It had taken a back-breaking amount of sulking, raging, catatonia, worry, isolation, plotting, creeping, running and standing. That was even before she could execute any of the revenge plan that had formed in her head two or three seconds after getting excruciatingly humiliatingly destroyed and defeated by that rag-taggle pack of little whores.

An endless array of empty jobs, bettering oneself through crash-courses in all kinds of skills related to one brutal revenge or another. The brain-squad hadn't been much help but that was expected. Adagio simply filled them in on the plans for revenge and let them fight it out over whatever detail they got stuck in the air of their heads.

Sonata happily working at Taco Shack was a bonus though. Meanwhile Aria had been increasingly, aggressively ramping up her criticisms. Something that was getting more and more bothersome.

--

Adagio groans, stretches and flops down in the sofa, pretty much face-first. Sonata looks up from her hand-held game, sniffs the air once, then goes back to whatever colourful, hyperactive game is currently filling the seemingly endless void in her head. Adagio shuffles about in the sofa for a bit, then sits up, fluffs her hair and looks around the room. All those fucking taco boxes. How does Sonata keep eating and eating and eating without showing any kind of difference in her figure? All she does is lounge about.

Adagio rolls her thumbs for a bit, sitting with folded legs, staring at the ceiling. She doesn't want to go to sleep, she doesn't want to wake up in the morning. She doesn't want another day of some soul-killing job, plotting or even just lazing about. She just wants the bell to toll for the day of sweet, sweet revenge.

She clears her throat. Sonata perks up and glances over her shoulder for a second. Adagio takes a tone. Rage, hate and the thoughts of vengeance is a powerful accelerant, all those singing lessons paid off. She sounds good, real good. Sonata joins in, weaker but with definite grace. After an entire song and a particularly grandiose finish, Adagio and Sonata share a smile before sinking back into their nevery-day routine.

An hour passes, nothing changes in the room. Adagio has begun entertaining herself with groaning out an entire song. Sonata hasn't even moved for fifteen minutes. A sound is heard, the door. A few clicking footsteps and Aria appears in the doorway to the room. She is twitching.

“Hey fuckface, do we have any gin?”

Adagios head snaps in the direction of her grumpy companion. She remains silent, observing Aria for a moment. Pretty much taunting her to say something more. Aria grinds her teeth for a good ten seconds. She attempts and fails spectacularly to lean against the doorpost. Adagio sighs at the display. This isn't the first time Aria comes home absolutely shitfaced. There is something else in her tonight as well. Looks like someone has been driving down the white highway.

“Adagio, gin! Or is it out like eeeverything else?”

Aria staggers into the room. Adagio is already up from the sofa. Fine, some gin then. Something to take off the edge and something to shut up Aria. Adagio coolly walks over to a cabinet in the corner and grabs a bottle along with some glasses. She spins and walks back to the sofa, sets the glasses and bottle down. Then she eyes Aria who just took a seat in the armchair across the small table. Game on. Aria reaches out and swipes a glass along with the bottle. Adagio watches with uninterest as Aria pours herself a real stiff one.

“No tonic then, Aria?”

Adagio lets her voice drag on in a toneless drawl, much to the annoyance of Aria. She soon gets her revenge when she slams another bottle to the table. Adagio pulls back with a disgusted look on her face. This only feeds Aria's wicked grin and by now, even Sonata is looking up to see what the coked-up newcomer to the bore-fest has to offer.

There is something seriously wrong with Aria's tonic. After all three of the wonder-troupe has been staring at it wide-eyed for a good minute, Aria decides it is time. She grasps the faintly glowing bottle of horrendous goo and pours it into her stiff drink. It dilutes the sea of gin just a little bit. The goo from the bottle swirls and dances a bit as if it didn't want to mix with the alcohol, almost like oil and water. A not-so stingy addition of the goo and a healthy dose of stirring later, the vile drink is ready.

