POV Jane Doe.

As Morbidius settles his decaying ass onto his putrid throne with a sickening squelch, I clench my jaw, trying not to hurl all over my fabulous new dress. The last thing I need is to attract more attention from these festering assholes. Trust me, I'd had enough of that on Tinder.

But of course, Fate just has to introduce another freak to the party.

"And now, from the barren hellscape of Wansurn, where starvation is the national pastime," he announces, his voice dripping with sickly sweet malice, "I present Gaunt Potentate Voracious Grill!"

Another skeleton rises from the dais, and sweet zombie Jesus, he is a piece of work. Towering and emaciated, with robes hanging off him like a used condom, Voracious Grill looks like the lovechild of Tim Burton and a Dementor.

But his face is the real horror show. Fucker looks like a dried-up parchment stretched over a bare skull. And those eyes - two black holes that devour all light and hope. I know that look, that starving emptiness. I saw it in the mirror after every bender.

As Voracious Grill drones on about the glories of eternal hunger, blah blah suffering is enlightenment blah, I feel a sudden, uninvited presence slithering into my mind like a telepathic tapeworm.

"The Gaunt Potentate of Wansurn," Raphael's voice echoes in my head, cool and clinical, "Is a master of..."

I barely manage to suppress a groan.

Blah, blah, blah. Long story short, Voracious Grill is just another trust fund baby who decided to rebel against Mommy and Daddy by embracing anorexia as a religion. Now he gets off on starving his groupies and using some voodoo magic shit to make it all seem like the path to enlightenment.

Talk about a fucked up way to spend your inheritance.

But whatever, I'm growing tired of Raphael treating my head like an all-you-can-eat buffet of information, ironic pun totally intended. It's time to put my foot down and establish some goddamn boundaries.

"Jesus Christ, Feathers," I mentally snap, "How about a little warning before you go traipsing through my head like it's a fucking public park? Ever hear of this little thing called consent?"

If Raphael is bothered by my righteous indignation, he sure as hell doesn't show it. "Oh please, spare me your mortal theatrics." The smug bastard has the gall to sound almost bored as his voice oozes through my mind like molasses.

"It's not as if you have anything of value rattling around in that head of yours. Certainly nothing that would pique my interest."

"Well ex-fucking-scuse me for not having a mind packed with celestial trade secrets and the meaning of life," I shoot back, my mental voice dripping with sarcasm.

"Guess I was too busy, you know, actually living my life to get a degree in divine philosophy."

"An endeavor at which you failed quite spectacularly, if your current predicament is any indication," Raphael drawls.

"Oh, go fuck yourself with a rusty halo," I snarl, my patience wearing thinner than a vampire's tan line.

"You know, for an allegedly enlightened being, you sure are a judgmental prick."

"And for a newly deceased mortal, you are astoundingly insolent," Raphael counters, his mental voice taking on an edge of exasperation.

"But by all means, continue antagonizing the one entity in this affair who is actually trying to help you. I'm sure that will work out splendidly for you."

I can't help but let out a humorless bark of laughter at that. "Help me? Is that what you call this little invasion of privacy? Gee, with friends like you, who needs enemas?"

"Enemies, Jane. The word you're looking for is enemies."

"Potato, puh-dildo," I quip, rolling my eyes so hard I'm surprised they don't pop out of their sockets. "The point is, if this is your idea of helping, I'd hate to see what you consider hindrance."

Raphael lets out a long-suffering sigh, the sound echoing through my skull like a disappointed parent. "You are impossible. Truly, a marvel of mortal obstinacy."

"Aw shucks, you're gonna make me blush," I coo, batting my eyelashes in faux coquettishness.

There's a long, weighted pause, and for a moment I think Feathers might have finally fucked off to go polish his halo or whatever the hell self-righteous pricks do in their spare time. But no such luck.

"As riveting as this little repartee has been," Raphael's voice slithers back into my head, "perhaps we could turn our attention to the matter at hand? Namely, the esteemed Gaunt Potentate currently holding court?"

