Funnily enough, the Plane of Fire wasn't anything like I was expecting.

It was worse.

For some reason, I didn't believe Shadow and Ren when they'd painted a picture of a charming world that made Hell look chilly. It couldn't be that bad, I'd told myself; it couldn't possibly be fire all the way down. That would be impossible, right?

That, of course, was assuming the Plane of Fire would be anything like planet Earth and would obey silly rules like making sense. Spoiler alert it wasn't, and I was getting a crash course on just how wrong I was.

Where do I even start? The heat was like nothing I'd ever experienced. Just imagine the hottest day you can think of, then double it and then throw all that maths out the window because you can't even get close. The thermometer had exploded. The mercury had dissolved. That probe NASA had sent to the surface of the sun was waving its white flag because it was too damn hot.

But the planet melting heat wasn't the first thing I had to worry about. That honour was held by the only thought that was racing through my brain as I flew through the Rift and dropped like a stone into the fiery abyss. Please, god, let the chain hold. Unbreakable or not, I didn't trust it. The Norse gods or whoever didn't strike me as the type to go messing around with the primordial forces of nature.

But the chain held so I could go on worrying about more important things, like the heat. Or the excruciating pain that was now ripping through my body.

Now, I'm no stranger to pain. I've been burned, shot, stabbed, and even had a knock-off Venom clawing through my veins but this? This was something else. It reminded me of how I got my burn scar, holding onto the Vulcan star, unable to let go. The euphoria of power, of something you weren't meant to have, blended perfectly with the sensation of every nerve being set alight with battery acid.

I think I was screaming. I couldn't really tell over the flames roaring like a jet engine. I could feel a sound coming out, but as soon as I opened my mouth, something boiling hot shot down my throat, into my lungs and spread through my body until my blood was lava. I was paralysed under the weight of the inferno, frozen in place, unable to tell if my skin was burning because all I could smell was smoke.

Yeah, smoke. It took me a minute to work out where it was coming from 'cause it's, y'know, from the fuel, which in this case was...well, me. I was the one burning.

But it was working...I think. The black skin on my arms was starting to crack, and underneath it was a bright white light that stung my eyes and forced me to look away. Of course, that's easier said than done when it's also happening on your face. Before I knew it, there was nothing but white light, and I had a funny feeling it was bursting out of my eyes like Helios in God of War 3.

So there I was, hanging in an alien world, screaming in pain and burning up like a lump of phosphorus in a sea of red.

Not quite how I imagined my Sunday going.

I can't quite describe the moment it happened. There was no explosion, no triumphant fanfare, no psychic lady coming in to announce, 'This house is clean'. One second I could feel my skin peeling off, and then there was nothing. The pain vanished, and it suddenly felt like a ten-ton weight had been lifted off my shoulders. Like an exhale from deep within my soul.

I cracked open one eye to see the truly weird sight of clouds of embers drifting off my arms to reveal skin. It may have been scarred and burned and covered in bruises, but it was mine. The curse was gone. I was free.

I would've started laughing if it hadn't remembered the other half of Ren's message. That and my jacket was starting to smoulder. You're not out of the woods yet, Nicky boy. Dying was still a little too high on the list of possibilities, and as ironic as it would be, I was not about to fall at the last hurdle.

Grabbing onto the thin silver chain, I started hauling myself up the line. Jesus, I'd forgotten how easy this was supposed to be. My strength flowed through me like water, every movement effortless compared to the lead weights I'd been dragging behind me. It was probably helped by the determination not to get incinerated.

Then something caught my eye. I was almost at the top when I spotted it. A small dark wisp of smoke clinging to the chain. Against the intense firelight, it was virtually pitch black and shrinking rapidly. But not so small, I couldn't see two tiny red pinpricks staring down at me in a way that made my skin crawl and not in a flesh-burning kind of way.

With a jolt of panic, I realised I knew what they were. Not flickering embers but eyes. And if I really squinted, it almost looked like they were set into a skull. A twisted, broken face, the jaw hanging limply open, expressionless if you ignored the wave of utter hatred rolling off that tiny wisp of smoke.

