EXIII Round I.I - Consternation

“I’m not going to entertain this drivel.”

Rella was out of the hotel room before Danielle could say another word. The door swung open under her scornful gaze and stayed there, quivering on its hinges. The blonde only let it deter her for an instant before she scrambled to pick up her purse—as well as the small black clutch that had been left abandoned on the spot that Rella had appeared on the floor—and follow. In hindsight, trying to explain to Rella Triean, of all people, that she was her original character had not been her most brilliant idea. The woman was already suffering from an identity crisis. It might have been prudent to keep that fact in mind before she had spoken.

Danielle sighed, supposing it only figured. She’d never been as eloquent in speech as in writing. Looking nauseated, she followed a few steps behind Rella, who could walk alarmingly fast despite the height of her heels. “Hey,” she called meekly, “where are you going?”

“Away from you,” Rella said, not even bothering to toss a glance over her shoulder. “Or, at least, that was the idea.”

Danielle felt a sinking in her heart as a lump formed in her throat. She sniffed. Her gaze fell to her feet as her pace slowed. “I’m, um, sorry,” she said. “About the things I said, I mean. If you’ll give me a chance to explain, maybe that’ll clear some things up.”

“I gather you’re the type who can’t realize when you aren’t wanted.” Rella stopped and spun around on her heel, facing down the blonde. Her expression was twisted in impatience, and her eyes narrow beneath the heavy eyelashes that framed them. “Scamper off now, little girl. I have important business to take care of.”

Her face flushing, Danielle averted her eyes. “You forgot this.”

The two of them chose to ignore the way her voice wavered in pain as she thrust the clutch out in front of her. Rella snatched it away from her with a sneer—only to pause and, looking over the blonde once again, give a weary sigh. She smoothed her skirt and tossed her hair over her shoulder. All at once her whole demeanor changed, as if the bad attitude she had greeted Danielle with had all been a trick of the lighting.

“I should apologize. I’m afraid I’ve been a bit harried and treated you unfairly because of it. Let’s start over.” She extended her free hand forward, red lips parted in a perfectly easy smile. “You already have an advantage, knowing my name. Won’t you tell me yours?”

“It’s Danielle,” was the half-murmured reply. Danielle shook Rella’s hand and found the smile comforting her nervousness. Strange, seeing as she knew for a fact it wasn’t sincere. She could see past the gentleness because she had written it for years. She knew what Rella was thinking—knew about the anger that was still boiling just below the surface.

“What a lovely name,” Rella said, folding her hands in front of her. “It suits you.”

A shiver ran down Danielle’s spine. There was something off-putting about being treated so nicely by a woman she could say with complete certainty felt nothing but distaste when she looked her. Rella wanted the upper hand—to be able to read Danielle as easily as Danielle could read her. She couldn’t, of course, but this wasn’t a fact she was privy to. Danielle was afraid of what would happen when Rella figured that out.

In order to shake the thought, Danielle cleared her throat. “So,” she asked, “you’re…looking for Death, right?”

Rella’s eye twitched almost unperceptively at the question, making Danielle wish she hadn’t said anything. She looked away.

“Yes,” Rella said. Danielle found her voice to be too sweet. It left a bad taste in her mouth. Rella took a step closer—and then another, until she was only a breadth away. Danielle’s shoulders tensed. Her feet shuffled. Her fingers flexed. Her heart raced.

“And you know this,” Rella continued slowly, “because you know everything about me, don’t you? What was it you said…that I’m your favorite creation?”

“Pretty much,” Danielle confirmed, trying to return Rella’s smile as she took a step backward. But Rella smiled wider and Danielle ended up doing little more than chewing on her bottom lip. She tried to stop at once, knowing she’d get lipstick all over her teeth if she didn’t.

“So you know why I’m here? You know why he’s done this?”

“No. I don’t, sorry.” Danielle frowned as she substituted biting her lip with playing with the strap of her purse. “I mean I know why I’m here, but not you.”

She remembered the look Death had given her when he dropped her off. For an instant, there had been a trace of intrigue at the corners of his mouth. All alone, huh? That’s a first, he had said, before leaving her with a shrug because it wasn’t his problem.

