Chapter 1
Elysia and Razielphustar

“What the Hell is this place?” Ely grumbled, not knowing how appropriate his question was.
The wolverine closed his eyes and rubbed his eyelids, breathing slow and heavy, trying to remember what the last things that happened to him were. With his free paw he gripped his crotch as he sometimes did when he was nervous and knew nobody was looking, but it didn’t feel quite right. He felt around. His paw was touching the bare fur around his sheath and scrotum. Ely squeezed his eyelids harder in a bit of confusion. He was wearing clothes last he remembered. There was no sense trying to speculate how he lost them. Experience told Ely he would usually find such things out within the day. But he still wished he had some clothes. Then something strange happened, and although it would be the least strange in the string of things that had happened to him so far, Ely somehow paid the most curiosity to it.
Ely stopped rubbing his eyelids and put his paw down. He expected it to come down onto the same strange surface that looked like shiny red plastic, felt like polished marble, but gave like rubber. Instead, his paw came down on a soft pad of denim. Ely opened his eyes and looked down.
	New clothes laid neatly folded beside Ely: a pair of bluejeans, a caramel button up denim shirt—which was somehow utterly devoid of wrinkles—a pair of synthetic knee-length boxerbriefs just like his old underarmour, plain white socks, and a pair of black hightop sneakers that bore only passing resemblance to chucks. Again, Ely wondered where they came from, and again concluded that speculation was both useless and usually misleading. He’d discover where they came from eventually. For now, he grabbed the clothes and set them on his lap to inspect. He brought the shirt and pants to his muzzle. They smelled like fallen sweetgum leaves, not the half rotted ones that smelled like wet dirt, but the ones only a day old that smelled so spicy, the smell he always thought should be made into cologne. He looked at the clothes inside and out. There were no tags or labels to speak of. Good thing too. Ely hated tags almost as much as he hated labels. Then he noticed the feel of the pants and shirt. They were so smooth and soft, almost more like silk than cotton. He’d only felt that once before, and that was his mother’s hundred dollar Egyptian cotton jeans. Wherever they came from, the clothes were clearly meant for him.
Ely stood up and put on the underwear, exactly like his old underarmour, except the fit seemed tailored, tighter and looser in all the places it should be. Next were the jeans, those too seemed tailored just for him, and the shirt, the socks—well, no one tailored socks; no one needed to, but they seemed comfortable enough. But the shoes, the shoes fit so comfortably, almost like they were built around plaster casts of his footpaws, and the cushioning contoured to his every curve and ridge. Ely bounced up and down on his shoes. It felt like jumping on springs. That confirmed it, the clothes were meant for him. He knew because he had polydactyl feet, with second pair of opposable big toes further inside and lower down than his first pair, and an extraordinary few shoes actually fit him with tolerable comfort, much less the perfect mold that these ones did.
Now, all that seemed left was establishing where Ely was. He looked in all directions. The room was a cube about ten feet to a side, with rounded edges, all of that same bizarre red substance. Ely squinted and cocked his head. The room was as well-lit as his bedroom with the torchiere lamp turned on full, but there was no light source. For a moment, Ely wondered if the walls glowed. If that was true, everything would glow equally, because everything was the same shade, meaning he would only need to test one spot.
Ely walked to the wall and leaned forward with one eye closed and his paws cupped over the other, blocking out the light as he looked at the wall up close. Darkness. The walls weren’t giving off light, there was no light source in the room, but the room was bright. That was not possible.
Ely stepped back and growled. He balled a paw and hit the wall hard as he could. It wasn’t that this lack of light source in a bright room confused him, but that it offended him. Light came from light sources, not from nowhere. To think otherwise would be stupid. To observe otherwise would be uncivilized.
Ely screamed and threw himself at the wall, trying to break through it with his shoulder to find some hidden light source behind. The wall vibrated and bounced back at him, but didn’t give. Ely resorted to clawing at the wall until drops of blood ran down the surface, smeared by his fingertips. Not a scratch appeared. Ely finally sighed and slumped forward. He dropped to the floor and sat cross legged, holding his muzzle up with his paws.
It was funny, it didn’t even hurt. Ely squinted. Nothing hurt in fact! Not when he punched the wall, not when he slammed the wall, not when he scratched the wall until his fingers bled! None of it hurt in the slightest. Perhaps, in his stress, Ely simply didn’t feel the pain. Being a wolverine, it was a definite possibility. But if that were so, why did it still not hurt even now, after the stress had passed? Ely closed his eyes and thought. 
The previous morning, Ely had tripped over a dog toy and hit his hip against the corner of the coffee table in his parents’ living room. He’d developed a deep bruise beneath his fur, and by all accounts, it should still hurt a good deal if pressed. 
Ely pushed his claws against the spot on his left hip and—nothing. There was no pain. The swelling from the bruise was gone as well. The bruise was no longer there! This too, was offensive. The bruise had to be there! Ely had only gotten it yesterday! It had to be hiding, hiding beneath the surface. The wolverine fury began to circulate once again, and Ely growled and snarled as he pulled down his pants and underwear and stabbed his claws through the flesh against his hip, digging through the skin and muscle, spilling blood on the floor, looking for some hidden swelling, some hidden pain deep inside. There was none. In fact, clawing his own flesh open didn’t hurt! Ely could feel his claws digging through his flesh, and after so long, even scraping against his hip bone. He could feel the flesh around his claws being pried apart, kneaded, and torn from the inside. But there was no pain. Ely screamed into the air and raked his claws down his face, spilling more blood on the floor. The feeling of flesh tearing was acute and obvious, but there was still no pain.
Ely’s reactions might have seemed extreme, but he was not like other furs. Aside from his species’s great size, strength, and temper, Ely was different in another way. His mind demanded rationality at all times. All things had to make sense, had to conform to logic, reason, and order at any cost. The existence of something that did not was a personal offense to all existence: things such as “because I said so!” being the rationale of authority, the continued use of political practices that had been disproven dozens of times, religious texts that contradicted themselves, as well as deep bruises that healed overnight and gaping wounds that didn’t hurt, were all offenses to existence.
Ely fell flat on his back and began to sob. This was impossible! This shouldn’t be happening! Bruises don’t heal overnight! Wounds aren’t painless! This can’t be happening! It was obscene!
Ely’s head fell to the side. He saw his paw covered in blood from the wound on his hip. His wolverine instinct took over again. Ely brought his paw to his muzzle and smelled the blood soaked into his fur. He began to lick the blood off his paw and relaxed as he did so. He grumbled in satisfaction. An erection slowly grew from the taste, which he ran a single claw-tip up and down. All wolverines loved the taste of blood, but very few of them ever sexualized it, not even Ely’s own mother or father.
No! What the fuck was Ely doing trying to get himself off while there was a gaping, bleeding wound in his hip? There had to be some way of stanching it. He kicked off his pants completely and grabbed them, planning on tying a pant-leg around his leg to press against the wound, but as he felt around for the wound again, it wasn’t there anymore. That wasn’t possible, but then again, neither were most things that happened in this place.
Ely took a deep breath. In order to make any sense of this room, he’d have to redefine reality, or at least reality as it existed here but not elsewhere. Why did the bruise heal? Why did the wound heal? Ely despised speculation, but in this case he had no choice. What happened just before it was gone? He was thinking that he didn’t want it anymore. Was that it? Did the wound heal because he wanted it to? That thought was a bit more comforting as it was more than mere speculation; it was a hypothesis, which meant it could be tested.
Ely sat up and looked at his paws, noticing casually that the blood no longer dripped from his face, and so the scratches there had probably healed as well, but that wasn’t important at the moment. Ely raked the claws of one paw across the pads of the other. The scratches bled as they normally would, but this time Ely didn’t notice that they didn’t hurt. He looked at his bleeding paw for a minute before licking the blood off it. It hadn’t healed from casual observation alone, so it was time to test the hypothesis.
“I want my paw to heal,” Ely whispered to himself.
Ely’s eyes widened as he saw the scratches across his paws suddenly stop bleeding and begin to close. After some seconds, it was as if his paw had never been scratched. The hypothesis had graduated into full-fledged theory. It seemed his wounds really did heal by force of will. This was a slight comfort. Reality worked differently here—wherever here was—but at least it worked somehow.
Ely stood up and pulled his underwear and pants back on, ignoring how drenched in blood they were, in fact wiping the remaining blood from his paws onto them. Back to his previous efforts, just where the hell was he? It would do no good to keep looking at a red, square room. Ely sat back down and let his head drop. He tried to think of his last memories just before he found himself here.
