“Just one more unkillable mythical god-monster for me to murder. Barely an inconvenience.”

  While Zuzia is locked in battle to the east, Daniel in the Citadel says that line to try to reassure Jeavana, but his own heart is racing and sweat is racing down his back. Little of that sweat can truly be blamed on the heat in the room, even if he was brazen enough to try. He likely used his entire budget of brazenness making such a confident declaration in the face of an enemy that already knows he’s present.

  The mechanic thinks to himself, Kaeralegier?

  “{Here Daniel. Stay focused and fire quickly. I think Senn is about to falter.}”

  She could have killed it if she wasn’t defending us. I owe her a lot, and here I am too afraid to turn around. But, Jeavana is safe enough now. Daniel looks up at the wall. It is stained with black charring, cherry red stone, and the glow of flames scattered behind him. Yep. A nice final boss room for a video game.

  “{Denial, huh? Good call. Right, then. Twenty mill or Rail?}”

  Rail gun, replies Daniel through his thoughts as he turns. He and Kaeralegier can’t afford to hide her right now, but thankfully, Ryukana and Amalaskae are distracted elsewhere.

  The mechanic draws Nemaisol from its sheath, and as soon as the blade tip leaves the scabbard, Kaeralegier alters the sword’s form into a futuristic, blocky rifle even for Daniel. It doesn’t have a ‘barrel’ like the Dragonslayer rifles, but instead, has a guiding channel between long arms fastened together to keep from pulling towards each other while maintaining the perfect distance.

  Daniel spent his formative teenage years like many of his peers. He played a lot of video games as escapism, as well as movies and shows. And, one of his favorite genres, certainly not setting him apart due to the popularity, was the zombie survival subgenre.

  Seeing a rotting ghoul in a video game, though, is much different than seeing the recognizable form of a dragon Daniel himself slayed.

  And more importantly, beheaded.

  Morthybargaron had a distinctive red sheen, like a firetruck painted with actual rubies. Much of that luster has darkened to a more grim tone, like the darker hue of fresh venous blood with a faint backlight behind it. There is some shimmer to his crimson scales, but not all of them are even still present.

  And, from the various old scars, and the new wounds made by Daniel in the dragon’s last moments, a violet-hued black substance oozes like a bubbling tar, or even a sinister black molasses that possesses such a dense, seemingly light-swallowing shade as to appear unnatural like a drawing of the reality before him. This surreal shadow-liquid is given the third dimension only in ghostly wisps by the subtle, gossamer impurities that imbue the foreboding ichor with a quality as if driving the light away just as much as swallowing it entirely.

  The dragon’s neck, which was severed to ensure Morthybargaron couldn’t be revived, has been reattached in a way Daniel might expect from supernatural forces beyond the work of a self-taught genius like Victor Frankenstein, yet sloppy and incomplete as if this reanimated wretch was little more than a tool assembled not in haste, but with absolute apathy.

  When the creature inhales deeply to precede its most natural of attacks as the dragon it once was, the many holes in its airway slurp and stutter until the viscous black ichor is pulled in as if to seal the holes and provide a brief, foreboding moment of eerie silence as the two beings from opposing spectrums of virtually all philosophical planes face each other.

  Ba-dump.

  Daniel can feel each and every one of his heartbeats right now. The first time he faced this particular dragon, he was afraid, but he had his most deadly weapon in his arsenal.

  The element of surprise.

  He is too afraid to act, standing like a fool as he watches a true embodiment of the Grim Reaper, born of this world’s most sinister, start to separate its jaws. The pilot flame is dark and as foreboding as the dragon’s false blood, and it momentarily strips the tiny human of his video-game defense.

  “Daniel!” screams out Senn as he falters, but it is already too late.

