The pair landed upside down. Gravity pushed them up and over the new edge of the world, then began to drag them back, as if it had just realized that it had almost let go of its prey. Pechi landed besides the river of lava, which had cooled to... water. She peered over the edge of the world and saw that as it flowed downwards, the lava seemed to transfigure itself into a blackened stone, and then to come out the other side, here, as dark waters. Within this murk were a number of bodies.

"Are these adventurers?" whispered Pechi. "D-d-do you think they make it this far? Often? And n-no one's won, still...?"

Alexa shook her head . "Seraph's own kin. If I had to make an educated guess, I'd say it was someone who it was inconvenient to save," Alexa said. "Are you prepared?"

"P-prepared f-f-for what?" asked Pechi. "Wh-what could possibly be worse than—"

Alexa's head tilted towards a swathe of woods behind them, which the river went into crooked. "Whatever special punishment this world cooks up for us."

Pechi grimaced. "A-as I w-was trying to say, c-can't b-be worse than b-b-being thrown into th-the depths of the u-underworld unexpectedly. H-how did you k-know w-w-we weren't going to die?"

"How did you not expect it? You're the one with the predictions," Alexa said. "The seraph wouldn't kill us with a quick fall. It wouldn't be any fun. Think ahead of it, Pechi. You know what it wants. You know what it wants of us."

Pechi bit her tongue. Her predictions for the day had promised something far more mundane. In fact, they had explained to her tedium, and across all her readings was the glare of the sun. Pechi could only hope it was the light of a coveted seraph horn, but that was likely too much to ask fate for. As Alexa strode forwards again, the enthusiasm that so animated her pulling them both into the filthy recesses of the shadows, Pechi asked, "A-and h-how do we r-r-remove ourselves f-f-from this h-hole when it's all over?"

"I'll levitate us back up," Alexa said.

"What if something happens to you?" asked Pechi.

"You won't be around to be stuck down here if anything happens to me," Alexa said, which was almost reassuring if you held it up to the light the right way and squinted hard.

The pair continued into the woods. It was a stark contrast to the forests that had animated the fourth world, which at least feigned a kind of warmth. These woods were fragile enough that each step caused the plant matter below them to click and snap, the leaf litter below looking less like the refuse of pants and more like the shrivelled charcoal that covered the surface. The trees were thick around, with unusual patterns of bark. The whorls of the ash-colored bark resembled faces stretched out in expressions of agony, and the entire forest was just not silent enough to convince Pechi that nothing lived in it.

She expected the soft groans of some tortured being in the trees (the seraph's tricks were getting old), but instead she heard the clatter of something between canopies. Alexa seemed to hear it, too, because the Canis's mouth twitched up into her signature snarl. Pechi lowered her head, fur raised, and she stopped. The sound intensified, picking up into a whistling and crackling noise. Several more noises of the sort ensued, and gold eyes watched them through the trees.

A bestial creature struck out into the light, its face half bird and half something more sinister. It looked like someone had torn a mask that had been forcefully melded on away from its face, leaving scarred tissue and half of the mask behind in the process. Its forelegs were covered in feather, leaving its back legs, which were barren of fur or other coverings, looking almost vestigial. The forelegs were also so much longer that they dragged on the ground, though the creature seemed to be trying to feign bipedalism as it loped towards them.

Pechi reached out with her mind. "Hello?" she offered.

The creature retaliated with a string of noise. Pechi felt herself attacked by a sudden violence, as if something was going through her limbs and picking them clean. Dozens of creatures emerged from the shadows, and as the first pounced, another slammed it down with one of those feathered arms. They all grabbed at each other as they tried to pull themselves forwards, smacking their beaks and clattering with awful noise.

Pechi snarled and a ring of white energy spread out from her, muffled somewhat by her coat. With whips of white light, she drove back harpies, and Alexa interjected with telekinetic prowess, slinging them into Pechi's streams of light only for Pechi to throw them back against the trees. The creatures jumped back with shock, and those who had been hit once bolted for the woods upon recovering.

"They don't like it when their victims have teeth, I take it," Alexa said. "That's unfortunate. We in Omnia have a habit of biting back."