For some reason, Ely’s mind wandered to his physics teacher, a Main Coon cat named Carlene Cameron, and the night they spent yesterday in her office. She was a curvaceous and full figured bright orange tabby with white points and a white belly.

“Oh fuck Ely!” Carlene moaned. “Further! Push it further!”
Ely was happy to oblige. A wolverine’s tongue was both exceptionally long and thick. He stretched his out so far it hurt, digging as hard as he could into his teacher’s pussy, brushing it against her cervix. He stretched even harder, until he felt almost as if his tongue would tear out of his mouth. At last, he got the tip of his tongue inside Ms. Cameron’s cervix, and wriggled it as wildly as he could. Ms. Cameron shuttered and cried. She wrapped her legs around his shoulders and back and squeezed. She dug her claws into his shoulders and threw her head back. The tangy syrup dripped from Ms. Cameron’s cervix and the walls of her cunt, while the sweet syrup dribbled from her urethra, both mixing into the tart pussy fluids inside Ely’s eager mouth.
“Oh fuck! Oh fuck! Oh fuck! Oh fuck!” Ms. Cameron moaned. “Yeah! All the way in!”
Ely was relieved to pull his tongue out of his teacher’s pussy, into his own mouth, after she’d finished cumming. He didn’t swallow all of it, as he knew what she wanted next.
“Give your teacher that amazing muzzle of yours,” Ms. Cameron gasped. “I want to taste my cum from your mouth.”
“Yes, Ms. Cameron,” Ely said with his best effort not to let any of Ms. Cameron’s precious cum drip from his jowls.
Ely stood up and looked up at Ms. Cameron’s copper eyes staring down at him, half closed and glazed over. Ely reached behind him for a chair. Although bigger than any of his other classmates, Ely was still only twelve, and couldn’t reach up to Ms Cameron’s mouth, especially when she sat up on her desk.
Ely pulled the chair forward and sat up on it on his knees. Ms. Cameron bent over, pulled him forward, and shoved her muzzle into his. Ely leaned forward and let Ms. Cameron’s cum drip into her own mouth. Ms. Cameron murred at the taste of her own cum from her student. 
	Ely put his tongue to work once again. He stretched it into Ms. Cameron’s muzzle, wrapped it all the way around her tongue, and then rhythmically squeezed, slid, and relaxed. Ms. Cameron’s paws squeezed Ely’s shoulders. She cooed and sighed into his muzzle, eliciting deep rumbles from his chest. 
After some odd minutes, Ely unwrapped his tongue from Ms. Cameron’s and separated his muzzle from hers, letting a string of saliva drop between their lips and onto their chests as it broke.
“Holy shit Ely!” Ms. Cameron sighed. “You’ve ruined me for any other breed.”
“I aim to please Ms. Cameron,” Ely said, bowing his head.
This was their game, their kink. Ms. Cameron had personally coached Ely on how to fuck like a pro all through summer school (during which he took nothing but hard science classes). At this point, Ely was more than capable of taking the initiative to please his teacher, but every day he came to school dressed in a uniform of coat’n’tie, plaid shorts, and tube socks. Every day he stayed after school, as he claimed, to study physics with Ms. Cameron, but in fact stayed behind to fuck her senseless. As said before, Ely could now easily take the initiative in satisfying his teacher, but their game/kink was for him to be the stereotype of a perfect poster boy elementary-school student, teacher's pet in other words. He would dress in the ridiculous uniform, gaining plenty of stares from the other students but no attempts at bullying—no one dared bully a wolverine—, and during sex would do nothing but follow Ms. Cameron’s instructions, for which he gave submissive school-boy replies.
“My tits are lonely,” Ms. Cameron pleaded. “They never got any attention today.”
“I’m so sorry Ms. Cameron,” Ely said, bowing his head. “I’ll get on it right away.”
Ms. Cameron sat up straight and Ely bent over to enclose his muzzle over the flesh of Ms. Cameron’s left C-Cup, and his paw over her right. He chewed the flesh of her breast while his long tongue corkscrewed around her nipple and squeezed the flesh around it. His paw kneaded her right like dough. She loved it rough, but complying with their game/kink, Ely always began as gentle as possible until she had to scold him to change.
Ms. Cameron pressed her paws into the back of Ely’s head. “That’s a good boy.”
Ely smiled at the memory. He also remembered that some of the other summer students eventually deduced what was going on between him and Ms. Cameron, eliciting even more interesting stares, which he always responded to with a smirk to confirm their suspicions.
He remembered also thinking many nights about sex-with-teacher from a purely intellectual perspective, as he tried to do with everything. He remembered every time one of their sessions was over, they abandoned their caricatures, and she’d talk to him seriously.
“You have to understand Ely,” she’d say, “that there is no relationship between us. There can never be a relationship between us. I don’t love you, and I never will. To me, you’re nothing more than something I use to satisfy my sick fetish. You’re a sex toy to me. So please promise me you’ll always think of me the same way, as a way to tickle your fetishes, as a sex toy.”
And every time, Ely would respond with, “I have no problem with that Ms. Cameron.”
That was what made it work between them. Most other times when a female teacher decided to fuck one of her vastly underage boy students, he would come out of the experience traumatized and confused. But this was typically because one of them insisted on a relationship. Sex in this situation could easily work to the elation of both parties, but love never could. Ms. Cameron understood this, and always made sure Ely understood that a thirty five year old woman fucking a twelve year old boy was an act of pure selfishness on the part of both woman and boy. That’s why it worked so well between them, where otherwise it seldom, if ever, would.
But Ely was always disappointed. He understood that this was nothing more than a fantasy fetish, yet Ms. Cameron would never indulge him in his greatest fetish, his greatest fantasy: blood.
The memory was certainly pleasant, and had given Ely a rather throbbing boner, but it didn’t get him anywhere. Ely wanted to know where he was, and the memory did nothing to that end. But why had he picked that memory in the first place? He was trying to know where he was, so why did he remember fucking Ms. Cameron? The obvious answer was, it was a memory from just today, and was leading up to getting—wherever this place was. What was the next significant memory after that?
Ely was in the car with Ms. Cameron. She was driving him home, as she did every day during summer school. She claimed that Ely’s house was right on the way to hers, which meant there was no inconvenience in taking him home long after the busses came and went. This was all true, and was even the main reason why she agreed to drive Ely home in the first place. But she would always take advantage of the situation, much to his delight.
Ms. Cameron spent as often as was convenient with one paw reached across the seat, kneading Ely's cock in her pads. Ely, of course, returned the favor and spent the whole time with a paw across the seat as well, stuffed down Ms. Cameron’s pants and rubbing circles just in the lips of her pussy, and at stoplights plunging his middle and ring fingers as deep into her vagina as he could while he rubbed up and down her clit with his thumb as fast as he could. They exited the school zone and entered freeway traffic, meaning Ms. Cameron had to use both paws and both eyes for driving. But Ely continued rubbing her cunt, bringing out a purr from Ms. Cameron’s belly.
Eventually, Ely stopped as well, brought his paw to his mouth, and sucked Ms. Cameron’s juices out of his paw-fur. Then he did something he seldom did with her. He’d all but given up after the first few tries, which were all at the start of summer.
Ely took a tiny green pocket knife from his jean pocket and unfolded it. Ms. Cameron sighed, knowing what he was trying to do.
They stopped at a stoplight.
Ely made a small, shallow cut across the crease on the underside of the second knuckle of his forefinger, so it would heal looking like part of the crease. He smirked with the twinge of pain. He brought his finger to his muzzle and let the trickle of blood drip onto his tongue.
“Sorry Ely,” Ms. Cameron said. “You only get to tickle the fetishes we share.”
“Just once?!” Ely begged. “Then I promise I’ll never ask you again as long as I live.”
Ms. Cameron scowled. Cubs used that phrase all the time, and truly meant it when they did. But they would inevitably break that promise, despite having every intention to keep it—most cubs anyway. Ely was something entirely apart from the others, and Ms. Cameron was almost apt to believe him.
“Give that to me in writing,” she said.
“I’ll have it for you tomorrow morning,” Ely replied.
Ely extended his paw toward Ms. Cameron. She grasped it and sucked the trickle of blood from Ely’s finger into her muzzle. At that moment it took everything Ely had to keep from shuddering. He’d never imagined that he’d get a girl to drink his blood in his entire life. Even if it was just a few drops, and a few seconds, it was astounding. Waves of heat and cold rippled through Ely’s tail, spine, and neck, ending at his ears before shooting back down.
