[The Great Khan] said: "It is all useless, if the last landing place can only be the infernal city, and it is there that, in ever-narrowing circles, the current is drawing us. "

And Polo said: "The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of the inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space."
- Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino

In school Lia was beaten not for coming last, but for being insubordinate. They took out strips of her skin, but they couldn’t take out the insubordination, not completely. Teachers at first, superiors later, she loathed them for their stupidity, for their contempt, for the simple fact that they demanded her submission and took control of her life. And she realized that she loathed Asmodeus as well.

Even when she fled, she did not think it likely that she would escape Hell. She knew that she was not Good and had little Good in her. The lexicon of her heart seemed to lack pity, guilt, and gratitude. When she recalled those she had harmed, she felt satisfaction, or irritation, or nothing at all; as for those who had helped her, she hated them, and hated all the more those who had helped her the most. She did not think of atoning, but of becoming mighty, and raising her tower, and exploding any troublesome interlopers. That was a pretty dream.

And then Lia thought that in all likelihood slaves of Asmodeus were permitted no dreams besides those that tormented them, and that this particular fantasy surely lay beyond the grasp of even the mightiest in His service, for there would always be those above them that they were forbidden to explode. And she thought that she was neither Asmodeus’s slave nor His servant, so why should she deliver herself willingly to Him? No, she should struggle, because her soul was still her own, and make for Axis or any other place she liked; if He wanted her then He would have to force her, and she really didn’t think He gave a damn.

So she struggled, and in time she found that she had more emotions than she had thought; they came awake like a limb that had fallen asleep, in pins and needles. It would have been better if that limb had rotted and fallen away entirely, because then her dreams that had been simple and concrete became muddled and complex; and now, when she imagined her tower, she felt resentment not only towards those knocking at the door but also at herself ensconced within the walls, as if she had become an interloper in her own fantasy.