"Forgetting is a mercy - those are some wise words," a voice from behind me said.

I tensed up immediately, and turned slowly to find Rain standing in the doorframe with crossed arms. I had no idea how long she had been listening in on our conversation and if I might have said something to incite her fury. But for now at least, she seemed perfectly calm and composed – no death glares this time. In fact, her beautiful face seemed devoid of any kind of emotion.

She looked like a doll, or rather, like a moving piece of art, as she set out to walk over toward us. Everything from her face, with those ridiculously bright blue-green eyes, delicate nose, sculpted cheek bones, full lips and flawless, pale skin, to her sleek, silver-white hair that fell behind her like a curtain of pure silk. Her whole body. Even the damned way she walked. Everything about that woman practically screamed perfection. She was so radiant, it was painful to look at her for too long. She was the kind of person who would make you want her, or want to be her. Right now, I couldn't even really say which of the two options applied to me. And when I thought about how close I had been to her the night before, when she had held me when I had cried, I began to feel light-headed, despite what felt like several liters of hot blood rushing to my cheeks.

She walked over to the hidden counter and pressed her hand against the wall. I tried to get a better look at the opening, but from where I sat, it just seemed like a perfectly smooth, seamless white niche in the wall. Rain took a plate and sank down on the chair next to Bridge, with an unfathomable grace to even the simplest of her motions.

"Being in this place is not so bad, once you stop wondering whether the grass on the other side is greener," she chimed in.

"Well, considering how everything here is white, pretty much anything on any other side will be greener, bluer or redder than here," I remarked drily.

Bridge giggled. To my surprise, my comment even coaxed a somewhat wry smile out of Rain.

"Of course," Rain said sardonically, "the new one's gotta be a smartass. Watch out, Bridge, or she will take your title as most annoying resident of Tartaros."

"Hey, what's that supposed to mean?" Bridge stopped laughing, crossed her arms and pouted.

"Nothing. Just that I hadn't expected this kind of... change," Rain said cryptically and sighed.

"So, what does the average day around here look like?" I asked to change the topic. "Breakfast, lunch, torture, dinner?"

Rain raised an eyebrow at me. "I'll ask you again how funny you think this is the next time you get back from a trial, dripping wet and bawling your eyes out," she said coldly.

I had overstepped the line there, alright.

"Well excuse me that I was a little upset after being almost drowned repeatedly," I grumbled.

"It was pretty harsh of them to put you through that trial on your first day," Bridge said sympathetically. "Luckily old Charybdis is probably not something you'll have to endure too often."

"Charybdis? Like the mythical creature?" I asked.

Now that I thought about it, it made a lot of sense. The way the well had kept filling with water and emptying again surely was reminiscent of the giant monster of ancient myths, which had been thought to create the tides through periodically swallowing water and spitting it out.

Rain rolled her eyes. "My brother gave that trial that stupid nickname, and for some reason it stuck."

I smiled at the thought. Somehow it didn't surprise me that it was him who had come up with that comparison. And I also noted that Rain didn't seem to have any problems with me talking about something that I 'remembered', as long as it was just stories that they seemed to know from the books in the library. Still, I decided to tread carefully around her.

"Is every trial like that?" I asked with a side glance at the white-haired beauty. She was silently eating her breakfast now, and seemed to ignore us completely.

"Not at all," Bridge answered. "They are very different. Some of them are very exhausting, physically. Some of them are more like tests, where you have to answer questions or fulfill certain tasks. Charybdis is one of the worse ones. Hopefully you've got some room to breathe now for a while."

"Morning ladies!" Diamond entered the room with a cheerful greeting, Arrow in tow. Behind the broad-shouldered, blonde man, the lanky young boy almost disappeared.

"You're up early! Ah, and I see the newcomer is up as well."

Something about Diamond, or Dia, as I remembered his preferred nickname, struck me as strangely anachronistic. His skin was tanned, in a way that didn't look natural but like a result of working outside a lot. Nobody in our day and age worked outside a lot. He flashed me a smile worthy of his name as he sat down next to Rain, and I reflexively smiled back.

