POV Jacob

  "Is that… Did we reach the end?" Ava asks in confusion as I'm about to poke a patch of darkness with my spear.

  "It's another cave, and there's something in there," Sam says in his new, irritable tone, like we were being stupid for not having night vision.

  "Many somethings, we can hear them, flapping?" Mia says in a much more helpful tone as Twitch the rabbit hops around, ears on a swivel.

  "So make a bottleneck kill zone and lure the somethings out of their spooky…Noah, fancy word for no light?"

  “Um, Umbra?” Noah responds in confusion.

  "I'm not sure that works, but thank you." I thank him regardless.

  "Jacob, please focus," Ella says in exasperation.

  "Sorry, claustrophobia is jarring, anywaaayyy…" I start before Sam interrupts.

  "Or we could just turn back, we don't need to go through there," Sam says as he frantically begins to scratch the back of his head again with such ferocity that I wouldn't be surprised if he drew blood. "I mean, it's just a cave, we can find another one somewhere back the way we came from. It wouldn't take too long to get back the way we came. It's not too far." Sam starts to ramble as he keeps scratching his head and looking around frantically, slowly heading back the way we came.

  We all stare at him for a moment before Mia suddenly yells, "Nope, I think they heard us and are coming."

  "You!... You talked too much, and we have to fight them. Why do you make us fight everything, you bastard?!?." Sam snarls out with both hands, scratching at his head in clear discomfort and anger as he screams incoherently.

  "Riiiight, guys, I'm starting to think something is off with Sam." My statement causes Noah to look at me with the unmistakable 'no shit' expression, while Sam just starts cursing my name so bad I think he's set a new record.

  "Mia, could you help him like you did Jacob yesterday?" Ella asked Mia, referring to the metal check, to see if I was possessed.

  "Nah, he looks fine," Noah says in what I assume is sarcasm while talking out his shield and hammer, looking between the Cave and Sam as if he is unsure of what to focus on.

  "There's nothing wrong with me! You are the one trying to kill everything! You're insane! You're all insane for following him! I'm going back! I need to go back, don't try to stop me!" Sam roars as he starts to pull at his hair and scream.

  'Kind of an inconvenient time to have a breakdown, Sam.' With a flex of my will, I send a current of power through the floor towards my panicking friend, sinking him roughly a foot into the ground before turning to look at the entrance to the large cave. I jumped up to the roof and slipped my fingers into the softened stone so I could channel my power into the brittle material, causing it to melt and sag towards the floor, narrowing the entrance into a bottleneck.

  "Let me go you…" Whatever Sam was screaming about was quickly drowned out by the sound of countless flapping wings and high-pitched screeching that slammed into me with enough force to knock me off the roof and towards Noah, who had taken position by the door as a one-man shield wall. I flail around in mid air before slamming into Noah's shield with a pained groan. Forcing myself to move, I dart around to Noah's side and start frantically stabbing at a swarm of something. I couldn't make out their black forms against the inky darkness of the cave, but they bled red just the same when I plunged a knife into their flesh.

  But no matter how much I slashed and stabbed the swarm just kept coming, biting and scratching at my face and anything they could get a hold of, cutting the head off one of whatever they were I give a quick glance towards Noah to see him unharmed as the creatures couldn't break through his amour and cysteine skin as he waved his hammer through the air in the hopes of landing a hit against our agile foes.

  A void approaches my eyes, causing me to flinch backwards and focus on the swarm of unseen enemies. After a few moments, I noticed Ava come to my side with a kinetic hammer made of water and chipped stone, which tore through the monster with ease, making it rain crimson and finally revealing the outline of the creatures we were facing.

  They were a large bat-like creature the size of a toddler, with claws on the tips of their wings and feet, slashing out at us with selfless abandon as their comparatively small head released an endless, high-pitched scream that only stopped once it lay dead on the floor. While we could barely make out the blood-covered individuals, it did not give us an idea as to how many were in the swarm. It appeared endless as they kept diving at us in a suicidal rush that would have Ava and me die by a thousand cuts in under ten minutes if nothing changed.

  I tried to think of a solution, but I couldn't bring down the roof in all this chaos, and the wall of flesh would make any Molotov cocktail more likely to hit us than to cause the swarm any real damage. 'Wait, where are Mia and Ella?'

  I turn my head quickly to look behind me to see a large, horrific humanoid looming over my friends as they hold Sam down as he thrashes around like a wild animal. It has gaunt grey skin with bulging black veins that press against the thin membrane; it moves with slow, unnatural, twitchy movements, panting like a mutt in midsummer heat. Its disturbingly human face stretched into a manic grin as it stared at Sam with an expression of unrestrained hunger.

  By some twisted sense of fate, none of my friends noticed the slowly advancing monster that seemed to blend into the stone walls and shadows as they tried to heal Sam.

