They stepped into the room and found it quite sparse. Like most factory offices, the walls were dingy and tinted yellow from the oil mist that hung in the air. Against the window sat a small desk with a computer flickering through its screensaver. A cheap office chair faced the supervisor or whoever was in the office, so they could look out on the floor and see the workers doing whatever they were doing.

  To Cole's relief, this office had blinds on the window. They were old and cracked, but he pulled them anyway and twisted them shut. "Good thinking, now we will never see 'em coming!" Cole ignored the comment, sat down in the chair, and responded, "Out with it, what is going on?"

  Joker stood for a moment looking into Coles's mind as though he was thinking. Something was definitely different about him here. Joker seemed more and more like his own person instead of a personality conjured up to help Cole deal with fighting and killing. Everything from Joker's stance to the way he was taking control of their body was feeling different and becoming more frequent.

  "I don't know why I know these things. I don't know why I know about this place or how it works. It's like I have been asleep for a really long time, and now I am waking up. A fog is lifting from me, and I just know." For a rare moment, Joker's face was serious as he spoke. Cole could see the effort playing across his face as he tried to remember.

  "But I made you. I imagined you to be the personality for me that killed, so I could do what had to be done and come home alive. How could you know something that I don't?"

  "I don't know, Cole. I'm starting to feel different, like I am trapped in here with you, but at the same time, I feel like I am you. I don't know what that means, so don't ask. I'm not the great magician Humphrey."

  Cole's mind was silent for a moment as thoughts bubbled outside of him. He could feel the separation that Joker spoke of, and yet the connection they had. He concentrated on this feeling, trying to separate and isolate it away from himself. That's when he felt it. Just behind the feeling of Joker, there was a force: red, glaring, and bright. He reached for it with his mind.

  "That's the djinn. After you ate him, his magic pooled right here. That is what you are using now." Joker's tone had broken the silence of his mind. Of course, the figment knew what he was doing. They shared sanity, after all.

  "it feels good, it's... I can't even describe it's like sex and good food and Christmas as a kid." Cole's thought was a whisper. He reached out with his will and touched the djinn's power, relishing in the feeling that flowed over him.

  "Cole, be careful. You don't know how..." Joker's warning was cut off as the power consumed their mind, turning everything deep bright red. He felt the power wash over him and build quicker than a blink, releasing in a sudden rush as the bubble of magic popped.

  There was a loud ringing in his ears as he opened his blurry eyes. Slowly, the world came into focus around him, light and sound coming back to him in muffled tones. Pain coursed through him in waves. The world shook and waved beneath his feet as he tried to focus. Destruction greeted him. The outer wall of the room had been burst outward, spilling rubble and stone as far as the eye could see.

  “Jesus and Mary, I told you to freaking stop. You have no idea how dangerous magic is…” Joker spat at him. The pain began to leave as the world came into focus for him. “We have to go now. That was so fucking loud. We are going to have everything in this nine hells on us, and we still have to get to the center of this fucking fun hou…” The words trailed off as their collective attention was drawn to a sound rising from the darkness.

  He did not wait for his balance to recover, pushing heavy legs as fast as he could. Cole ran, their muscles fed with the fuel of desperation and djinn fire. They ran without thought. The sound followed behind, growing louder. In the fleeting logic left to him, they knew it was catching up. Another turn past the machines that lay dormant, humming sleeping giants of industry. “What is that? Seriously, why is everything so freaking fast here? Fuck, seriously, just fuck.” Cole's anger bit through the flight-or-fight nightmares in his head. “It sounds like a swarm, but angrier, like if hornets had babies with crickets, and then that baby had kids with a rattlesnake... Oh, I know what that is, Cole… we gotta hide, we gotta hide now.”

  “What are they? Where are we going to hide here?” Thought skittered away as the feeling of Joker’s control slid into his frayed nerve endings. The orange glow that pervaded Theosis gave just enough light for them to pick up the details. The images came too jumbled and fast for him to make out, but Joker sorted through them quickly with the djinn's sight. “Why is it darker now? Did we bust our head on the wall?” Cole asked, trying to keep the fear from consuming him…

  There was no answer in the flickering flight, just picture after image until one scene stuck. He looked at the thought held in their sight. Everything was washed over in the dimming red of the djinn site. His eyes focused on the center of their view. It looked cold, absent of all heat, leaving a stark black blob in the haze of Theosis. “We are going to cut this close. Listen, Cole, as soon as we get in here, I need you to put your hands on the door and touch the djinn fire again. But this time, think of mist floating away in the wind. Push that feeling into the door and all around us."