“Maybe you’re just here because I’m here. I heard that there are other writers and that they have their own—”

Rella raised a hand to stop her. “That’s not important,” she said. To Danielle, it sounded a great deal like a warning. Although Danielle had been telling the truth when she admitted she wasn’t sure why Rella was there, looking at her again she had to agree. It wasn’t an important explanation because it wasn’t true at all. Rella had always been tied to this world; Danielle had made sure of it. This was the wrong time and the wrong place for her to be, but it was still Nothing. There had to be a good reason that Rella was there, independent of being her original character. For some reason she couldn’t say, Danielle had the feeling that Death’s experiment had worked backward with them: instead of the writer summoning her characters, her characters had brought about the presence of their writer.

She gave a short nod. “Okay, yeah, probably not.”

And somehow, she knew without actually knowing that Death had been responsible for this, too. Even if he didn’t know it yet and even if she wasn’t sure why or how. In the end it was always Death.

“It’s strange,” Rella sighed. “He’s always been the sort to gloat, but since he did…whatever it was, he hasn’t shown his face in front of me. I have a few questions to ask him, you see, and since you seem to know so much about me and this city, don’t you think it would be kind of you to escort me to him?”

“Who? Death?”

Danielle balked. Rella’s smile began to sour.

“I’d appreciate it very much,” she said. Every word was more strained than the last.

“Let me, um, clarify something—or a couple of things.” Danielle’s heart hammered as she took a deep breath. It wasn’t as if this was a terribly perilous situation (yet), but she could feel Rella’s patience thinning with every passing second. More than that, being thrust into the spotlight by someone so, well, Rella, was incredibly daunting. “I don’t actually know that much about Nothing. Conceptual things, yes, but I’ve always been really bad about describing scenery. I couldn’t tell you where anything really is.”

Danielle’s explanation was met with a stony stare, which she tried very hard to ignore. “And Death’s not my character. I’ve written him a lot—with you, obviously—but I can’t tell you how his brain really works. I’m just good at faking.”

“I see.”

The simple nature of Rella’s response caused Danielle to suck in a breath. “You do?” she asked.

“Yes,” Rella said. She wasn’t smiling anymore. Her tone wasn’t friendly. “You’re useless. You may know who I am but you can’t tell me anything worth the time I’d waste listening to you blather on. I’m going to turn around again. Don’t follow me.”

Danielle’s face felt hot. “He could be at the labyrinth,” she said before Rella had a chance to pivot away from her. “I think it would be worth checking.”

“Hm,” was all Rella offered in return. Even though Danielle couldn’t meet her gaze she could feel Rella’s piercing stare drilling a hole right through her heart. Then, finally, she huffed out a sigh through her red pout. “But you don’t know how to get there, do you?”

“Well, no,” Danielle admitted, “but how hard could it be to find it?”

Rella waved her hand as if swatting an invisible fly. “If I’m going to wander aimlessly I’ll do it alone. There’s no point—”

Danielle didn’t hear the rest of what was presumably another insult when her shoulder slammed into the hallway’s opposite wall from the force of a body colliding into her own. Her vision lurched as her legs twisted around one another and she let out a yelp of surprise, but she had enough time to find herself confused. How had someone slammed into her from the side as if they had been barreling down the hallway at a breakneck speed when there had barely been a few feet in that space?

She didn’t stay confused for long. It was impossible for her to mistake the high-pitched wail that accompanied her descent.

“I’m sorry! I’m so sorry, Miss! I should’ve looked both ways first but I thought this hallway would be empty,” a boy was saying. Each sentence was punctuated by a nervous whine.

Danielle blinked as she steadied her wobbling stance and rubbed her sore shoulder. She looked first at the gaping black hole that was rapidly closing itself up on the wall next to where she had been standing seconds earlier—then down at the source of the voice. The boy—or the young demon, rather—was still whining and apologizing, his entire body quivering as he scrambled around trying to pick up all the papers he had sent flying in the collision.

“Hayden?” she asked. He immediately went silent with a final, pitiable sniffle and, looking up at her with the wide-set green eyes she’d drawn on many occasions, regarded her with a mixture of alarm and curiosity. He clutched the papers to his chest.

“You know my name?” His eyes went even wider, his mouth gaping in a way that made the points of his fangs visible. “N-nobody ever calls me by name! Wait…”

He stood up all the way on the tips of his toes and leaned in, reaching up his hands slowly as if to touch her face. Reflexively, Danielle reached out with her own hands and wrapped them around his before they could make contact.

