A scream got into Mistrial’s dreams but, given that her dreams were frequently apocalyptically charged on the regular, now merely intensified by the ongoing toxic fever, it just kind of blended in. She still got up to confer with the rest of the house but without any sense of alarm. That sense of ease gradually dissipated as she found herself completely and inscrutably lost. Well, that’s it for me, she figured, I fucked up my brain. Maybe I’m still dreaming. Maybe I’m a vegetable; maybe they had to euthanize me after this horrible drug went wrong and because I was not right upon death it trapped my spirit in this between-state, never to return to the source. Limbo. Lost in my own dementia for all time. Everything looked familiar, like Spider Heaven, but seemed to loop on forever. She tried retracing her steps back to bed but couldn’t find her room. No water, no bed, no bathroom, just walking through endless halls of Spider Heaven-ness. This must be what being a ghost is like. I can’t believe I died, she figured, it’s all those stupid twin’s fault. She stopped to squat and piss in a corner and of course it had to be that moment in stepped Heathcliff, but when she looked closer at the face it wasn’t Heathcliff at all. It was the woman she had seen from the window. The toilet creep, back at it again. “Can I help you.” Mistrial asked. “Take me to your mistress,” said the crimson witch, her grey eyes flashing in the dark. “Look, I have no clue where anything or anyone is,” she hiked up her underwear, “i just want to get back to bed at this point and call it a loss. Maybe tomorrow will be better.” They carried on searching together for a way out. “We’re looking for one of our own,” said the witch, “She murdered one of ours, and she must return to be judged.” It was a bold lie, Mistrial felt she would have seen that riding around in the Heathcliff carousel of memories, but declined to make a scene of it, “should we try a window?” She asked. “Look,” said the witch, “as we approach the far windows recede further into the distance. This is High Magic and the only one who knows their way out the labyrinth would be its creator.” “Lame,” Mistrial said, sleepily, “lame.” They walked on. “How did you find out Heathcliff was here?” Mistrial asked “You confirmed it,” the witch looked at her in a very level fashion, “but some time ago I had been listening to voices in the brook downstream from your covenstead, it gave up this secret in the voice of a little girl.” “Damn.” Mistrial wondered just how cursed that kid was going to get when all was said and done. “Do you smell that?” the Red Devil asked. Mistrial did feel an acrid pricking up in the back of the throat and as they carried on the suspicion was all but confirmed. The air was quickly becoming grey and dead, and more Red Devils appeared wandering the halls, grouping together. She figured this was all part of an invasion of the house. Curiously, none of them were at all afflicted by the onset panic she felt about the smoke billowing down the halls. Nor were they ever eminently menacing, but all the same Mistrial decided to shake this little party, only to cross paths with them again seemingly no matter what direction she took. Soon a whole section of the house was lit up in tiny lapping flames and peeling wallpaper. Mistrial began running. Purely instinctual, panicked running, and turned a corner right into Heathcliff. Verifiably Heathcliff, this time, with all her Heathcliffiness. Heath said she knew the way to the cellar, but first she asked if Mistrial would help get the bindings off - It being an emergency. She had tried tearing her way out but was left with big loops hanging out from the sides and complained vociferously why Mistrial had to pack her so tight. Mistrial struggled with her work for a while, yanking here and there while Heath complained that she was just making everything tighter when a Red Devil turned the corner right into them. Heathcliff immediately thrust the end of the broom handle up into the witch’s eye, poking it up past her eyeball and snapping the cartilage of the lobe, then fled. “S-sorry,“ Mistrial said, to the jumping screaming victim and joined Heath in hauling ass right into the mix with two more devils shooting through on their brooms and Heathcliff leapt up like a cat and pulled the broom of one around into a wall, jamming it through the balustrade and sending the rider tripping over the handrail down into the lower floors. The remaining rider made a move to slap her with a hand that pulsed and glowed like coal but Heathcliff remained elusive within its clawing grasps. Mistrial came around with the handle of a stool and aimed to break it over the devil’s head but the witch, with a preternatural sense of her approach, swung back on her and drove that rough, crystallized hand directly into Mistrial’s soft belly, sending a whole world of pain shooting into her heart and from there out into every corner of her body so her underwear was shot through with blood. Completely blind, she turned a bookcase over on the assailant and stumbling was caught by Heath’s embrace, who vaulted the balustrade with her. They fell about ten feet when the bandages caught somewhere above and spun them wildly, over and over, halting them some ways above the floor below. Heath’s face bulged, caught by the neck, with Mistrial wrapped up prettily looking down the dark corners of her gasping throat, tongue lolling wildly, and it occurred to Mistrial to push forth a bit and fish around the underside of Heath’s tongue for that safety stitch she put in. She pulled the fine thread into her teeth and yanked back, snapping it cleanly. With that, Heath grabbed her by the wrist and shot up into the air led by the power of the broom once again, clearing them of the binds, then shot through the flame filled hall, spinning out of reach of the red glowing hands shooting out in defense of the space, then through the house at breakneck speed, skating up oncoming walls to bring the broom round quickly into the turns, then skirted through the open door of the cellar, slamming it shut behind them.