Stathis awoke, although it was hard to be sure. There was a strange glow, seemingly shed from the air itself, casting everything into an omnipresent soft haze. No shadows, no light, just endless almost-nothing. She slowly rose to her feet – beneath her was bare stone, ancient-looking and bare, sere of even weeds, but she could only see a tiny area around herself before it was just mist, above and around her.

The air here was cool and dry, and utterly still. She tightened her grip on her blade, feeling slightly better with a weapon in hand. Shapes seemed to be forming, endlessly shifting just out of sight, threatening shapes looming. Or it might just be her imagination, she couldn’t tell. She started walking.

Later – minutes, days, or hours, she couldn’t tell, this place seeming to be aside from mortal concerns like “hunger” or “thirst” – she came across something, the first thing she had encountered on the apparently endless plains. A pillar, vast and dark, loomed ahead of her. After however long she had been walking, it was almost a relief to come across something different, even if it blocked her passage. It seemed to cut into the stone ground and stretched further than she could see upwards. It was impossible to tell how far above it went – maybe Semari could climb it, but she definitely couldn’t. She touched her hand against it, then hissed in pain, a line of bright blood appearing on the dark surface.

She looked at it more closely, being careful not to touch it again – the surface wasn’t smooth, it was covered in countless tiny ridges and bumps, all razor sharp. She tapped it with her sword, the sound of metal-on-metal ringing out, the first sound other than herself she’d heard since coming here.

Once or twice she thought she’d heard Janaxia, somewhere in the impossible distance, faintest suggestion of a voice, a sound in the emptiness, but it was probably just her mind making things up, to fill the emptiness. She looked up, trying to get some sense of the size of the thing, watching as her blood vanished, drawn into the thing. Above, something changed, the haze tinting black, a slow throbbing of un-light somewhere above.

One of the shapes swirled about the darkness shifted, becoming more solid. A humanoid shape, except with wings, stumps of shattered horns on their head. A wound in their chest, trailing black smoke, light visible through it. They tilted their head, flexing claws as they looked at Stathis curiously. Their voice was mangled, their jaw damaged, still showing signs of the wounds from their last fight.

‘Child of light, my slayer. Even I fall pray to madness, in this place. But even a wisp of madness may give pleasure, if I am to be trapped until the sun burns cold!’ She flexed her claws, tail flicking aggressively.

Stathis readied herself, making sure she had some distance from the barrier, not wanting to get pushed against the razor-sharp ridges. And then Galondwyn leapt forward, claws swiping the air, Stathis moving to protect herself…