I started climbing faster, I was only a few feet from the Rift, after all, and I could surely outpace it, but the last shred of Infernal Fire had other ideas. If it couldn't have me, no one could. So I was powerless except to watch as the black lump wound itself around the painfully thin chain and detonated in red light.

But I barely noticed that or the ominous cackle that rang out like a bell over the roar of flames. My attention was rooted on the impossible gap between where one part of the chain ended, and the other began. That and the silver splinters exploded outwards like a pipe bomb. It took my brain a few seconds to realise that my lifeline had been snapped in two.

Then I fell.

Falling like I was trapped in my nightmare once again, but I was pretty damn sure I was awake. I couldn't scream; there wasn't enough air for that. The only sound that came out was a gasp, and all of a sudden, I knew how Hans Gruber felt as he plummeted off Nakatomi Plaza.

Time seemed to freeze around me. I tried to grab the chain, but the break was too high up, just out of my reach. That had to be on purpose. It wanted me to watch as my only chance of escape slipped through my fingers—one last triumphant middle finger to the stubborn git who defied it.

Shadow said there was no floor. It was just fire all the way down. Would I last long enough to find out, or would I be incinerated long before that? Im going to put my money on the latter. Oh god, what were they going to think when they pulled the chain back up? What could they do? Nothing. That was the answer. Nothing.

There was nothing I could do as I fell through the flames, one arm desperately reaching out for something, anything to grab onto.

Instead, something grabbed hold of me.

I almost jumped out of my skin as I felt the hand clamp hard onto my wrist, but before I could process anything else, I was forcibly yanked upwards by someone who bench-pressed double-decker buses for fun. Next thing I knew, the intense heat vanished, and my cheek bounced off something metal.

With my head ringing like a bell from my rather unceremonious reintroduction to solid ground, I dared to crack open one eye just in time to catch a glimpse of a pair of black boots strolling away towards the stairs. They were rather swanky if I do say so myself, the sort of thing you'd see at a ren faire, all buckles and straps that probably cost a fortune.

Why they lodged in my head, I have no idea, but by the time I'd shaken my head and forced myself into a sitting position, the figure was gone. So were the footprints that should have been against the ash-covered floor. On a normal day, I would've been more worried about the magically disappearing man (I think it was a man at least, either that or a woman with very big feet), but right now, all I could think about was that I was alive.

Never have I been so happy to see a night sky in my life. I actually had to pinch myself just to make sure I wasn't having a near-death hallucination like that creepily popular theory about Grease. But it was real. The cool breeze against my face, the warm metal under my hands that was just this side of uncomfortable. If it hadn't been for the sinister red light coming off the Rift, I could've convinced myself I was on a camping trip.

But it had happened. I had proof! I turned around and found the rest of the silver chain still anchored to the iron fence and pulled it out of the rift. The end of it had fused together into an ugly lump of metal, still steaming from where it had come out of the heat. The other half wasn't tied around me anymore. It must've fallen off when the line snapped.

I stared at the chain and scoffed. Invincible, my ass.

That's when I noticed my hands. My right arm was red and scarred and pockmarked with old burns. In other words, we were back to normal. I scanned both hands—no black veins. No corruption. The weird submarine thingy had a reflective heat shield on the front of it, so I leapt up and ran to it and almost started crying.

It was me. Green eyes, brown hair, still slightly broken nose, check, check, check. I started laughing, throwing my hands up and whooping with pure joy. Anyone who saw me would probably call an ambulance at the sight of me leaping around like a loon, but I didn't care. I'm still here. I'm still here! HA HA!

SCREEEAAACH!

I stopped jumping around and froze. What the hell was that?

Oh...right...I forgot about that. Slowly I turned towards the open warehouse door where the hundreds of crates sat inside, packed so high they almost reached the ceiling. Only the last time I saw them, I'm pretty sure they were closed. Then there was a smell. A sulphurous whiff that I'd caught faintly inside the Rift, but now it was much stronger, and there was something else mixed in, like-

Shit. Copper.