Adagio watches with uninterest as Aria begins guzzling the witches brew down. She awaits some kind of recoil, some horrible coughing fit or the likes. She is soon disappointed as Aria has half the glass with a mischievous grin. This triggers the leader-type and she grasps the bottle of goo to pour herself a terrifying drink. When mixed and stirred, she locks eyes with Aria as she drinks it. There is a certain maliciousness over the purple one's face. She is plotting something, isn't she?

The drink almost tastes like gin and tonic, if a bit heavy on the gin and with a consistency of badly made jell-o. Doing her best not to hold her nose, Adagio defiantly drinks down more than Aria. When she has done so, she decides, a bit foolhardy, to take the rest as well. Aria has already put her glass down. Adagio notices both her companions staring at her just as her vision begins to blur.

Poison? Poison! How? Why? Aria!

Adagio grits her teeth and attempts to reach out over the table towards the intensely quizzical face across her.

“Aria, you fuck...!”

Aria checks her cup and gives a shrug, then says something that just sounds like stone scraping on stone to Adagio. Along with her hearing breaking into a million pieces, her vision really starts to go too. Just before things go black, through her blurry vision, Adagio can see both Aria and Sonata start off towards her, both their expressions unreadable. Then she can think no more.

--

Darkness. Unending, blacker-than-black nothingness. Adagio is annoyed to find herself conscious, or at least gathered enough to know who she is, even if she has no idea where she is. Cold. No, warm. Hot, in fact. Something in the unending blackness feels like a breeze and there is some weird scent she cannot fully place. This is when a tiny shimmer in the eternal blackness gives her at least the slight idea of up and down. It is when the flickering candle-coloured light returns for a second shimmering in the eternal black that Adagio realizes that the breeze she feels is indeed her falling. The sensation courses through her body, from her stomach up through her spine, straight into her brain. Her eyes open wide, her face locked into a terrified screech without sound. An icicle broken off in her brain and the melted ice-water dripping down every little nook and cranny of her spine.

She is nauseated near vomiting but does not even retch. She spends a good few moments clawing at thin air, desperate for something to grip. Something that does not exist. She does not know how long she has been falling, she does not know how far is left. In all good reason, she is rather confused by this. The last thing burned into her mind is the strange look in Aria's face before all this madness begun.

She looked like she had no idea what was going on. Was she ever that good at acting? No. Something fishier might just be going on here.

In the middle of these few rational thoughts, Adagio realizes that the darkness around her is no longer darkness. It is some kind of thick, earthy-red clouds of swirling mist. The heat has increased too, it almost hurts to breathe. She is unsure about if it was better when it was just darkness. The cloud around her turns lighter and lighter. Finally, just moments later, she notices the fire.

The milling streaks of brick-coloured miasma has been replaced by raging torrents of flame. She is falling through a sea of fire. The flames lick her but do not instantly burn. The wicked caress of fire finally sends her over the edge, she painstakingly takes a deep breath of scorching air and expels it from her burning lungs into a ear-heart-and-brain-splitting scream.

This is when she impacts the ground below.

Adagio lies still, very still, as still as the dead. Although she is not dead, she knows that much. Things would be much easier and make more sense if she was dead. Her eyes are locked on the infernal sky that spreads out over the edges of her little crater-hole. Fire and a thick, swirling mist dances with patches of horrible, light-sucking darkness. No doubt that painful crap she just fell through.

She by no means attempts to move, just thinking about what it was like to have a whole body confuses her. She stares at the sky for so long, it makes her feel like her eyes are crumpling into more tinder for the endless fire. Every second is a year, every year is forty-seven months. Fourteen lifetimes pass. She blinks, one, rapid little motion of her eyelids. A black wave washes over her, horrid, sludgy goo from some unnamable demonic sewer. Her head rises, a million angry ants buzzing in her head. She looks to the side, a chain-gang of pickaxes prickles down her spine with the might of five gorillas. She pathetically tosses her arm over her upper body. Looks, feels and seems like every bone is broken twice or more. It baffles her deeply that she is actually able to do anything at all.