"How was your trial?" Arrow asked as he took the chair next to me. He was Diamond's polar opposite. His skin was almost sickly pale, and somewhere underneath a mess of black bangs that looked like they should have been cut about half a year ago, I spotted freckles and a pair of dark brown eyes that were fixed on me.

"Sucked. Literally," I answered his question and grimaced. He gave me an understanding nod.

"So who is running this place?" I continued my questioning. "And the tests? These people who picked us up, they never talk to you? They never told you who they are and what they want?"

Bridge shook her head. "No. The only way they communicate with us is the voice that tells us what to do. And these," she said as she pointed to her bracelet.

I had nearly forgotten about it, but now I became acutely aware of the metal ring on my wrist again, and could almost feel it tingling with latent electricity.

"If you make a mistake..."

"Oh, I've had an opportunity to experience it already, thanks."

"I'm sorry...." she said. "But you will learn fast. There are things they really don't like. Like when they think you're stalling, or when you purposefully mess something up. That's when you'll get punished. But if you play by their rules... it's over faster if you comply"

"But how do they know? Do they watch all the time? Like, right now?" I asked. I narrowed my eyes and let my gaze wander across the room. The walls were perfectly smooth, there were no obvious signs of any surveillance. That only made me more suspicious.

I noticed how Arrow and Bridge exchanged a quick glance, and then Bridge shook her head as she answered. "We're not sure. They do seem to... monitor us. Sometimes we get things, sometimes they take things away, to reward or punish us, perhaps."

"How do these things get here?" I continued my inquiry.

"They just... appear," Bridge shrugged.

"Magic?" I asked skeptically.

"No, I don't think so. It's not so hard to sneak something in or out of here without anyone noticing. Like we found you in the atrium in the middle of the night. Nobody saw how or when you were brought here," Arrow explained.

He stole a sideward glance at Rain and Dia, who were involved in a discussion on their own, and then leaned in closer, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper.

"I think there's something in the walls. Something... moving. Mostly at night, when the lights are out. I tried to block the panel," he told me, pointing in the direction of the hidden kitchen counter, "Problem is, lights go off at night and it's pitch black in here, so you can't really see... but you can still hear, and-"

"That's enough, Arrow," Rain cut him off. "I don't think you should put any more crazy ideas into the newcomer's head than she already has by herself."

"I was only-"

"Enough," she insisted.

"I will tell you another time," Arrow whispered to me, before he picked up his plate and got up. "I'll go check on Feather and bring her some food. I heard she was in the Desert with Quill."

"Wait, we're in a desert?" I asked in confusion. The term made me think of the Wastelands. "So that's what's outside of this place?"

Now it was Dia and Rain who exchanged a look, and whatever silent agreement they came to caused the blonde man to sigh quietly.

"I think it's time somebody told you about how things really work around here – stories about magic and punishment and hell aside," he said, taking on a serious expression that did not seem to match his otherwise cheerful character.

"So, occasionally, you will be drawn for a trial – this is what happened last night. Everybody has a number. Yours seems to be eleven. You better remember it well. When you are called, they will lead you to a place where you will have to fulfill a task. We didn't have time to explain it to you last night, because we also didn't expect you to be called so soon after you arrived. So... sorry about that, I guess,"

Admittedly, his charming smile made it easy to accept the apology. He scratched his head, looking for the right words to continue.

"Sometimes you are led into a room where you have to solve puzzles or... do certain things for them," he went on. "It can be tricky to find out what exactly they want you to do, because they never give you clear instructions. They only let you know when you do something wrong."

He tapped on his bracelet in emphasis, and I shuddered at the thought alone.

"But usually, these tasks are easy. The harder ones are the ones we call 'trials'. You saw Charybdis, or the Well. Sometimes, we are brought to the Desert. There's also a swamp and forest, and a mountain range. Often, when you think you've reached the end, you're sent back again and have to start over."

Like Sisyphus. I thought all of a sudden. Like Sisyphus being tortured in Tartaros.

It was a horrific story, and one I had read as a young child, not very well knowing what I was up to. I ended up so frightened by those tales of the ancient underworld where the dead dwell, that couldn't sleep for several nights. I was afraid that I'd be taken away from home and brought there, to be punished for being a bad girl that read on her tablet underneath her blanket at night.