“You are! You’re a human! A real, live, breathing one! Oh my goodness!”

Hayden beamed and bounced on his feet. His fingers wiggled from in between Danielle’s. “You’re so warm! And colorful! It’s amazing!”

Danielle’s already flushed face flushed harder and before she could stop herself she was mirroring Hayden’s smile, her discomfort momentarily forgotten. She freed one of her hands to place it carefully on his unkempt mass of red waves, between the small horns that were buried beneath them. He didn’t seem to mind.

“So, how do you know who I am?” he asked, proudly adding: “we haven’t met before because I’d remember!”

“It’s, um,” Danielle started, taking a step back from Hayden and putting her hands behind her back. She opened her mouth to finish the explanation but an aggravated sigh from Rella cut her off. The dark-haired woman didn’t bother announcing she was leaving before she turned away, her curls bouncing behind her in perfect time to the clicking of her heels.

Hayden jumped—practically scattering the papers he had recovered all over again. Danielle had the feeling he hadn’t even realized there was another person in the hallway.

“Hey!” He jumped forward after her, disappearing through a hole that manifested before him. It spat him back out in front of Rella, forcing her to stop abruptly. Danielle didn’t need to see her face to know how angry she must have looked. “You’re alive, too!”

“Don’t remind me,” she hissed.

“Oh, sorry.” Hayden’s pale face seemed to become even sicklier. He blinked apologetically up at her, his shoulders hunching in defense of her sour attitude. “But wait, where are you going?”

“Nowhere,” Rella said, sidestepping around the boy. He looked confused and followed after her. Realizing she had been left behind, Danielle hurried to catch up.

“The name of the city’s called Nothing, though,” Hayden said.

She stopped, causing him to walk right into her. Danielle waited a few paces back as Rella turned her stony glare down on Hayden, who began to tremble without hesitation. She put the hand that wasn’t holding her clutch onto her hip and looked as if she was about to give him the verbal beating of his young life—but stopped, her frown deepening into one of confusion.

“It’s you,” she murmured, recognizing him as the demon that had opened the portal Death had sent her down without warning. He looked different—happier—and aside from a couple bruises that were very likely due to his own clumsiness there wasn’t a scratch on him. He was the same height and seemed to be just as youthful as Rella remembered, but the sadness in his eyes that had hinted at his real age was nowhere to be found.

“Me?” He repeated nervously, pointing at himself. Rella’s eyes only narrowed further. Danielle could see her gears turning—could practically hear the unhelpful remarks Rosemary was undoubtedly providing. Confused, Rella? she was sure to be saying. Poor, stupid girl. Danielle knew it was only going to make Rella more frustrated.

“Hayden,” she said with a small smile, “Rella and I were actually hoping to take a look at the labyrinth.”

“Uh…you mean the weird thing Mr. Death’s building with Coroner?” he asked as he shifted on his feet to look at the blonde once again.

“Building?” Rella repeated, her frown deepening.

Before Hayden could turn his focus back to Rella, Danielle continued. “Yeah! Yeah, that. Um…do you think you could take us there? We don’t really know our way around the city…”

“Oh! Sure! Uh-huh!” Hayden smiled, the tension melting off his limbs. “Come on, I’ll show you! It’s not too far at all.”

---

If the walls to the labyrinth had been completely built, Danielle would have found it tempting to bang her head against one of them. It had been a much longer walk than Hayden had promised—a fact which he apologized for; he was so used to travelling through portals that his actual sense of distance in walking was a bit distorted—but not unbearable. Danielle found the people to be unsettling, but once she learned not to stare at their gaping wounds and to avoid eye contact with the more heavily chained citizens, her stomach became much more inclined to accept her surroundings.

The real problem was that both of her characters had abandoned her once they had arrived at her destination. Hayden, of course, had been an anxious wreck—and Danielle, being his writer, understood that he was busy. The life of a demon errand boy wasn’t one that provided much room for leisure. Although she had been hard-pressed to let him go, Danielle had assured him it was okay and let him disappear with a clear conscience.