  As if to emphasize the moment of horror, the moment the draconic ghoul begins its exhale, the sinister ichor roils and erupts as if brought to an instantaneous boil, the sheer force of the monster’s exhale overcoming the dark power of the viscous tar-like substance. Yet, even as it all but stands on end like an enraged wolf’s fur or an angered bird’s feathers, far less of the dark ooze sheds away, clinging by its own syrupy cohesion. This effect, as the pressure passes through the neck of the creature to project its breath forward like a profane Prometheus, causes the sinister ichor to fan out around its neck in a near complete circle, not unlike a liquified frill on a dilophosaurus or other frill lizards.

  The breath is terrifying enough on its own, streaking towards the fragile wayward human like a merciless stampede of fire that sends a moment of true terror through Daniel. Once more, he simultaneously has no time at all and all the time in the world to reflect on his life, and the promises he has failed to keep. He is entranced by the absolute power he was never ready to truly face off against, backdropped by the crackles of electrical arcs dancing between the strings of demonic necromantic blood flaring out behind the reanimated fiend’s chipped and broken horns.

  WHOO-ROARRRR!

  Daniel makes sense of it as he’s flying through the air. He was catapulted aside by a blast of wind, narrowly avoiding the immolating column of poisoned, unnaturally grey-hued flames. Having seen Neith’s finishing necromancy breath, the mechanic wouldn’t be surprised if the monstrous former dragon mixed the same into its fire breath, since it presumably can’t produce more ignityal once it runs out, if it’s truly just a reanimated corpse.

  What is surprising is that Daniel is still alive, and he coughs as he slides across the floor. The impact was not gentle, and all of his aching joints and muscles are pained greatly once more from the continuous string of grueling events he has been going through recently. That said, his brain has successfully been knocked clear of the fearful trance, and he scrambles to sit up, snatching Nemaisol in railgun form. He aims quickly as the dragon flexes its head back and forth, seemingly seating itself, settling the ichor into place, or simply annoyed by the sticky substance moving like bubbling, toxic mane. In the absence of pressure, the substance slowly drips like cold molasses, forming long, stretching strings to the ground where each individual ‘droplet’ forms a puddle unto itself, due to the draconic ghoul moving around so much.

  Daniel takes a breath, since Senn only bought him a singular moment, and the dragon seems all too aware of who he is, even if its mind, will, and body are no longer his own.

  The Harbinger of Calamity squeezes the trigger, and the goddess-possessed weapon whines as it charges. Divine energy coalesces at the muzzle, and Morthybargaron’s reanimated corpse shifts its posture. If it does actually have some visceral memory of that moment, the shot that killed Morthybargaron was the first and aimed specifically at him, coming without warning and just enough power to destroy his heart. Any weaker, and it wouldn’t have pierced through the dragon’s scales, since it shattered just inside his flesh and tore his heart apart, but didn’t even fully penetrate the organ itself.

  Whether it knows what’s coming specifically or not, the blasphemous puppet feints to one side before ducking to the other.

  Daniel does his best, but his own hands are shaking from terror. Regardless, he snaps the weapon back as fast as he can in the last instant that it fires. The ghoul already has his foreclaw down, halting his momentum, but even the 20mm would have been inescapable once the hammer struck.

  In this case, time is all but irrelevant for the brief instant that an apparent line of light connects Daniel and the dragon. The bullet is long buried in the wall or several other walls behind the dragon by the time the muzzle even makes its deep, thrumming boom like something out of a sci-fi movie. The air explodes with a supersonic crack as if a bomb just went off, even without an explosion projecting the bullet forward. The sheer velocity of the small slug, summoned and enhanced by Kaeralegier, delivers so much force upon the seemingly galvanized corpse, that its own upper arm, just below the shoulder, seems to pop like a water balloon filled with the fiendish black blood.

  The dragon lets out a terrible wail, though it doesn’t seem to be explicitly from pain, so much as just a chaotic noise of a monster as it shifts tactics.

  “That’s right,” murmurs Daniel, doing his best to stay focused. He aims at the ghoul’s chest. Can you fire again, Kaeralegier?

  “{I can, but try to limit how many times you miss. I’m basically spitting off active sonar pings every time I do that.}”

  Sorry, and thank you.