An agonizing, brutal struggle taking aeons and aeons of time and she has managed to sit up. Her broken, ragdollesque posture improved rather significantly by the fact that even though she is pretty much paste, she seems to be able to hold herself up. At least enough to move around, perhaps even stand. Her defiant annoyance spurs her to do so. After another uncountable amount of time, a few minutes or a full day, impossible to tell, she is standing.

Standing in the crater her fall created, she takes her first step in a lifetime. Painful, wobbly. She grinds teeth and swears inside her head. With the next step comes a good few more. She creeps up towards the fairly shallow edge of the crater and peers over it. The landscape beyond is strangely familiar. Streets and houses, familiar places around her current home town. The place looks like the firestorm in the sky would have moved through it. That and an army of angry... well, something's that's really angry.

Slowly but steadily enough, she heaves her broken body up out of the crater and stands up. Another brief glance around and she notices that no signs, posts, walls, windows or just about anything has any words on them. No information, no names, no directions.

She doesn't need directions here, she knows where home is from here. It isn't even far. Grunting out a sigh, she starts limping in the direction of home. All this fire and brimstone now no more than a buzzing mosquito in the face of having to move a smashed, thrashed and crushed body around. The pain is so intense it has dulled all and any of her senses. She does indeed feel and look like the worst end of a zombie-epidemic. She drags on through the deserted streets, not minding the emptiness until she turns a hard right to change blocks and end up... Back at the crater.

She can both hear and feel her entire mangled form snap, crackle and pop as she lets out a bellow of pure rage. Of course nothing could be so easy as to get where you want to go. Letting out some steam felt good in her body though. She takes a ragged, deep breath and glares up at the internal sky as she curses it for all and with all nasty words she can conjure up in her tired mind. It is quite the cavalcade.

Done with cursing the entire existence of this place, Adagio takes a final deep breath and lets it wheeze out through gritted teeth. Checking her hands and rolling her shoulders, she nods once for herself. Whole again, as whole goes. No sense trying to make sense of any of it. She looks to the crater, huffs and then starts walking down the streets with no names again.

Left turn, right turn, shortcut through alley, left turn... Adagio races through the familiar streets on paths that should lead to places that are not there anymore. Another turn, another stinging disappointment. The streets lead nowhere but back to the crater. The looming sky threatens to crush her at any moment. Everything is a biting annoyance and she does not know how much more rage she can muster. The options are not many and failures dominate. Soon blood, murder, death and Hell are the only things on her mind.

Hell. That's it. She has had the peculiar transition into Hell. The thought proves a momentary respite to her overloaded mind. Of course this is Hell, what else could it be? She slows down, huffs and wiggles her dry tongue around in her parched mouth for a while, thinking. If this is Hell but still looks like home, it must be something modeled after her. A private Hell? How quaint.

Looking around while attempting to gather her head, Adagio is already forming something of a plan. If this is her personal Hell, of course she cannot go home. She has to change the way she thinks about any kind of solution in this scorched trash-pile. She has to go to the last place she would want to go. She has to go to the damned school.

Picking up a pace again, she wanders aimlessly for a moment to test this place. All roads lead back to the crater anyway, why not see if she actually has any power to change that. Now that it has messed with her head enough for her to figure it out, perhaps it will indeed take her where she wants to go, simply based on the fact that she does not want to go there. At least that's another brain-twisting, rage-inducing thought.

A few more long moments in this soundless, trackless desolation and Adagio is finally able to put on a small grin of feasible victory. Up ahead stands the darkened colossus of what reassembles Canterlot High. She moves closer with a purposeful stride, all pain and exhaustion in her broken body even more forgotten now. She has a personal vendetta with this place, both school and now this Hell.

Upon getting closer, she starts making out details against the infernal sky. Chains, sharp poles and an intricate webbing of something that looks like razor-wire seems to cover most of the outside of the school. Adagio huffs again and stops herself from speaking a few words about how boringly stereotype that is. Is it supposed to be dark and scary? Please. She strides on. Her gaze locked on the main doors as if they were indeed the gates of Hell themselves.