The light turned green. Ms. Cameron shoved Ely’s finger out of her mouth with her tongue and began to cross the intersection. Ely turned to look out the passenger side window as they crossed, and saw a cherry red SUV barreling down the road toward him.

Ely shook his head. The last thing he remembered was getting hit by a van. Did that mean he was dead?
‘You’ll know you’re dead when you wake up in the morning and nothing hurts anymore.’ That’s what Ely’s grandpa would tell him. Indeed, nothing did hurt. Nothing could hurt! Was he dead? Was he really dead? Was this some sort of twisted, Machiavellian afterlife? Ely never gave any thought to the possibility or impossibility of an afterlife. It was something that could not be observed, and was therefore meaningless. But now it seemed the most important possible consideration.
Strangely, Ely’s first thought wasn’t ‘what happens to me now?’, but ‘what happens to everyone who used to know me?’ The thought wasn’t even of how they would react to his death, but to the inevitable discovery of what went on between him and Ms. Cameron. If even the briefest of examinations took place, they’d find Ms. Cameron’s pussy juices all over Ely’s paws, and that would prompt a deeper search. From there, they’d surely find Ely’s cum inside Ms. Cameron’s mouth and pussy, and her cum soaked into the fur of his crotch, and inside his mouth. Everyone would know what they did. What would they think of him? Of her? Even worse, what if she were still alive? What would happen to her then?
Ely fell onto his back and started to sob, much harder than last time.
“The realization dawns then.”
Ely swung his body up, snarled, and bared his fangs at the being in front of him, stopping shortly after in confusion that the being didn’t so much as bat an eyelid at the display. No one had nerves that steady! Even those with no fear whatsoever of such a sight would still twitch a finger or blink, not in fear, but by reflex alone. This being didn’t.
He was a squirrel with bright red fur fading into jet black in his paws and footpaws. He looked about forty, but was no taller than Ely. Then again, squirrels tended to be small anyway. He wore a candy apple red tee shirt, black leather vest, black silk slacks, and a Scrooge style black top hat. He sat crosslegged about five feet from Ely and held a huge steel briefcase in his lap. But oddest of all were the two tiny bat-like wings sprouting from his back. 
“Who the Hell are you?” Ely asked.
“My name is Razielphustar,” the squirrel answered.
“That’s a—“
”Strange name, I know,” Razielphustar finished Ely’s sentence. “It wasn’t quite as strange in Hungary during the lost age.”
“You mean you’ve been... wherever this is for the past five hundred years?” Ely asked.
Razielphustar sighed before speaking. “I died in the year 2575, yes, but I’ve been here far longer. You see, my... vocation requires the ability to alter time, so as five hundred years passed on Earth since my death, I experienced many eons of time. You wouldn’t believe what I had to go through to greet you.”
Since his death?! Then it was true. Ely was dead, and this was some form of afterlife that was never anticipated by men or by furs. But of course it wasn’t! How could you anticipate something for which there is no frame of reference aside from baseless folk-tales which were all stupid anyway?
“You are Elysia Rosenburg are you not?” Razielphustar asked.
Ely nodded.
“Oh good!” Razielphustar sighed in relief. “I would hate to have missed out on such an opportunity due to a careless mistake.”
“What opportunity?” Ely asked, shaking his head.
“Oh, I’m sorry, the opportunity to act as the concierge to your death, Razielphustar said.
The words sent an icy stab through Ely’s spine. He supposed this meant that psychosomatic pain was still possible even when you're dead.
“Where am I?” Ely asked.
“You no doubt have many questions Elysia. Ask me that one last,” Razielphustar said.
Ely sighed. “Fine then. Why did you have go through some kind of lengths just to greet me?”
“Because you are a guru,” Razielphustar answered.
A guru? Ely’s first and most obvious thought was that Razielphustar must’ve referred to his Asperger Syndrome. But there was no evidence to support this, so the conclusion was conjecture. Unless... of course! It was more than conjecture; it was a hypothesis! Stupid. There was such an easy way to test it.
“Are you talking about my Asperger Syndrome?” Ely asked.
“I’ve heard it called that before, yes,” Razielphustar answered. “I find it quite unflattering, implying that you are in need of medical attention.”
“I don’t need medical attention!” Ely growled. Stating or even implying that he did was one of the few things Ely had no tolerance for.
“I know you don’t,” Razielphustar replied. “I only say that’s what others make you to seem like, just because you are different. But during the Lost Age, your kind were simply referred to as gurus.”
Ely stopped growling and lowered his head in an apologetic gesture. Unlike most people Ely knew when he was alive, this Razielphustar seemed rational. But it was confirmed; he was talking about Ely’s Asperger Syndrome. Hypothesis had graduated to theory. All that was left was the why.
“Why does that make me so desirable?” Ely asked.
“Simple,” Razielphustar answered. “Gurus’s minds work differently from other minds. They see their world and everything around them in purely analytical terms. I’ll bet many others have told you that you behaved far too much like an adult, and that you needed to act like other children. But you couldn’t, could you? That behavior was perfectly natural to you, wasn’t it?”
Ely nodded again.
“You see Elysia, when most furs die, especially cubs such as yourself, the realization of their deaths cause them no end of sorrow, shame, and confusion. Trying to console them enough to explain their situations fully is always a heart breaking task. But you gurus have such a beautifully matter-of-fact perspective on the world. It’s always vastly easier to discuss the ins and outs of death with your kind, and is so joyful to us to see you not endure the trauma that others would. And so Elysia, whenever a guru dies, I and others of my vocation always fight over who gets to be their concierge.”
“And what is your vocation?” Ely asked.
“That will be included with the answer to ‘where is this?’. Ask something else in the meantime.”
Ely looked up. There weren’t many other questions he felt he needed to ask. But two popped into his mind at that moment. He asked the more important first.
“I was with my physics teacher just before I died,” Ely said. “Did she die too?”
Razielphustar unlatched and opened his steel briefcase and removed a single piece of paper.
	“Five twenty five in the P.M., today. This was the recorded time of death for Elysia Rosenberg and Carlene Cameron. Cause of death, head trauma induced by an automotive accident caused by a drunk driver. The drunk driver survived with mild injuries and a non-damaging concussion.”
How typical. The wasted driver who caused the crash gets off with scrapes and bruises while everyone else dies. But it was a bit of a relief. At least Ms. Cameron wouldn’t have to go through the torment society would inflict on her when they discovered she’d fucked her twelve year old student after every schoolday for a nearly a whole summer. Ely sighed and his shoulders slumped in relief. As he closed his eyes, Razielphustar smiled briefly at his sudden ease.
Ely opened his eyes, then muzzle to speak, but quickly snapped it shut again.
“What were you going to ask?” Razielphustar asked.
Ely was going to ask if whoever investigated the accident found the evidence of the forbidden sexual relations, which they definitely would have if they bothered to check. No, Ely didn’t want this squirrel, or anyone else, knowing of that. He went back to his previous unasked question.
“What’s the briefcase for?” Ely asked.
“I’m glad you asked that,” Razielphustar replied. “I used to use a clipboard, but it was just too messy, so I switched to this briefcase. A lot of others in my vocation followed suit shortly after. The briefcase contains dossiers on all of the souls I am to concierge today. Tomorrow it will be emptied and refilled. Despite its numerous enchantments, the briefcase barely contains enough room the keep the files organized, but it’s still a vast improvement over the clipboard.”
“And what does my dossier say?” Ely asked.
Razielphustar sighed. “That goes into the final question, but I suppose it’s time for that now. Ask me where we are.”
“Where are we?”
Razielphustar turned his head and blinked. Ely could tell just how difficult it seemed for the squirrel to answer the question. “We are... in... Hell.”
Hell? He’d died and gone to Hell? The fur from the tip Ely’s tail to the base of his nose stood on end. The cold pain stabbed not only his spine, but his lungs and his liver and his nose and his eyes—psychosomatic pain, the only kind he could still feel. He was in Hell! A thousand thoughts and questions and considerations, all terrifying, machine-gun fired through Ely’s brain in the few seconds between hearing the word Hell, and his next question.
“Why am I here?” Ely asked. He did his best to sound normal, but his words came out fluttered. The question was technically valid, Ely knew that, but still seemed moot. He already suspected why he was there.
Razielphustar tightened his lips, narrowed his eyes, and breathed deep with a sigh of sorrow. Ely knew he didn’t like this one bit, even if it was so much easier than concierging non-gurus. “Would you like the short version or the long version?”
“Which version gives me a better understand of the situation?”
“Surprisingly, the short version.”