  Daniel squeezes the trigger, and the weapon whines as it charges once more.

  In those crucial slices of a second, the putrescent dragon corpse whips his tail forward and slaps its own arm towards Daniel.

  Damn it! curses the mechanic. He struggles to his feet, but he has to do the only obvious choice. Nemaisol fires as a railgun, and the dismembered arm explodes in midair before it can reach him, splitting into two more large chunks that slam the ground and tumble past him.

  “{Well, I guess that one couldn’t be helped. Nice shot.}”

  Daniel aims at the dragon again, but just as he starts to squeeze the trigger, it makes strange, gurgling growl that drains the same inky black ichor from between its teeth, giving it a wicked, somewhat-rabid appearance. It inhales again, but Daniel has seen dragons in action enough times now to know what’s about to happen and what, more specifically, is not imminent.

  “Xyreko! If you can hear me! Evacuate everyone from the room!”

  The dragon exhales, and it quickly obscures its own body with a thick, flickering black cloud that seems to be impenetrable to all light but the faint, ghastly glow from within.

  Daniel fires again, and the supersonic crack echoes through the room. He realizes that, even if Xyreko can respond to him, he can’t really hear it right now.

  “I know I’m stuck,” shouts Daniel, suspecting the golem caretaker is protesting. He backs away from the cloud as it fills the room. “But, if it’s a spell, I should be the only one who can withstand it. And, if it’s not a spell, then there seems to be some time. Remember what I told you about the elements. Take all of the elements but Oxygen out of the air in the room. I can’t hear you if you’re talking, so you have to trust me.”

  Daniel knows that a dragon’s venom vaporized is poisonous, though far less potent than its liquid form. As long as he minimizes his breathing, when the vapor encroaches, he stands a chance of surviving long enough.

  “{Simply throw Nemaisol out of reach, Daniel. Then Xyreko can transport you.}”

  Daniel realizes that it’s a logical decision, but just as he’s thrusting the shapeshifting magical weapon forward in blind trust of the voice speaking to him in his own mind, he narrowly grips his hand, catching the stock by mere centimeters.

  Horror fills him, but he also realizes he needs to move quickly, and he dashes backwards and to the side. The dragon knows where he was last located as well, and it is far larger than he is. It can clear the distance of the room in an instant, and the only things holding it at bay were Yaulwembor and Senn, but the room is still intact and Senn should have been evacuated.

  Daniel shouts, “Xyreko! Golems, full broad!" He scans the black smoke that is quickly filling the other half of the room and rolling forebodingly towards him.

  Think, Daniel… Why would she want me to discard Nemaisol and escape? Can she hear my thoughts like Kaeralegier? Why was she able to speak to me with Nemaisol drawn? Damn it!

  His breathing is getting heavier and heavier as doom rolls closer and closer to him.

  Flashes denote the cannons firing from the walls, and the scatter blasts of anti-magic buckshot descend into the evil fog with seemingly ineffectual whisps. Daniel can feel the blasts more than he can hear them, renewed deafness with each shot threatening to make his hearing loss permanent.

  Show me just one scale, Morty. I killed you once already.

  “{Calm down, Daniel. Scan calmly, or it will get the drop on you. I’m with you. Like you said, fire me the moment you have sight of it.}”

  Daniel hesitates. The voice is exactly the same. Each time after the speech about fourteen needles, it has only been Kaeralegier’s voice reaching him.

  He knows something should be happening right now. He knows he shouldn’t be alive. The ghoul isn’t Morthybargaron. It is only his corpse being puppeteered by a sinister master beyond edge of the known reality. She has tendrils reaching into the world from the abyss, and this was just one more demonstration of her power.

  Daniel could fire blind into the smoke, but it would give away the delay time, and the reanimated dragon would be free to strike. It’s a basic stand-off. It’s not true mutually-assured destruction in this case, since it will come down to the first one to land a deadly blow.