Walking with purpose up the steps, she fails to notice the shadows moving amongst the prickly outside of the building. Swaying shapes hung from wires, sweeping darkness blacker than the blackest of black she fell through. She puts her hands against the doors and pushes hard. Annoyance and rage has washed away any kind of fear from her tired mind.

The doors creak open with at least some manner of ease. Adagio steps in and peers around with an uninterested look on her face. The hallway is void of all life. Another non-surprise. All the décor is featureless, logos, words and even framed photos are simply blank versions of their previous selves. She walks casually into the middle of the hallway before flinching at a sudden sound in the otherwise eerie quiet. The loud slam of a door. She looks back, already expecting to see the doors closed behind her. They are still open.

On the other hand, she notices that the outside world seems to have disappeared in a swirl of crimson and black. The storm in the sky has swallowed everything outside. Nice timing.

She takes a deep breath and breathes out through her nose in a sharp exhale. Surveying her surrounding yet again, she tries to decide on where to go. Is she simply meant to wander these horrid halls, looking for someone or something that is not there? Likely. The thought is not very encouraging but curiosity has snuck into her rage. She walks straight ahead, firmly determined to just have a look around the hallways themselves. Rooms will have to wait.

Another noise manages to startle her yet again, the same kind of slamming sound as before. Narrowing her eyes, she attempts to figure where it came from. She does not have to wonder for long, as something else up ahead catches her attention. There is a glow coming from a forward doorway. The gym hall?

Hurrying her steps a bit to get over to the open double-doors, she soon spots something, no, someone, running across the hallway and disappearing into the glow of the large hall. Was that? No, it couldn't be. It was, wasn't it?

Sunset Shimmer. One of the prissy little bitches that caused her downfall to begin with. Oh, it is on now. In this place, there are no rules. Hair-pulling and nails to the face is officially a go.

Adagio hurries to catch up with the bacon-haired harlot but has to come to a halt as soon as she reaches the doors. A sight most foul stops her. She stares wide-eyed as her mouth falls open. The glow comes from a large bonfire in the middle of the hall. Chairs are piled high along with banners, instruments and audio equipment. Amongst the burning debris are a number of horrifically mutilated bodies. She recognizes a few faces, she can assume that the rest are what she thinks they were. Students. Pieces of them everywhere. The light reflects off the floor as it is completely red.

The stage is littered with arms, legs, heads and a wide variety of other bits that someone would be very distressed to lose. Blood and gore, guts and bones. In an intricate web of wires above the stage hangs the twisted, mangled corpses of the principal and vice-principal. Adagios face contorts into a disgusted frown but she remains largely untouched.

Where did that bitch Sunset Shimmer go? She takes a step into the room, only to have to quickly steady herself after slipping on the gore-slick floor. She curses audibly as she commends herself on not falling into the pile of disgusting flesh that is all strewn around. So this is Hell, then? It remains little more than a momentary frustration.

Scanning the room with hate-filled eyes, she decides to go for it.
“I saw you, you little whore, you can't hide from me!”

The only response is the crackling of the corpse-fire. Stinking, foul, gruesome totem. Adagio grits her teeth in frustration as she slowly makes her way forward, a bit more careful now but with a purposeful stride amongst gizzards and brain-halves. Perhaps halfway into the room, a bright light suddenly turns on with the audible flick of a switch. A grand spotlight pointed to the stage.

On the stage-wall behind the hanging corpses is a few words splattered in blood.
“I'm awesome, take caution”

Adagio huffs and looks around again with narrowed eyes, her aching body taking a fairly decent defensive stance.
“I fell through darkness and fire, I smashed into the ground and was reduced to paste, there is nothing you can do to scare me, Rainbow Bitch!”