  "Wwwhat is that place? What if I explode?" Cole stammered.

  "Shut the fuck up, boy, and do it. I will explain it if we live!" Joker's voice was harsh and commanding as he sped their body forward, crashing into the blank spot with full force. He braced himself for the bone-jarring impact that would follow, but to Cole's surprise, the wall gave way and he realized they had run through a door. He felt the cool metal under his fingertips as Joker slammed the door shut. "DO IT NOW!"

  Without thought, Cole reached out to the djinn fire inside of him, feeling it hum its way through his flesh. He brought up the memory of an old creek behind his childhood home, the feeling of a cool and humid day as the fog lifted off the water, and watched as the wind scattered into a perfect blue Hoosier sky. "Push, jackass, push!"

  The feeling came naturally to him, the hum in their body became a rush flooding down his arms and through his fingertips. He could feel the magic melting into the wall, everything was in harmony, a chord struck in perfect rhythm. The sound crashed outside the wall building to a crescendo of angry buzzing and cracking bone. "Hold it, Cole, keep pushing it out, it's working. It can't find us, just keep pushing." The coaxing in Joker's voice almost broke his hold over the flame and he felt his concentration waver for a moment. Whatever was on the other side of the door grew frustrated, having felt its prey vanish from its senses. The hum of djinn fire in his veins began to flux, it was becoming harder for him to hold his focus on the image of the mist. His body felt as though a mountain was weighing down on him, threatening to crush him at any moment.

  Sweat dripped off him pooling on the ground at his feet. He was losing his grip, the magic was scattering away. "Please, please just go..." The prayer fell from his lips as a whisper. The swarm buzzed back and forth from where they hid and then receded into the distance. He waited for the sound to fade into silence and collapsed to the floor, barely holding himself up with hands and knees. "Good job, Cole baby, very good job..." Joker's voice carried in it something Cole had rarely ever heard, respect.

  He gulped in air through burning lungs, slowly feeling his body return to its resting state. His muscles ached, his skin burned like he had been scalded, but he was alive, and with that feeling came a brief relief. "What was that? I feel like it's the first day of boot, I'm shredded." Cole's thought echoed through the empty quiet. It took Joker a moment to respond as he looked at him in their shared mind space. This was always an odd feeling, to have one's imaginary friend stare at them and realize they are staring.

  "That was a hell swarm. You know of them, think back to your church boy days. They are one of the plagues God will release in the revelations. They live between here, hell, and purgatory. I remember more and more the longer we remain here. I am remembering who I am, Cole. I am remembering what you are. I can feel it there, just behind what we are together."

  "What are you talking about? You are really starting to piss me off with all this Yoda, master of secrets bullshit. Why couldn't those things find us in here? What did I just do? What is happening?" Cole's rage flowed through his thoughts, but the figment merely smiled their trademark crooked smile.

  "This is a door, a special door, this place has laws, old laws Cole, laws spoken in the dark before reality was formed. The first thing I can tell you is iron is powerful here. It can channel and block all but the strongest magic. This is why you read about it so much in your fairy tales. The true laws last no matter how mixed up they get. As for what you did, you pushed the djinn fire into the metal and used its natural properties to block us from the swarm's view, physical and magical."

  "Honestly kid, you held it together longer than most of the old magi I once knew. That lot would have passed out in ten minutes trying to hide from a swarm like that." The laugh that ended Joker's answer was familiar and comfortable. He sat there in the dark of the room, letting everything that had been said wash over him. It was chaotic, pushing at the very edges of his logical self. He could feel his mind wanting to shut down from the absurdity of it all. This was not a dream.

  "No Cole, this isn’t a dream. It's the reality behind reality, the realm where God and Satan walk. It is as real as everything you can touch, feel, see, and hear. It's been a long time since I have been here. I looked for you for a very long time. So many fucking rituals, fucking teens all dressed up in black lipstick and spouting words they didn't even understand, but I found you."

  Cole's attention snapped to Joker, probing him with his will and djinn fire. "Don't do that Cole. The djinn fire is almost used up, and you are, as you say, shredded. We are going to need the last of it to heal you and get to the center of the maze. I will answer your questions in time so quit being all drama and fucking brimstone."

