The Innkeeper

Chapter 1687: Make it stop

Hell was not all that, really. For one, there weren’t any windows in the labyrinth of stone corridors. It was also really stuffy. The air had no oxygen, but was filled with all kinds of poisonous or flammable gases, which, besides being bad for Jack’s skin, didn’t make it pleasant to breathe.

The heating was also a problem. Everything was hot. Way to follow stereotypes, right? Jack’s mortal body was not really equipped to deal with this much heat, and if Jack wasn’t the strongest, most durable fairy to have ever existed in the mortal realm, he would have died just from dehydration.

It was Jack’s amazing cultivation technique, and the constant feedback from Lex, which made Jack’s body much stronger than any fairy had any right to be. Crippled as he was without his fairy dust, the only thing he could rely on was his body, so it was a good thing it was so tough.

If there was one area where hell seemed to be lacking in, it was in population. Jack hadn’t met a single other living thing – not even a plant. When he was told this was a trial, he expected the difficulty to be more than just navigating through an endless maze.

Not that the maze was easy. Jack had already spent a couple of days flying through it, at first carefully, but then later on at full speed. He made no progress, simply because everything looked identical. All the halls, all the turns, all the decor, all the lava, it was all the same. If he didn’t have impeccable memory – thanks to his other half being an immortal – he would probably just be roaming in circles forever.

But he expected there to be countless guards, maybe a few other prisoners, any number of enemies around every corner. Yet he found no one.

“You know, this place is not so bad for a hell,” Jack said to himself, looking down the dull corridor. Since he was alone, Jack had taken to speaking his thoughts aloud in the last few days. “I mean, it’s literally on fire. Talk about a hot property.”

Jack chuckled to himself.

“The lava lamps really add ambiance.”

That one made him chuckle even harder as he looked at the nearest lava-fall.

He didn’t stop for long, though, and kept flying. The moment he left, though, a couple of hellions fell to the ground, rolling on the floor from cringe.

“Make it stop,” one said hoarsely. “Please, for the love of damnation, make it stop.”

“The puns. He just keeps saying them,” cried the other.

“No, I can’t take it anymore. I quit!” screamed the third, and threw himself in the lava, permanently ending his shift in this particular dungeon. Or any dungeon, for that matter.

What Jack didn’t know, most because the lack of his fairy dust even crippled his senses, was that he wasn’t alone. He was surrounded by a race of hellions similar to wraiths. They were meant to torture and kill anyone who entered the halls, and were undefeatable to many.

Jack, with no spiritual techniques available to him, could never defeat them using his physical body alone. However, his puns and bad jokes were more torturous and lethal to the hellions than actual torture.

A while later, Jack finally found a room that was different from the usual ones he’d encountered. It had a large pool of lava separating two doors. Considering he could fly, it wasn’t really an obstacle for him.

“You call this hot?” Jack said as he flew over the pool. “I’ve done pilates where I sweat more than this. This lava moat is lukewarm at best.”

As soon as he left, countless wraiths fell to the floor, crying.

“That wasn’t even a pun. It was just bad. It. Was. Just. Bad.”

Jack felt like he heard something, but going back wouldn’t do him any good, so he kept moving forward. He was finally making some progress, when he stumbled onto a fork. Finally, the options were getting harder.

“This hallway smells like brimstone and bad decisions,” Jack chuckled. “You know I have to walk down the right path, because there’s no way I’m walking down the wrong path.”

Maybe being alone for so long was getting to him, because he could have sworn he heard the corridor moan in agony when he said that last joke. But that wouldn’t make sense. The corridor wasn’t alive – he already checked.

But as it turned out, the right path was the wrong one, because he ended up at a dead end.

“Looks like I took a wrong turn and now I’m in a-maze-ing agony.”

Before he could even chuckle at his latest pun, the wall in front of him literally crumbled. The rocks just turned into rubble, breaking up and revealing a path ahead.

A couple of times, Jack could have sworn he heard someone behind him, so he actually went back and checked. He found no one, and no ghosts or enemies jumped him in secret either, so he simply shrugged and carried on.

A few hours later, he found a hall where the floor was lava, and there was a single cage hanging from a ceiling, a sleeping fairy within.

“It can’t be this easy, right?” Jack asked. Of course, no one answered. He checked the room for traps, because what kind of trial would it be if he could just rescue her so easily? That old fairy even warned him his trial would be incredibly hard. Oh, maybe he was referring to the toughness of the stone walls. Very clever.

“Hang on,” Jack said to the cage that was… hanging.

At that exact moment, an earthquake struck, and a massive crack cut through the entire room, warning of an impending collapse. Ah, so there was a trap.

What Jack didn’t know was that his last joke had literally given a hellion a stroke, despite the absence of a brain, and the fallout from that caused the room to break.

Jack flew up to Tinker and encountered his first real obstacle. He tried to rip open the cage, but the cage was solid. Getting it unhooked from the wall was easy, owing to the massive crack in the ceiling where the cage was attached, but he could not open the cage. Heck, he couldn’t even find a door on the cage.

“Don’t worry, I’ll figure out a way to… de-tinker with this cage,” Jack said, wearing a smug smile.

Another earthquake hit, this time much stronger. It almost felt like the whole labyrinth was breaking apart.

Jack finally took the situation a little seriously, and began to fly out of the room as quickly as possible before the heat became too unbearable.

But it was no use. All the labyrinth walls seemed to be cracked, allowing pools of lava to fall through from the cracks, filling up the halls.

“Talk about a heated situation,” Jack muttered as he kept flying.

There was an explosion somewhere in the distance, causing even more cracks to form.

“Hey, wake up,” Jack yelled as he carried the cage. It would really help if Tinker could help him out of the situation, but the fairy was sound asleep. Or maybe she was in a coma, because no matter how Jack shook the cage, she refused to wake up.

“Talk about a deep sleeper,” Jack muttered.

Then, it happened. He no longer thought he heard someone. He definitely heard someone.

“Oh lord, make it stop! Make! It! Stop!” a deep voice yelled somewhere in the distance, the vibrations of the voice causing the whole labyrinth to shake.

Jack started to fly faster because the labyrinth was breaking faster, and more and more lava was pouring in. Though Jack had a strong body, he didn’t want to try swimming in lava with it, so he desperately tried to find a way out.

He was so focused, he didn’t notice Tinker opening a single eye and looking at Jack oddly. Despite having gone through literal centuries of torture, she could not help but think that Jack’s puns had a unique flavor to them that would be hard to forget amidst all the torture she had endured.

Jack, meanwhile, flew through dozens of corridors until finally he found one that wasn’t being filled with lava, and finally sat down to get some rest. He placed the cage beside him, and looked at the sleeping fairy. Since she wasn’t waking up, he’d have to figure out his own way to get her free, and then find another way to bring her joy.

In the meantime, since he still had no one to talk to, Jack looked at the sleeping fairy and couldn’t help himself.

“So, you come here often?”

Then, hell blew up. Or, to be more specific, the volcano that the labyrinth was built within blew up. The volcano itself was being possessed by a hellion, and it could take the puns no more, so it quit. The moment it stopped possessing the volcano, there was nothing holding it back from erupting anymore, so it blew up.