Stepping left and then right again as the thing shot two further vomitous wet yellow-brown vomitous faeces cannons, he –

He'd learned enough about the modes of attack of this particular species of demon.

In the manner that he'd learned to employ this weapon he – it already seemed a part of him, and only after he'd merely ran through it – he let it tear again another barking explosion that he perceived seemed to propel something out of – it – he thought it wasn't merely fire but projectiles. Projectiles of some kind and for some reason – they must be sorcerous – he thought – had a clear marked effect on demons.

This effect was its disintegrating them at once; this particular species, and instantly and indeed uniformly across its entire ambulatory corpse: the attached toilet bowl demon that had been used in a previous life to store or perhaps dispose of/recycle... faeces.

But not now. This shit was the thing it shot at him to attack him with. Which – it was thoroughly unkind; also unpleasant.

But the original owner. This too could only be a demon of some kind or variety; that used this entity for the shitting into device it had in its home for shitting into. Above it – the toilet – in some kind of demonic hierarchy of whatever this place was but anyway one shot and it was rendered uniformly disintegrated: more puss and bowel and organs now exposed through its rotten epidermis. – It was more disintegrated and in fact its epidermis was nearly falling off its body; the toilet bowl, which was leaking acid shit on the flat repeated bowels-and-gears patterned two dimensional floor-pattern.

Another cannon of excrement just – again – nicked him; noticeably, he was weaker but his own weapon responded immediately, dead centre, in a burst of projectile flame that erupted the foul entity in a profusion of flying liquids; organic mater; bowels; organs and shit that streaming back in one fluid movement was completely avoided by him in this new world/environment/realm.

It was a reduced abstract reality land, he couldn't fail but to notice, that he – avoided soaring demon guts in, and shit; in which, also, the Hero Dreamt – he found himself... dreaming.

They dreamed him – these demons.

He knew that.

And thus this new title that – it wasn't new... it was old.

They dreamed him these demons, this was explicit/implicit in the ceremony itself – that had brought him through the mist, here:

He looked at where he was, The Hero Dreamt: really examined it.

Really sought to understand what it was. What it meant. And why he was here.

The corridors stretched before him that –

Because killing demons –

Repeating two-dimensional – felt in some sense he couldn't really understand – walls; repeated patterns; textures, flat, he –

Because killing demons was clearly what the demons wanted.

A weirdly flat, fake, abstract space. Completely pure. And clear. And without anything extraneous. No details. Merely repetition; merely the same flat repeated patterns on the walls; less detailed on the floor and ceiling, more gears and mechanical apparatuses. All flat/abstract and merely a representation – more of that on the floors and ceiling and more of the intestines. – The hanging intestine patterns and sliced off baby's faces – and bowels. Fine this. Reported to his senses.

But the whole place –

Basic, flat, repetitive, no detail, merely functional, merely moving him forward in a space in which he had to. This was clearly what it was – murdering demons –

But – Basic, flat, repetitive, no detail, merely functional – and – obsessive – this was exactly what it was. This place. It's structure; the rite and ritual he'd passed through: this place was the dream – look at it, no detail – nothing not functional, to his killing demons. What did this place even... mean... here...

Nothing not abstract, nothing clearly not designed to make him think about anything that wasn't this space and for this; these actions in repetition – because – this place it was clearly –

this was clearly the dream of a demon.

He was dreamt, all this implicit in the ritual – he didn't know how he was able to explain it to himself but the mass that had passed him/through him into that mist into here; it was so that he – the Hero Dreamt – pass through – the Demon Dreamt – fuck-them-he-was-no-demon – the Demon – the Thing the Demon Dreamt – he was the Demon's Dream – and apparently this propensity was part of who he was too, because/but –

It was –