The question was largely academic. Ely knew from experience that the long version almost always gave the better understanding, so he was surprised to hear this time, possibly the most important time, that the true essence of why lied in the summary, and not in the details.
“The short version then,” Ely said.
Razielphustar turned back toward Ely with mournful, down turned eyes. “The short version it is then. The truth is Elysia, everyone goes to Hell. It doesn’t matter who they are or what they did. No living thing is ever admitted into Heaven—ever.”
Everyone goes to Hell?! No living thing ever goes to Heaven?! What the fuck was with that? Razielphustar mentioned the phrase admitted into Heaven, which must mean such a place existed, but what was the point of its existence if it was embargoed from all existence?
“Why is that?” Ely asked with a breath even more fluttered.
“Once again, do you want the long or short answer?”
“Once again, what gives a better understanding of the situation?”
“Once again, the short answer.”
“Once again, the short answer.”
Razielphustar sighed, rubbed his eyes with his paw, and leaned back on his paws. “Here in Hell, we have a saying. Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely, and infinite power corrupts infinitely. And there’s only one being in existence with infinite power.”
“God?” Ely asked.
Razielphustar nodded.
So God was infinitely corrupt? Ely had a hard time wrapping his brain around the concept, despite his analytical nature. Until now, he’d scarcely given a thought to God. In his mind, it wasn’t that God didn’t exist, but simply that God didn’t matter. The question of the existence, or lack-there-of, of God was something for which an observable answer was impossible. Ergo, the question was meaningless, and a waste of time to consider, just like the question of an afterlife. But now it seemed there was an observable answer, and the answer was yes. Not only did God exist, but he was a douche of trans-cosmic proportions.
“HE, well, HIS standards are insane, contradictory, and never-ending,” Razielphustar continued. “At one point it was technically possible to gain admittance into Heaven if you lived up to those standards. To be honest I’m amazed it was even possible back then. Of the hundreds of quadrillions of sapient beings who die every year in your universe, two on average made it to Heaven, typically less than one quintillionth of one percent. And that didn’t even include all of the non-sapient beings. They all went to Hell; they were considered a waste of space. But recently, even that infinitesimal possibility has been revoked. You see, we here in Hell tried to pull a stunt a short while ago, to teach you earthlings the truth. But HE saw us, and decided that our presence in the universe had irredeemably tainted it. He decreed that from then on, the mere existence of—existence itself, was a sin, and all living things that would ever exist henceforth were damned.”
By ‘HE’, Ely supposed Razielphustar meant God.
Suddenly everything made a lot more sense. Never-mind fucking your thirty five year old teacher while you were only in seventh grade, Ely was sent to Hell just because he’d been born! The Wolverine fury started to flow through his veins again. No! He had to control it, at least for now. He had to find out more. Find out more?! The fury left, and the fear quickly replaced it. He was in Hell! What was going to happen to him? If rumors were to be believed, it would be torment the likes of which was not possible on Earth. He didn’t want to know. But he had to. He always had to know.
Razielphustar continued. “Why HE still keeps track of every being’s individual sins is beyond me, since after that decree it all became a moot point anyway. You’re dossier for instance contains tens of thousands of sins. Every time you let a curse escape your lips, every time you ever questioned anyone deemed an authority, every time you so much as glance at another fur sexually, you commit a damnable offense, all on top of the damnable offense of your father’s sperm meeting your mother’s egg.”
“What’s going to happen to me now?” Although Ely spoke with no flutter or hesitation, it was one of the hardest things he’d ever asked.
“Nothing you don’t want to have happen to you,” Razielphustar answered.
What? Nothing he doesn’t want to have happen to him? What the fuck was that supposed to mean? That didn’t make any sense. Ely wanted to keep asking for clarification, but the exact wording wouldn’t come to him. Thankfully, Razielphustar anticipated, and continued explaining.
“You see Elysia, common rumors of the nature of Hell are grossly misinformed. This is not a place of suffering, at least not for most.”
That made even less sense.
“For every infinitesimal sin every being ever committed, including the sin of being at all, HIS will decreed that said beings were to be forever punished in the most sadistic ways. But we don’t obey HIS decrees here. We do things our way, and our way states that as long as you didn’t cause any needless harm or pain, then you did nothing wrong.”
Okay, that was starting to make sense.
“So here, not even your secularism, or your sexual escapades with your grade school teacher are held against you.”
Shit!!! He did know about that!!!
“I can see from your aghast expression that you didn’t realize I knew of your and Ms. Cameron’s fornications. Yes, every infraction you’ve ever committed, at least in HIS eyes, is in your dossier. But there are very few things within it I truly frown on, and they are all minor. Even your violent streak I find noble, as you so seldom expressed it against other living beings, and even then only in the defense of another. So you see Elysia, I find nothing wrong with you.”
“That still doesn’t answer my question,” Ely said. “What’s going to happen to me now?”
“Let me just say there are seven levels of Hell,” Razielphustar explained. “Although technically there are eight, but the eighth is something rather strange, so for all practical purposes, there are only seven. Seven levels of Hell for seven levels of behavior, from angelic to barbaric. Right now you are in the second level, meaning you are not perfect, but you are in essence a good person. And I assure you, nothing bad can ever happen to you on level two. It can be as much of a paradise as you wish it to be.”
Ely breathed a bit deeper. The fear was starting to lessen. Paradise, Razielphustar said, if only he wished it to be. What could he wish for? At the moment he couldn’t think of anything. Not even his diagnostic personality could truly comprehend what was happening. Though he knew factually everything he was told and had concluded, he couldn’t appreciate it, and a deeper, more instinctive part of him was still confused.
“Overwhelming, isn’t it?” Razielphustar asked.
Ely nodded. Another thought occurred to him, one that pained him inside. He couldn’t stand it until he knew it was alright, but feared asking in case it wasn’t. But Ely was not one to hesitate. It’s best to get bad news, if there is any, over with as soon as possible. That was Ely’s way.
“What happened to Ms. Cameron?” Ely asked.
“Female teachers seducing adolescent students are more common than the newspapers would have you think,” Razielphustar said. “But each case is unique, and so it’s not exactly predictable what happens to them.”
Razielphustar rummaged through the steel briefcase and removed another paper. He adjusted his glasses and scanned it for a time before replacing it in the briefcase.
“It would seem Ms. Cameron was very careful about not hurting you emotionally,” Razielphustar said. “She singled you out above all other students because she believed correctly that you were the only one with the perspective to handle such sexual relations.”
“Every day she asked me whether or not it was what I wanted,” Ely added. “And every day she made sure to say that I was the one in power, and that her future and her life were at my mercy, and not the other way around.”
“Given how considerate Ms. Cameron was, her dossier reads that she was also placed in level two.” Razielphustar said.
“What about my family, and hers?” Ely asked. “Anyone who cared to check would’ve found all the evidence in the world of what we did. Do they know?”
“The county medical examiner knows,” Razielphustar answered. “He knows the full extent of what you two did. But given the grief of both the Rosenbergs and the Camerons, he opted to keep the knowledge to himself. No one besides him will ever know while they are alive.”
Ely fell onto his back. Tension released itself from his muscles. Two more tears ran down his furry cheeks as he released a great sigh of relief. Humiliation from the living was not something to worry about when you were dead, but Ely’s family was still a great worry. Not only his, but Ms. Cameron’s family too would be none the wiser. They didn’t need to know anyway. They didn’t need more pain than they already had to deal with. An mmm of content escaped Ely’s lips. He brushed a paw back through his hair, running across two small, hard protrusions coming out of his head. He jumped in shock when he felt them
“What the fuck are these?!” Ely shouted.
Razielphustar didn’t even need to see to know what Ely referred to. He simply frowned in smugness and nodded. “Horns, everyone arrives with them. But if you want, you can pull them off and never have to grow them back.”
I don’t want horns! Ely shouted in his mind. I don’t want them now, or ever! Ely swept his paw forward again and the charcoal gray spiral horns the size of walnut halves fell off as if they were simply balanced on his head. Razielphustar caught them as they fell, and absentmindedly upended his muzzle to drop them in and began chewing. Ely glared at him with narrow eyes, a furrowed brow, and a wide sneer.
“That’s... odd,” Ely said.
Razielphustar finished chewing and swallowed. “Indeed, I’ve never had horn that tasted like bacon and peanut butter. Now that you’re feeling a bit better, I think it’s time to talk about your room.” 
Ely pushed himself to sit back up, leaning back on his paws, and squinted in curiosity at Razielphustar.
“My room?” Ely asked.