  The tense moment drags out for an unbearably long time, and the oppressive black cloud seems to linger in Daniel’s field of view like the inescapable darkness of the deepest cave. It has already started to swirl around his feet, but nothing seems to be happening.

  That is, until the sinister black mist finally seems to fade, sinking down like a balloon deflating.

  That’s when the true horror strikes him.

  There is a gigantic hole in the wall behind where Morthybargaron’s corpse was, and Daniel is stunned for a long time. He almost runs forward, but he halts himself.

  The corners are still obscured, but he finds it difficult to believe something as large as Morthybargaron would be able to hide in the areas still obstructed by the sticky mass of smoke.

  The air smells and tastes sour like he’s in the presence of a long-decayed corpse, while the foreboding volcanic smell of sulfur and other inhospitable components seems to round off the overall oppressive atmosphere of pure evil.

  Daniel notices a figure on the floor near the corner opposite from where he and Jeavana were. “Yaulwembor!”

  The mechanic runs to the unmoving superpredator. He thought she was evacuated, but even more importantly, he was also convinced that her humanoid form had become virtually invincible from the way she condensed her mana.

  A distant voice seems to be trying to reach Daniel, but his hearing is still dulled, and his ears ache.

  “{...iel! W…! Da-..., are y-... … …-ing me!?}”

  Everything feels off, but he can’t let Yaulwembor die. If he needs to, he’ll carry her out.

  That said, his skin is still crawling, and his heart is racing. He tries to glance around, but he’s worried about too many things. Not least of which is the faormyr collapsed on the floor with blood pooling around her right side. The same black ichor seems to have stained her scales, and it dribbles from the reptilian humanoid’s mouth. He knows he has to treat it like a hyper-infectious material, given the nature of the being he is now certain sent it.

  But then, the words definitively in the voice of the eldritch Lurker reaches him once more. Just a stitch is all I need…

  Daniel halts his momentum quickly, stumbling slightly.

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  The blood is coming from Yaulwembor’s right side, where her bicep ends at a roughly severed stump.

  I’m a god-damned idiot… thinks Daniel to himself.

  It all happens at the extreme end of speed that Daniel’s humble human mind can process anything. Some of it undoubtedly slips by him.

  Just as he is reclaiming his footing, Yaulwembor’s eye snaps open. Instead of the usual intense glowing violet color her eyes possess with self-polarizing cross-shaped pupils and welding-visor-like third eyelids, this being has an almost fiery, or even phosphorescent orange color to its eyes with a ‘shattered’ pupil, like it’s being strangled by fourteen parasitic roots.

  Two options are before Daniel, and he doesn’t like either of them. But, his gut is going with the one that is slightly more practical, since Xyreko is pretty reliable.

  The mechanic acts on his instinct, possessing no time to do anything else. He swings Nemaisol up again, squeezing the trigger even before he has it pointed away from the floor. ‘Yaulwembor’ is already springing up, using ‘her’ tail like a crocodile to balance her lithe body as she stays low, fast, and dedicates almost the entirety of her substantial leg-strength to her forward locomotion.

  The railgun is already whining, vibrating subtly in Daniel’s hand in a foreboding build of divine energy. Kaeralegier is obviously still willing and able to help him, meaning that voice he was hearing only a distant echo of is his goddess companion.

  And, the evil goddess bound directly to him is managing to interfere with her, even with the magic-negating weapon drawn.

  The false-Yaulwembor tries to use her scaled left hand to try to push herself out of the way, but Daniel doesn’t stop his sweep. Of course she would react. She has to. Not that he’s making a conscious decision. His body is acting on reflex; the fastest a human can respond to anything.

  The weapon flashes as an explosive burst of plasma denotes the violent interaction a bullet wrapped in the mana of a goddess travelling at speeds that a human could not withstand. Though a nearly-infinitesimally small fraction of the fastest practical speed there can be, the railgun’s slug moves more than five times faster than a typical sniper bullet or the Dragonslayer’s 20mm rounds, which is faster than living beings can move without magic.

