The Pleasures of Hell

Chapter 01.019

~~Unknown~~

A girl. Running. Black swamps. Piles of maggots. The fire sky burned a dark color, or was that the air in the swamp, twisting the color? Blood everywhere, turned black in the gross mud. Guts, intestines, organs around her feet. Trenches, filled with bones and flesh.

Whoever this girl was, she was running. But running wasn't good enough. She fell, and turned onto her back.

Someone with enormous white wings, and a blade so perfectly smooth it had a mirror sheen, stabbed her in the heart.

She died.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~Day 26~~

~~Mia~~

Mia sat up. The switch in her head flipped back to on, and a glance at the amber veins told her it wasn't quite the morning twilight hours yet. She'd spent a few hours of the night doing guard duty, ready to wake Vinicius if something attacked, then he'd spent a few hours doing the same. Back and forth twice meant she got enough sleep to function at least. And yeah, sitting around for a few hours while Vinicius slept was boring as fuck, but it gave her time to think about stuff and hopefully get over said stuff.

But the third time she woke up, ready to start a brand new day of fresh Hell, she clutched her heart where the angel in the dream had stabbed her.

No, not her. The angel had stabbed someone else. Mia had felt her die. A quick death, almost painless. Almost.

"Vinicius," she said.

Vinicius opened his eyes, head still pointed at the alcove, but his one visible eye pointed directly at her. Eep. Just a little too similar to that scene in The Land Before Time where Cera ran into the unconscious Sharptooth.

Her guardian, at that point in her life, had insisted the old kid's movie would be a good watch. Mia had been five, and still had the mental scars.

"We're alive," she said. "Nothing ate us. No Cainites found us."

Vinicius nodded.

"And, um... I..." She hugged her knees to her chest and put her forehead on her arms. "I had a dream."

Silence, for a few seconds. But when she lifted her head, Vinicius's one visible eye remained pointed at her, and he clicked in his throat once.

"It was a dream. I had a dream. I think? I, or some girl that I was riding, like you kinda sometimes do in dreams, was running away from... from an angel. There was a black swamp, giant piles of maggots, and the air made everything look weird and dark."

"The Black Valley."

"That was the Black Valley?"

He nodded.

"Um, but I've never seen the Black Valley. I don't even really know what it looks like."

"Describe more."

"More." More, and something specific. "I saw... trenches. The girl ran on swampland, stumbling in this shallow dark water, but she also stumbled into trenches. And there were... guts... in the trenches. Guts, bones, everything."

"The Black Valley." Vinicius nodded and slowly brought his colossal body to its feet. The hole in his gut was healed over, but the skin looked red and soft. Hopefully, as long as no one stabbed him there, it'd darken as it healed.

Much as she was still mad at him, she needed him.

"I don't understand. I had a dream? About a place I've never seen?"