Jasmina ever had to deal with. Her mother always had told her how important her beauty sleep was and she had listened, always taking way more time than needed with anything concerning her looks. Here however, nothing seemed to matter except sleep. It was like a yawn was choking her, eyes trying to fly shut but being kept open by something she had no control of.

Gio was walking beside her, the usual tiredness in his eyes having faded into the same saturated blue as the sky, devoid of any emotion. The glimpses of softness he had shown on Earth were gone, no weakness visible in the hard exterior he had pulled up. They passed people freezing on the ice, all of them lying in foetus position and seeking a sleep they would never get.

"Please," one begged at Gio as he passed.

Gio didn't even look up, ignoring them as they stepped off the ice in a sea of clouds, wading through it like water. It was so warm she pinned her hair up, but at the same time not too much to become unpleasant. She found the reason easily, one look downwards at the clouds showing the steam rising everywhere except the circle around her and Gio.

"What's with the inconsistent temperature here?" she said.

"As soon as they remain still too long it fluctuates extremely," Gio said," the clouds start out as a soft warmth and the ice around it as a pleasant breeze, but when they stay still for longer than a minute it becomes boiling or freezing. Prevents them from ever getting any rest."

"Do you sleep here?" she said," it's hard to imagine you awake all the time."

"Me?" he said. She followed his gaze when he looked around, at the people walking and crying everywhere, all of them too scared to look at them. "I can't sleep as long as I'm here, to keep the magic in place. The devil made it so that the sins don't have to or feel the need though, so it's fine."

"Why do you sleep then?" she said.

With how many nightmares he got she didn't imagine it to be a comforting thing for him and yet it wasn't often she saw him awake. They stepped out of the cloudlands on the ice again, a blue throne rising up in the air. Bubbles were flying in the air around it, dreams trapped in the iridescence. Gio touched one absent-mindedly, but it didn't pop, instead calmly gliding off his hand.

"It's the only way I can see my mother," he murmured," so I don't mind if she carries her own wounds when she appears, as long as she still takes me in those arms of hers." He shook his head, slowly letting his gaze wander over the souls in his domain. "I used to think sleep was something to appreciate, but I know better now. It's a reminder of the sin I carry, of not having noticed my mother's grief until she slit her throat in front of my eyes."

"Why do you blame yourself for someone else's decisions?" she said.

"Because I could have known," he said," I knew, I did. I was just too lazy to do anything about it."

He held out a hand to her and she looked at him, before taking it when he nodded. The world around her started to spin again, fading into black, and it was only then she could hear the words of the lullaby, the words untangling in her head.

"This is Italian," she said.

"It is," Gio said as he closed his eyes," my mother used to sing me to sleep with this, back in Sicily. I remember waking up in Rome after she died, drowning in guilt, and hearing it still."

He let her go, his last sentence in fluent Italian, though it somehow sounded just as sad as the song.

"I'll see you at home, Jasmina."

"You should be glad I speak seven languages," she called out as she disappeared in the darkness.

"Seven? Why do you speak so many?"

The first thing she saw was red and she knew even without recognizing the voice where she was, the screams piercing the air only making it more obvious. Ira was standing in front of her, grinning widely, the sky the same color as the blood on his knuckles. The ground was covered with the same spots, large holes with crimson pooling in them all around the place. She wondered if it was blood at first, but when a wounded man stumbled and fell inside one he sizzled and didn't come out again.

"Why do you have lava?" she said.

"Don't worry," Ira shrugged as they started walking," they can't die. They wake up in a different part of this hell."

"I wasn't worried about that," she said," I was just curious why your part of hell looks like the inside of a volcano. Was this the best you could do?"

"It isn't," Ira laughed," my part is the most diverse. The torture methods decide how the exterior looks like, this is just the burning side of it." He started walking, glancing at her. "Anyway, you haven't answered my question yet."

"I studied different languages so I could talk with all my parents' business partners," Jasmina shrugged," and my mother thought it dignified, which resulted in me having a tutor over every day until twelve."

"That sounds like a drag," Ira said," I only learned one language and that's Slovak. The devil just gave us all the skill to talk whichever language the person you're torturing is speaking, but all I still hear is my own language."

They took another step and somehow everything around them changed immediately into blue, the temperature dropping considerably. Ira took her hand in his and jumped, the background becoming a battlefield, the both of them in the middle of it. She looked around at the people cutting away at each other, his look not betraying any emotions.

"They know better than to come near," Ira said in her ear, loud enough so she could hear him above the screams.

She wasn't concerned. With her new position as queen of hell she doubted Azriel would let anything happen to her. He may not have been close, but she knew he was still watching. Ira seemed to be more on edge than her, almost jumping when the sound of a bomb exploded all around them. His eyes had snapped towards the sound, wide and lost, but before she could say anything about it they had jumped again.

When he didn't speak she gestured at the pitch black place they were in now, torture instruments all around them.

"So," she said," what's your favorite part here?"

"What?" he blinked. It only took him a second to shake his dazed expression away, a wicked grin on his face. "If you're talking creative, you've got to be here. There are ways of torture here you've never seen before."

"You and I both know I'm more the type for mind games, Ira," Jasmina drawled.

"Those are boring," he sulked, picking up a weapon from the floor," don't you want to see this cool bazooka instead?"

More screams echoed off the wall around her, a sharp contrast against the heavy silence in Gio's part of hell. When she looked to her right she saw someone being beheaded, only for him to sit up and the head to grow back spontaneously. It was a lot of gore and broken bones, none of them that appeasing to look at.

"It's fine," she said as she looked back at Ira.

As if reading her mind he frowned, placing the bazooka down. "Is this about the little thing earlier? You shouldn't mind it, it's just some PTSS."

"No," she said," this is about me not wanting to have a bazooka shooting anywhere close to me or my face."

"Boring," he complained," don't you want to test out any of these instruments? We have truly awful people here, so no one would mind."

"There you are, Jasmina," a voice said beside her ear.

She didn't even bother turning around to it, expecting the darkness around her as soon as she heard it. When she blinked, the sky was sunrise orange, all around them trees made of candy and tables spilling over with food, the rich scent of spices wafting from it. Daichi was standing beside it, grabbing a lolly of it.

"You were taking too long," he grinned, opening his arms wide," so I took you along."

He took the wrapper off, the sweet pink rotting immediately once the air touched it, turning into ash after a minute. As soon as he placed it down on the table and his hand brushed the turkey it did the same, before both of them were replaced by the exact same thing.

"Welcome to gluttony," he said," what do you think?"