Elya blinked.

The first thing she registered was touch. Her feet were bare, just like the rest of her, and they felt not the gritty, coarse sand of an arena, nor the perpetually warm rock of Hell, nor the slick, bone-deep coolness of the floors of Maxwell's mansion.

They felt cool, damp dirt. Her skin felt not the arid, dry air of Hell, warmed instead of cooled by the occasional gust of wind, but a cool, cool, air and the warm, friendly touch of sunlight.

The silence did not last long.

Birdsong reached her ears first. Then, the rustling of wind through the leaves of a tree, and a distant stream babbling.

Four gasps, identical to her own, reached her ears.

Finally, the blinding light faded.

They were as they had been since reaching Hell, but Elya barely looked at them.

Grass! Real, living grass, came up to her knees. Off in the distance, she could see a band of forest stretching off into the distance, as well as a small handful of houses that hugged the river they appeared next to. The sky was a clear, endless blue dotted with clouds, with white clouds.

Elya sniffled, and then she began to tear up. They'd escaped! They'd made it! They'd-

"Damn, I wish I could cry."

She whipped around, wiping the water from her eyes. "No clue what you're talking about," she sniffed. "Now, Koenig-"

"It's gone."

She looked at him. In his hands was not the small compass he'd made earlier, but a bit of ashy dirt.

Neumann groaned. "Now how are we going to find her?"

"Well, as long as she's not trying to stay hidden," Weiss began, "I'm sure she's made an impact. All we'll have to do is go to a town or city and figure out where she is."

"Well," Grantz said, "if nothing else, I'm sure it won't be any harder than escaping from-"

"D- D- D-"

Elya turned, her brows furrowed at the unfamiliar voice.

It was, unequivocally, a peasant. If one were to imagine a peasant, who toiled away in fields and looked no further over the horizon than the nearest town to sell their extra food, then this person, from their dirty but sturdy clothing, to their weathered hands and face, fit the idea of a peasant perfectly.

He was also shaking, a word caught in his throat as he glanced at all of them in abject terror.

"D- DEMONS!"

Elya didn't understand what he'd said. Her eyes flicked to the others as he scrambled away from them.

Grantz, very tall and pale and gaunt, his features facial stretched upwards with his elongated skull, with rusty knives that dragged along the ground grasped in both hands. Their team's singular Type 13 hung from his neck.

Neumann, purple and rotund and wielding a club as tall as his height, one of their Type 97's struggling to reach around his neck and resting just above the divot in his chest he'd revealed was where the computation jewel he'd detonated when he'd died had rested.

Koenig, tall, sharp, lithe, and red, with knives for fingers and a piercing gaze, already somewhat familiar with at least a small sliver of this world.

Weiss, bulky and blue-skinned, with horns poking out from his hair.

And herself, who would look like a normal person if it weren't for the tail and wings and horns and the absolutely massive rack.

Also, none of them had clothes.

Right.

The man moved rapidly, spurring the donkey pulling his cart forward and, when it didn't move, he turned and ran towards the distant town without it.

"…Or maybe not," Grantz finished lamely. Elya stretched – with how grotesquely stacked she'd become, she had to do so regularly and often. "For now," she suggested, "we should probably hide. We can plan for finding Tanya and Visha later – as long as we aren't dead, we can do it later."

They agreed, and then they were off, heading towards the nearby forest.

Elya promised herself, as she had when she'd met God and been sent to Hell for her admiration for Degurechaff and her loyalty to Visha, that they'd meet them again. Somehow, someway, they'd find each other.

She's shake the hand of Visha's commander, and give her friend a hug – and try not to smother her to death in the process – and then, depending on if they'd gotten together or not, beat Degurechaff over the head with Visha's love until they accepted each other. Or, if they were already together, she'd tease the hell out of both of them for that earlier misstep that Visha had written her about.

The brief thought that Visha might not even be here touched her mind, but she dismissed it. Who else would she have come here with?

She grinned to herself, as they reached the woods and kept running, half-playful and half-vengeful. Then she'd do her level best to wring both of their necks for getting her caught up in this, because getting sent to HELL and then living in the Medieval wonderland Koenig had described instead of her home was absolutely not what she'd wanted to do with her life and she would make the two of them pay!

-OxOxO-

A/N 1: And thus the Five Most Loyal escaped hell!

This has been a fun side-project for Third Time's the Charm. I'm especially glad that I didn't try to put these scenes in the main story, because it's already got a lot of stuff going on.

Reading this won't be necessary to finish the main story, of course, but everyone who's taken the time to read it will be more aware of what happened to the Five Most Loyal compared to the people who read the main story and just get a summary when they eventually show up.

Regardless, I hope everyone who took the time to read this side-story enjoyed it!

A/N 2: If you'd like to donate to support me monetarily, search for Sugarcane Soldier on the website of the Patrons.

Thank you to WarmasterOku, Afforess, UNSC_Kawakaze, Theewizzz, Vee, malenkaya, Saito Tachibana, and GnashingBeef for supporting this story and everything else I write. Make sure to vote if you haven't yet!