What You Are Is Beautiful

Dreaming of Hell

A/N A longer chapter for today. I had a big writing sprint of ideas and I laid out a solid map of events for the next few chapters. I did include some potentially upsetting discussion with Beatrice and her mother, but I won't be putting a TW because it's mostly subtle.

Ava's form was still laid out on the sick bed. She knew that she appeared lifeless outwardly, but her mind ran rampant with visions and messages, slurred together in a deranged muddle of panic and confusion.

Sand shifted below her feet as the wind threw her hair about erratically. The air was cool and smelled faintly of copper. Ava blinked her eyes open, trying her best to keep the sand from her face. She felt herself gasp.

The sky was alight with brilliant orange, red, and yellow hues. The sand around her was a mix of crimson and onyx scattered with the occasional corpse of what Ava could only describe as demons and monsters. She looked around for any sign of life to find nothing but death and emptiness.

She felt panic pooling inside her chest and escaping to her limbs that began propelling her forward. Sand and dust kicked up in her wake. Her back was burning and she felt a familiar vibration pulsing through her body. Before she could fully comprehend her position, she was loosing touch with the ground, barely grazing the surface, before pushing through the air using the power of the ancient artifact embedded in her flesh.

Ava glanced down at her feet that were kicking out at nothing as she slowly ascended, no longer moving forward. A strangled cry pulled itself from her throat. Seconds later, she was plummeting back to the sandy world below her. Her body collapsed in the hellish mixture, tumbling down a slope until being stopped by the corpse of a Tarask. Ava choked on a scream as she tried to scoot away from the creature. That's when she felt a hand on her shoulder.

Ava turned and screamed at the contact before recognizing a familiar blue glow. The boy stood before her, skin smoldering with trails of blue divinium. His eyes shone with a familiar fear that Ava's felt herself.

"Michael," she breathed, "where are we?"

"I don't know," he responded. His blonde hair was streaked with dirt and muck. Dirt was streaked across his face where lines had begun polluting his youth. "But you can't be here. He'll find it again. And he'll release all of this into our world."

"All of what, Michael?"

"This...these...these monsters. And the angel. He's not a very good angel."

Ava stood and pulled the boy into a hug. "I don't think he is an angel, Michael."

A faint yellow glow caught her eyes and she turned to see the shadowy form of an iblis drifting over the sea of sand and bodies. She tensed and instinctively tightened her grip on Michael. She needed to keep him distracted. Ava didn't know why, but she felt like this was all real somehow. All of it. Michael, the iblis, the corpse of the Tarask, the other monstrous forms scatter across the dunes...it all seemed too real to be just a dream.

"So how did you get here?"

Michael tensed. In hindsight, that probably wasn't the best topic of choice. "Mum's portal worked. I felt it...like something was pulling me to it. And it was so brilliant and everything I had ever dreamed of. So I ran in and I called for her to follow, but she never did. The portal disappeared and I'm stuck here."

Ava was speechless. The portal had worked and Michael has been down here for God knows how long. "We're going to get you out. But it'll take a while."

Michael looked up at her, eyes glassed over. "I don't know if you can do that. What if all of this gets out too?"

"But you don't deserve to be here."