Rella had, of course, been less polite. Danielle had been so distracted with Hayden that she hadn’t noticed when the other woman had simply walked off into the labyrinth—not that it surprised her. She sucked in a breath and sighed. Now that she was alone, it was okay to be frustrated. There was nobody here to criticize her emotions except for herself. “Great,” she grumbled through clenched teeth. “Perfect. I don’t even know what I’m looking for.”

It’s not as if she had anything to tell Death—if anything, she wanted to stay far away from him. Attractively tall or not, he made her uncomfortable. That and he had been the one who brought her to the Underworld in the first place. There was no way he was going to help her get back home. With nothing better to do, Danielle started walking. She took a different path that stayed closer to the labyrinth’s edges, and as she did she began to calm down.

“I guess I shouldn’t complain,” she murmured to the empty air in front of her. “Rella has a history here, even if she can’t remember it, so she deserves the chance to take a look around for herself. It’ll be fine. I’ll find her again.”

“Find Rella?”

The question came from around the half-formed corner and echoed much more clearly than her clunky footsteps. Danielle stopped, her heart leaping in surprise even though the voice wasn’t wholly unfamiliar. Instead of continuing down the stone corridor she backed up a few paces to where the hallway wall broke away and leaned her head back to get a good look.

“Icy?” The voice asked.

---

Rella did not intend to suffer the force of her unbridled rage toward Death being laughed off due to the presence of an awkward, homely blonde who didn’t know when she wasn’t wanted. Nor, for that matter, did she intend to suffer the presence of a simpering demon child. When she found Death, he wasn’t going to hear her anger—he was going to feel it.

Rosemary tried to warn her that it wouldn’t do any good; that man never listened. Rella was only setting herself up to become even angrier. Unfortunately, Rella was already too angry to bother listening. She struggled to push the volatile specter to the back of her mind as she surged forward through the skeletal frame of the labyrinth-in-process. Each time her heels connected with the stone they made a louder, more indignant sound.

Click, click, click, went the echo. Can Death come out and play?

But he didn’t. Death wasn’t appearing no matter how angry she became or how obviously she searched for him. It was strange; he had always been so eager to push her buttons. What had changed? The thought caused her anger to falter—if only because it hardly made sense.

The narrow hallway opened up and Rella found herself in the large room that could have only been the center of the labyrinth. Black screens lined the walls. They were complimented by an assortment of gray buttons and a single dark chair fit for a king (or for a very, very tall man, as it was). Rella didn’t look at them for long. Her eyes drifted toward a set of empty pods. Something stabbed at her heart. She frowned and stepped closer to them, thinking without warning how terrible it was going to be for the souls these were meant for. Rella shook her head and stepped backward, startled.

Starting to connect the dots, Rella? Rosemary asked. For an instant Rella could have sworn she saw the girl standing in Death’s chair. This was, of course, just her imagination. Rella didn’t dignify the question with a response. Rosemary huffed impatiently.

But it was true. It made sense somehow, all at once, and Rella couldn’t believe she hadn’t understood earlier what Death had been planning. Somehow, someway, he had gotten that demon to open a portal that had sent her back to a time before he had finished building the very same labyrinth that would play such a big, if indirect, part in their futures. The labyrinth would determine how the course of the competition for a position as Death’s partner would go. The labyrinth would ultimately be destroyed by Persephone Dimitriou…and Death would lose, just like she had.

This didn’t explain why Rella felt so uncomfortable in a place she had never actually set foot into, but that didn’t matter. It was probably just the stone—the promise of closed in hallways that reminded her too acutely of her childhood.

Are you sure that’s all? Rosemary asked with a sly giggle.

Rella looked at the pods again. She had assumed they were meant to contain souls, even without having any evidence as to why this would be. Confused, Rella frowned and brought a hand to her forehead. Before she had a chance to give it another thought, heavy footfalls from the room’s opening brought her back to the present. She turned, knowing who it would be before she even saw him.

Rella gave Death a wicked smile. “I found you,” she cooed, stepping closer to him. Her earlier anger seemed to be a thing of the past.

“Didn’t bring you in with the others,” he said, his gruff voice sounding as amused as it did questioning. “How’d you get down here, girlie?”

“You didn’t make it easy,” Rella said, ignoring his question. She stepped even closer, until she was right in front of him, and ran her hands slowly down his chest. “That was quite rude; it’s impolite to keep a lady waiting.”