Pechi nodded.

The woods grew eerily still, a stream of distant, dull light falling on them from the trees. It was impossible to tell its source, as the 'sky' above them here was pitch black, but the pale blue hues cast over the woods reminded Pechi of her room, in the most unsettling way possible. The light shone on blood and feathers that now coated the ground, and wandered up across the trees and flitted across the pair's faces. The two of them looked up, scenting the bloody tang of the air, and Pechi felt her heart pulse violently in her throat. Alexa's eyes were narrow and mutinous as she passed the white Canira.

Pechi heard laughter in the air. It was faint and breathy, more annoying than genuine, and the sound of it made her fur stand on end. "Do you hear that?" she asked Alexa.

"Hear what?" Alexa asked.

The laughter grew louder, echoing out across the land. It was impossible to tell what direction it was coming from, and it seemed to generate from outside their heads, so it wasn't telepathic communication. Some creature was out there, laughing at them, and the noise was beginning to sound unsettlingly like someone cracking branches-- or bones-- open.

"Who are you? Reveal yourself at once," warned Alexa, her eyes wide with electric fury.

"We're here!" snickered an oaken voice.

"And here!" chorused another.

"Here as well!" said a third. "Look up!"

Alexa noticed another beast in the trees and snarled. "I'm looking. Don't like what I see." She hurled a piece of charcoal at the tree, which caused the harpy to move away in astounded, furious clatter. It kept screeching as if it had been assaulted, joining its companions far back in the canopies, but the giggling that plagued the area only grew stronger.

"Look closer!" said the first voice. "You're not looking very closely at all."

Pechi tilted her head. She placed her forelegs against a tree and stared deeply into the face of one of the trees. The whorls contorted, as she watched, into not just a face but a whole body, stuck paralyzed and grinning in the tree's bark. Pechi's heart pulsed as she saw her own dark magics reflected back at her, in the form of the imprisonment of an alien.

Pechi was cruel as the gods. She bit her tongue with disgust. "Of course. Of course, of course, of course. A-A-Alexa. We need-- we need-- we n-n-need to leave. Now."

Alexa nodded. The great thing about Alexa, if you got around everything else about her, was that when you asked her to get a move on, she'd do it, happily. The only thing that truly bothered Alexa was not being on route to some initiative, but fortunately, she didn't have enough latent curiosity or interest in her crewmates to ask about their visceral reactions to magic that may or may not have resembled the magics that they were using to try to bring back their family who they may or may not have accidentally purposefully sold out to the government for smuggling.

Alexa and Pechi found themselves down by the river after a long walk on the stable plains of the banks, where Alexa eventually settled down, slumped halfway over the waters. She looked up and down the way, and Pechi followed her gaze, finding nothing.

"You'll never get out unless you know where you're going, and you don't know where you're going, and you don't know where you've been," one of the trees warned her. A new, equally alien shape blossomed from this one, but it was indisputable that that was a living thing. Those were the eyes, the branches had been limbs a long time ago, and the bark seemed to move up and down in a way that bark was not supposed to.

"D-d-do we take the river?" asked Pechi, putting a paw in. She regretted the decision at once, as the speed of the water picked up, and she found her paw deep in a dark, viscous liquid that was decidedly not water. Alexa reeled her back with telekinesis, hastily jerking the Canira out of the waters, and Pechi muttered a quick, "Th-thank you."

As the waters stilled to their usual meandering pace from their mercurial burst of speed, Pechi tried to wipe the liquid from her paw, only to smear it across the ground and get the dark leaves stuck to her, as well. Soon there was grime encasing her entire leg, and it smelled like the dead.

"Wh-what is that river m-m-made of?" asked Pechi.

"Oh, those are the luckiest ones. They're the ones who get out," said one of the trees.

"I c-c-can't--" Pechi stammered.

Alexa leaned in close. "Pechi. Don't listen to them. We're going to follow the river as far as we can. They're here to distract you. Don't let them."

Pechi nodded.

"Oh, you're Pechi!" cried one of the trees.