I huff, crossing my arms. This is some next-level bullshit. Building a whole religion around being hangry and treating food like it pissed in your Cheerios? Monstrous. Batshit insane.

And yet, in some dark, twisted recess of my soul... I almost understand it. Because when you peel back all the flowery fuckery and faux-spiritual fellatio, what is Voracious Grill really doing?

Feeding the insatiable black hole inside himself.

Chasing that moment of oblivion when the clawing ache vanished, however fleetingly.

Just like I'd spent my whole pointless life doing - jamming anything I could into the ragged wound of my own need.

Booze, drugs, nameless warm bodies rutting in the dark... all just different flavors of the same anesthetic.

So maybe that pompous, skeletal prick and I aren't so different. Two sides of the same fucked-up coin, desperate to fill our voids, damn the consequences. But hey, at least my self-destruction was a solo gig. I wasn't running around brainwashing an army of poor bastards into worshipping their own starvation.

I watch in morbid fascination as Voracious Grill finally concludes his homily on the virtues of starvation and drifts back to his throne like an anorexic wraith. In this crowd, convincing people eating is overrated is probably just a regular Tuesday.

But then, like a prom queen at a gangbang, Fate grins that insufferably dazzling grin of his and gestures grandly to the dais. "And now, hailing from the lushly verdant realm of Illirium, I give you the maven of medicinal magic herself, the Sap Sage Bloom Vermeil!"

I swear, it's like someone cranked the crazy meter up to eleven. When Bloom Vermeil takes the stage, it's like Lisa Frank, Timothy Leary, and a sentient fruit basket had a cocaine-fueled orgy, and the resultant psychotropic love child strutted out in a Technicolor bukkake dreamcoat.

She has this ludicrously lush cascade of shimmering, color-shifting hair that looks like fairies had vajazzled a mood ring, and her dress appears to have been stitched together from unicorn-jizz and the dilated pupils of Burning Man attendees. Bitch could have strolled straight out of a rave at the My Little Pony Porn Awards.

But for all the ocular clusterfuckery, it's Bloom's eyes that truly defy description. Impossibly vivid, jacked-up green, pulsing with manic vitality like someone had crushed glow sticks into her retinas. Just being caught in her gaze feels like tongue-kissing a live wire.

"Salutations, O' exalted conclave!" Bloom chirps, her voice like music-box tinkling cranked through a rainbow glitter megaphone.

"It is both my supreme honor and privilege to stand before you as the emissary of all that is hale, harmonious, and horticultural!"

As Bloom starts waxing poetic about the wonders of vitality and the joys of photosynthesis or what-the-fuck-ever, I can feel a familiar pressure building behind my eyes, the kind that usually meant I was either hungover or about to be subjected to some serious bullshit. Looks like it's gonna be the latter this time.

"Knock, knock," Raphael's voice suddenly echoes in my head like the world's most annoying Jehovah's Witness.

I barely manage to choke back a groan. "Who's there?" I think back, injecting enough sarcasm into my mental voice to kill a small mammal.

Raphael ignores my brilliant wit, launching into another one of his infodumps. "Bloom Vermeil is the Sap Sage of Illirium, blah blah, master of healing arts, yadda yadda, conduit for primal energies of growth and renewal, etcetera etcetera."

I roll my eyes so hard I'm surprised they don't get stuck. "So what, she's like the hippie love child of Mother Nature and Florence Nightingale?"

"In a sense," Raphael replies, and I can practically hear his long-suffering sigh. "Bloom's power is immense. She can heal any wound, purge any poison, even drag souls back from the brink of death. But it comes with a catch."

"Of course it does," I mutter. "What is it with you immortal types and your weird-ass caveats?"

"The laws of cosmic balance," Raphael explains, like that means jack shit to me. "She's..."

Ugh, here we go again.

I zone out for a second, letting Raphael's voice fade into background noise as I try to piece together what I know about Bloom.

Okay, so from what I can gather, Little Miss Sunshine is basically a walking, talking battery for the forces of life itself. She can heal pretty much anything, bring people back from the brink of death, yadda yadda. But all that power comes with a hefty price tag.

