[Training] I'm on the hellevator

Maea

And I only needed one more touch
Another taste of devouring rush

Ash blew across the ground. Stagnated lava spread out as far as the eye could see beneath roiling black clouds, underlit by the distant glow of lava pools and less solid fields than this. Beneath her paws the rock was sharp and difficult to walk on. Now smooth as glass, now crumbly like old plaster, rising and falling like ocean waves turned solid mid arch, and searing hot; perhaps this was what outlanders had meant when they wrote about their hells. A place of punishment for sinners, according to some, while others described it to be more as a state of mind. Maea could believe both, and it suited her well to be here now. 

Standing out like a sore thumb in this world of black and red and gold, she felt out of phase with the landscape and with herself. What had been a raging, howling storm of dissent inside had choked into confused silence, and the numbness felt somehow worse than even the despair. 

It wasn't a good place to be. But just as she roamed aimlessly across the crusted landscape, her thoughts kept running in circles, finding no way out.

But the room was so quiet
Whose side am I on?

Base by Skylark, Art by Midjourney