More silence, more frustration. This is one Hell of a show. Adagio kneels down to pick up a bloodstained skull from the floor and give it a critical once-over before dropping it. It seems so real. Feels, smells and looks so real. Shaking her hand a bit to get rid of a clump of hair and skin, she lets out a disgusted little sound before searching around the room again with her critical gaze.

They are playing with her.
“Come out and face me, you disgusting fucking losers!”

A sharp, rasping giggle is heard. Shuffling. Footsteps. Adagio flings her head around in frustration. They are all here, she can feel it. Why are they skulking in the shadows? This little game is just juvenile, even in this terrible atrocity. Finally, she finds something to focus on. A pair of eyes. They are dimly glowing at the very edge of the light from the corpse-fire. Large, purple. Twilight Sparkle.

“Got you now, Sparkle, time to pay!”
Adagio steadies herself the best she can, then charges right at the purple eyes. Bounding over corpses and broken things alike, she rushes the purple girl. Her fist raised and voice cracking in a desperate war-cry. Finally faced with something that actually surprises her, she loses her momentum and soon her balance. She trips, falls hard into the goop on he floor and skids right up to Twilight. What once was Twilight anyway.

The hollowed-out head of Twilight Sparkle is mounted on a microphone stand. Her eyes are surgically carved to reflect the glow from a small candle planted in her skull. Adagio looks up with a certain horror at her former rival, her pretty purple face locked in overwhelming terror, her neck severed with something that does not look like it was very sharp.

Adagio gasps for air as she tries to make reason of this. If this is her Hell, why is Twilight like that? Who or perhaps what could have done that?

Another sharp, rasping giggle forces her to her feet as it sounds out much closer this time. She strains to get up, now rather badly stained with blood and gore. A little bit of panic has burrowed its way into her mind. She was so sure about what was going on earlier. That theory is now right out the window. Her eyes flit back and forth, desperately looking for the source of that terrible giggle. This time, she does not have to search for long.

Towards her shuffles a ragged shape, almost completely covered from head to toe in blood and grime. She, for it is still clearly female, was probably once pink, a colour now faded, worn and darkened. Pinkie Pie.

Adagio huffs, if that psychotic candybar is the cause of this, Hell truly has lost all flavour for drama. Sure, she has a big, nasty knife, stitched-up mouth and true malice in her eyes. Menacing enough perhaps for a Sunday special in the drive-in cinema. As murder-Pinkie comes closer, Adagio quickly grasps the mic-stand and swings Twilight's dead head in a wide arch. The brutal blow hits the ragged Pinkie Pie in the side and sends her skidding across the gore, cackling like an uncontrollably mad person. Twilight's head rolls off towards the burning pile of whatever.

Adagio stands up tall and steadies herself with the microphone stand. Pinkie rises slowly a few meters away, now unendingly rasp-cackle-giggling. Adagio counters with silence and a fairly steady second attack. Running and swinging something has never felt so good. Perhaps she can get used to this whole Hell thing.

Bringing down her longer weapon hard onto Pinkies head is met by a satisfying, audible snap. The pink-and-gore girl falls into a limp pile. Adagio laughs, stops from a searing pain in her side, finds out that it is just a displaced rib and then laugh again, louder. Through the haze of pain, the power of adrenaline and just straight-up barbarism she feels more alive than ever.

She howls in a cracked voice and finally manages one of her trademark laughs as she stabs the microphone stand into Pinkie Pies lifeless form.
“Any... More... Of... You... Fucking little whores out there?!”
Stab by stab, word by word, she only slows down gradually.

She expected no answer and received none. She pulls her glorious weapon out of the bloody pile one last time and slings it up on her shoulder while looking around. The other bitches must be hiding here somewhere. She just has to find them. Whatever small tinge is fear she had is replaced by an overpowering need to hunt.