But that can't be all there is to it – this can't just be some subconscious remainder of the Old World tales I read years ago, I thought, but even in my own head I sounded not entirely convinced.

"But...I don't understand," I admitted, "So is this prison in a desert, or a forest, or are these places part of the prison, like the Well? How do you actually get there?"

"No idea," Bridge said again, and neither Rain nor Dia chipped in with a better explanation.

"All we know is that sometimes, when you're drawn for a trial, you are taken to a desert, or a forest, or a mountain. Nobody knows how we got here in the first place either. Strange things happen in Tartaros."

I took a deep breath and rubbed the space between my eyebrows while thinking about all of it. It was hard to process, and even harder to actually believe anything of what they had just told me. Tartaros seemed to me more like a giant scientific experiment than an actual prison, where somebody made people run in a maze like rats. And these people here all subjected to this, without even knowing why. They seemed to just accept their fate and comply with this place's weird rules. It made no sense, and if only it didn't feel so horrifically real, I would have loved to believe that it was nothing but an ordinary dream.

Perhaps the accident messed up my brain worse than I thought. Maybe this really is the scrambled and bizarre result of my subconscious mixing up some memories. There is probably a rational explanation to all of this, I thought. But staring at the back of my hand, where the spot that I had pinched this morning was still red and sore, made me doubt it.

Or perhaps I have really just gone mad.

"Hey, you. Stop daydreaming and clean up your dishes," Rain ordered me. Startled, I jumped to my feet to help her clean up the table.

"I swear, if you turn out to be as lazy as my brother-"

"What about me?"

I couldn't help but smile when I heard Cloud's voice coming from the doorway, and from the corner of my eye I saw that Rain was smiling too. It suited her.

"Good morning, Cloud" Rain said, sounding uncharacteristically friendly.

"Good morning, Sunshine!" he said cheerfully.

"Don't call me that" she said, the smile on her face instantly decaying into scorn.

I giggled at the joke, and she immediately shot me a furious glare.

"Good to see you up and about," Cloud greeted me as well as he grabbed breakfast and began to eat it while standing right next to the niche in the wall. "Feeling better?"

Most probably his sister had told him about my nightly nervous breakdown. Tartaros didn't seem like the place that would make it easy to keep something to yourself. Feeling somewhat embarrassed, I just nodded in response to his question.

"Cloud, sit down while eating." Rain scolded him and gave him a reproachful look.

But unlike me, he didn't seem compelled to follow her orders. He completely ignored her, scooped up another two spoons and then put the plate back on the counter. The wall closed the moment he stepped away from it.

Rain sighed. "Your manners are seriously lacking," she complained.

"We're in hell, Rain. If they wanted us to show good manners, maybe they should have built us a castle, not a prison," he replied sarcastically.

"A castle in hell. Like Pandæmonium?" I chimed in.

Cloud turned to look at me with his mesmerizing eyes, and for a moment he was staring at me as if he had just noticed me sitting there for the first time. Then a faint smile appeared on his lips.

"Ah, yes, 'Built like a Temple, where Pilasters round were set, and Doric pillars overlaid with Golden Architrave'. That sounds about right. Alas, here we are, our Pandæmonium is just a boring white box." He sighed and waved his hands at our surroundings dismissively.

I could feel goosebumps rise on my skin at his words. Something about his voice gave me these pleasant shivers that ran from the back of my head down my spine and all across my body. The feeling caused my heartbeat to accelerate, and my breath to hitch. Just like I had felt as if the words had been on the brink of coming alive when I had read from the paper-bound books in the library, his voice seemed to cast that same magic without the necessity for any printed paper.

"Nerds..." Rain muttered under her breath.

I ignored her, keeping my gaze fixed on Cloud, who looked back at me with his blue-green eyes sparkling with a fire of curiosity. I knew that look, and I knew exactly what he was thinking. Because I was thinking the same. I had never met anyone before who had really read Paradise Lost. Let alone somebody who could quote from it by heart.

"But if this was Pandæmonium," I began, "wouldn't that make us... demons?"

And with an impish smile, he replied, "Or fallen angels, if you prefer."