See, every time Bloom works her mojo, it drains a bit of her own life force. Like a cosmic cover charge for playing god. So to keep her healing hands from shriveling up like raisins, she has to constantly recharge by taking spiritual spa days at enchanted pools and sacred groves.

It's all very Fountain of Youth meets Goop, if you ask me. But hey, who am I to judge? If communing with magic trees keeps her from going full-on Evil Dead, more power to her.

I mull that over, watching as Bloom continues to prance and preen on stage like a pageant queen on pixie dust.

As much as I want to write her off as just another self-righteous blowhard with a messiah complex, I can't shake the feeling that there's more to her than meets the eye.

Something deeper, something... dangerous.

"Alright, so she's got the magic touch when it comes to playing doctor," I concede, my mental voice grudging. "But what's her angle? There's always an angle with you people."

Raphael's chuckle is like the psychic equivalent of a pat on the head. "Very astute, Jane. Yes, Bloom's power comes with a price. The pursuit of vitality can be a double-edged sword, as many a soul in Illirium can attest. It takes a strong will and a pure heart to wield such power without succumbing to its darker temptations."

That's what I'm beginning to grasp is the difference between the so-called "good guys," the ones from Elysium, and the "bad guys," the ones from Avernus.

I shoot a sidelong glance between Bloom's radiant magnificence and the pustulent horror show that is Morbidius the Vile. One represents the ultimate ideal of bountiful creation and champagne-popping self-actualization. The other looks like the final radioactive turd that even a mass extinction event couldn't courtesy flush away.

It's not about being "good" or "evil" per se, I muse, doing air quotes heavy enough to dislocate a shoulder. That's just typical human projection mapped onto things our tiny primate brains can't properly process.

Nah, the real litmus test separating the shining cosmic overachievers from the skid-marked rejects? It all comes down to one key factor: restraint.

Keeping a goddamn leash on the crazy and exercising enough self-control not to burn the entire universe down every time the fancy strikes.

The Elysium crew, for all their self-righteous blathering about virtue and sacred yadda yadda, they get it. They understand there's a time and place to pop off and start flinging gamma rays around like the metaphysical equivalent of drunk toddlers.

And that keeping a lid on their chaotic side, at least in public, is just good manners.

But those Avernus douchelords? I snort, literally able to taste the disdain wafting off Morbidius with every reeking, pustulent exhalation. Yeah, they're not even pretending to play by the rules of polite society.

Keeping a grip is for the little people - they're all about embracing anarchy to the fullest, repercussions and unnecessary universe-roasting be damned.

I feel a shiver run through me at that, a flicker of unease that I can't quite shake. Because if there's one thing I know about myself, it's that my will is about as strong as wet tissue paper, and my heart is about as pure as a back-alley puddle.

If I had even a fraction of Bloom's power, I'd probably end up going full Darth Vader in a hot second. And something tells me the denizens of the afterlife wouldn't take too kindly to a newbie necromancer running around resurrecting the dead for shits and giggles.

I mean, can you imagine?

Jane Doe, Mistress of the Undead, commanding a shambling army of zombies to do my bidding? I'd probably start with something small, like making them do the Thriller dance or fetch me snacks from the afterlife vending machine.

But let's be real, it would only be a matter of time before I went mad with power and tried to take over the whole damn underworld.

And then where would I be? Probably right back where I started, only with a lot more pissed off deities and a serious case of zombie breath.

No thank you, I'll leave the whole "with great power comes great responsibility" shtick to the professionals.

Besides, I have enough on my plate just trying to navigate this cosmic clusterfuck without adding "aspiring god of death" to my resume. The last thing I need is to give Raphael another reason to get his feathers in a twist.

Speaking of everyone's favorite judgmental pigeon, he's still yammering away in my head like a telepathic telemarketer. Something about the delicate balance between life and death, and how Bloom is like the hippie eco-warrior version of the Grim Reaper.