  Daniel can barely process the fiend’s movement speed, but when he is able to whirl to face where ‘she’ has tumbled past him, he can only focus on the fact that his own body is still mobile, and the false faormyr, the creature he is now certain is the reanimated Morthybargaron, slides to a stop in a slightly curled position. A series of parallel, long matte streaks of the sinister black ichor now stain the floor where the false-Yaulwembor’s reptilian scales and scutes troweled and gouged the thick black liquid in uneven patterns. The sinister ichor seems to be both cohesive and unnaturally repellant, leaving large droplets and raised puddles like water on the surface of oil, both on the floor itself as well as the same black tar-like material painting the tiles. Some of these ‘droplets’ burst like delayed bubbles, giving off one last faint shimmer of the gossamer violet-centered hues as the apparent power leaves the profane false-lifeblood.

  The railgun shot seems to have eviscerated the undead interloper, though its organs are still largely in place, regardless of their own destruction, thanks to the very same viscous fluid that defies all normal logic Daniel would apply to a fluid. In and around its body, it seems to be a glue holding the creature together, while outside of its body, it acts more like sweat or even maybe tree sap or blood, where some amount of biomass loss is acceptable in order to carry out other functions.

  Whatever those functions are, Daniel doubts they involve heat or waste removal, nor to prevent wound infection.

  "You're kinda making me wish you were Vaal Hazak right now... At least he couldn't transform into my friends,” remarks Daniel coldly. He aims the railgun at the wounded creature, aware that he isn’t out of the woods yet. If anything, his comment is to try to distort the present reality back into fiction, or to reassure himself, or anything else to keep his hands from shaking too badly.

  He’s not sure if the anti-magic of the polonium buckshot loaded into the cannons has the room negated still. While intense due to the relatively short half-life, the usage of polonium is double-edged, because beings powerful in magic can accelerate that half-life even further with the opposing reactions mana and radiation have on each other.

  That said, many things are becoming clear.

  Daniel’s hope and assumption that radiation could negate all magic seems to be wrong, or the corpse would have ceased movement right away, similar to Kernuules’ core being once Daniel was able to negate its mana. But, Fal and the Lurker combined were apparently able to overcome even Kaeralegier’s potent nullification through Nemaisol.

  And, even that should have been his first clue. He could easily write off a goddess using divine energy as ‘circumventing the rules’ of magic, since they’re literal deities (even if lesser ones). But, the mana that can be negated by radiation as Daniel knows it is merely a niche of energy or force that he doesn’t yet understand, and which happens to oppose radiation in a cancelling sort of relationship.

  After all, radiation doesn’t negate magnetism or electrostatic force.

  Daniel coughs again. The bitter and oppressive air in the room is irritating his lungs, and it seems he was fooled. There was never a hole in the wall, and his immunity to magic from having no mana of his own is no longer the advantage he had.

  Because he has mana, and the Lurker is the one ensnared with it through the curse.

  Regardless of his future concerns and fears, the ghoul is still alive, even if it should be in its death throes if it were still a living being.

  “{I’m impressed, my Harbinger,}” taunts the foreboding elder fiend’s voice in his mind. “{I suppose I underestimated you. ‘Tis no matter, of course. The threat of your death was always my goal.}”

  What? thinks Daniel. He’s still not sure if she can read his mind the way Kaeralegier does, but her words become clear when motion draws Daniel’s attention. He coughs again, since he’s surrounded by fouled air that is likely poisonous, but the motion is against the wall.

  It sinks in as a small horde storms the room; four female dragons, a daconid, a Chi’rinnis, a Succubus, several gatonines, and a small swarm of goblin soldiers.

  No!

  Daniel shouts, “Get back! Anyone that comes any closer will die!”

  “Mukori!?” screams Geirahoel.

  Daniel sweeps Nemaisol across the entire group, which is sufficient to cause all of them to halt and flinch back.

  The desperate human keeps glancing at the false-Yaulwembor and the newcomers.

  His stomach twists when the blasphemous creature twists its visage into an evil smirk.