“This room is yours,” Razielphustar answered, waving his paw about. “The red box is a kind of place-holder. It’s what exists before it’s shaped by the will of its occupant. You can transform this box into anything you wish.”
“How?” Ely asked.
“It’s explained to most cubs that Hell is place composed entirely of thought and will,” Razielphustar answered. “That is not exactly true, but it’s said because that’s what most cubs can best understand. Being a guru though, you are capable of grasping a more complete explanation. You see Elysia, Hell is an entirely corporeal place, like your Earth. However, thought and will determine the shape it takes, as well as the shape you take.”
“The role of the observer, a force that exists both in here and in my universe,” Ely elaborated. “But here taken to its furthest extreme. What you imagine becomes real. Is that where my clothes came from?”
“Yes. And it’s more like what you desire becomes real, but only to a certain extent,” Razielphustar said. “Hell itself contains a kind of omnipresent pseudo-consciousness we like to call Hell’s Giving Force. Your wishes can shape your surroundings, but only in so much as they will let you, and some places are more malleable than others. Take this red box for instance; its form is entirely up to your own imagination. At the other extreme, there are places that have completely solidified, and refuse to let any will shape them. Do you understand all this?”
Ely nodded.
“Excellent, because I want you to shape this room now,” Razielphustar continued. “Not too much at first. What I want you to do is create a bed. Now think Elysia, in your mind is the image of the bed you have always wanted. Bring up that image, and then desire it.”
Ely closed his eyes. “What if it’s too big to fit in this room?”
“Don’t worry about the room,” Razielphustar said. “It will change to accommodate the bed.”
Ely nodded, and imagined the bed he always wanted. He already had many aspects memorized. It was twelve feet wide by ten feet long, an ‘extreme ultra-king’ as it was called online. The mattress was pure memory foam, twenty-four inches thick with a perfect gradient of increasing density. The blankets were silk, with a black-and-red checkerboard pattern. The bedframe was carved of a single piece of blood red snakewood, far larger than the already enormous bed would ever need, ensuring its design to last for ages. Posts reached up to a canopy fully fifteen feet above the mattress, with drapes of the same black-and red checkerboard design hanging all the way to the ground. It was all carved in the most intricate way into gothic, floral, and dollar-esque designs.
Razielphustar smiled. “Now open your eyes.”
Ely opened his eyes. The room had indeed expanded to accommodate his imagination, and his bed sat right in front of him, even greater than he’d imagined! Ely stood up with his jaw agape and eyes wide. He walked from side to side, inspecting the bed. The stitching, carving, and all work was so perfect it seemed scarcely possible to have been made by paws, which of course it wasn’t. The grain of the snakewood was like desert ripples, and polished so fine that Ely could see his reflection even in the smallest of engravings.
“That’s amazing.”
Ely looked up to see Razielphustar sitting up on his bed.
“It normally takes people decades for their imaginations to become this disciplined,” Razielphustar continued. “Even most gurus take at least a year to get such a mind for details.”
“I think I can create the rest of my room now,” Ely said.
Razielphustar nodded. “I would not believe you unless I saw this bed with my own eyes. But I have, and I do.”
Ely closed his eyes yet again. What was the one place, real or fictional, that he always wanted to be in? The place that was most alluring? Most exotic? The answer was simple. It was in a game. Ely opened his eyes to see the red room transforming before him.
The walls expanded and became everything he imagined in his favorite fantasy residence. Vast columns of pure black opal grew like vines around granite and snakewood walls, carved into designs just as incredible as the wood on his bed. The floor became a color mosaic of opaque quartz blocks, and liquid metal seeped through their seems to form red velvet rugs adorned with gold dollaresque swirls. Giant wrought-iron chandeliers in the shape of brambles grew from the ceiling, and each sprouted hundreds of two foot tall candles. Liquid metal seeped from the ever expanding walls, forming all kinds of accommodations such as mirrors and tables and desks and couches and love seats and chairs and ottomans and things Ely couldn’t remember the names of at that moment, all halfway between Victorian and Craftsman styles. Elsewhere, more rooms similar to this formed, most even grander in design.
Razielphustar grimaced. “I think it’s time for you to stop now.”
“How?” Ely asked.
“You simply want it to stop.”
Stop! This is getting to be too much! I wanted a room, not a ziggurat! Stop! Please stop!
But everything kept expanding.
Ely shook his head. “I can’t stop it!”
“Oh shit!” Razielphustar shouted.
Razielphustar stood up and leaped off the bed. He ran down the ever changing room, out onto an opaque quartz balcony, closely followed by Ely. There they both found themselves thousands of feet in the air, with forts and towers and spires of a great gothic castle rising all around them as their little room—little only by the standards of the rest of the castle—continued to rise higher and higher. In the distance, mountains and conifer forests and rivers and lakes sprouted from nothingness, and the area grew vaster and vaster.
“Oh shit!” Razielphustar repeated.
Razielphustar held out his paws and shouted. “I command your expansion to cease!” His voice had an unnatural backwards echo, and sounded louder than the loudest blast speaker, although it didn’t hurt Ely’s ears.
Razielphustar’s command worked. The castle ceased to expand, as did the land around it. Razielphustar sighed and fell down on his butt.
“I’m sorry,” Ely whispered.
Razielphustar shook his head. “Don’t be. That was my fault, not yours. You have what is called a hyperbolic imagination, which means that your wishes sometimes take on lives of their own, after which you have no control over them. It’s a trait sometimes possessed by gurus, and I was foolish not to anticipate it.
“Either way, I had to stop it because, believe it or not, there is actually finite space in Hell, so we don’t allow rooms to grow too large. As it is, this castle takes up roughly the same area of your entire home city of Portland, and the surrounding land has roughly the same area of your home state of Oregon. But still, it is your room and I can’t force you to remake it. But I recommend that you eventually try to use it as something more than merely your private residence. Out of curiosity—what was the impetus for this castle?”
Ely turned toward Razielphustar. “CastleVania, my favorite video game.”
“I am not familiar with those terms,” Razielphustar said. “But... well, nevermind.”
Razielphustar turned back toward the balcony, as did Ely. They both looked out at the landscape, which took on a cloudless night sky with a magnified golden moon in the distance.
“What now?” Ely asked.
“What now?” Razielphustar answered. “Now comes the one part you might not like.”
Ely looked at Razielphustar, who looked back at him. The fur on the back of Ely’s neck stood on end, but it wasn’t as bad as when he first heard Razielphustar say he was in Hell. But still, this seemed almost like a kind of betrayal. Razielphustar assured Ely nothing would happen to him here that he didn’t want. So what was with ‘the part you might not like’? It was possible Razielphustar had lied to him. It was also possible that the squirrel had simply forgotten to mention that there was one thing that would happen to him here that he wouldn’t like. But Ely had no tolerance for either of these events. He reared back and bared his teeth.
“You said nothing would happen to me here that I didn’t want!” Ely shouted.
Razielphustar continued to gaze with an unchanging expression. No gasp or step back, no twitch. Ely was forced to turn his snarl into a curious grimace. Even the absolutely fearless twitched by mere reflex, that was what Ely had always known. He still expected this squirrel to twitch even though he’d seen Razielphustar not do so before. The surprise was enough to knock Ely out of his anger.
“I’m very sorry Elysia,” Razielphustar said. “I always forget that part. There is one thing that must happen to you that you may not desire.”
“What is it?” Ely asked.
“I have to take your heart.”
Take his heart? What did that mean?
“I’m dead,” Ely said. “What use would a dead person have for a heart, or any other organ for that matter?”
“Well, to elaborate—“
”No, no, no!” Ely interrupted. “I’m dead! I don’t need organs! So why take my heart of all things? Why make it so arbitrary? Why not something else? And why take anything out of me at all? If I don’t need any of it, then clearly you don’t either!”
“It’s not your physical heart I have to take!” Razielphustar said sternly.
Not the physical heart? Then what? The heart was always symbolized. Perhaps what was truly taken was what the symbolism represented, whatever it was. The hypothesis was testable easily enough.
“What are you really taking then?” Ely asked.
Razielphustar pursed his lips and looked away from Ely. He’d seen that twice before, and both times it meant Razielphustar didn’t like saying what was to come.
“Just spill it!” Ely growled.
Razielphustar sighed and turned back to Ely. “It’s a long story.”
“Well, I seem to have plenty of time.”
Razielphustar nodded. “Yes, you do, don’t you? It was part of HIS design of Hell, and HIS will for those sent here. Part of the torture they had to endure was the removal of their hearts. But as you observed, that was actually figurative. What’s really being removed is all your emotional connections to other beings.”