  He let go of the djinn fire but still felt Joker out with his will, pushing past the image that was his figment. Pictures broke the quiet in his soul, blasting through with the feeling of eternal fire and despair, the sound of a thousand tortured souls screaming in agony to a god that would not hear them. "What the fuck are you?" Cole's voice trembled as he pulled his will back from the monster in his head.

  "Yes, I do believe an introduction is in order since you ate me in your youth, and forced me into this image. Hello Cole, my name is Asmodeus, crowned prince of hell, and in charge of all of hell’s gambling houses."

  Fear of the biblical raced through Cole. This demon was not lying. He could feel him, could see his face behind the image. "Get out, get the fuck out of me now! Foul demon, you have no power here, I cast you out!" The scream raged across them.

  "You forgot to invoke the father's name kiddo. Not even the demons that clean my shit would flee from that weak-ass invocation. Besides, Baby boy, I can't leave. You aren't possessed, you ate me, swallowed me up like a Babalon whore. I'm afraid you are simply stuck with me until you die, or we die. I'm not sure how that part works. Let's not find out."

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  "If I ate you, then why are you still here? Shouldn't you be gone like the djinn? I am pretty sure I shat you out a long time ago."

  “It doesn't work like that with angels and demons or your kind. Eat one of us, a god or demi-god and we stay with you, I did try to possess you, I could feel you in the house, but we have no time for that, the past is the past, and we have to go.”

  “Are you going to kill me? How can I trust you?” Cole asked his voice trembling, he felt so violated, used and most of all betrayed. “Look we really don’t have time for this, I told you, I don’t know what will happen to me if you die and I can't get out of here, there is a very good chance I would just float out all Casper like, but there is a chance I could die with you or worse than that I could be trapped in your fucking corpse for eternity!”

  “Now seriously we have to get a move on, we have to get out of here before the time is up or we will not finish what has to be done in Terris, besides I have grown a little fond of you fucker, and if you repeat that I will eat your fucking guts.” Joker's tone was one of cool ire, steady, and even as if he was merely explaining facts to a child. “Now listen Cole first things first take off that harness you look ridiculous”

  “You told me to put it on asshole!” Cole shot back “I have no idea what you are talking about, we are better than that, now take it off, you have a crown prince of hell in your meat sack, act like it, I will talk you through using the last of the djinn fire to regenerate yourself, while you get out of your clown suit.”

  Time slipped by as they worked their way through the healing process. Cole could feel the djinn fire leave his body, it's light dimming as exhaustion washed out of him and his cuts mended. “We have to move Cole, it's time to stop running and start fighting. The best way out is through.”

  “Did you just quote Robert Frost to me?” Cole's thought floated across his mind, echoing. “When are you going to learn, not only am I eons upon eons old, but that we share the same mind. What you know, I know, and Mr. Frost was a good man to party with…” Fondness bloomed from the demon as he spoke and he struggled to shake it off. “We need a plan. We have our hammer, this mismatched suit, and our wits.” He thought the question to Joker, feeling it hang in the air between them. “There is much more we have. You can eat magic. We have the collective trait of human creativity, not to mention your tattoos. For whatever reason, they seem to function as wards here. We got this,” was Joker's reply.

  He reached out with his mind and surrounded himself in the numb of the killer. The rush of adrenaline, pushing through his veins, burned time into a thick molasses of heightened senses. The door came open more forcefully than he expected and bounced off his shoulder, leaving him feeling foolish and self-aware as he stepped into the fading orange haze of the Theosis orange-covered factory.

  He walked, taking in his surroundings with a quick proficiency born of a soldier used to war. Their collective mind grabbed onto details they could use for cover or advantage in a quick fight, cataloging and piecing together weapons of opportunity. “I have always loved the human capacity to find clever ways to kill each other. You all have a serious thirst for all things death. Demons and angels alike have to watch something happen and copy it before we can use such a thing. It’s just one more reason why all of creation hungers for a soul…” Joker's tone enviously crashed against their thoughts as they made their way through the maze that should be leading to the center of the factory.

  The way Theosis rolled over itself, expanding and contracting, made his mind swim. The distances were hard to judge, and there was this feeling that he had walked miles and yet had not even taken a step, which was giving him a headache. “There has to be a better way to do this. This place is designed to trap us, even I can see that, but the feeling here is making me sick. We have to find a way to break through this illusion and skip through the fun and games, or it's not going to matter at all.” His idle thought broke across to Joker, who looked at him smirking. “What if we could find a way to search all places at once, travel all paths, and find the dead ends, traps, and craziness instead of wandering around each one?” Joker's reply dripped with a knowing feeling.