"Pechi, Pechi. You'd be in the river for sure. That's where they put everyone who hurts their neighbors," the tree said. "Lucky, lucky. Most of us hurt ourselves, which is why we're here, where the seraph decides how we get hurt, and when we get hurt. The seraph has been punishing us, but we deserve it. We've always deserved the worst kind of hurt, and we're here, where we can't hurt ourselves anymore."

"Cassie would be in the trees, though," said one.

"Nasty scratches!" chirped another.

Pechi walked faster, but the conversation followed her up the banks. The trees passed it between them like a game.

"She'd be a pretty tree."

"You'd love to make a tree out of her. That way it can live with you without coming back and hating you."
Pechi's ears fell flat to her sides. In spite of herself, she felt a shudder run up her whole body, and she pressed on, her coated paw clinging to the earth with more and more force. Whatever had her didn't want to let go, but none of these worlds ever did.

"H-h-how do you k-know all this about me?" asked Pechi, taking the bait with a defiant look upwards, at the grotesque face of a thing with many fangs that had now become splinters in the bark.

"The Lamb tells us about you," promised the tree before them, giggling in a wheezy way that seemed far too high for the pitch of its voice and the contents of its face. Its voice growing more sinister, it asked, "Do you want to know what he tells us about Alexa?"
The tree's face compacted as Alexa crushed it beneath her mental grip.

"B-bored of the conversation?" asked Pechi.

The trees fell silent.

"You freed him?" asked one, at last.

"He's freed," another said.

"Come free me," announced one. "I am the one with the crusted bark and the bend, and when the harpies land they nick my branches off. Free me next."

"Free me!" argued another. "I dream of the time I almost succeeded in leaving this place every night, when I almost fell over from the rot the harpies caused me."

"Free me next," a third argued. "I'm more desperate. I deserve it more. I barely hurt myself and this place is nothing but hurt, and the seraph says it will let us rest soon, but it loves us, it loves us too much, and I don't want to be loved anymore!"

Alexa smashed in another, but her face was already contorted into a mask of confusion layered with mild disgust. Her telekinetic grip knocked trees around in quick succession, and by the time she was finished, the only whispers were from a long ways off, still begging for release even though they had never even seen the silent freer of their kind.

Alexa heaved a breath. She continued down the way, and Pechi looked on at the broken faces, the content, and the sap scars down their bodies. A harpy rustled in the brush and then ran away at their approach, rising into the sky and flapping its oversized wings. A violent cry echoed from its mouth, once and again, and Alexa leered at a final tree, left alone in the center of her massacre.

"Can you tell us where to go next?" Alexa asked.

"The Lamb wouldn't like that," it said. "Free me if you're so angry. Strike me down."

Alexa shook her head. "If you don't speak, I'll leave you alone. When those beasts in the trees find out they only have one soul left to pick on, I'm sure they'll give you extra attention."

"Oh, please," whimpered the tree.

Alexa turned to go. "We have other ways of finding the exit," she promised Pechi.

"Please," said the tree, its voice receding. "I came here like you, so long ago, and none of my teammates knew what I had been hiding... when they heard the things the trees said about me, they were disgusted, and then they didn't even try to save me when the plant matter started encasing me. I've been here so long, and there's no sun, which the plant wants, and there's no one who really feels anything anymore. It's so cold. I'm so alone."

"Prepare to be more alone," Alexa said.

"Please," the tree begged. "It won't like that. It won't. I can't say."

Alexa swished her tail. She took another step towards the edge of the clearing.

"This forest is an endless circle. You need to jump," it said. "Almost no one takes the leap of faith, so almost no one goes that far."

The tree crumpled like a can being compressed under the pressure of the ocean. Alexa ground it into sawdust with her grip, the remains sprinkled in pieces across the ground. She looked back to Pechi, as if expecting an answer.

"You don't need to thank me," Alexa said. "For doing all the work, or for choosing not to pry on your secrets."

"Th-th-thanks," Pechi sighed. "B-b-but you k-know enough about m-me."

"Do I?" asked Alexa.

"Of c-c-course you do," Pechi said. "Th-that's wh-why you're honest with me. Y-y-you d-d-don't pretend th-that there's s-s-something worthwhile in th-there worth saving."