Ely’s eyes went wide and the fur from his tail to his ears stood on end. The icy stab shot through his spine and made his eyes water. Ely took several tentative steps back from Razielphustar.
“That... that... that...” Ely stammered. “That’s not my idea of paradise!”
Razielphustar took several steps toward Ely with pleading eyes, who swiped a paw across his cheek, scratching four claw-cuts into his muzzle, and took several more steps back. Razielphustar sighed and wiped the blood from his muzzle. The cuts vanished beneath his paw. Ely raised both paws, holding his claws poised to strike again.
“Please let me finish,” Razielphustar said .
“Only if you back off!” Ely yelled
Razielphustar nodded and stepped back. Ely lowered his paws but still kept his arms and legs tense.
“As I was saying, it was part of HIS will,” Razielphustar continued. “If I don’t take your heart after one hundred hours of your arrival... well... ask me about the eighth level.”
“Fine then, what is it?” Ely grumbled.
Razielphustar walked to the edge of the balcony and rested himself on his forearms against the granite railing, staring into the surrounding land. “As I said, for practical purposes, Hell only has seven levels. The eighth is a level in name only. HE named it the ‘Lake-of-Fire’, but that doesn’t really describe it. If I were to be hard pressed, I would call the eighth level, ‘the Nullity’. What it is, is simply oblivion, the only true way to destroy something. Anything cast into the eighth level is erased from existence. I have to take your heart within one hundred hours of your death, or it will swallow you up, and erase you.”
“So what?” Ely growled. “I either turn into a mental zombie or I get deleted?”
	Razielphustar turned to Ely. “No, there is a loophole. If I merely take your current emotional connections, but not your ability to form new ones, that satisfies the condition, and you can continue existing.”
“What do you mean?”
“When your heart is pulled from your chest, there will be a brief moment where you become the... ‘mental zombie’ as you coined the phenomenon. But when the moment is over, you will form a new emotional connection to the first being you see, that being myself. To most people, this moment is so brief they don’t even realize they had it. Soon after, all the feelings you had for those you knew in life will return. And if you find some being to connect with strongly enough, you will grow another heart, and that one will be yours to keep.”
Ely half-sighed, half-growled, fell back against a black opal column, and slowly slid down until he sat. He dropped his face into a paw and breathed deep. Ely heard puttering and shuffling, and felt nearby warmth. Razielphustar had walked over and sat down next to him.
“And you say I’m easier than the others?” Ely giggled.
“As difficult as you think you’ve been, yes, you are infinitely easier,” Razielphustar answered. “Normally, the cubs I concierge are hysterical: screaming, crying, running, hiding, attacking, and cowering. Usually it takes them half of their allotted time to even hear my words, and then they continue their disparate hysteria until the last possible moment when they finally let me take their hearts, and even then only out of the paralyzing fear of the Nullity. In fact, many of them refuse to believe even during the last moment when the Nullity swallows them up and erases them. Christian and Muslim fundamentalists are the most common of those, thinking that God is simply testing their faith before allowing them into heaven. They scream triumphantly as they fall into the Nullity and begin to disintegrate, swearing that they have finally earned their place at God's side. And then—poof, they’re gone, deleted as you call it.”
Religious fundamentalists, it sure as fuck wasn’t surprising to hear that they’d do such things. “Are there others who do the same?”
“Some cubs are so overcome with primal, thoughtless fear that they refuse to have their hearts taken, even at the last moment when they dangle over the Nullity from my paw, and then force themselves from my grasp. I’ve never seen it myself, but I hear that often times when their parents arrive, they in turn choose to be swallowed by the Nullity themselves rather than face an eternity where their children no longer exist.
“I remember about a year ago, that is a year to you, but millenia to me. I concierged a very small cub at about the same time we tried that stunt I mentioned previously. But I digress. He had an extraordinary strength of both empathy and patience. He managed to grow a new heart in only a single day, which is virtually unheard of. But still, when I first met him, he was consumed by fear, despair, and nightmarish fantasies. It took me hours to console him enough to get him to listen to me. So yes, you are vastly easier than the others.”
Ely laced his fingers and rested his chin on them. He huffed and considered the possibilities. Razielphustar had not lied to him so far. He’d forgotten critical details, but intended no deception. Ely knew he would accept Razielphustar’s demand—he had no other choice—but his head swam and spun with all the new information he just acquired. Ely would need a long, long time to sort and file everything he’d just learned. But he had all eternity to do so, and urgency always took priority, at least in his mind.
“I have a hundred hours to make up my mind?” Ely asked.
“Minus the time we spent together,” Razielphustar answered. “I will return in forty eight hours.”
“No,” Ely whispered. “Take it now.”
Razielphustar cocked his head to the side and squinted. “Come again?”
“I want it over with so I can go on to more important things,” Ely whispered. “Like figuring out what the fuck to do with everything you just told me.”
“Another reason I wanted to concierge you,” Razielphustar replied. “Guru’s seldom hesitate to make important decisions. And yet, even among them I sense that you are somehow extraordinary. Do not worry Elysia, this will be completely painless.”
“I know,” Ely whispered back.
Ely let his eyelids fall shut. Razielphustar stood up, spun around, and kneeled in front of him. At that moment, his right paw sported four inch, glossy black claws. They did not unsheathe or even appear suddenly. They were simply there where a moment ago they weren’t. With his claws, he began to pull off the buttons on Ely’s shirt one by one until his cream furred chest was exposed. Ely breathed deep and felt no fear as the tips of the claws touched his skin, and then pierced it. Blood seeped from the wounds, and the smell made Ely’s nose and cock twitch. Razielphustar pushed his fingers inside Ely’s chest, forcing him to exhale. At that moment, without any anger, fear, or pain, Ely realized that the feeling of claws piercing your chest and grasping at your insides was actually... pleasant! Even with the blood now flowing freely, it reminded Ely of his mother brushing his fur as a kit, only now the feeling came from inside his body, rather than on top of it, making it feel all the better.
“Mmmnnnggg...” Ely sighed. 
Razielphustar smirked, knowing just how good that felt, having experienced such things countless times. He took his time, shredding the edges of Ely’s lungs and letting blood fill them. Ely didn’t feel as if choking, but only floating in some warm, thick liquid with the intoxicating smell of sugar, salt, and iron oxide. Razielphustar reached behind Ely’s heart and stabbed his claws through Ely’s spinal discs and into his spinal cord. Ely gasped at the warm waves of tingles it sent through his body, one beginning just as another ended. Finally, Razielphustar pierced Ely’s heart with his claws and blood poured from the Wolverine’s chest. The feeling was utterly alien, something he could only compare to an overinflated balloon being untied and released of its air. He whimpered in pleasure at the sensation. With a pull, Ely’s heart was ripped out of his chest, and suddenly all feeling was gone.
Razielphustar wiped his free paw over the gaping hole, healing it as he figured Ely wasn’t in a mental state to remember to do so himself. He tucked the still beating heart into his trouser pocket and looked back at Ely who stared into space, eyes wide as possible.
“You’re file said you had a blood-play fetish but, damn Elysia, I didn’t think it went to that length! ... Elysia?”
Razielphustar leaned forward and stared quizzically at Ely. He gasped and fell back on his haunches. Ely stared into empty space with dilated pupils. He was limp as a ragdoll, and wasn’t even breathing. Razielphustar lunged forward, grabbed Ely’s shirt and started shaking him as hard as possible. He got no reaction, as if shaking a sack of flour.
“Oh shit no!” Razielphustar screamed. “Oh fuck, oh, fuck, oh, fuck! Fuck no, fuck no, fuck no! Come back to me Elysia! Come on I’m right here! No good. Elysia, quick, think of someone you love now! Think hard dammit! Think of someone you love! Think of someone who loves you! Scream their name as loud as you can! Do it now dammit!”
Ely gasped and pushed Razielphustar back, throwing him through the air with a brute strength that shocked even the squirrel demon.
“Sipha!” Ely screamed. He breathed deep, shook his head, and blinked many times. 
Razielphustar, on his back, pushed himself up on his elbows and groaned in relief that Ely was moving, and breathing. “That was too close,” he sighed. “I almost lost you forever.”
“It was like I was drunker than anyone else who ever got drunk,” Ely signed. “So drunk my brain just turned to rock. And my body turned into a blob of Novocain jelly. What happened?”
	“I’m so sorry Elysia,” Razielphustar sobbed. “I almost destroyed you. I almost put you through a worse fate than the Nullity itself.”