How long had I been in there? It only felt like a few seconds, but I couldn't be sure. Oh god, this wasn't good. Shadow and Shiera, where are you?

A blast of darkness shot into the sky from the other side of the compound, accompanied by the shriek of something that wasn't human. Well, at least one of them was alive, but no offence, he wasn't the one I was worried about, but at least I had a lead.

I started to run down the steps when I heard another one of those awful screeches. It sounded a bit like the bat thing (what did Ren call it again? An ialtóg tine ifrinn, wasn't it?), but at least that thing had the decency to sound like an animal. A horribly mutilated animal who ate bone shards like I used to eat dried pasta but an animal nonetheless.

Instead, this voice was cracked and ragged. It was a sound I was familiar with. On Demoney, there was a guy who lived on the floor below us, probably in his late forties, even though he looked about a hundred and he was a chain smoker. I literally don't think I ever saw him without a lit cigarette dangling from his lower lip, even in the places that were supposed to be non-smoking.

We never learned his name, mainly because the kids were terrified of his yellow teeth and cyst-covered skin, and the bastard knew it. Whenever he saw us at my tiny brother and sister in his horrible raspy voice. You could almost hear the cancer eating away at his throat and lungs. I kept threatening to go down and knock some sense into him with my baseball bat, but in the end, I didn't need to. A stroke got him. Good riddance.

Looking up and scanning the sky, I easily saw where the screams were coming from. Something swooped down and landed on a nearby roof, hissing at me. It was just close enough for me to get a good look at it, and let's say Lovecraft himself couldn't have come up with an uglier monster.

It looked human, kind of. The body was humanoid, and so was the head, but that was where the similarities stopped. Its skin was red and shiny with burns to the point that muscle poked through in some places, but it was either used to the pain or couldn't feel it. Instead of feet, it had hooked claws and wings like a bat, its fingers painfully elongated and strained against the skin, but its face was the worst. It didn't have a nose or ears anymore; they'd burned off along with its lips to reveal rows of needle-like teeth.

The creature stared down at me from its perch with lidless eyes. For a moment, I hoped it couldn't see me, like how the Maw had only been able to sense heat, but as soon as those lumps of blackened coal swivelled and focused, I knew I was wrong.

With another gut-wrenching scream, it threw itself off the roof towards me, but I was ready for it. I remembered my last encounter with these creatures loud and clear, and while fire wasn't going to work, steel had proven to be remarkably effective. In one fluid motion, I stepped aside, drew Incaendium and swung him down hard.

It was like a breath of fresh air. Whatever tiredness had been in my muscles was gone, my sword had no weight, and fighting felt as easy as running. The creature shrieked in agony as I carved it's through shoulder, splitting one of its wings clean in half. While it was writhing on the ground, I plunged Incaendium through its head so its body erupted in flames.

Ah, Mr Hayden, said a familiar Irish voice. You're not dead, you brilliant bastard! Welcome back.

"It's good to be back, Ken." I was grinning like an idiot; I couldn't help it. The adrenaline in my blood, the fire blazing in my heart, god, I'd missed this.

Maybe they'd sensed the death of their comrade or just smelled the mix of ash and lighter fluid that hung in the air after it blew up, but all of a sudden, the sky was full of hissing flying monsters. I admit, I may be good, but even I'm not that stupid. Those things could still rip me apart, and I couldn't even burn them.

"Right..." I stepped back, still gripping Incaendium tight in case one of them decided to charge. "Quick question, those things can still light me on fire, can't they?"

Somehow I heard my sword swallow. Yep. So why didn't we even the playing field?

"What are you talking about?"

There is a way, said Incaendium slowly, to make yourself a little more...fireproof.

And just like that, my fear fell away. With my smile now spreading from ear to ear, I felt the heat that burned in the centre of my chest get brighter and brighter. I hadn't done this in a while, and let's be honest, it probably wasn't the best use of my power, but hey, I'd spent a week on death's door, and if I was going to go down now, I was going to go down swinging.

