Reginald stood there panting, dumbstruck, his vision a little blurry and with pain in his shoulders. 'Damned Scorched'. The pain in his shoulder made it apparent the ill intent man bore him. He half expected Mann to kill him outright. There were a lot of ways he could clean and destroy all evidence. As an inspector in the 'clean-up' department, he knew this.
He was happy to be drawing breath again. This was his third encounter with death after he transmigrated to this world, all in a span of two days. The first was his unceremonious hanging, the second his brief tag game with Mann, and thirdly the resulting Miasma poisoning.
He made his way back home away from this deserted part of town. Soon he was back into the hustle and bustle. Taking in the beauty of this world, give or take the bizarre variations.
However, the pain in his shoulders wasn't abating, making him uneasy.
Reginald found a slightly deserted alley. A dirty alley with poorly drawn graffiti and overflowing trash cans. Somewhere only vagrants and vermin inhabited. He pulled his coat slightly to the side to look at the wound site. Mann drew blood, and his inner jacket was soaked in it, but more importantly, black veins were spreading out from the wound. They spread out, without any discernible pattern. His breath grew shorter as his pupils dilated, and he knew what the veins signified.
'motherf**ker'. He cursed silently.
Reginald quickened his pace home. Mann was a Scorched. One thing they were known for was that their bodies contained Miasma, an energy from Hell.
To an Unscorched, however, it was poison. A living body was never meant to harbor such energy in the first place and the body would try to expel it at any cost or die trying. Miasma was very destructive. Pain, anxiety, insanity, and other negative states in people were closely linked to this energy.
This was not his first time seeing Miasma damage. Based on the intensity of the veins, he knew it was not fatal but he definitely would be close to it if he let his body expel it.
No longer caring about his image, Reginald quickened his pace in a bid to get home faster. Pushing against the pedestrians violently. Screams of protest flying in his wake.
"Yo! Big man thinks the streets are his runway."
A young man, seeing his flight, decided stopping Reginald was a fun activity. He chuckled as he pushed Reginald to the floor.
"Punk" Infuriated, Reginald stood up.
A fist struck the man's face, Reginald's fist. Without hesitation, Reginald had struck out. The man was not expecting a violent outburst and lay there in the walkway staring as Reginald walked away past him. He stood up, looking at Reginald departing, he shouted a few vulgarities in a bid to save face.
But Reginald didn't care, the pain from the Miasma was slowly eroding his mind. Pushing him to be irritable and irrational. Only by getting to his apartment could he get what he needed. A standard police issue elixir designed against Miasma poisoning. The elixir was quite expensive and wasn't readily available but his position as an inspector earned him a few each year. He silently regretted not bringing some with him.
Reginald's breath grew shorter, the light in his eyes growing dimmer. But he would soon be home. He would soon get what he needed. He painstakingly climbed up the stairs with the grace of a poisoned man, not stopping to respond to the occasional 'hello, Inspector!'
Reginald opened the door to his apartment and made a beeline for his cabinet. Pulling out a tin and opening it, he took a blue, cube-shaped, weird-looking tablet. The weird nature of the tablet didn't make him hesitant; because he gulped it down the next second. It tasted strongly minty, and he felt refreshed the moment he swallowed it. He could feel the Miasma resisting. The contrasting feeling overwhelmed him, pushing him to the edge of his senses.
It was said that one of the major symptoms of Miasma poisoning was hallucinations. Reginald was currently experiencing it firsthand. Flashing across his mind like a motion picture were images of Reginald's life and struggles. Everything about his daughter remained vague, as if her form was physically cut from his memory in every image. He struggled to remember anything to quench the heartache her faint memory left behind.
Unbeknownst to Reginald, the Miasma meant to pass through his body now flowed directly into his brain. This was an unnatural phenomenon, and seeing what Miasma did to other body tissues, the damage it would cause to a sensitive organ like the brain would be considerable. The Miasma flowed towards his brain as if being pulled by a force and disappeared. As if devoured, no trace of it existed.