She casually strolls through the gore over to the corpse-fire and pokes at it with her mic-stand. She spreads a few burning bits, chairs and body-parts around the room, illuminating the dark corners. Just as she is planning her route to carry on with the hunt, she hears the brutal door-slamming noise again, this time echoing down the hallway just outside the gym hall. She peeks out from the slaughterhouse into the corridor, only to find that one way is slowly being swallowed by the raging inferno from outside.

This does not even bother Adagio, as she is now on the hunt. Staying in one place simply does not matter. Reinvigorated by her first kill and with a flare in her eyes, she makes her way out into the dim hallway. Listening carefully as she makes her way, she is on such edge that she can pretty much feel herself vibrate under the pressure. Hell has become her private hunting grounds.

The silent firestorm behind is soon forgotten as she stalks the corridors. Dark corners, half-open doors. Nothing outside of the gym hall has been particularly gruesome. Almost nothing stands out, it is like all traces of individuality has been wiped away. A rather stark contrast to the maddening chaos of the previous room.

The hallway leads on. Adagio is careful but not slow. Where next? Where might her prey be hiding? Cafeteria? She grins for herself as she closes in on the open space ahead. As the corridor gives way to the wider open space, all she can see is darkness. The cafeteria is like a black hole, the walls on either side and far end are just not visible. Adagio slows down and comes to a stop. There is surely some nasty surprise here. Perhaps that which is awesome of which she has to be cautious.

She steps slowly into the pitched dark. Long, thin stick at the ready. Perhaps halfway into the room, she stops. A clattering little noise has her look around frantically in the darkness. She does not see a damn thing. This is probably the worst idea yet. Something swishes by at arm's length. Adagio swings around without hitting anything.
“Show yourself!”

She grits her teeth and spins around, only to be blinded by the oncoming light that chased her down the hallway just moments before. The firestorm draws closer. She observes it for a moment, the slow-moving fog of death crawls into the room as if it was the slowest wave crawling up much too far over an unsuspecting shore. She backs away from the flame and smoke. The newly found light allows her to see well enough. Dark, shifting shadows in the corner of her eyes. Claws and fangs threatening to tear into her at any moment. When she looks, there is no one or nothing there.

Growling in annoyance as she backs away from the firestorm, she soon realizes that she is trapped in the cafeteria. All exits are now enveloped in swirling fire. Shadows on her back and fire before her. A challenge? Probably just another stupid test, this place may not make sense but seems to be controlled by a certain set of rules. Rules she can figure out. At least given the chance.

No chance now. She swings around again, mic-stand swishing straight through one of the vicious shadows. She catches the flash of a face. She is almost entirely certain it looked like Aria.

Fucking Aria. This is all her fault. She... She killed her!
That has to be it. In her own little slice of Hell, everything is Aria. The rest of these silly nightmares are just dumb puppets.

Cannot beat the shit out of a bunch of shadows though. Thinking of this for a few moments while dodging shadowy claws has really backed her into a corner. The fire is almost licking her now. The heat is getting awful.

“Aria, you fuck!”
She roars the words in absolute fury as the fire consumes her.

--

When she comes to, she finds herself in an extremely unwanted but all too familiar position. Darkness. Unending, blacker-than-black nothingness. This time all she has to offer is a sigh. The sensation of falling does not even bother her. All she has to do is prepare for the impact.

Whistling through the air, she falls with grace this time. Arms clasped and a tactfully raised eyebrow. Another terrible smash into the ground? More broken bones that will set themselves?

Please.

The thing that bothers her the most is the loss of her trusty microphone stand. Oh how she would like to crack a few vertebrae right now. She tries to check her nails but realizes she cannot. Fuck this darkness, even the swirling heat of the fire was better than this.

At this thought, she impacts with the ground, or, well, the surface of something wet and mushy. While it spares her bones from cracking all too bad, she is soon enveloped by wave after wave of some disgusting liquid. Things are still completely dark. She curses in her head. Panic and survival instincts not yet forgotten kick in. She attempts to swim in the goop. Which way is up?