As heat coursed through my blood, the imp creatures gathered above me, snarling and gnashing their horrible sharp teeth. They knew what I was, they knew my fireballs wouldn't even scratch them, but I didn't care. For the first time in what felt like forever, I was myself, and if they wanted to kill me, I was going to make it as hard as possible.

Just as the first imp threw itself out of the sky, claws reaching to rip and tear, the fire in my heart exploded into an inferno. The force from the blast rocketed out of my catching a dozen or so and blasting them into the sky. One went flying through a building which collapsed with a rather satisfying splat.

Then there I was, standing in the heart of the storm, my body blazing as flames poured out of my arms. My fingers were white hot, heat waves rising off my skin, and even though I couldn't see it, I knew my hair was on fire. So were my eyes, now green balls of blazing fire. I glanced down at my heart, the familiar ribbon of orange light flickering and crackling with power.

Now that they'd recovered from being blasted into next week, the now very pissed-off imps weren't in the mood to play nice. A creature the size of a minivan scrabbled towards me and, with a stinking shriek, unloaded a mouthful of dark red fire over me. Now while these things didn't have much in the way of facial expressions, this one probably expected me to have turned into a pile of ash and bones. Not today, Satan. Instead, I just stood there with a smile on my face, a sword in my hand and a bunch of infernal hell beasts I'd like to introduce it to.

"Alrighty then," flames burst out of Incaendium as my sword started to cackle. "My turn."

Those poor, poor imps...they had no idea what hit them. There could've been a thousand of 'em, but I didn't care; I was a machine of fiery death. I hacked and slashed through the pack, slicing off wings and tearing open stomachs until boiling acid poured out (before they burst into flames, that is). I think I even took a few heads off, but I couldn't be sure. I was blinded by adrenaline.

Now the Infernal Fire may have hijacked my body and puppeted me to murder more than once. It had always been violent and over the top, and let me reiterate, I was not in control and let's say that's a new phobia to throw on the list. But this was me, I was in control, this was me, and only me and I was loving it. The smoke, the heat, the buzz in my veins...I was alive again.

Plus, I'd had a hard week. Slicing through a few mindless minions was just what the doctor ordered.

Soon the air was thick with the smell of sulphur and bile. Bits of viscera clung to my clothes, but while I had been knocked off my feet a few times by a rogue fireball or an imp getting in a lucky swipe, I was mostly unscathed. Thank god for my Primal Form healing me, or I would've been toast, quite literally in this case.

Sadly it wasn't a miracle worker, and before I knew it, my muscles were starting to burn. Incaendium wasn't exactly light, and the imps weren't slowing down. It felt like every time I cut one down; another one took its place. I had no idea how many Molly had fished out, but I swear I saw one crawl out of the Rift as I pierced its friend through the gut. Did I have any proof that they were calling for backup? No, not exactly, but I was pretty damn sure they wouldn't stop until the portal was shut.

You know what? Screw it. I'm finishing this, but I'm not doing it on my own.

I just needed an opening, and I got one. Effortlessly I drove Incaendium down onto a squirming imp, slicing it from skull to sternum and kicked it away. As its body burned, I leapt through the gap and ran for it away from the pack, my feet thudding on the packed earth, and they screeched and scabbled after me.

But I didn't run for an alleyway; if they followed me in and I got cornered, that would be it. Besides, rooftops are always more fun. Just before I hit the wall, I slammed my hand onto my amulet so that instead of fingers dragging me up the wood and steel, I had claws.

Flame cheered in my head, and even I couldn't help but let out a victorious roar as I charged headlong across the rickety roofs of the compounds. Bless the imps; they couldn't even try to keep up, could they? Ha! Suckers.

Over the rooftops, I spotted a jet of ice smash into a building, and I pushed Flame's four paws as fast as they could go, completely ignoring the wailing of the imps still chasing me. I could worry about it later, specifically when I had backup. We had to shut the Rift and end this once and for all before it was too late.

But first, I had to find my friends.