THEODOSIUS, CTD. SORCERER AND UNCTD. NECROMANCER, WAS IN HELL.

"Literally."

Theodosius, ctd. Sorcerer, unctd. Necromancer, was literally in hell.

Wait—really, Theo?

"Yes. What kind of narrator are you? Don't you know these things?" Theodosius gestured in frustration, indicating his surroundings. He was standing in a vast, startlingly white room. Far, far in the distance, past a long, meandering line of people threading through velvet rope dividers, was a security desk. Beyond the security desk was a door. Above the door was a sign in impressive Gothic script reading, "ABANDON HOPE ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE." A very tall, very, very broad man with brick red skin and goat's hooves approached the desk, scanned an identity badge on a panel at the side, and was permitted entry.

Presumably, he had abandoned hope, but such a private thing is not easy to tell with one glance at a creature's weirdly muscly shoulder blades—

"Hello! Narrator!"

Someone's testy this morning. I just have to check my notes—give me a moment here.

Theodosius waited more or less patiently. He had been doing nothing but waiting for a very long time; what was more waiting on top of waiting, and waiting, and waiting? He was a professional waiter at this point in his life, if "waiter" could be taken to mean "person who waits" and not just "person who waits upon" ...

The endless line of people moved a fraction. Theo shuffled half a step forward. He craned his neck, as he had craned it approximately 70,345 times before, to look past the shape of the old woman who stood before him. It was a familiar shape: massive, clad in a floral print that made Theo queasy, and smelling of too much drugstore perfume. She kept it in her purse and, possibly conscious of the fact that she had not been able to bathe because she'd been standing in line for a decade and a half, she took out the bottle intermittently to douse herself. Beyond the pungent woman was the same man Theo had seen standing there for the past sixteen years, looking just as shifty and just as pasty as he had every day prior. Just in front of him in line was—

Theo, you're actually in Hell! Hell with a capital H!

The sorcerer-cum-necromancer looked with no small measure of indignation toward the ceiling of the cavernous room in which he stood. "You left me to queue at the Mouth of Hell and forgot all about me!"

I've been focused on other stories, but you've been on my mind. I promise you have.

"Oh, have I now?" He scoffed.

Listen, you aren't my only project. I just had to focus on something else for a month or two—

"A month or two? Narrator, you've been gone for sixteen years!"

There was a clattering sound from somewhere outside of space and time. It was the sort of sound a pen might make, were it dropped by a startled author onto the floor.

That can't be, Theo. Unless—oh, bollocks. I suppose this is where we have a conversation about time passing differently in your world, blah, blah, blah?

He glowered at the ceiling. "We can probably skip over that part, since it's so insultingly obvious. What are you doing here, anyway? I'm dead. Have you come back to see me in the door? You might have done that earlier, since I've been here for six—"

Alright, alright—I'm very sorry about all that. Sixteen years is a long time. But I'm not sure I understand. You can't have been queuing for sixteen years. You could have raised a child all the way up into an ill-tempered teenager in that time.

He did not reply, because this comment was not helpful in the slightest, and because he had very little tolerance for jokes at this point in his misadventures.

Theo? You've been out here in the lobby the whole time?

"Yes! You have to badge into Hell these days, apparently, and it must take a small—no, a medium-sized eternity to get a badge—and I've been waiting my turn forever, although why the underworld requires such stringent security I can't begin to guess! Are they afraid someone's going to come and rob them of their fire and brimstone?" Theo scowled at the aromatic old woman in front of him, who had turned with a censorious expression on her face to regard him, fists akimbo. He raised a hand to cut her off before she could speak. "I'm not in the mood, Mildred."

Mildred gave him a why-I-never look. "I'm used to you talking to yourself, Theodosius, but at least you could do so quietly," she said.

Where's Bihatra?

Theo visibly shuddered. He looked back up at the ceiling. "Hopefully far, far away. You'll remember that she ate me at the end of my last tome."

Novelette.

He pressed his lips into a stubborn line, crossed his arms, and said, "That's not a very impressive word. If it wasn't a tome, at least call it a novel. Or just a book."

Well, I wanted to call it a novella, but it was about 3,000 words short.

"It would have been a lot longer had you not allowed a demoness to eat me!" he cried, bridling.

Yes, yes ... where is she?

Theo shook his head. "Damned if I know—" and he paused, looking around the glimmering vestibule of Hell, before finishing in a sullen mutter— "damned if I don't."

That isn't very helpful, Theo. She's—well, she's kind of important to all that happens next. I need to find her.

The necromancer blanched. It was quite difficult to see beyond the wild growth of his hair and beard, which had gone sixteen years without a trim, but one could just make out the waxen complexion of his terror-stricken face above the tangle. He quivered. He quailed. He quavered. "What?"

Let me see where she's gone off to. If we can just get her attention, I'm sure the rest of it will all move along swimmingly.

"What? No—wait!"

Just sit—er, stand tight a moment, Theo.

"Wait! Wait! Never mind! I'll queue! I'll queue!"

But it was too late.