“If anyone wants to walk away, then now's the time. No hard feelings.

But," he added, offering Red his hand and helping her to her still- unstable feet, "the rest of us are going to pick a fight."

In the Shoggoth's layer...

Jane was curled up in a ball somewhere in the darkness. She had run out of tears, breath and prayers many minutes earlier. She no Longer believed that Red was going to tear through the surrounding blackness on a magnificent steed adorned with shining armor and rescue Jane.

There was no light . . . only the Dark One.

The Dark One was almost intoxicated. The girl was on the edge and beginning to fall slowly into the abyss. It had been whispering into her mind . . . telling her stories of agony and ecstasy intertwined.

It teased her with false hopes, then slammed her with fear. It promised her relief, then delivered a mental image of Red's corpse rotting on the subway platform. It knew that Jane could no Longer tell the truth from the lies, and in fact no longer cared.

A problem with immortality is the belief that one is untouchable that one is more powerful and wiser than mortal beings and thus incapable of making a mistake. That was when bullies, tyrants and dark gods made their mistake. The Dark One wanted to push someone who was already falling, possibly out of sadistic glee. But by reaching out its “hand" to push her, it gave Jane something to hold on to, and that was a very dangerous thing.

The Dark One pushed its thoughts into Jane's head, touching her soul with its own foul essence. That's when it sent to her the simple phrase, {{IT WILL ONLY HURT FOR A MOMENT! THEN YOU'll BE MINE!}}

Eight years earlier, when Jane was too young to defend herself, her stepfather Jack had said the exact same thing. He had said it after going into her room late at night when her mother was stoned out of her mind on antidepressants and vodka. He had said it before before doing unspeakable things to her. She had wanted to scream out back then . . . to wake her mother and make the woman come to her daughter's aid. But she had been afraid. But Jane wasn't going to go down without a fight this time. She was going to scream, and she'd rescue herself if she had to.

The Dark One was like a whale in the ocean . . . powerful, but still just another tiny creature when compared to the waves themselves. Even whales can drown. The Shoggoth fed on fear and madness and pain . . . with Jane, it began to choke.

The scream that Jane let out was enough to send the angels running for the pearly gates and the demons to hide behind Lucifer's throne.

It was a scream that would become a thing of legend in the nether regions that hid behind the dimensional cusps. Jane had heard those words, had seen the face of the man who had nearly broken Jane's spirit so many years ago, and with their minds still connected, Jane lashed out at the Shoggoth. Both physically and mentally, she attacked the void. Her hair filled the room, finding the creature's form and ripping at its flesh. It wasn't a God . . . it just wanted to be. It was, by the rules of the universe, now a mortal creature however powerful, and that meant it could suffer and die. And Jane fed on its own energy as she tore at its physical and spiritual beings, as well as at the stones of the surrounding room. If she were going to die, she was going to tear down the walls of Hell in the process.

For the first time in millennia, the Shoggoth felt fear.

Gelok and Patrick were waiting by the security desk, wondering how long it would be until their Master's would be done with its new plaything. Then two things happened. The alarms began to go off, and the ground began to rumble.

Hellspawn came running from all over the place and storming out the front door. They were met at the gate by a number of lycanthropes and Talented humans, all of whom had evil gleams in their eyes.

Arthur was suddenly afraid. He floated off the ground, looking for an escape route.

Gelok and a dozen or so of his warriors had moved towards the door, preparing to repel the invader. He was a bit surprised . . . he thought that with that red-headed whore dead that these mongrels would have lost their will to fight. Or was this simply the last desperate act of a crazed dog? ‘No matter,’ he thought as reinforcements arrived, bringing the number of Hellspawn to twenty plus.

“This is going to be too easy, he muttered, a puff of brimstone escaping his lips.

A body hurtled through the glass front of the building, which was impressive considering how thick that glass was. One of the outer sentries lay in a pool of his own blood in front of the receptionist's desk. For a moment, there was silence, except for the crackling of glass on the tile floor and the clicking noise made by the receptionist's clipboard falling off the countertop.

Then Gelok saw eyes in the darkness. One would think he would be used to things that go bump in the night. He was one himself, and served and even greater one. But those burning reddish lights approaching contained an animalistic aura that made him sweat and cringe. The faint outline of a creature came into view, sleek . . . powerful. . . cat-like. Then he saw the rust colored fur and the gleaming teeth of the werecat.

‘Impossible,’ Gelok thought, his eyes widening. ‘She can't be. . .'

Red had flesh in her teeth, blood on her tongue and punishment on her mind. She had forgotten what it was like . . . the difference between a fight and a war. A fight is a clumsy thing, reserved for back alleys by people with lead pipes and pistols. A battle that was where warriors shone. Battles were chaotic, but there was a serenity about them. Battles were where what you did mattered it was where wars were won. As she jumped through the broken window, she ignored the stabbing pain of glass in her paws. She smelled Jane, and nothing short of the Grim Reaper was going to keep her away.

Behind her, a huge and hulking bear-like creature strode through, along with a menagerie of creatures that Noah wouldn't have let on board the Arc. Werewolves, a wereboar . . . things not of this dimension. If there was a zoo in hell, then someone had left the cages open.