please don't show me your ____

Zane clutched his chest and heaved breath after breath, the others not much better. Shay sagged to the ground and heaved as Effie nudged his side. “Oh—we made it!” she said. “It’s… wow.”

“—Oh.” Addison’s mouth fell open, and she cupped the sides of her face. “Oooh. Uhhh. Sorry, little bugs, there goes your one moment of relevance.”

“What are you—woah…”

Nothing seemed odd looking at the floor. Pulling himself up, Zane expected something like a high, too high ceiling, monsters teeming about, some kind of hellish obstacle course they’d need to push their limits to get through.

But…

A world beyond Zane’s imagination awaited him. One might describe it as a ‘peaceful afterlife’, a bed to curl up in and disappear forever within its folds. A blanket of snow. A deadly lure, an enticing place to stop. Clouds dotted a path forward and swirled towards something looming in the bright blue skies. They seemed to be able to stand on these clouds, which wrapped around various floating land masses of meadows along the way.

He stood, and went forward.

“Nowhere to go but up, right?” Zane said.

“I guess…” Effie trailed off, moving to Zane’s side. “But isn’t this weird? No one feels weird, right?”

Shay looked himself over. “I feel fine.”

“Nothing weird here, either,” Addison said. “Seriously, Zaney, you’re scaring me. Are we gonna scout ahead or not?”

Putting his bag down, Shay brought the sparks out, who scurried ahead, up the cloud bridge to the next land mass. The group waited a few minutes. When they didn’t come back, Shay took off first, everyone else following afterwards. Nothing jumped in their way, nor did the path collapse and plunge them into the never ending emptiness underfoot. They made it to a beautiful meadow of…

“…fruit?”

Trees. Trees bearing beautiful apples—their shimmering surfaces reflected light as if constantly dripping with dew, round and golden.

The sparks stacked on top of one another to reach one with no avail. Zane shooed them away before they actually managed to eat one. “Let’s move on before one of these guys eats the obviously poisoned apples.”

“Yeah, no argument from—” Shay turned around, and around, around again. “—shit. Where’d the path go?”

The path to the entrance remained, but the one forward melted away into dewdrops flowing downward. There’d be no going forward any longer.

Unless.

“Do we… have to eat one?” Zane said. “Is this some kinda test?”

“I don’t know…” Effie scratched her cheek, seeming equally clueless. Shay pulled his beard over and over. Like anyone would have the courage to eat some random perfect fruit in the perfect garden of a god about to mass-brainwash humanity into empty husks. Who knew what it would do to them?

Who knew…

Addison sighed, crossing her arms. “You really don’t remember this story?”

“What?” Zane said. She clicked her tongue.

“The story of the Repose. One of those old bogus church legends about respecting nature. A whole bunch of soldiers gorged on fruits in a meadow they found and made a mess—but the smell of the fruits attracted vicious monsters who tore the soldiers to bits for their selfishness. Maybe this is Vitam’s way of justifying our suffering, by setting us up as the ones bringing on our demise. Like hey, I gave you the chance to turn back, don’t blame me if things go wrong for you!”

“So—that means we gotta eat?” Shay grimaced. “Then… shit, does that mean there’s monsters here!?”

Zane pursed his lips. He imagined it, Lucian’s worried voice carrying like but that’s just a story, let’s not jump to conclusions, maybe I can jump up to the next land mass and we can find a way. But he wasn’t here. They had a choice to make, and by the looks of it Vitam didn’t give them much of an option.

“Probably,” Zane said. “And unless anyone’s got any bright ideas or ways to fly, there’s no way we’re touching the next land mass without giving this test a shot.”

He plucked a fruit, and—

Addison slapped it out of his hands.

“Wait,” she said.

Effie frowned. “Wait for what?”

“Wait for me to finish, obviously. I have an idea.”

Addison bent down and scooped up the fruit. The way she investigated it made Zane think she knew the answer to some hidden puzzle. Some secret solution around this obvious trap that might lead them to safety.

Effie’s eyes widened, and she shot over, but it was too late. Addison took a bite, and the clouds that disappeared from the path ahead rematerialized.

Then—

The ground shook.

“So only one of us needed to fall for it,” Addison said. “Good to know. You guys better start running.”

The tower door cracked and caved. The apparitions, once of Calm and Happiness, grew bright red as they passed through the door, fueled with the Rage of the tower’s master.

Effie grabbed Addison’s hand, but the other woman stayed rooted to the spot. Zane jumped in to help her, but that only prompted Addison’s ire as she smacked their hands off of her. “Stop! God, you can’t even see what I’m doing. Are you dumb? Do you want me to die here?”

“What are you talking about?” Effie said. Zane appreciated her speaking up, because he was sure he couldn’t muster a word even if he tried.