  The overwhelmed mechanic frantically tries to turn the railgun on the profane puppet once more, but a coughing fit disrupts him, and he drops to his knees.

  With that, the reanimated creature seems to melt before his eyes. He reflexively tries to fire, but the shot misses the thick, dark cloud as it rises into the air.

  The coughing worsens, and Daniel tries to wave everyone else away while watching the cloud escape.

  A small figure with moderately modernized armor and a robot-like golem arm arrives at Daniel’s location, checking on him.

  “You have to… clear everyone out… The… smoke… It’s not… sm…”

  Klur’s voice is partially muffled from a full-face helmet and air rushing out from underneath it. “Fear not, Emperor. Goblins are quite hard to kill with mere plagues.”

  A couple more goblins join him, and the three work together to support Daniel while dragging him to the door.

  “No… we have to kill… Morthybargaron…” Daniel tries to strain against them to search for the fiend’s presence, but his vision is clouding over with tears from the relentless coughing.

  “Mukori!” calls out Geirahoel.

  “S-Stay back… She… She planned for this…”

  Ryuogriar takes charge, stating sternly, “Quarantine him in one of the prison cells and summon Hekate and Byleathea at once.”

  “You can’t!” calls out Geirahoel urgently.

  “All of you… Morthybargaron…”

  Reignleif approaches Daniel fearlessly, cupping his cheeks with her hands. “Mukori, the threat has been destroyed.”

  “No… *cough* No, it escaped… You can’t bring Hekate here…”

  “Mukori, we need to have Byleathea brought,” starts Ryuogriar. “And, Hekate will…”

  “No… It can NOT be Hekate!” Daniel’s urgency is hindered by the coughing, though the danger seems to be coming through. He adds, “C-Contract…”

  The dragons all recoil slightly and glance at each other.

  Hekate was a slave for her entire life until Daniel killed her master.

  Whether or not it is the mana, soul, or body that is the master is definitely something to be questioned.

  The reason it absolutely cannot be ignored is because Daniel can hold and release magic contracts, which was true even during the time when he had no mana at all.

  Whether or not any shred of Morthybargaron’s soul remains, his body and mana are both intact. Hekate would return in an instant if she found out Daniel was in danger.

  “Didn’t any of you see Morthybargaron escape?” asks Daniel.

  “Escape?” asks Geirahoel. She points over Daniel, and he wearily looks. His body tightens.

  Morthybargaron’s body, still oozing the black, molasses like profane ichor, is lying lifelessly against the wall where he was fooled into believing there was a hole.

  But then… Who was I fighting at the end?

  “You… kept your promise…” murmurs a surprisingly and unusually soft voice. Daniel turns his gaze to Jeavana, who wipes her own face. She avoids making eye contact, hugging her own shoulders. “B-... Barely an inconvenience, r-right?” She looks at him with rosy cheeks.

  Once more, everything feels wrong.

  Kaeralegier? Are you there?

  No response.

  Daniel looks at everyone around him. They’re all worried about him, and the goblins are checking Morthybargaron’s body.

  No. They wouldn’t be this careless… thinks Daniel. Not when she’s involved. Every droplet of this crap should be considered a curse. Or toxic. Think… Uhh… Ah!

  Daniel smiles softly, and he starts making a clicking sound with his tongue near his back molars. It’s the closest he can get to making the sparking sound his apex predator companions make when igniting their pilot flames. He suspects Hekate can do it as well, though she has made no efforts to use the inherent abilities of her natural form, other than her magical power.

  Regardless, his clicking holds a very specific timing that only one other person right now knows about; something he has been teaching her along with the alphabet, since she is capable of recognizing sounds for what they are, but can’t make sense of the sounds that others hear as words. She isn’t incapable of communicating. She just has needs specific to her.

  The pattern the mechanic employs is three quick clicks, then three delayed clicks, followed by three quick clicks.

  Daniel’s companions either cock their heads or glance at each other, unsure of what he’s doing.