Death didn’t say anything. Rella flicked her gaze upward to notice that his smirk was significantly less smug than it normally was. He reached for her hands with one of his own—but didn’t get far enough before her eyes sent him falling backward into his chair.

“It’s not your turn to speak,” she said, leaving no room for argument. One of her heels came up to rest on the seat of the chair that remained exposed between his open legs, causing her skirt to travel further up her thigh.

His smirk wavered. For an instant, she could have sworn he actually looked taken off guard. “Who are you?” he asked. This time, there was a weight behind it that expected an answer.

Rella grinned more widely, her perfect teeth glinting at him from beneath shining eyes. “Oh, this is a treasure. You really can’t tell, can you?”

Without breaking her stance over him, Rella leaned in to trace one finger along the rim of his cap and then along his stubble-covered jaw. “I could say we’re soul mates. Wouldn’t that be cute?”

“Don’t think so,” he returned flatly. Rella could hear an insult coming and cut him off before he could finish. “’fraid I’m—”

“Spoken for? I already know, Mr. Carver—much more than you could possibly imagine.”

Death’s smile snapped down into a grimace and then all at once he was gone, his chair sitting empty without a single trace that it had been occupied to begin with. Rella let out an indignant cry, her face twisting, and she kicked it away from her. It slammed into the wall with a loud thud before falling onto its side, the wheels spinning confusedly.

“I wasn’t finished! I know you can hear me! Get back here this instant!” She stopped a foot against the ground so hard it sent a stab up her leg and Rosemary had to remind her to mind her manners. Rella let out an angry huff of air and slowly unclenched the hands she hadn’t realized had become balled into fists. Death didn’t come back.

“If that’s how you want to play, that’s fine,” Rella decided with an attempt at a smile that looked more like a grimace than anything else. “You can’t hide forever and we both know you don’t want to, either. I’m too interesting, right? Come talk to me when your pride’s less wounded. Maybe I’ll tell you something you’d like to hear as a reward.”

---

Lori wasn’t so sure how much longer she could take this. Her foot was killing her and she couldn’t get remotely close to any of the citizens. She wanted to do her best to mingle, even if being social wasn’t really her thing, hoping she’d find some sort of clue that would lead her to Nothing’s exit, but Eira and Nadezhdamaris were making it impossible. If they weren’t scaring the souls off by being loud and intimidating, they were scaring the souls off due to their bickering.

“Why did you make them so mean?” Plum whined from her shoulder. Lori nuzzled her lightly with her cheek, flashing an apologetic smile.

She didn’t get a chance to answer. Before Lori could respond to Plum or even entertain the idea of telling the two bickering women to take it easy, Eira was lunging for Nadezhdamaris’ throat with a snarl—only to get pinned on the ground by the angel with hardly so much as a pause.

“Damn it—damn you! I’m not going to let you treat me like this just ‘cause you think you’re so much better!” Eira staggered to her feet and struck her nose in the air, squaring her shoulders.

Nadezhdamaris barked a laugh. “I think nothing. I know what ground I stand on. Do you?”

“I’ll show you!”

“Stop it!” Lori stepped in between them as Eira jumped toward Nadezhdamaris again and the angel immediately brandished her bow. The world flipped with a sickening thud when Eira’s fist connected with her jaw. Plum was screaming. Lori groaned, hurt all over, and realized she was on the ground. Well, she was on the ground for all of five seconds before Nadezhdamaris was lifting her to her feet again.

“You’re lucky I don’t strike you dead, rogue,” the angel was saying. Lori’s head was still spinning so hard from shock she couldn’t find the words to interrupt. “It’s only for the sake of your creator I spare your life. Don’t show your face before us until you’ve learned how to respect the one that’s given you your miserable existence.”

Eira screamed curses and insults and threats after them as the angel dragged Lori away, but made no effort to follow. Her deep, angry voice became more surreal as the distance between them grew. “You didn’t need to do that,” Lori started, reaching up to stroke Plum’s soft fur.

“She hurt you. As your protector, I cannot consider this anything short of unacceptable,” Nadezhdamaris said. She opened her mouth to continue, but Lori cut her off with a displeased squeal.

“Plum! She’s gone!”