with pain. My whole body ached, and the surge of energy that she had pulsed on my body left me speechless and unable to move.

The Women of Black leaned down sitting on my chest. She was so much heavier than me and yet she felt like nothing.

"Silly child." Her voice came out sensual. I was frozen to the ground. "They may train you with as much obliviousness as possible, but it will never work." His face breached into a scowl, and her hands pressed down fiercely on my chest. I could hardly breath now.

She lifted up her right hand and grabbed a knife out of her pointy boot. She took the knife and flicked in front of me to say "look what I have and you don't." She took the knife and cut her arm. Slicing it right down the middle, slowly. She but her red lip, yelling out in the midst of it all. Her screams sounded more like battle cries than pain.

He whole arm was red with blood, and almost matched the color of her lips.

She took the knife, now crimson, and jammed it close to my face.

Suddenly my cheek started to burn, like she had set an oven to boiling. I could feel my skin start to peel and the fat in my face start to bubble. I yelled out as the pain became unbearable. I still couldn't breath or move, but I could fucking feel the blood in my face get warmer to hot as the blood on that knife got closer to me.

"Do you feel that!" She screamed out in satisfaction. "Even what pours out of me when I'm injured could kill you! Remember what it did to your little wizard friend!" She grew her face closer to mine. My cheek felt as if it was on fire. She gritted her teeth at me. "Imagine what it could do to you."

I remembered when we stuck in that crazy T.V show. When IFirez had been brainwashed to be a gameshow host. He had used some weird blood as a punishment, and he got some of the blood on him. After he woke up he was screaming and crying, and that was even after the affects wore off.

"Somebody help!" I screamed out. My brain wasn't working properly. I could only have the rapid thoughts that were running around scared as well.

"Silly girl." She spoke. The knife growing closer and closer to my face. "No one will help you."

She then smiled a grin again, and she licked her lips. The droplets of her blood from her arm were floating around the room. "The only reason your not dead is because I want you alive all for me."

And then air could enter my lungs again. I could take big gulps of oxygen in and out. My cheek felt cool - like nothing had happened, and my skin was soft not peeled off.

The room was black and blank again. I was surrounded by darkness, but there was no sign of her ever being there.

I woke up gasping for air. My heart pumping through my chest. Pure fear was running through my veins. My blood burned hot, and my skin tingled.

I was laying on a cement bed. The same cement bed that I woke up on six months ago.

We were in the jail cell in the kingdom. The same jail cell in the kingdom that had been destroyed.

"Well something's wrong." Tom commented.

Yes. Something was very wrong.

They're was a crash outside the door. A loud boom that would have realistically shaken the whole earth. It broke into my eardrums, and hurt my head.

I slammed down onto the ground holding my ears shut. The boom was so loud that my ears started to ring, almost like a bell warning us all.

Instead of heading the warning we all became curious.

Tucker perked his head up. His eyes were spinning from the dizziness of the noice, but he was too stubborn to let that stop him.

He stood up. "Let's go guys-"

"-wait!" I interrupted.

Everyone was shocked to see that out of all people - I - would be the one to be precautions. But I had something to say.

"The crypt of death isn't real."

Tucker arched his eyebrows at me. Everyone else just looked confused, and Tom gave me this ex-fucking-scuse me face.

I had to explain no matter how crazy it sounded. Whatever the women was, she was strong. To strong for this world. It could be a trap to go any farther without precaution.

"I was in a place and this women came up to me-"

"It was just a nightmare," Sonja interrupted, trying to calm down everyone in the room. But these weren't people she needed to baby. This was our team. We are warriors. "Hope we all had them."

"This wasn't a nightmare." I had a small remembrance of my burning cheek and how my fat bubbled under the blood on her knife. I knew real from fake. No one could tell me it was a dream. "This women had that blood that hurt IFirez and she used it to hurt my cheek. It felt to real to be fake."

Wag's soft voice came out of the crowd. "-some night terrors feel extremely real. You could just have post traumatic-"

"I've had enough night terrors to know what's real or fake!" I yelled out. Everyone was still staring at me like I was insane, except Jordan. He had a little trust in me.

With that bit of reassurance I talked on. "The women said that she was the darkness and that this crypt of death isn't real."

Tom, probably the most skeptical, spoke up. "So if this is a trap - then who set it up for us. Why would the gods think this is a crypt? So they're all lying to us."

A few pieces that I hadn't put together yet. Was this women deceiving us so powerful that she could manipulate gods without them knowing? Mianite could have believed this was a crypt himself?

"Aren't we the odd ones out?" Jordan said.

I didn't understand what he was talking about at first, but then I put those final pieces together.

"The trap wasn't for us, it was for Mianite!" I announced.

"What?" Tom mocked. He looked completely done with our bullshit and ready to walk out that door any minute.

"No, no, no." Tucker said. His eyes getting brighter, and his brain started to wrap the ideas together. "I get what they're saying. No higher being knew we would be here. We weren't meant to jump off of our world, so if this crypt was built before we came it would be meant to trap someone different."

"-and that someone is Mianite. He's the only one who would want his supposed crypt back." Sonja added.