	“What the hell are you talking about?” Ely asked.
	For some minutes, Razielphustar fell forward, his face buried in his crossed legs as he continued to sob. Ely could only stare in morbid fascination as the squirrel demon started pounding the floor with a fist and gurgling out the words I’m sorry, over and over again through his sobs. Ely pushed himself back further against the black opal column, almost reacting in fear to Razielphustar’s bizarre behavior. Razielphustar eventually came to his senses, slowly and tentatively, he pushed himself up and stared at Ely with a tired face and red, sagging eyes.
	“I’m sorry Elysia,” he whispered. “I should’ve anticipated it. I almost lost you forever.”
	“You already said that. Now what happened?” Ely asked.
	Razielphustar huffed and straightened his vest with his paws, smearing wolverine blood all over it. “That was called the Regression.”
	“Let me guess, guru’s do that?” Ely asked.
	Razielphustar nodded. “After taking your heart, you didn’t form the bond with me that you should’ve, causing you to regress to that state, the Mental Zombie you spoke of earlier. That was what you experienced. That state of being would have been permanent if you hadn’t broken out of it in time. In spite of the possibility of annoyance, I must apologize again. I am not normally this absent-minded, but my first opportunity to concierge a Guru made me so giddy that I could not think clearly—not entirely. It was irresponsible of me not bring a co-concierge who has dealt with your kind before, and I fear I may be punished harshly for that oversight.”
	Ely waved a coercive paw through the air. “And are there any other guru dangers I should be aware of?”
	Razielphustar shrugged and shook his head. “Only one, and it is a direct result of the Regression. Your chest is now locked, unable to grow a new heart except by the one whom you placed its key with, the one whose name you shouted to break free.”
	Ely shook his head. “I don’t remember shouting any name.”
	Razielphustar stood and walked to the balcony edge. Ely stood and followed. They both leaned on their forearms against the granite railing, looking out at the night forest.
	“Of course you don’t,” Razielphustar said. “You don’t remember anything from that time except the state of being you described. But I assure you, you shouted the name Sipha.”
	Sipha! The name caused Ely’s eyes to widen and water, and his breath to cease with a gasp. The fur from his nose to tail tip stood on end and his body became cold all over, and then flushed with warmth. All his muscles tensed involuntarily and he gripped the granite railing so hard it broke the small bones in his fingers, which he was unaware of. Razielphustar noticed from the crackling sound, and looked down to see bloodied fingers looking like rippled French fries. He put a claw under Ely’s chin and turned the Wolverine cub’s head toward his own. Ely wept silently and his jowls trembled.
	“Who is Sipha?” Razielphustar asked.
	Ely looked away and down at his fingers. He lifted his arms to stare in morbid curiosity, which he quickly put behind him. With a shake of his wrists, the fingers were normal again. Ely turned around, leaned back against the railing, and crossed his arms.
	“My cat,” Ely whispered. “My nonev cat that is. My pet, though I could never bring myself to think of her that way. We were born on the same day, and my parents put us in the same crib at night to keep me from being lonely. My first memory was her rubbing her face against mine. She was a pure white shorthair, and her fur felt more like a chinchilla’s than a cat’s. I named her after my favorite CastleVania character, Sipha Belnades. But she got into a box of pesticide when we were seven and became paralyzed. We had to euthanize her.”
	Staring wide eyed and unfocused, Ely’s tears flowed freely, though there was no other indication of sorrow, and his slack-jawed expression seemed almost more confused.
	“I haven’t thought of her in years.”
	“She still exists Elysia, somewhere in Hell,” Razielphustar said. “But you can never grow another heart until you find her. Which is easier said than done as Hell’s second level alone contains... quintillions of square light years of inhabitable area.”
	“Then how will I find her?” Ely asked.
	“Hell’s Giving Force will see to that,” Razielphustar answered. “It is a benevolent force, and if you journey long enough, it will lead you to her. I will give you two days to think all of this over. In the meantime Elysia, I suggest you become acquainted with this—CastleVania of yours. By the way, would you mind if I arranged for the wilderness around the castle to serve as a home for nonevs? We have to do something with all this space.”
	Ely nodded. “Sure, go ahead.”
	Razielphustar smiled. Ely flinched when the squirrel demon suddenly vanished in a puff of red smoke, leaving him alone. He turned back and leaned against the granite railing again. He would never remember how long he stared into the night sky. All he learned is that his dream vision of CastleVania was locked in an eternal, cloudless night lit by thousands of stars. The giant moon completely circled the sky in just a few hours, but never set, and the temperature was always forty five degrees Fahrenheit of perfect comfort to one covered in thick fur. In the time he stared into the night, never blinking, Razielphustar’s efforts came to unfold. A flock of bats flew by the balcony. Wolves howled in the distance. Owls hooted in the trees. And Loons cried on the lakes. Hell’s Giving Force, it seemed, had chosen the perfect assortment of Nonevs to compliment Ely’s gothic fantasy. But for now he did not know this. For now he was simply exhausted mentally and wanted no more than to wander and stare aimlessly, which he did.
	Many hours later, CastleVania it seemed sprawled forever. Ely wandered through halls never less than twenty feet wide and sixty feet high, all build of gothic and florally carved pointed arches. Through every story high, gold-embossed, snakewood door he opened, a wing typically larger than most hotels opened up. 
One wing among the thousands seemed to be an exact replica of the America’s Library of Congress. Ely read nothing, but spent hours wandering and looking at the covers of the millions of books and other media types filed away. 
Another wing, even larger, appeared to be a concert auditorium shaped like the inside of a giant conch shell—the most perfect acoustics architecture could create. The seats were red leather with gold studs, all reclining, yet larger than the largest recliners he’d ever seen, and with two feet between every chair. Despite this, with three floors of seats and countless balconies, there still had to be seating for an audience of well over a hundred thousand. The stage itself was solid snakewood, with almost a thousand chairs resembling red and black leather Ferrari seats. Behind it was a pipe organ with what had to be well over a hundred thousand polished gold pipes sprawling the entire rear wall of the auditorium, dwarfing the largest organ on Earth. It had not one, but five balcony platforms for organists. Likely there were so many pipes that it was meant for five people to play at once, attempting to synchronize their performances into a single tune. Ely sat in one of the recliners for an hour or so, marveling at the pipe organ before leaving. He turned back as a thought occurred to him. Had Led Zeppelin or Pink Floyd got back together and continued touring in Hell, they’d probably jump at the chance to perform here.
Another wing was extremely small compared to the others, a shower seemingly, but still taking up almost half an acre of space. It was in fact a giant gazebo of opal columns and opaque quartz floors and ceilings, exposed freely to the outside. In the center was a basin of descending steps, all ten feet long. Arranged on each step was porcelain furniture and vanities containing all manner of bathing supplies, while the bottom held what appeared to be the steering wheel of a pirate ship surrounded by two giant mine-cart levers. Ely instinctively shed his clothes and ran to the wheel to turn it, making a fine lukewarm mist spray down upon him from unseen faucets a hundred feet up in the domed ceiling. As the blood washed away from him, Ely fiddled with the levers, learning they controlled the temperature. Increasing the heat steadily without any discomfort, the water eventually became boiling hot, enough to slosh away flesh on earth, yet painless in Hell. Ely’s skin peeling right off his muscles felt more like an underwater massage from the inside out. He couldn’t help but whimper in pleasure at the sensation. As he looked up, a flock of bats flew inside and circled above him in the boiling hot spray. He sensed psychically that they found it just as pleasurable as he did. After enough of it he turned off the shower and the bats flew away. Ely giggled to himself as he saw his body, now only boiled muscle, a living pot roast. With a shake, new skin and fur flew out of the seams of his muscles and wrapped itself around him.
Another wing was the smallest of them all. It was a chapel seemingly, and far humbler than anything else seen so far. It was only the size of a large living room, with shag carpet floors, brick walls, and a glass ceiling. The altar up front seized Ely’s curiosity, and he approached it. More and more he started to weep and tremble as he saw the altar was covered with memorabilia of his beloved Sipha. Every photograph ever taken of her was framed there, as was the canvas she walked over after he’d dipped her paws in ink, and a gallon sized mason jar filled with white fur that had come off when he’d brushed her. He stuck his muzzle inside and inhaled. It still smelled like her. Ely fell onto his knees, and his head into his arms folded on the table. He sobbed at the memorial for how long he couldn’t remember, until he was exhausted physically.
He left everything untouched when he was through. He stopped at the door and stared back at the memorial for even longer with an unblinking, expressionless gaze, before the full brunt of exhaustion took him.