Addison scoffed. “You know what I’m talking about. The monsters follow the scent of the fruit. They’ll follow me, and you guys’ll get up there. Maybe some of them will like, follow anyways, but we’re not worrying about that now, you’re supposed to run!”

She shoved Zane away, then Effie. “So run! Don’t make me look uncool at my coolest moment!”

Apparitions of Sadness gave them another shove, and when that didn’t work, Shay grabbed both their arms and yanked them towards the path. All the while, he muttered apology after apology: for not going after her, for having the cowardice to run.

Though Addison smiled, despite it all. Her Sadness turned its focus to the tidal wave of rage, and the last Zane saw, she was all but submerged in it.

The gentle cloud path morphed into dark rumbling roads, the sky turning from a gentle blue to a similar shade of red as outside, meadows rotting, covered in piles of dead leaves and moldy fruit. They stamped the remains to bits underfoot as they fled from land mass to land mass. Occasionally the thunder clouds sent shocks that turned Zane’s legs to jelly, but he couldn’t stop running.

Even still, Rage persevered. Once the spirits got past Addison they barreled towards the trio. Zane charged his fists with Rage and swung, but his attacks did little—if anything, the burst of Rage only served to invigorate them. “Damn it, this is supposed to work!”

It worked before, but these guys had to be different. Of course, of course, of course!

“Hey, kid, stay alive!” Shay swung his hammer with precise strikes at the spirits which drew too close, while Effie took to destroying the ones on their left as they hurried along.

“We’re gonna stick by your side to the end,” Effie said, “so save your strength for the big battle and—get running!”

Zane huffed. “You think I like standing around here?”

“I think it made for some nice scenery before!” Effie shouted.

Shay elbowed her out of the way of a Rage apparition, huffing and puffing. “Not the time for this! Get going or I’m letting you get got!”

At the man’s prompting, Zane and Effie hoofed it, up to the highest land mass. It touched the tip of the reddened sky, where it went flat as though they were put in a jar. Shay tossed a hook up, and it broke through.

But the gap only fit the hook, not nearly big enough for a person.

“All right,” he said, handing one of the sparks a bottle. “Now or never, get that thing through the gap, shake it and get away. Go!!”

Effie went to work destroying apparitions while the sparks followed the wire through the tiny gap in the sky. Pitch black darkness waited—they had no way of knowing what laid above. “Seriously,” Zane said, “did they even get any of that?”

“Huh? They’re smarter than they look.” Shay crossed his arms, as if offended on their behalf for… some reason.

“They’re monsters.”

“And they’re more than that,” Shay said. “We learned that ourselves.”

“I really really hope they are!” Effie backed into Zane, barely knocking the head off a spirit before it grabbed her neck. Another wave approached, bigger than the last. If the sparks didn’t pull through, then…

Ah.

It would really be over. Everything Pearce and Addison sacrificed would be for nothing. And if they had a chance of surviving, the group’s deaths would seal their fates.

So, they couldn’t—they had no room to fail, not a single inch—

A pop had Zane covering his ears. The sky-ceiling exploded, leaving a person-sized gap as the little monsters hurried back over to gaze at them from the little gap above. Shay whooped and scrambled to get up the wire as Effie pushed Zane ahead of her, before she climbed last, cutting it behind her.

Zane rubbed the back of his head, near-darkness surrounding them. Within dim light, he caught sight of Shay cradling something.

One of the sparks, still and lifeless, while the other two huddled around him. The deceased one clutched a small bottle in its pincers.

“…Shit…”

Zane held a hand out—but Shay said nothing. He placed the body down, hands clenching and unclenching.

“I… should’ve put more time on the detonation,” Shay said. “But the stupid little monster—it set off the explosion before it got away like I told it to. Maybe these little guys aren’t so smart after all…”

Effie frowned. She scooted over to Shay, patting his back. “Or maybe it knew we needed to get out now, so it did what it had to do before the spirits reached us. I’m sorry, Shay.”

Maybe Zane should’ve apologized, but he failed to do so. Maybe because the spark knew what it was doing. Like Addison did, like Pearce did, like Leon did. They put everything on the line for what mattered.

Even if what mattered was—complete, utter—

Zane stood up.

“C’mon,” he said, “we’ll give it a nice grave later, promise. But there’s something we have to do first. Before some asshole god takes this away from us.”

In Vitam’s world, there was no loss nor suffering. Bad memories slipped from your head like sand. No suffering lingered, no troubles wormed into your heart, no grief dared to taint your mind.

Moments like this, with no emotions to sustain them, would cease to exist.

For the sake of everyone they lost—none of them could allow that to happen. Effie helped Shay to his feet as the sparks scrambled into his bag. Step by step, they set out into the darkness.

Into the final level of the tower.