I am tiny in measure to the high ceiling and large room that is in the shape of a perfect circle.

Inside is another new creature in this malevolent menagerie.

It is dark red and has a long cylindrical body shape with small tentacle-like tube feet. It worms along the floor like a snail. Thin spikes dot along its body that extends, killing the flying ice spitting creatures who drop to the ground. It would have been cute if not for the fact it was the size of a mammoth and with each inch forward it sucks and eats the creatures in its path.

The doors close shut behind Bara and me.

“Kill it!"

No shit, I was going to give it belly rubs until you spoke.

Bara tries to open the door with a desperate, mighty pull but it is futile.

"Strength will not prevail here. Your magic alone is all that can kill it now."

The creature is slow and pauses to savour each of its meals.

I charge up a spinning mana arrow.

"Not enough, something with more power."

Heeding the Fark’s advice, I shift the arrow to the form of a javelin for an adept class magic attack spell.

Ten seconds pass and at full power, I fire.

The mana blasts into the creature, chunks of flesh fly off, but the wounded creature is unfazed by the attacks and worms ever closer.

Out of the hole, I punctured, shoots out a flexible tentacle from its bulbous body.

The thick, pink tentacle coils around my arm, ready to tear it off.

"Summon them. You know the spell. They are our only hope. Do not worry about the madness. I will erect unbreakable walls of will in your psyche."

I ready the summon.

More tentacles shoot out and grab Bara pulling her towards the creature. Multiple spikes shoot out and pierce through flesh.

The creature from the bowels of Dagonlith pulls a limp Bara to it.

No!

I conjure an Atrioici with the last dregs of my mana pool.

It has a round body that flies on bat-like wings and yellow eyes flow across their bodies flowing like blood. The skin is as if it has been turned inside out and is of a pinkish-white hue. It has sharp teeth jutting out like the point of spears from the top of the body.

The Dagonlith’s Horror shoots out tentacles and spikes out the Atrioici. The Atrioici laughs as they leave not even a cut across its flesh.

This particular Atrioici has tongues that sprout from its body. It licks its targets and the flesh melts and hot steam rises obscuring the view.

The creature wails bellowing a terrible screech as it dies in agony until all that is left is a puddle of melting flesh and thick mist.

A swarm of Dagonlith Monitors try to attack the Atrioici, but the Doom of Civilisations massacres the wave one lick of acid at a time. Left behind is a small mound of squishy flesh piles knee-high.

The Atrioici turns to us.

Thick walls slam down, dividing us from the Terror of Worlds, creating a barrier between us and the living incarnation of death.

"The Overseers will want the Atrioici sample, it is a fair exchange for them to turn a blind eye. Planets have been sold for less than what will return soon anyway. We lost nothing it will be gone soon. Yes, I know about the importance of bindings, I’ve read deeply about your kind. Did you think I would make a bargain blind?"

You fool.

"Slurg, take her to the healing chamber."

Behind us, a large hunchback that stands on two legs picks up the fallen form of Bara.

Steel and diamond melt and visible through the rising steam is the yellow eye of the Atrioici.

"Can they not be contained!"

The only recorded means of death is the power of the sun.

"Dispel it, cast it back to its plane."

The Fark voice rises with panic. The Atrioici breaches through and I cast a portal shoving it further away into the depths of Dagonlith.

Why should I?

"We will all die if you don't."

We bargain equally.

"Or I kill you, and it fades."

And lose your chance for freedom?

"I swear you and Bara are safe, she will live but only if you can cooperate with those that understand the situation better than you. Namely me!"

So be it.

I follow Slurg and we walk through the bright corridors of Dagonlith.

I should never have trusted a voice in my head. This is as bad as madness.

I blast an incoming Dagonlith Monitor with a mana bolt.

"Calm down, August."

You led me into a trap.

"I couldn’t stop the trap, so I made an exchange with the overseers to ensure they turned a blind eye to our escape."

If that is true, why not tell me?

The Fark is silent.

You are tricking nobody, I see the edges of your schemes.