Hell's Giving Force was hard at work then, as Ely had learned more about the inner workings of Hell simply by exploring his own CastleVania for little longer than one earthly day than most would from a month of classes. During said time, Razielphustar’s words became clearer and clearer in his mind, and by now he understood them both rationally and intuitively. At last his seemingly though entirely un-random wanderings led him right back to his own bedroom, to the bed he’d imagined.
Ely struggled to climb atop the bed and wrap himself in the silk checkerboard blankets. His head hit a pillow as big as he was, and in less than a minute he was asleep. All he dreamed of the whole time was himself as a three year old boy in his bed, with Sipha rubbing her head against his and purring, his earliest memory.

Two fingers snapped in front of Ely’s face, waking him with a start. He snapped at the fingers, which pulled out of the way just in time to avoid his jaws. Ely growled and turned toward Razielphustar sitting cross legged on the bed next to him. He calmed when he saw who it was.
“You,” Ely said.
“Yes, me,” Razielphustar answered. “But enough about me. I’m here to talk about you. Do you like your room?”
“It’s better than the best place I ever imagined,” Ely whispered.
Razielphustar smiled at the comment. “Good! I’m glad you like it. But you can’t stay here forever.”
“I know,” Ely said. “I have to find Sipha. The castle itself reminded me of that.”
“I see. Well, if you’re going to begin searching, I suppose I have to teach you about portals.”
Portals? The word confused Ely for only a moment before he understood its connotations. However, to a purely analytical mind, connotations weren’t good enough. He needed facts.
“Explain,” Ely requested.
“Well it’s quite simple. Portals are one’s main method of transportation in Hell. You create them through your desires as you create anything else, where you can that is. Everyone’s portals look different, but they all function the same.”
“How do I make one?”
“Lean over the side of the bed,” Razielphustar commanded.
Ely climbed to the side of the bed on his paws and knees, oblivious to the fact that he was now nude and giving Razielphustar a delicious look at his toned ass with his tail up and his cheeks spread. The squirrel might’ve tried fucking him right then and there if Ely had been here for some time. He chewed his tongue, knowing he’d get his chance eventually. Ely’s profile did list bisexuality as one of his damning sins, despite the fact that as yet he was entirely unaware of it.
Razielphustar scooted himself on his knees to the side of the bed, pulling the silk blanket with him, which bunched up around him. Razielphustar leaned forward and waved a paw at the floor.
“Imagine if you will, a door, or a window, or a tunnel, or whatever is easiest to imagine,” Razielphustar instructed. “Imagine that this thing leads to another place. It doesn’t matter what place it leads to, as long as it’s far outside your room. Now want it. Desire it to appear and reach your paw down through it.”
Ely leaned over a bit more and reached a paw down beside his bed. He felt it pushing through liquid and disappear as a plain square mirror with no frame faded into sight below him. Ely reached his paw back out. Razielphustar leaned further forward and saw both their reflections.
“A classic mirror portal, indicative of someone who desires structure more than surprise,” Razielphustar said. “Of course we both know why. But what you don’t know is that the mirror portal only reflects yourself when you don’t know where it goes. When you do, it will show that place instead.”
“Then how do I know where it goes?” Ely asked.
Razielphustar smirked. “Only one way to find out.”
In a blur of speed that not even Ely could perceive, Razielphustar straightened his legs, propelling himself backward behind Ely, where he lifted the Wolverine boy by the knees and sent him falling over the side of the bed and through the mirror, which shattered into countless tiny pieces after he fell through, all of which vaporized before they touched the ground.
Razielphustar looked back and forth. “And now the bed is mine... for the moment at least.”
Razielphustar shed his clothes and hat, exposing the small curved horns atop his head, and laid down in the bed, wrapping himself in the silk checkerboard blanket and falling asleep almost as fast as Ely had upon his head hitting the giant pillow.

A frameless square mirror appeared in thin air, and shattered as a nude, twelve year old wolverine boy fell through it. Ely fell on top of something small, soft, and leathery, which didn’t interest him at that moment. He immediately stood, shook his head, and turned his gaze upward toward an amber sky while the mirror fragments vaporized around him.
“You fucking asshole!” Ely screamed.
“Watch where the fuck you’re falling!” another voice shouted below him.
Ely blinked and cocked his head in confusion for a moment before looking down and seeing that he stood on a tiny preteen boy, a leaf nosed bat with dull gray fur. He shuffled off the bat in surprise.
“Sorry!” Ely shouted. “Sorry about that! But the dick just shoved me through that portal and I didn’t even know where it went to.”
“Well I’ll forgive you if you help me up.”
Ely nodded. He reached down and lifted the tiny bat boy by the claw. The bat yelped in shock as the paw flung his body upward as if he weighed nothing, displaying strength that normally only furs twice as large as his new acquaintance would have. After shaking his head and looking at the fur in question, he immediately realized why. The dude was a Wolverine! And a cub like him, but nearly twice his size due to species difference. More than that, he was a nude wolverine, and with one of the most perfect solid, yet lithe and sinewy bodies he’d ever seen, and with a sheath looking like it would hold a cock as big as another perfectly bodied fur he knew of, another bat to be precise.
The bat froze in place and sounded a cross between a giggle and a groan as he stared at this Wolverine’s chest, abs, and especially crotch.
Ely coughed and hit his temple several times before looking down at the dumbfounded bat, oblivious to the clear expression that almost any ‘non-guru’ would immediately recognize.
“Did I hit you on the head too hard or something?” Ely asked.
	The bat flinched, and then swallowed. “No!” he said, “I just got distracted,” ‘by the thought of you drenching me in cum,’ he thought at the very end. He extended a paw, “My name’s Bartleby.”
Still looking at the dirt ground he stood on, Ely shook Bartleby’s claw, unaware that he’d in fact crushed the tiny bat’s delicate claw in his grip, which came back looking like a crumpled paper. The bat stared at it in shock. A flick of the wrist and his claw was normal again. ‘This guy doesn’t know his own strength,’ Bartleby thought.
“Name’s Ely, now just where am I?”
“Are you a new arrival?”
Ely nodded.
“Figures,” Bartleby said. “You’re in the Dusty Meat Market, its set up to look like one of those great old Arabian markets you see in cartoons and travel shows.”
Ely at last looked up, seeing himself in an ancient looking city with single and double story Arabian buildings covered in gold, cream, or green plaster, and with countless outdoor stalls covered by hemp awnings decorated in regal stripes and angled patterns of color. All around were furs of every age and species hawking meat products whose skins looked like fine glazed vases from cooking to perfection.
It was strange, Ely noticed, that no one shopping actually paid for anything, but instead simply grabbed the delectable looking meats from their baskets or platters or bowls or grills or whatevers. Stranger still was that roughly a quarter of the furs walked around nude, reminding Ely in that instant that he too was naked as he looked down at himself. ‘At least I’m dressed for the occasion’, he thought.
Then he noticed the most bizarre thing of all. About one in twenty of the furs on the street engaged in sexual relations of some sort, in full view of everyone else! Some merely masturbated, but there were twosomes, threesomes, and the occasional foursome, in every flavor combination of species, gender and age. The sight was mind-boggling to someone who’d seen it only for the first time, and Ely could only stare with his jaw agape at the goings on until a claw tugged at his tail.
Ely turned to see Bartleby looking up at him with a cocked head. “Is something wrong?” he asked.
Ely looked up and waved a paw around. “Is it like this everywhere?”
“If you’re talking about the sex, this is one of the tamer places you’ll find,” Bartleby said, adding a chuckle to the end. “This place is mainly just for eating. The fetish zones will blow your fucking mind. And from the looks of things, you seem ready to get blowed yourself.”
Ely turned back to Bartleby with a raised brow and confused grimace. The bat stared at his crotch. He looked down to find the scenery had gotten to him, and his oily slick cock stuck out eight inches straight up from his sheath. Thoughts poured through his head a mile a second. 
‘What the fuck?’ Ely thought. ‘I thought I was only four inches! Then again, it’s something I’ve always wanted. Is this another part of ‘the role of the observer taken to its furthest extreme’? Don’t speculate! It’s not rational. Why even say that? I could test the hypothesis easy enough and just ask this bat. He’s staring at my cock. Why aren’t I embarrassed at all this? I suppose if sex is everywhere than there’d be no reason to be. But the way he’s staring, and what he just said. Does he want to suck my cock? What should I tell him?’
Ely looked around again. No one seemed to notice the sex taking place all around them. They went about their business as if the fucking was all just part of the scenery. He considered his response.