The clouds of memory choked Reginald as he searched for any remnant of his daughter, anything. Every house he had ever lived in with her, every room they shared, every laughter as she called out to him, 'Dad'. He could remember her lines but not her voice or her face, he only remembered the color of her hair: blonde. He kept looking, kept rummaging through every last event, hoping to find something, and her already vague image became blurrier with every memory. All of them except, one.
Reginald could finally see her, clearer in this memory than the next but still blurred. He looked around, this was her school. And that was it. From nowhere came a falling feeling, like waking up from a nightmare.
And he woke up, opened his eyes. He was no longer in his room. Purple sky, red sun, and dark red soil as if soaked with blood. The overwhelming stench of burning blood filled the air. Every single detail framed up to somewhere he knew existed in this world. Hell.
"What the f**k"
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Hell is believed to be the source of sin, each layer corresponding to an important aspect of sin. Each layer of Hell is known to have an entirely different ecosystem from the other layers.
The first layer of Hell is known as the Hell of Blood. It was one of the most common and easily accessible to the Scorched. Red sun, purple sky, and soil soaked by blood. The soil stuck to his boots. This was definitely the Hell of Blood.
'How did I get here' trying to recall the chain of events that led to this moment. He got poisoned by Mann, he rushed home, took the elixir and he was here.
Reginald looked at his wound and noticed the Miasma was gone. The only difference was that the last time he checked, the veins were spreading out erratically, but then they were moving upwards. He brought his hands to his neck and could feel the veins bulging towards his head. Was he dead and now in Hell?
Well, he couldn't say the world didn't try hard. It has been trying to kill him since day one. His only regret was that he couldn't find out what happened to his daughter.
Violent wind blew over the horizon, carrying the coppery scent of rotten blood. The wind blew violently, pulling at his coat, threatening to take it off. He noticed his revolver was still in his breast pocket. Hanging on to his favorite coat, he wondered. Was he really dead? Did dead people need coats?
Soon the wind subsided, leaving blood-colored mist in its wake. Not enough to completely hinder sight, just enough to restrict it to a few leagues away. He looked in the direction the wind blew from.
The mist thinned just enough for him to see them.
A line of monsters—dozens of them—shoulder to shoulder, stretching across the horizon. They stood in silence, unmoving, as if sculpted and set in place for this moment alone. None of them looked the same. All of a different species. Twisted limbs. Misshapen torsos. Some were tall as buildings, others hunched and trembling. A few had wings that twitched faintly in the heavy, blood-scented air.
He counted four that he recognized. Wendigo. Vampire. Ghoul. Nofestratu.
All logged in the cleanup reports. He'd cleaned after or disposed of them personally before. They were some of the most common monsters from the Hell of Blood used by the Scorched. That familiarity didn't bring comfort because he knew what these things were capable of, and he never trained in combat; he was just a clean-up agent.
The rest? He had no names for them. One had a body like melted wax, pulsing with visible veins. Another floated without legs, its ribcage split open like a mouth. Some had too many eyes. Others had none. They all bore fangs—some serrated, some needle-thin, some jagged like broken glass—and they all had the same eyes: glowing blood red, burning like coals in the dark.
They didn't speak. They didn't move. They just watched. Waiting.
He had to admit, 'the world' must have overdone itself. Waking up to a noose around your neck as he dangled wasn't quite enough. He was stalked and poisoned. Both didn't seem to do the job, so it literally transported him to Hell.
He quickly armed himself with the revolver, pointing at the monsters. The gesture gave him courage, a little dose of it.
As if a condition had been completed, the monsters started closing in. They moved with such fluidity that he could not expect from monsters. Such movement could not be associated with the feral monsters of Hell. Everything since he got here just seemed too organized, the wind, the sun, and clouds, now the monsters. They were almost mechanical. They were soon a few meters from him. He had to do something. Negotiations? Not against monsters from Hell. He could only shoot and hope the others back off.
He aimed at the vampire. He was more familiar and knew that their hearts were their weakness. And he shot.
As if a condition was being met. The monsters started turning into dust, all of them. Except for the vampire he shot. It was standing there looking at him with a blank face.