  ‘Oh hell no.’ I'm about to try and yell a warning over the black bat's screams when a claw finds its way to the back of my head, making me stumble. I spin around in self-preservation as another bat sinks its fangs into my neck and latches on like a vampiric parasite.

  With a snarl of rage, I fully inhale, flooding my body with oxygen and newfound strength. The spark within me roars to life as I pull on my power, yanking it into place and ripping it through my body with little self-regard for unimportant things, such as tearing my body apart. I pressed the power into my neck, but it wouldn't travel into the bat that was latched onto my flesh even as I continued to stab into the horde.

  I pushed again, but all it did was shake my insides as the power was forced beyond my limit. 'Guess I'll just have to try harder.' The words echo in my mind, mocking my efforts, but I didn't have time to monologue. Summoning the healing tonic into my mouth, I try again. I can't affect the living, but the living can be affected by my raw energy, power that burned my insides could burn the flesh of these meat suits. With an internal scream of defiance, I ripped the power out of my neck and into the air surrounding the bat drinking from my neck and into the inky blackness of the cave. Then, with an almighty push, I flooded the air with my current.

  At once, my blood started to boil, and a blue haze obscured my vision. Cyan lightning lashes forth from my neck, striking down the swarm of bats in droves. Instantly, the screams changed from an annoying, high-pitched squeal to a guttural roar of anguish as the bats fell like flies. But the lightning wouldn't stop pouring from me like water from a broken dam that lashed out at the cave. Not having time to use my inventory, I reach into the pile of corpses, holding in the gag as my stomach lurches with power, and make a spear of solidified corpses, turn around and launch it at the creepy monstrosity closing in on my friends.

  Not trusting my aim, I throw the spear made of solidified blood, flesh and bone at its malnourished torso. It hits true, tearing through its skin and into its stomach before exploding into a shower of gore once my power within the crude spear diminished.

  It stumbles back and grasps at its wound, the manic hunger gone from its deranged face as pain spreads through its body like a terrible virus that ravages its body. If it made a noise, I couldn't hear it over the swarm, but the blood splatter finally got Ella out of her trance, allowing her to see the monstrosity looming over her.

  She flinches back in horror before snapping out of her shock and shooting several arrows at the beast, causing it to collapse as an arrow finally pierces its eye, its corpse falling backwards in a heap. But despite the small victory, I was becoming worried. I couldn't stop the lightning. Nor could I control it. My blood sang in a sweet symphony of agony as it boiled; my hazy eyes seemed to glow, blocking out everything other than the light blue tint. I heard screams from my friends as the scorching lightning started to lash out indiscriminately, filling the air with the stench of burning flesh. I felt liquid stone fall onto my collapsing body. Melted stone dragged my sinking form into the floor of the closing tunnel as I fell to my knees, unable to muster the energy to stand. More stones fell onto me before I heard an ear slitting boom that shook the cave.

  I felt fire lick my skin through the gaps in the liquid rock just before the weight of the tunnel roof collapsed onto me, and the world split in half. Whatever the first explosion was, it must have set off a chain reaction, because it felt as if the very earth were collapsing, trapping me within a tomb of my own making, my mind and body unravelling from the strain of the blue lightning, before the world finally turned black.

  Floating through the darkness, muttering, and vague shapes swim through my mind. I try to reach out to them, but they slip through my grasp until they slowly build up around me into a cold, sterile room. A room I both knew intimately and feared. Dr Singh's room, Rheumatology department, Southmead hospital. Or at least a memory of it. I look around groggily, taking note of my bare arm with bruised veins from too many blood tests and my mother sitting next to me, sitting stiff as a rod as she spoke to the doctor.

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  "What do you mean?" She asks, concern laced into every word. Her voice made my heart ache with loss as I turned to face the woman who raised me. Her curls frame her soft face, sending memories crashing into my mind.

  "It is a rare systemic autoimmune disease. A type of vasculitis, an inflammation of the blood vessels. It can affect people differently and targets specific organs. In Jacob's case." He gestures to me as I try to read the long, complicated name of the disease on the screen. "It appears to be causing fatigue, temperatures, sinus infections, stomach pain and coughing. But with a history of IBS and asthma, it's hard to tell on those last two." He states in a calm voice. "But it is treatable." He says, at the end, trying to reassure us as yet more medical gibberish appears on the screen, the letters squishing, merging, and changing, making it impossible for me to read or remember even after he gives the medicine's name.

  "But you said that it can cause skin cancer." My mother exclaimed in worry.

  "There is a chance, but it, along with the other side effects, are very rare." He says reassuringly. The familiar itch of a scalpel slicing through chemically numbed flesh contradicts him even before he can finish his sentence.

  The room shakes as pale blue lightning flickers at the corner of my vision, but neither of the two memories appear to notice. "So I'm just killing myself with extra steps?" I ask, knowing my lines by heart with how often I relived this exact moment.

