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A watch-demon which somewhat resembled a great squat toad glared through reddish eyes at the Souls. "Some of you are new," it ‘said’. "Some of you may think of trying to escape. Don’t even waste time on the idea. Out there..." it gestured, "are endless distances full of heat and rock, where the beasts of the Abyss roam by night and the Salamander devils hunt by day. Even demons don’t venture to journey to the other cities of Hell except by caravans. You would not last a work cycle there. Now, dig."

The Soul which was confused followed the others down into the mine. It was a honeycomb of passages, branching and meeting and heading off into blind ends, completely without plan or structure, and the Souls had to scrape away at the rock with nothing but their own substance and their suffering. All through the honeycomb of passages there were only Souls crawling, digging and pulling along the rock the diggers had removed. Watch-demons moved among them, their whips cracking ceaselessly.

The Soul crawled through the narrow passages, squeezing itself through smaller and smaller tunnels, its substance broiled by the heat from the rocks and yet not destroyed. Suffering oozed from it like sweat, and impregnated the rock it scraped at, to be collected later by the Demons and used for their purposes.

The Soul’s confusion pulsed inside it like a live thing, refusing to be crushed out of existence. It scraped at the rock, following other Souls sometimes, going along by itself when it had to, not knowing where or for how long. And then, suddenly, it found a way out.

No doubt the way had existed for a long time, and perhaps might have been used earlier by some Soul or other to try and escape. It was nothing more than a near-vertical chimney leading up through the rock, and at first the Soul simply thought it was more of the same kind of passage it had crawled along for so long. So it scraped its way upwards, leaving its suffering and pain like the trail of a snail on the stone. It scraped its way upwards, ever higher, until it suddenly emerged on the surface.

So sudden was its emergence that it reacted with shock, almost retreating back into the pain-filled but familiar confines of the rock tunnel. It lay on the black rocky plain, under the sullen red globe overhead, the searing heat of which felt almost cool after the mine. It would have gasped for breath, if it could. It lay like that for a very long time.

Eventually, it rose somewhat, though still crouching as though the blazing ball overhead would crush it utterly on the black rock around. It rose, and began trudging off across the plain. Where it was going, it had no idea, just that it had to get away from the city, and the mine. The walls of Dis, the tremendous gates, and the high-domed palace of the Lord Demon fell behind to be swallowed up by the gloom.

Little by little, thought began to return to the Soul. It was no longer merely an it – it had begun to reassume an identity.

I am she, the thought came. I am – I was human. A woman.

She knew this much, now. She did not remember why or how she had got to be here, but the knowledge of her humanity and femininity was enough for the moment. She clutched to that as tightly as she could.

Away to one side, the road stretched, rising over the broken bedrock of the plain. The Soul, now less confused, moved towards the road and walked in the shadow of the embankment, where it was slightly cooler.

Things moved in the shadows by her feet, little things with many teeth that snapped at her but could do her no harm. After the first few attacks she ignored them.

She knew now that there was no way back, that she was to spend eternity here, or perhaps – if the dangers the watch-demon had spoken of existed – there were even worse places, the Hell of Hell itself, which even the demons dreaded. The Soul had no wish to taste of the perils of such a place; and yet she had, now that she had regained some sense of herself, could never return to slavery and suffering in Dis or any of the other cities of the Abyss.

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