  Most importantly, Yaulwembor doesn’t react.

  Damn it. If Nemaisol can’t break the illusion or dream… What can I do?

  Jeavana asks, “Is everything alright, Daniel?”

  “I’m summoning Hekate,” replies Ryuogriar. “We need her and Byleathea to…”

  Daniel aims Nemaisol at himself, and everyone halts. “Daniel!” shrieks his orange consort. “I warned you…!”

  “You know, there is one thing that I’m not very good at conveying. I am wholly surrounded by people who are actually more powerful than me. Whether they really realize it or not, I trust them so implicitly, I am comfortable pointing a weapon that can disintegrate a dragon’s bicep at my own face.”

  “Mukori…” growls Ryuogriar sternly. But, Daniel doesn’t relax. Yaulwembor growls, though none of them move towards him.

  “You can call my bluff. I should be bluffing. But, like I said. I absolutely trust each and every person here, from the goblins to the faormyr. And, I don’t think Geirahoel or Jeavana even remember what my actual name is.”

  All of the faces shift to slight shock, though it’s very subtle and brief.

  The railgun whines, and they all scream simultaneously, “Daniel!”

  Fear already has a firm hold on Daniel, so he can’t really get more afraid at the moment. And, as he just said, he has complete faith in the people he is seeing right now, as well as the more subtle one he’s holding in his hands.

  There’s an unimpressive ‘clunk’ from Nemaisol, and nothing else happens.

  I see… So I can’t die, and you don’t want me snapping out of this.

  “Mukori,” snarls Ryuogriar. He immediately aims it at her, and he has to give credit for some authenticity coming through. The woman flinches back in horror, and the others also react as he might expect.

  But, just as quickly, Ryuogriar becomes composed again, just as she probably would if Daniel acted similarly out of paranoia or fear. “Mukori, calm down. You can put Kaeralegier away now. The threat is gone.”

  “Is it?” asks the human dryly. “You never told me your name, though you know so much about me. Just not everything, clearly. Ryuogriar knows Kaeralegier, but wouldn’t speak of her. And, if you have me trapped like this, I must still be alive. So, tell me. Why do you want Hekate or Nemaisol?”

  There’s a long, awkward pause. Ryuogriar’s cautionary, composed affection eventually shifts to one of emptiness long after someone would have spoken. But, the charade has already faltered. Daniel trying to shoot himself and being prevented was almost a certainty.

  He tightens his grip on Nemaisol. The legendary weapon should resist anyone or anything with magic. Kaeralegier herself can override this if she chooses to, but only started to in Daniel’s case because he promised to free her from the sword and continue to protect her.

  If he’s trapped in an illusion or dream now, it means either his curse-bound Lurker still needs him for something.

  Wait… He looks at his hand, which is squeezing the grip as tightly as he can. The human has experienced something harrowing, even if he doesn’t know when exactly the illusion began. It makes him sick with worry, but he can still figure this out.

  “Very well,” growls the voice Daniel knows all too well now, speaking through Ryuogriar’s mouth. “Then, let me show you the present.”

  The image suddenly shifts, and Daniel flinches back a step out of reflex. He starts to feel terror, but as before, he manages to snap out of it because he doesn’t feel his heart rate accelerating the way he knows it is.

  Ahead and around him is a scene of decimation. Little remains but a few lingering flames amongst a wasteland, and the bodies of Daniel’s beloved family shattered and discarded against the ruined floor and walls. The contract room has been destroyed, and everyone that was just trying to reassure Daniel is dead. Not all of them are intact. And, there are others. Others who would come to his rescue.

  Daniel feels his hands loosen on Nemaisol, but he forces himself to clutch it even tighter. He can feel a slight tingle in his right hand, but as tight as he’s squeezing it, he should be giving himself muscle aches.

  Even though he knows it’s a lie, he can’t help the tears that start to form.