  "Well, not really, it's more your body is attacking itself…" He tries to correct me, but I ignore him as more sparks of power dance through the corners of the room.

  "Still, it's good to know what's happening. Just got to take control of the situation. Try harder. You know how it is." I struggle to stand on my shaking legs.

  "Well, it's not really a matter of trying as it is…" He tries to carry on the internal play, but I ignore him and face my mother "Love you mum, so much. But hopefully I won't see you again for a while." She looks at me, frozen, almost buffering, the memory of the woman, not sure how to respond. A small smile spreads across my face as I begin to slowly unravel the memory into countless pieces that slowly fade into nothingness.

  The image may have shattered, but the message my subconscious was trying to tell me was clear. I was killing myself. Again. Somehow. But this time was different; I started it and was going to put an end to it. Or at least that's what I thought until I entered my mind palace and saw the absolute behemoths duking it out in the sky.

  "What in the shit is that?" I ask, aloud as I stare up at the carnage happening within my mind. Just below the layer of clouds that made up the roof of my mind flew three titans of immense size, dwarfing even the colossal waves that stormed through my memory sea. Their clashes sent shockwaves of pressure through my mind, and I could feel them tearing me apart, little by little, with each clash. One was a pure combustion of flame and heat that fought with an equaling burning sword that looked to be propelled by jets of fire and plasma.

  The second, smaller Titan was made from a ball of blue fog and lightning, which seemed to be trying to form itself into what looked like my silhouette in a particular shade of blue, often staring back at me in the mirror. Now that I think about it, the glow from my eyes was also the same as my eye colour.

  I had no idea what any of it meant, but I was quickly distracted by the last and smallest Titan, a greyish-black ball made entirely of mouths that bounced chaotically between the other combatants, its teeth bared like a wild animal as it tried to bite anything and everything.

  And yet. Somehow. Despite the strangeness of it all, the Titans felt like they belonged. Even as they beat the shit out of each other while flying in the sky. How I knew this, I had no idea. I just knew that the fractured portal felt foreign and like it wasn't meant to be there, but these strange creatures radiated a sense of kinship. Could it be some kind of manipulation? Absolutely, but I lost nothing by asking, so that's what I did.

  Willing myself into the air, I approached the clashing giants in a wobbly flight. When I was finally level with the enormous creatures, I called out a greeting, "Hello, huge creatures that are somehow in mind!" My voice echoes across my mind Palace in a resounding boom that makes the Titans pause what they were doing and turn to look at me. Or at least I think they did? None of them had eyes. But they stopped, and that was progress.

  The lull in the battle finally allowed me to take a breather I didn't know I needed. I felt the strain on my mind and body ease for a moment, allowing me to stand up straight in the face of their overwhelming might. Now that I was closer, I could almost feel the invisible presence of each creature, their aura sparking emotions and memories within me. Boiling blood, a need to protect and sharp blades. Excitement, passion, lightning and boundless energy. Hunger, the drive forward and consumption in the name of strength.

  None of them were bad per se, but they weren't necessarily good either. Any kind of rogue elements in my mind were bad in my books, but these manifestations represented key parts of me. I didn't know what any of it meant, and having boiling blood was definitely a no-go, so I started trying to talk to…Myself?

  "I don't know what's going on, but it's killing me, and if I die, you have nowhere to go. So we are going to have to find a different way to settle whatever the hell this is. Understood?" I tried to lace my voice with confidence and authority, but if the Titans heard it, they ignored me as they went straight back to fighting.

  I tried talking again, but they didn't listen. I tried asserting my will over the manifestations of myself, but it failed miserably. I could feel my body breaking down, and my mind began to slip away, even within my own mind palace.

  If I were truly going to die, I might as well make the most of my last moments. With nothing to lose, I throw myself at the Titans, determined to take at least one down with me before I say goodbye to this miserable existence. Imbuing my strikes with willpower and transforming the space around me into bungee cords, I launch myself into the fray like an arrow from a bow.

  But as I get in and amongst the battling behemoths, I begin to notice things. The smaller two Titans were trying to subdue the flaming humanoid, flashes of images within my mind that I don't remember but know are my own, and lastly, punching a tower-sized being of pure fire does fuck all.

  My fist lands squarely upon the blazing Titan's neck, and images of a small dingy studio apartment housing a family of five flash through my mind. I launch myself upwards, into an uppercut, and towering glass structures obscure my mind's eye. A kick slams into its flaming head, forcing scenes of floating vehicles being swept away by a tidal wave of blood and sewage to resonate through my mind.

  Blue lightning strikes to my side while the mass of mouths holds back the perpetually exploding sword. But despite all this, the flaming creature stood firm, barely moving an inch, before it exploded into a flurry of sword forms I had no way of knowing that knocked us all backwards and flooded my mind with memories I had never experienced. Days at school, nights running from the monsters that haunted the streets. Pills and needles to feel alive. Being cut open in government black sites. Drowning in tornadoes forged of frigid water.

