That left forgetting. Except, I hadn’t forgotten anything. In fact, I’d experienced someone else’s death. Their memory? Was that key to getting out of here?
From one step to the next, the sky brightened to a hot glare, and the path morphed to sand under my bare feet that was a sharp burn. The thump of my heart kept time with the voice in my head screaming Run!
I clutched the scroll in my hand tighter. I’d found the second piece, tying us with Chariot. Not much further. My Attendant would be waiting and I’d be safe from the man with the portal magic.
Starbursts exploded behind my lids, a searing agony doubling me over. A blade stuck out of my middle and blood gushed out through my fingers onto the red sands of the Negev. If you ignored the part where my pink fleshy bits were hanging out, the crimson stain I made on the ground was kind of pretty, almost like one of the crown anemones that blanketed this area in February. Admittedly, I wouldn’t bring this particular bouquet to a dinner party, but there was a certain fascination factor to seeing myself from this particular angle.
Pro tip: shoving your large intestine back into your body wasn’t an effective use of your death throes. I launched myself at the man in the Bedouin robes, slapped my palm against the bloody ear hanging raggedly from his head, and sent my magic into his.
It tasted of dates and the sirocco. My pain ebbed away, his magic wrapping me in a gauzy haze that delivered me into the arms of death on angel wings. With my last vestiges of awareness, I snared his magic in the red forked branches I created. White clusters bloomed, decimating his powers for good.
The scroll tumbled from my hand onto the sand. I had one last glimpse of sunshine before darkness claimed me.
I snapped back into full awareness, traversing the same narrow path through the silent, gloomy land once more.
Jezebels. I was reliving Jezebel deaths. Fuuuuuck.
I pulled up my shirt with still-blue fingers. Sure enough, there was a gash across my middle, accessorizing my chic waterlogged look.
Two deaths. I was the thirteenth Jezebel. Was there an exit? And if I didn’t make it out in time, would I die for real? I had no way of knowing, but I was damned if I was going to find out.
My third death was actually quite pleasant. There was a bed, for one thing, and my family was grouped around, weeping. Not fake cries either, where the intensity of their wails are in direct proportion to how fast they want you to bite it to ransack your jewelry box. They were really upset. Except they kept calling me Liya, which was weird.
Wasn’t my name Sherlock? No, wait… Jezebel. That felt more familiar but not quite right either. Was it my middle name? I watched the flames dance in the hearth across the bedroom, and as I took my last wheezing breath, a chunk of wood crumbled into the flames.
Ashes.
I stood on the path once more, repeating my name over and over again. That was how this place got you. The forgetting part. I had to remember my name or I’d never get out of here.
But then my brain trumpeted a warning. Beware twelve.
I shook my head. Twelve what? What else had I forgotten here?
Between the third and fourth deaths, I tried using my magic to get out. There was nothing to send it into. No foundational magic to disassemble, and even if there had been, taking Sheol apart was not prudent.
The sixth time I died, the crack of gunfire echoed off the dense press of trees in the Black Forest. The shock of the bullet to my temple made me gasp and seize up. The world went tight and black and it was pretty much over. A total upgrade from death number five which had involved a rare poison and vomitus convulsions.
It was taking me longer to remember my name, but every detail of each death I’d experienced was burned into my brain. This place was not going to claim my identity—or my life.
I manifested a dagger and carved the word “Ash” into my flesh, a soundless scream tearing from my throat as the skin parted. Blood dripping, I kept moving forward.
While the eighth death was nothing to write home about, it beat the hell out of bursting into flame, which heralded my descent into the death of the ninth Jezebel.
Things did not get better from there.
Beware twelve.
Back on the path, I ran a finger over the jagged, blood-encrusted letters on my arm, wondering about the importance of the word “Ash.” Faces flashed at me, swimming up as if from a dream. There was something so familiar about each of them: a pair of green eyes lit with laughter, a cocky grin and a flash of hair as black as raven’s wings. Even a puppy, its little tongue lolling out.
I teased out the knowledge. I am Ash. Maybe I needed the entire sentence on my arm. I tried to make another dagger, since I’d lost the one I’d had, but I was too weak and my blood had dried too much to write with.
I am Ash. I am Ash.
I stumbled, almost plunging headlong into the Repha’im, and only catching myself at the last second. I held my hand up to the side of the path. A Repha’im flowed up to meet my movements, close enough for me to feel the air vibrating between us.
I am Ash. I had the absurd desire to introduce myself to the Repha’im.
I kept walking, tricking myself into believing that moving forward was somehow accomplishing something.
Beware twelve. I turned the warning around and over in my sluggish brain, until the answer floated free. Twelve previous Jezebels, twelve deaths to relive.
The path still
