Within Sensi's suite, I prepared to drink a tea made from mesfera leaves.

Mesfera was a potent hallucinogen, used in various spiritual tribes as a way of communion with the universe at large. As far as I knew it was banned within the Civilized Lands, though plenty of forbidden treasures existed if one had the money and power.

"Opium is not enough to fully penetrate the barrier between the Physical and Mental Realms," she said. "Your mind may already know how to access the realm of thought, and perhaps you can even contact Paimon within your memory palace, but it would not be a true communion. All sentient creatures have a natural protection against mental manipulation from others. The hallucinogen will help overcome those barriers."

That did nothing to help my nerves. My hands shook as I grasped the cup. "Are you sure that's something I should be doing?"

"We have no good options," she said. "The Increate never intended for mortals to enter Desolada. This will facilitate your passage. If Paimon is truly watching you, he will guide you the rest of the way."

Felix stirred from his divan, turning to look in our direction. He had mostly recovered over the past few hours, though I sympathized with his pounding migraine. At least Sensi dosed him with laudanum before reducing his dislocated shoulder back into place. He also had several cracked ribs, but he would recover. The Captain had never meant to truly cripple one of his prisoners.

"You don't have to do this, Leones," he said.

The only other path led towards insanity and death. There was never any other choice to be made.

The mesfera tea was bitter enough to set my eyes watering. I finished it to the dregs. Then Sensi poured more water over it and forced me to finish it again. Cursed woman.

For the first half hour nothing happened. The others watched me, though after a few minutes Felix rested his head back on a cushion. From his steady breathing he had gone back to sleep.

Sensi continued to drill me on behavior towards Paimon. Respect. Bravery. Though I was now the one approaching him, I still had the power to bargain in my own favor if I did not like the terms of his contract.

Finally, the world begin to twist around me. For the first thirty seconds it was only a distortion, then things began to shift in place. Furniture walked about the room on wooden legs. The array of candles lighting the suite threw off streamers of brilliance; if I turned my head side to side, they left afterimages along my vision.

Sensi directed me to lay supine on an unoccupied divan, my hands crossed against my chest. I closed my eyes.

From the little I knew of hallucinogens I expected to venture through some brilliant universe of vague shapes and vivid colors. I was prepared to lose myself, or at least my sense of self.

Instead, I opened my eyes and found myself in a new world: Desolada.

I stood on a vast grey plain. Chunks of obsidian floated through the air; the ones near me were the size of fists. Beyond my immediate vicinity my perspective was warped. Depth in particular seemed wrong, as if I was a third-dimensional being captured within a two-dimensional painting. The sky was an endless sheet of white; the false-moon, a perfect black orb, looked more like a hole cut into the fabric of reality.

A figure materialized beside me. I did not turn to look at it. I felt its presence the way a child senses creatures in the dark. A bloodviolet star flickered to life in the sky and, like slowed lightning, spread in a geometric frenzy of lines.

“Another broken mortal finds his way.”

I spoke into my mind, with my own voice. At first I dismissed it as a strange thought but there was a certain tenor beneath the words---something both impossibly deep and unfathomably empty. He spoke to me the way the Increate spoke to his oracles, burrowing his way into my consciousness.

Now that I was here I had no idea what to say. Frozen, I stared at the spread of light across the sky.

“I know you,” said Paimon in my head, “and I see you. Gaze upon me and bow not. I cannot abide men whose nature is to kneel.”

By degrees I tilted my head until I saw him in the corner of my eye. He loomed beside me, shaped like a man but twice my height. I kept turning until I viewed him head-on. He appeared to be carved from solid moonlight except for the vast crown of antlers sprouting from his head. His eyes were a pair of bloodviolet sparks. Looking at him I had the sense of great and unknowable depth, as if I were peering down through the surface of an ocean.

“Lord Paimon,” I said. My tongue felt heavy in my mouth.

He touched his hands together and bowed his head over them. He had the long, graceful fingers of a master sculptor or musician. “The mortal pays his respects. I welcome you to Desolada. You have not come completely of your own volition. I sense your fear, your uncertainty. This aspect of Desolada does not please you. Be at ease.”

The world around us flickered, changed. We were now in my father’s study, the colors faded like an old, sunworn painting. My perspective still seemed warped here but in a different way. It felt muddled, like a dream.

This was where I had first sensed Paimon watching me from within my memory palace. When I opened the door to the study and instead gazed upon the void. I had not been ready to confront the demon lord---or meet him, or conspire with him, whatever we may do.

Paimon sat behind my father’s desk but the demon had enough sense not to steal his appearance. Instead he looked more like an older brother that I had never had. This man must have been nearing thirty. Mother’s light blue eyes and long eyelashes added a touch of softness to his face. He wore a military uniform centuries out of style, high-collared and stiff with starch.

“I extracted this vision from one of your dreams," he said in a voice quite similar to my own. At least he was no longer projecting thoughts into my head. "You must not mind this one---you have had it several times. All of your dreams are harsh and lonely, though you are fond of this one. It was only natural you fashioned your memory palace in this likeness.”

So much information there, much of it concerning. Extracted from one of my dreams, as if my thoughts were some ore to be mined. Did he know everything I thought, everything I felt?

“You understand the situation I am in?” I said, choosing for now to ignore the implications of Paimon’s words.

“In much greater detail than yourself. Astaroth has trapped many of you within a tesseract. It is a four-dimensional construct, which means it encompasses time as well as your physical reality. There is a level of complexity to this that makes it impossible to translate into your understanding. In most circumstances, mortals like yourself would be helpless against a construct by one as powerful as Astaroth. Fortunately this power is similar to your own and Astaroth possesses only a tangential understanding of time.”