"Fascinating," I think back, not even trying to hide my sarcasm. "But can we get back to the part where I'm supposed to be winning my immortal soul back from the eternal time-out corner? Because as riveting as this celestial circle-jerk is, I'm pretty sure my continued existence takes priority over Bloom's bouquet of botanical bullshit."

"And that, Jane, is why you'll never understand beings like the Sap Sage," he drones in that infuriatingly nasal tone. "You're still too wrapped up in your own mortal angst and cynicism, blind to the deeper spiritual truths that the enlightened ones like Bloom have transcended."

I want to argue, to tell him exactly where he can shove his holier-than-thou attitude. But as much as it chafes my cheese, Feathers has a point. If I want to survive this metaphysical Hunger Games, I can't afford to get bogged down in the same old existential quicksand.

Bloom's whole shtick - the aggressively peppy exterior, the grandiose sermons on the sanctity of life - it's all just a mask, a shiny veneer hiding something darker.

Because let's be real, anyone who looks like they snort Pixy Stix and piss glitter has to be packing some serious damage beneath the Lisa Frank smiles.

Trust me, I know from experience. The higher the sparkle quotient, the deeper the void.

"In Illirium, we have a saying!" Bloom bellows, eyes blazing like a nuclear flower crown in full meltdown. "'From the puniest pube-sprout, the mightiest meat-redwood shall grow!' So go forth and fertilize, my fragile fuck-muffins, and remember - when life slips you a roofie colada, just smile and nod and pray you wake up with both kidneys!"

Okay, maybe she doesn't say it exactly like that, but can you blame me for zoning out? It's either mentally riff on her New Age word salad or risk slipping into a boredom coma right there on the ballroom floor.

The point is, Bloom is on some next level guru shit, preaching the gospel of personal growth and cosmic oneness like a sherbet-hued Tony Robbins hopped up on ayahuasca smoothies. And the audience is lapping it up like stray dogs at a spilled bacon grease convention.

As for me? I'm just trying to keep my eyeballs from rolling clean out of their sockets. It isn't that I don't appreciate a good motivational metaphor - lord knows I'd chugged enough cheap self-help pablum in my trainwreck of a life to fill a small ocean of Dr. Phil's tears.

But something about Bloom's whole vibe, the way she wields those cloying plant analogies like a weaponized Care Bear Stare, sets my bullshit detectors a-jangling like a three-balled cat in a wind chime factory.

I mean, don't get me wrong - I'm sure she means well, in her own terrifyingly peppy way. Beneath the Lisa Frank color palette and the grin that could power a small country, there's probably a nugget of real wisdom rattling around in there somewhere.

A kernel of truth about the importance of, I don't know, nurturing your inner child or fertilizing your spiritual growth or some such crap.

But as I watch her prance back to her throne in a riot of soap-bubble iridescence, I can't shake the feeling that buried under fifteen layers of high-fructose treacle and good vibes, Bloom Vermeil is not an Incarnation to underestimate.

Something old and primal and utterly alien lurks behind those glowstick eyes, peeking out through the cracks in her technicolor dreamcoat.

"Fuck me sideways, that was intense," I mutter, trying to expel the lingering unease on a shaky exhale. "I feel like I just shotgunned six Pixy Stix and performed a sun salutation on the event horizon of a supermassive black hole."

Raphael radiates smug condescension like an overpriced scented candle. "That's the trouble with you mortals," he sighs. "So easily overwhelmed by the slightest whiff of higher consciousness."

I ignore him, too caught up in the whiplash of metaphysical vertigo to summon a properly barbed retort. Besides, as much as I hate to admit it, Bird Brain has a point.

Compared to these hoary old gods, with their eons of cosmic perspective and spiritual dick-swinging, I'm about as significant as a flea on a flea on the ass of enlightenment. An amoeba with a smartass streak, just along for the ride as they steer reality like a clown car careening through the funhouse mirror of creation.

But hey, insignificant or not, I'll be damned if I'm gonna sit here gaping like a concussed goldfish while the deific all-stars whip out their existential yardsticks. If there's one thing Jane Doe knows how to do, it's talk shit and chew bubblegum.

And buddy, I'm fresh out of fuckin' bubblegum.