Kicking and struggling. She makes good way for a while in what she thinks is the right direction. No matter if the wind was punched out of her upon hitting the surface, a trained singer's lungs can handle more than this pathetic sea of darkness. She hates it. She hates it all. The darkness, the idiocy of this place. She will not be defeated.

Breaking the surface with one last desperate stroke, she breathes in deep of the tomb-tasting air. Stale nastiness and something that definitely smells like rot. Now another problem is apparent. Where the Hell does she go? She takes a few slow strokes, keeping her head over the surface. Her hair is soaked and getting heavy. That is when she spots it. A flickering light in the unending black. A little candle that has absolutely no take to the darkness beside a small halo for itself.

She has no idea how far off it is. Then again, she has no other options. Every stroke feels like swimming in a nasty, watered down stew. She struggles for what feels like and might as well be hours. Then it happens, something solid up ahead. Only slightly submerged in the dark goop. Feels like rock. Seems to stretch on.

Adagio heaves her tired body up on the drenched plateau and discovers, much to her annoyance, that she cannot lay or sit without having her head under the slime. Standing up feels good though and soon she is wading through the gunk instead of swimming. She does not even take careful steps. She just assumes there will be footing towards the little light. Why not? All other things here has worked like a haunted house ride. Besides, what is the worst thing that could happen, drowning? That might just bring some glorious change to this darkness.

She wades on, getting ever closer to the tiny light. The rock ground beneath her feet holding well enough. There seems to be a slight slope leading upwards out of the goop. Well on fairly dry ground, Adagio collapses. Closing her eyes, the blackness behind her eyelids is no different to the rest of her bothersome reality. Well, besides the tiny, flickering light still to be reached.

An unknown amount of time later, she rises. Rested as far as rested goes in this place. She stands up and takes another great lungful of the surprisingly dry, stale air. She spins around, looking for that tiny source of light that was guiding her earlier. Obviously she is meant to at least try to get to it. She finds it again and also finds that there seems to be dry footing on the way. Haunted house ride indeed. Just with a whole lot more physical exertion. And rage.

Adagio strides along like nothing could go wrong and actually sees the light getting closer and closer as she takes so many tireless hours of marching. Eating is forgotten, drinking is permanently cancelled. It takes another forty-seven lifetimes but she eventually reaches the candle.

Because that is indeed what it is, a gods-damn candle. A rather thick clump of fine wax set into a curved metal base. No other detail or indication of anything. The meagre fire-light does not even illuminate down to her feet, so she has no idea where the solid footing ends.

Cursing loudly, Adagio grabs the candle with both hands and pulls at it. She means to remove it from its stand and give her a chance to explore her surroundings but of course, it is stuck. She curses loudly again and pulls harder. This sends her flying back down onto the darkened ground, candle in hand.

She manages a short laugh, only interrupted by the fact that she can feel her entire surrounding shift and move. Keeping low to the rocky ground, she waits for the rumbling to stop. When she stands up, she is greeted by the blaze of torches. A million of them. The dark goop is now far, far below. The eternal darkness threatens to swallow up all the light from the torches but for now they blaze defiantly against the encroaching void.

The defiant blaze illuminates a path upwards. A mighty set of stairs. Adagio firmly plants her palm against her face. What is this, an obstacle course? Groaning and muttering, she starts off in a slow ascent.

It takes another painful eternity to get up the uncountable steps. Thinking, dreaming and singing all along the way; Adagio has very real ideas of murdering whoever she encounters. Brutally. She does not even care if that turns into her new thing. This lawless land meant to break her has only strengthened her resolve.

Aria. Oh how she cannot wait to plant a fist in her stupid, smug face. She just has to be the final boss of this Hell. The thought alone sustains her. There has to be an end to this endless madness. That end is going to be a fist meeting a face.

Adagio grins for herself, the last step climbed. She looks out over a pathway lined with fire, a great gate in the distance. One heavy step forward, then another. There is no chance in Hell this is going to end pretty.

Author's Note

To anyone who read through that; I applaud you.
More to come.