Double Or Nothing: A Coin Flip Away

That Ice Temple from Hell

The sound of wings. Footsteps approaching the door. Shuffling leather on a coarse and matted carpet. Shrap entered the store with a groggy Cynthia beside him, Shrap himself half submerged in his briefcase to fit through the doorway. The interior of the shop was cozy and warm with candles, tapestries, ancient pottery and various displays of handcrafted mastery over sewing and stitching padding the shop's walls. If one moved too close, they risked sticking to the warm, silk carpet fabric for all eternity.

Shrap sighed, tilting his mask around the store. "So The Vizier led us to this place. Might as well have a look around to see what we can gather from all of this," he grinned, nudging the half asleep Cynthia on her shoulder, "right Doc?" Cynthia snapped awake, blinking back red eyes and a weary glance. "Hmm! Uh, yeah, totally," she yawned, cracking her back and arms. Shrap chuckled, using his arms to hand walk through the store from his briefcase. "You're pretty sleepy with all this humidity. You couldn't, I dunno, shapeshift into something with more energy?"

Cynthia shook her head, scratching her hair. "Mm, no. I'm preoccupied with my daughter, I can't focus on anything else," she sighed, accepting defeat. Shrap wandered toward the shelf by the right end of the shop, ringing a bell hollowed out of some monster's skull. "Jules is gonna live, Doc. If she's anything like Jack, she'll power through this." Before Cynthia could object, the ringing of a bell behind the counter brought the two's gazes to the shelf space behind the table. A little blue man, a fungus of some species, with blue speckles on a pale white cap and weary, wrung eyelids, approached Shrap and Cynthia using a stepping stool to speak to them at eye level.

"Forgive me for the inconvenience, I was organizing some things in the back. Who are

you both?" Shrap shuffled back to let Cynthia speak. Clearing her throat, Cynthia removed her goggles to make eye contact when speaking. "We're travelers from Greed. We heard about the flowers and their hypnotizing beauty and we wanted to see them for ourselves." Something changed the mushroom man's attitude, as if a switch had been flipped to darken the room. "Oh," the man's voice lowered beneath his fungal crown, "you claim our flowers are hypnotizing? You've never seen the definition until you've seen these flowers!"

The man stamped his foot, sending Cynthia and Shrap tumbling through the carpet on the

floor, down a shaft beneath. Spiraling downward, ensnared in the fluffy fabric of the carpet, Shrap flailed his arms to grasp the outer wall of the shaft. Cynthia, fighting through Shrap's screaming, balled her fists into dark gray pistons. "Shrap!" She shouted. The Sinner stopped screaming, his mask jostling around in his briefcase. "Yeah? What?" He rattled out. Cynthia thrust her piston hands outward, slamming into the shaft with spikes and screeching to a stop with the briefcase in her lap.

After Shrap's screaming ended, Cynthia crossed her legs to hold the suitcase. Cynthia

exhaled, tilting her eyes toward the light above the tunnel. Shrap craned his neck around the exposed shaft, using his hands to peel back the tattered carpet. "Enf! Hang on, lemme get this carpet off real quick," he grunted, pulling the velvet red fabric away. After tossing the carpet off of Cynthia's shoulders, the large, grotesque shards of flesh and matted blood on the yellowed fangs of a carnivorous plant snapped from beneath the protagonists. Now Cynthia was screaming while Shrap rummaged through his case.

"Oh relax, will ya? It's a Forsacia Carnifex, rooted too far below us to get a jumping

chance." Cynthia stopped screaming, her eyes wide and bloodthirsty fixed on Shrap. "THEY CAN JUMP?!" She shrieked. Shrap twisted his neck about while the monstrous plant below continued snapping at them. "Yes," he replied, tossing a grenade with bright green and yellow hazard stripes plastered on its surface into the pit. A loud explosion and fragrant sweetness followed a bloodcurdling wail as vines and tendrils in the shaft tightened and twisted, cracking and decaying before shriveling.

Cynthia released her grip on the walls, sliding down the shaft with Shrap's suitcase in her

arms. Her boots made a squishing noise against the shriveled flesh of the monstrous carnivore below. Cynthia set the suitcase on a lifeless gray eyeball beside her, letting Shrap crawl out and stretch out his limbs in the extended ceiling space. "Yeowch! What a fall that could've been," he muttered, turning to Cynthia with a shrug. "Any ideas what to do now?" Before Cynthia could respond, her breath clouded the air in the cavern. Noticing her materialized breath, Cynthia straightened upright with a shiver.

"So I'm not the only one who's cold, right?" She muttered, setting her hands and sleeves

ablaze to keep warm and shed light on their surroundings. Shrap stepped off of the monstrous carnifex's corpse, using Cynthia's fire as a light into the murky blue cave entrance. "Is," Shrap half yelled upon regaining his footing, "is this ice beneath us?!" Cynthia floated to the ground, talons sprouting from her sneakers while the lights on her boss' titanium gauntlets shone down on the surface of the floor. "Whoa, you're right," she breathed in puffs, rubbing her fingertips across the pale blue floor, twisting with diffracted light.

Shrap, however, had moved on. "Uh, Doc? Is it supposed to be cold under Hell?" Cynthia

lifted her head up. "Cold? No, why-!" She stopped with the image of a large frozen cave flashing in her goggles. "Well this just got interesting," Shrap exhaled, rubbing his hands together.