  “Well, I am all for that, but how can we do that? I thought you said your kind can't really come up with new ideas like we mere humans.” Frustration seeped into their mind. “Oh, we can't, but I have seen this trick before, long ago from the Magus who freed his people from enslavement. As I remember, they became tired of wandering in the desert. There were some rules they had to follow, and basically, everyone was bitching at the Magus to get them out. Now, that guy used his faith to have a flock of birds search for the way out, and we don’t have that or the faith of a magi, so we will need to adapt the concept.” Joker's thought brought up the memory of sand and heat, with a feeling of deep and powerful loss, but with it came the idea of what he needed to do. “I have to eat the swarm, don’t I?” The question was followed with a feeling of disgust as Cole wrapped himself in the idea of it.

  "Not all of it, at least I don’t think so. As I remember, the hell swarm is a magical insect, but it is as I say an insect, and they have a queen. We just have to get the queen."

  “I don’t even know how I ate the Djinn. It all just kind of happened. How do I even make that happen again, Joker?” Cole’s question didn't even have time to fade before he felt his skin begin to itch and crawl. A reddish glow emanated from beneath the leather of his jacket. He pushed the sleeve back to see the words of his tattoo swirling, arranging itself into a word reading “Instinct” in bold scarlet letters.

  “Did my tattoo just answer my question like a smartphone?” His surprise melted into the answer already forming in their shared mind. “Ok, well instinct, that’s not much of an answer, but it’s what we got. How do we find the queen?” Cole’s question hung in the air.

  “The queen is always with the swarm, in the middle of the swarm actually. As for how to find the swarm, that’s the easy part!” Joker's reply came with his wicked laugh as the demon grabbed control of their body. The swift surprise of his attack left Cole sputtering in their mind, leaving his will stunted in the face of his possession.

  Joker took in a swift, deep breath and screamed, the sound echoing off the hollow walls of the building and traveling in crashing glory away from them, trailing off into the distance. “What in the literal fuck are you doing?!” Cole screamed in their mind, but the only answer was Joker's demonic laugh. The scream had barely faded before they heard the buzzing coming for them. The sound of angry insects and breaking bone came from all around them and grew louder at an alarming rate.

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!” Profanity spilled from his lips as Cole took control of his body in the short time it took for the swarm to surround him. Pain ruptured through his flesh, as pincers and stingers ripped their way across his flesh. This was not the sting of a regular bee or wasp, but something more to torture the souls of the forever damned. It threatened his very sanity, driving madness into the numb he wrapped himself in.

  “Get to it boy! Eat! Eat the fucking world!” Joker laughed. Cole could feel power flowing out of the demon and into his body, making his skin hot and his tattoos burn. The pain became dull and distant as he opened his mouth, the swarm rushing in to fill the space, stifling his scream. Rage replaced all thought, and Cole bit down to a satisfying and gooey crunch. The taste was rancid against his tongue, the smell of raw sewage baking in the sun against the texture of rotting flesh melted into his vision, with a gag, he swallowed, forcing the mass down.

  Bite by bite, he guzzled the onslaught of putrid bugs. Fear boiled in his mind as he struggled for breath between bites, and his vision began to dim. Then he felt it – a subtle but slight shift in his mouth, the popping and cracking sound of bone as his jaw unhinged, making his bite deeper and longer. The feeling of falling surrounded him, and he breathed in deeply, watching the swarm funnel into his mouth as his hunger pulled them in faster.

  Hunger filled his mind. It seeped into his flesh, tore away at everything he was and could ever be. He was lost on the edge of it, teetering between himself and the abyss. “THAT’S IT COLE, ONE MORE BREATH AND WE GOT HER!” Joker's voice was barely a whisper over the madness that tried to consume him. But with one last crunch, the hunger snapped, leaving the room in stark silence.

  The pain still burned through him. His stomach lurched and rolled in cannonball turns as bile rose in the back of his throat. “We don’t have time for you to be sick kiddo, it’s the venom. It will pass as soon as your body adjusts to the magic. Now get up, we got work to do.” Joker's tone was matter-of-fact, neither snide nor belittling, but rather of a man that was used to giving orders and having them followed. He got to his feet as the poison's effects slowed down to a manageable point and felt inside himself for the magic.