  The last one makes me pause. Water. Antithesis. The thought clicks into place in my mind like the last piece of a particularly annoying puzzle. I could feel my body breaking down in the physical world, my blood scorching my veins as it screams for release from its fleshy prison, but I don't let it stop me. Pain was an old friend, wherever it was by my own hand or the natural forces that tried to take me to an early grave, I never let it stop me before, and I will be damped if I start now.

  With a pained smirk, my mind twists to my will. My ego falls from the sky, no longer needed as emotions and thoughts surge through my mind palace. The being of fire was pierced by memories of cold, water, and ice, raised from the deep ocean of my liquid past, which froze into spires of glistening glaciers.

  Thoughts of selfishness, disregard for human life, and unyielding hatred for humanity strike from the storming clouds above, weaving around the burning Titan in a lattice of contempt, pinning it to the towers of crystalline ice. And for once flames flutter and stumble backwards only to be held in place by mental constructs, causing its body to rip open and the ice to grow outwards in sharp thorns, spreading within the body like a pathogenic rose.

  More and more ground was taken by force, allowing me to summon healing tonic and crystals into my body's gullet, forcing it to keep going as it was torn apart. Agony seeped into my very being as I felt my soul fracture at the strain of killing a long forgotten part of myself. But I kept pushing forward. Ice froze through the flame, selfish thoughts forged into lightning strikes manifested into plasma, and my body slowly started to crawl forward.

  Melted crystals fueled my advance through the solid stone that was given no choice but to bend to my will. Healing tonic stitched my fraying body back together one cell at a time. Each moment brought forth a fresh hell, numb and burnt fingers pulled me forward through jagged stone that cut through my skin, unleashing steaming blood. Mental fortitude unravelled at the self-mutilation within my mind. Willpower ebbed and strained against the Titan as it broke through another shackle of frozen memories. But a plan began to form within my mind. Most would call it mad, but that was all part of the fun in the game we call life. For if it wasn't enough to think the thoughts, I had to truly mean them, allow them to strike down the beast within. So I sank into the ever-present depression.

  It would be so easy to give up. To finally rest after all these years. 'I've tried my best, haven't I? Pushed through the months of debilitating fevers, years of ridicule and a lifetime of not being good enough, as if my greatest accomplishment has always been and will always be, being born. Just a footnote in the lives of those who truly matter.' Cracked and bloodied nails scrape against the stone as I manage to heave myself another centimetre.

  'It's not like my death would really change much, at most, the others wouldn't have as many tools, but the magic shop thing coming will probably replace me soon enough anyway. Even if I live, I won't be missed, ignored and forgotten in an endless cycle as I try to latch onto anyone and everyone who shows me kindness.' My hand falters against the hard rock, ice shatters in my mind as I slow my crawl of freedom. 'What was the point? I live now to just be ignored until I die somewhere else?'

  My hand slips against the unbroken stone, my burning head falls forward and slams against the cool rock's surface. 'Just resting,' I tell myself, but I knew it was a lie. I had long ago outlived my welcome in this accursed world.

  And yet I didn't give up, I couldn't. Words began to fall out of my lips that came from so deep within me that every other word before them felt like a lie. "I wanted to live, I wanted to experience everything this twisted world has to offer, and I wanted to be free, to live without my burdens. To finally be free to forge my own destiny. It didn't matter if I was beaten, broken and abandoned, I would see my life through to its fullest." My fingers once again dig into liquid stone. My thoughts strike the Titan with my conviction. My pledge.

  If it was created by parts of myself that cherished and wanted to protect others, I would just have to let those parts falter. Strengthen my resolve to live life the way I want.

  Blue arcs of lightning flash through my mind as the passion forged Titan blitzes forward with renewed vigour to resume the onslaught against the flaming behemoth that was once again being pushed back. More and more strikes landed on the weakening Titan as passion became interwoven with excitement, fueled by my newfound desire and channelled through the empowered Titan. Until finally wisps of flame scattered up through the clouds into parts of my mind and maybe even my soul that I could not follow. At least not yet.

  I knew it wasn't dead and it would be back as I continue to push myself down my path, but its absence finally allowed the healing tonic to make progress through my battered body. My blood stopped boiling, and the other Titans slowly faded through the storming layer of clouds, leaving me with more questions and an aching soul that the rapidly diminishing tonic couldn't soothe. But that would have to wait.

  I needed to get out of the hole I had dug myself into before I ran out of crystals. I couldn't risk waiting for the healer to disappear into the winding tunnels before I was patched up. So, with a sigh, carrying the weight of my bone-deep exhaustion, I once again reached into the stone and pulled myself forward.