Capucine had her entire face covered up by her arms backed against the wall in a dirty and dusty cell, abandonned. Not even a guard, just her, crying, left in shambles at the fact that she lost despite having everything, crying at the fact that she is now disconnected from God.
Usually the guards, dark figures instilling fear into the prisoners' minds, are just here to terrorize them, to enhance the fear and the feeling of permanent doom. But for her, there was nothing. Not a guard, not a person. She had a large empty cell and her eyes to cry, such was her very own personal hell. To always be alert in case the rules change, to always be sad and lonely, the heart beating her chest like it was trying to escape. Lost hallways leading into lost hallways, nothing else. Some torches on the walls to regain some mental sanity, a few item parts here and there.
She takes a left turn and someone is there, a girl, and the second she sees her she immediately goes back to her cell, slamming the door and going as far as possible. Breathing loudly, she feared for her life and her body that had suffered already too much.
While she was, indeed, hard to be seen considering how curled up she was in the right corner of her cell and the darkness on top of that, the girl didn't see her right away but ended up opening the right cell and finding her after staring at some black shadow for a solid minute.
"Are you here?"
Capucine didn't respond, still in shock. The hell of this world felt very much like the air was extremely dense, it had almost a palpable touch to it. Despite hell being a different part of the world, it still belonged to it, and everything felt extremely real.
"Please respond, I won't hurt you. There might be a way to escape this place."
"Who are you?" Capucine finally asked.
"Melisa. Melisa Nolstand. I was sent here because I deserved it. I ignored all the signs and tried to make a pact with Efalis, sealing my fate."
"My name is Capucine, I was with Efalis in Paradise but someone killed me when I went back to Earth."
"How could you lose?"
"I'm stupid, that's why. I hate myself and I hate this world. All of the realms or whatever it is."
"You can escape it. Completely. Not just hell. But the realms, all of them. You just have to trust me for now."
Capucine stopped crying and looked at her, after her eyes had adjusted to the darkness of the place. She had a black and red skirt and a black bland jacket on her and some basic black shoes. Nothing too fancy.
"If I can actually escape, I'll hide. That's right! I'll hide and forget about this world. I'll just hide in the deepest hole and stay there!"
"Stay quiet from now on. There's a monster around here. Go ahead and be of use, tell me if you see anything."
"You want me to go there by myself? Are you insane?"
"I got you out of your mental state, now go verify if the way is clear."
"I hate you so much."
As she stated how she felt about her, she still silently checked beyond the stairs that were not lit up by any torch. Once all the way down she looked on the right to see an abomination breathing like a starving stray dog in an alley and stepped forward, opening a cell and advancing in it to hide against the wall from the inside. The thing eventually passed by and, noticing nothing strange, ventured further on the right.
Melisa went down and moved to the right, as Capucine extended her hand towards her. They both hid inside as far as possible for a few ten minutes until the creature came by again.
They held on to each others and made themselves as small as possible to avoid being seen and focused on their breathing to make sure they would make no sound at all.
The aborrhent noises it made, the screeching of its' throat and the sounds that indicated he would try to communicate but asphyxiated itself everytime it was trying to talk would make them both cringe of horror inside.
The steel sound of a cell door slamming on its' fence resonated further and the abomination left. Slowly they caught their breath back.
"I hate this, Melisa. I hate this so much. I can't stay here, I can't do this shit anymore I have to leave. There's no way this place is real."
"It is, trust me. If you go far enough you'll see someone used to rule this place. I found personal chambers with portraits of himself, deranged lunatic. Anyway, I don't know what that was, probably another prisoner but we need to get moving."
"But he's right there. I can't."
"We're going to have to keep moving. Capucine. Stop being like that. Just move your legs, one by one."
"Why is the air burning me? It's not even fire, it's grease. It's everywhere."
"You're losing your sanity. Come on, whisper if you want to talk, whisper like me, stop being so loud."
"Melisa, it's scaring me."
"I know, I know. You have to be braver than that if you don't want to cease to exist completely. There's always a way to come back."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean there is a chance you and I end up in Heaven one day. We live in a world, as painful as it is, that is fair. You have to realize that if you play your cards right, you'll be able to rise higher than anyone else. We have a shot at this, just believe it."
"Okay so what did you even see that made you think we could escape?"
"A hole. Far, far away, a hole. A singular hole on the floor that leads to the inside of a castle."
"So why didn't you go?"
"Because I saw what was inside and I refuse to believe this is real."