  He could feel it deep inside his chest, and it unsettled him. The sensation of magic was both familiar and surprising to him, and with a mental shrug, he pushed his mind out as Joker had instructed him before. In the theater of his thoughts, he could see the magic – a golden ball surrounded by black and grey smoke. Reaching out with his will, he touched the smoke of the ball and felt the presence of thousands of tiny minds, mismatched and stitched together. “That’s the swarm, nasty little buggers but fierce. You are going to have to separate them from the queen which is the glowing ball in the middle.” The demon's tone instructed.

  “If you know so much about how to do this, then go ahead and do it already, it's not like you haven’t taken over before!” Cole chided his companion.

  “It doesn’t work that way, Cole baby. I can control our body, I can control my magic, but your magic, that is yours, connected to your very soul. Not even God messes with free will,” Joker replied.

  Cole shot the demon a look that could have melted glass, his frustration crashing into the feeling of slipping time. He needed more time. “Be creative. How can I do this? What would they do in his fantasy novels?” The thought had barely formed in his mind before an idea burst through it. A tingling feeling ran down his spine, leading to a pressure in his head as his will gathered around him, flowing through him. It took a moment to find his focus, but he pushed the weight of his thoughts through the writhing black smoke to the golden light at its center and, with a mental jerk, pulled it free. The multitude of scattered, fragmented minds focused sharply into one thought: “Your wish, our queen.” Cole felt a smile wash across his face as the magic boiled in his veins.

  The experience of using the swarm had not been pleasant. He discovered that somewhere inside his body, the swarm itself had taken up a physical residence. They had not materialized from some other dimension but had come vomiting out of his mouth like a bad horror movie. The whole event had thoroughly disgusted him and left Joker in a fit of laughter, broken with the cackles of “Welcome to hell, Cole!”

  They ran down the corridors, the swarm fanning out in all directions around them, finding the dead ends and pockets of collapsed time, warning them away. At first, the sensory information had overwhelmed them both until Cole had figured out how to filter it out through the golden light of the queen. Now, the distance melted away in a buzz of certainty.

  Hammer in hand, they ran sure-footed, taking corners and hallways alike at near full speed. His swarm returned to him as he ran, crawling their way down his throat and back to the place he tried not to think about. The path in front of him opened up into the wide sprawling space of the forge facility. The machines seemed to be working here, as he could see red molten steel floating from vats in thick, blistering strands. The smell of sulfur lay heavy in the hot, stagnant, dry air as he pulled his run-up short to get his bearings.

  “We need to be careful here, kiddo. This place feels off. We may be in a pocket of Theosis where it's closer to hell, a thinning in the walls. If you cross over, there is no turning back.” Importance dripped from Joker's warning. They looked out over the sprawling machines, looking for anything that would be out of place. Furnaces sat in neat rows, pouring ruby metal into the runoff troughs. In the distance, the hydraulic hammers pounded their steady beat and chime of shaping cold steel. Shadows crawled their way across the floors in the ambient light of the steelwork.

  “This room has always been dim and depressing, but here in this place, it seriously looks like a Wes Craven wet dream.” Cole's thought brought a laugh from his demon, but the realization was clear to them both. Other than the machines, nothing was moving on the factory floor. Stepping lightly, they made their way to the center of the room, where the offices should be placed. In the other world, he knew that inside would be an elevator that would lead him to the second floor of the building. It was where all the upper management would sit in their pristine white shirts and have meetings and other things that upper management was wont to do.

  The light was low, but just enough for him to make his way to the office. Looking over his shoulder, he reached for the doorknob, feeling a sense of nervous dread breaking through the numb. He stopped his fingers on the knob and slowly turned it, hearing the latch catch and knock with a loudness he could feel in the pit of his stomach. "For the love of Christ, Cole, stop pussyfooting about and get on with it!" Joker chided him as he pushed the door open and stepped inside.

  He looked out over the windows to the factory spread out before him but could see nothing except the machines pushing on in John Henry fashion. "Is it just me, or was that a little too easy? I mean, seriously, I had to eat bugs to get here, and we just walk on through?" Cole's thought was tinged with nervous relief. "I don't know, I don't trust it. There is something off here, but I am a demon of the first fallen. I really don't trust much."