  I have to think this through. How can I snap myself out of this? It’s all a lie… It has to be a lie…

  “You can deny your eyes all you wish,” speaks the voice, now behind him. Daniel turns, and he feels his breath slip briefly. He only ever sees glimpses of her as shadows, looming in the background of her own presence. Like a pitch black silhouette rising into the clouds and gazing down on the world with six glowing golden eyes.

  The room doesn’t contain her, and as such, it is merely a portion of her face as three of her eyes look in at Daniel from beyond a hole in the wall. He still can’t fully grasp her scope. She’s larger than Yaulwembor, like a mouse to a German Shepherd, or maybe even a horse. Each of her eyes alone are visibly wider than Daniel is tall. The pupils and irises each look like they belong on decorative Celtic artwork with how complex and mystical they look.

  Like the other times, everything other than her eyes is pitch black, but there is a slight texture to her appearance that Daniel feels deja vu about, but can’t quite place. She reminds him of the Devourer, and its inky-black presence on the surface of the continent, so large that it’s difficult to truly observe the tiny details. The surface of the Lurker’s face around its eye seems to be ever-shifting. It’s not quite flexing, but wavering.

  “I know you’re not free yet. Which means I know this isn’t real, either.”

  “Oh? Who do you think made this hole, my Harbinger? Who slaughtered them? You know the truth. Just because you can see me now does not change the truth.”

  “The truth is whatever you want it to be in here,” replies Daniel. He then smiles bitterly. “You are undeniably wise and powerful beyond anything I can probably imagine. But, in contrast, you have no real concept of the world I grew up in. What AI was capable of, and how it was infecting the information age with the surreal. You have seen the tip of an iceberg through my eyes, strangled by fear of beings like you. Beings that I have to defend myself and my family from. You can let me out of here the easy way, or I will dedicate the rest of my life to being sure you are the most killable creature on Zenkon if and when the day comes that you return.”

  The many-layered voice gives a soft chuckle that fills the whole room around Daniel.

  “Your overconfidence is amusing, Daniel. And, I do have many things to thank you for, truly. But, that is the only reason I tried to grant you a merciful dream instead of this grim reality.”

  The mechanic bites his tongue. There is an overwhelming sense of dread that comes from simply seeing the eldritch horror, even in small pieces like this. He can tell she is getting closer and closer to her escape from whatever dimensional prison she’s in, which seems to somehow have access to whatever happens when a void bag is destroyed.

  He is certain of this, because Morthybargaron should have been annihilated by Geirahoel long before he was ever cursed, which means she would have to be accessing Daniel’s memories to simply create a fake version.

  But, as his teeth clench down on the much softer flesh, he notices something.

  He can feel it.

  Not only that, it is the first actual pain he has experienced since realizing he’s in this illusory trap.

  He looks at Nemaisol again. This ancient evil lurking beyond some intangible threshold wants the magical weapon.

  Or, more specifically, the goddess contained within.

  Even more important, though, is the reason Daniel is still alive.

  “She’s resisting you.”

  The eldritch titan says nothing, and Daniel continues as he thinks, “Kaeralegier has always been able to negate you before… meaning that husk is forcing her to defend me. So, why am I still alive? Morthybargaron should have very little difficulty annihilating me. But, if Kaeralegier…” Daniel smiles, and he has a pretty good idea what the sword-bound goddess might have done. He’s not sure when the transition happened, but it’s not a battle of wills.

  It’s a battle of time.

  Daniel takes a breath and says, “Spirits of lightning, I call upon you to help me cast my most powerful spell.”

  “Oh? A spell, now, is it?” muses the legion-like voice of the being. She rears back away from the hole, and Daniel notices somewhat familiar contours, though again, her own visage disappears into the distance quickly.

  Regardless, his spell isn’t meant to attack her.

  He rubs his left hand fingers together, focusing on a sensation he had started to abandon because he ‘has no mana’.

  You’ve saved me, Yaulwembor.

  Daniel smirks.

  It’s not that he has no mana, as it was when he arrived on Zenkon.

  There is an ultra-powerful, mythical god-parasite always draining it.

  ***