I looked around me, at the familiar chaos of my father’s study. The closest thing I had to a sanctuary, anywhere. “Which means I can escape.”

“Even with a thousand years of meditation you would never unravel the tesseract alone.” Paimon clasped his hands on the desk and leaned forward. “I have long watched your world. I know the songs of its winds, the eddies of its oceans. The fates of its people are no greater mystery. Nothing happens in this universe that has not happened before. Astaroth knows this. I know this.”

“I am not sure I understand,” I said.

“Let me speak plainly, then. Astaroth has constructed this tesseract for a particular reason. He is searching for a new Echo. He lures all of his prospects into this tesseract and, when they have all converged, reveals himself. It is a bloody and brutal war that he makes mortals wage amongst themselves. Only one of you emerges from this tesseract, broken and empty, enslaved to his will. You understand this much?”

I took a deep breath. Not that I needed to breathe in the Mental Realm but it helped me steady myself. “So I would have to defeat Felix. Sensi. Everyone else there, until there is only one of us left?”

“Every person there is meant to be there,” said Paimon. “Most remain unaware of the particulars, though some came of their own accord. Sensi welcomed Astaroth and his Captain into her establishment. She knew I would tell you this but she only now realizes the consequences of her actions. I lend her no assistance but you---you lost little rose---I would welcome you into my garden.”

“I would be your Echo,” I said. “Not Astaroth’s.”

“Astaroth does not realize your potential. You must be cultivated. Clipped, where necessary. Your thorns, I hope, will cut deep.”

On the way was a painting my father would have never possessed in reality, a priceless work of art. Tarrare’s The Black Lotus. The wooden frame and canvas felt so real beneath my hand. What strange things our minds are capable of.

“There are many stories about deals with the demon lords,” I said, looking back at him. “None of them end well.”

Paimon spread his hands.“They do not tell those stories to little children. In the heart of the Civilized Lands you lived in safety that few could ever imagine. Savra is a beautiful and terrible world, full of dreams and blood. It has birthed many desperate souls, and many of them seek out the Goetia. That tragedy befalls them is the natural course of the desperate. I accept no responsibility for their fate.”

“Is that the secret of the powerful? You decide whether or not to accept responsibility?”

The colors around us seemed to brighten when Paimon laughed. “You act as if I am obliged to shackle myself with your human ethics. The tribunes of your world decree that I must be charged with foul misdeeds. I whisper lies, but against what truth? Others serve me and are rewarded so. For these sins you may imprison me, but I warn you: not even the Increate has devised a dungeon so worthy, lest the cosmos themselves are my prison.”

We locked eyes for what felt like a long time, though it felt different compared to staring at another person. There is a certain electricity to maintaining eye contact, whether its with a lover across the table or an opponent facing you in the dueling circle. Here there was nothing. The figure behind the desk was little more than a puppet, and I imagined Paimon far above this scene, manipulating the strings.

He blinked and the spell ended. “You have a profound issue with authority. You seem to think there is a fault in your teachers, but instead they are sensing this fault in you. As your master I would correct this flaw. Much of what you have been taught is mistaken or altogether wrong; because of this, you are hesitant to trust others. Even that woman Sensi speaks drivel. Revealing myself upon her false tarot cards brought me much pleasure. I will reveal the truth to you, as evil as it may be. If you have no desire to accept my offer, leave, for now. We shall meet again in due time.”

I spoke through gritted teeth. “And what is your offer, exactly?”

He smiled. “You and your friend Felix are rarities amongst mortals. Few humans develop power over abstract concepts like time and luck. Likewise, I am somewhat of a rarity amongst the Goetia.” He ran his fingers along the desk. The wood disappeared beneath his touch, erased from existence. “I am nullification. The Lord of the Void. This power is the antithesis of the Increate, who embodies infinity. It is nothingness. Zero.”

“You offer me nothing,” I said.

Paimon stood, stretched his hand toward me. “And you would be wise to accept it. For now I can only offer you a rudimentary understanding of nullification. Enough to counteract the abilities of others around you and, if you prove worthy, unravel the tesseract. Savra is a world of many dangers. It would not do for my Echo to have no aegis.”

"And what do I have to offer you in return?"

"Your loyalty," said the demon lord. "Other than that, we shall discuss the terms of our contract as we go along. If, in the end, you are dissatisfied with the power I will bestow upon you, we may discuss some alterations. Once you begin to understand the extent of my gift, you will have no reason to complain."

I felt as if I stood on the edge, looking down into the abyss. My decision here would shape the rest of my life. This was what the Goetia did: they backed people into corners and turned them into traitors. I thought of the Archons and the philosophers. Most of all I thought about my father and Everett and the others, slaughtered by the people this society proclaimed holy.

There was a very real possibility that Paimon and Astaroth had orchestrated everything. They were brothers of a sort and, though collaboration among the Goetia was rare, it was not unheard of. But even without the threat of the tesseract I still would have considered the offer.

Ever since I first heard of Echoes I had thought of seeking out the Goetia. The thought slipped into my mind while I lay in bed at night, staring at the ceiling, worrying at the thought like a sore in my mouth.

“I accept.”

Paimon nodded slowly. “Take my hand, then, and I will show you the path.”

And without a further thought I did.

* * *

The void is clarity. It is simplicity itself. All matter is an intrusion on the natural state of the universe. Even energy leaves its mark. The void is what the blind man sees, what the deaf man hears. Strangely nothingness is a thing-in-itself: the absence of a loved one gouges a wound, and our wounds are emptiness that has left its mark. The man born blind has no concept of sight. The man who becomes blind knows exactly what he has lost.

There is an interconnectedness between all things, brushstrokes on a canvas that come together to form an image, and even the negative space contributes to the whole.

This is what Paimon showed me when I took his hand, in a moment that lasted forever and no time at all.