"Ha, you cannot fathom the depths of my thought. You are a pawn in a gamble predicated on the current cosmic balance. You are not my only or best option, August, but I am yours. I can help you in ways you cannot even foresee, and all I need in return is to arrange a single meeting and my freedom once you're dead. Do you think I want to deal with Archmage and her puppet child? They would burn a city to the ground and call it a win if they grew slightly in power. So, come quietly because I do know better than you."

I am silent after that.

Slurg takes me into an empty room.

"Slurg, wrap him in chains. I can’t let you have any funny ideas. It will be easier if you cooperate, August. I had hoped the chains wouldn’t be needed."

Where are you?

"I am in the air you are breathing, bound to this prison and ripped from my body. It would be simpler for you to consider me a spirit, than for me to try and explain how my species has engineered beyond the need for flesh to exist based on our research of the Demiosians who have travelled beyond the plane of Celia."

Thick shadows cling to a formless shape and twin dark red eyes glow.

This is my visible form to your eye.

Despite sitting in his cell, I am the one on my knees and in chains, prostrating myself before him.

"Who are you?"

"I am Leokan. I was once a finger of Undalian the Unyielding who breed the first Demons, the scourge of Saforth and doom to Frekra Prophet of the seven systems. As their servant my deeds were many but my crime was a trick and my punishment was to be erased from history."

I sit in cowed silence and let the titles wash over, accepting the bizarre: of the trace of a form by shadow and crimson light that contained memory without matter. A constellation crafted by arts and skills beyond the world I blasted out of and landed into this hostile planet on the orders of an authority I am compelled to serve or die sooner rather than later.

"You are much too afraid to become calm, August. It is a biological function that is not your fault. It is designed to protect you from the shocks that brutal realities can inflict. Unfortunately for you, I am far more terrible than what your consciousness can protect you from."

"What is it that you want from me? How do I protect Bara and myself?"

"It is quite simple, you must willingly let me possess you. We must combine and together become something more complex and greater than either of us were apart. I am not speaking of a touching of boundaries. We are greater than a dyad like a pair of lovers, however, we are lesser than the triad that births society, rather we are becoming a new, hitherto unconceived, being."

"Why? Why should I not just commit suicide and remain in control?"

"I take nothing but offer something new, but I’m afraid I cannot reach out to past and offer hope. I propose, a new life at the cost of less time in your current one. Think not in terms of benefit or loss. This is not an exchange. It is a rebirth and a new death before your final one of that body. The chance for a second journey that is unique in all of existence within the span of your mortal coil."

"Do I even have a choice?"

"As a last gesture, suicide is still an option, you are as you always were free to die. That power is yours. I would only demand that you think of it as an option rather than an act and remember it is not forever, though while we are mixed, long life is assured for you. You as we all dared not to choose life but you have aggressively extended it. I offer the choice to choose a birth, your one. I promise we will be linked only while it is of mutual benefit. It shall be an intimate dialogue but we will no longer be two related selfs but rather directly connected selves. Don’t worry, young August. You will thank me for this kindness before you meet your end."

"Are we not pawns of the Archmage, is this not her wish?"

"It is what the Archmage wants, and it is what you and I need, and her vision falls shorter than mine. The circumstances of your conditions lead me to believe that we yet get our revenge."

"Is that your motivation, revenge? I need you but how do you need me?"

"There is an answer I can reach to a question I hope to ask. You are the most expedient means and ends for me to fulfil that purpose."

"Is that all?"

"Yes, helping me fulfil my life’s ambition is all."

"So I get two death, how lucky." I say sarcastically.

"Three deaths and three births. One from the rebirth, your dying moment and the death of your memory in the minds of the living. However, if it is of comfort the remembered moment is said to be infinite, especially, if witnessed by an immortal then your memory is borne eternally."

"That doesn't make much sense. I get it I will die one day and be forgotten. I accept the bargain."

The shadow grows until it fills the room with darkness. A cry of fright lurches out of my throat and in my panic I swallow the otherworldly being. A see a flash of crimson before I am gone and we are born anew.

What is in the cry of a newborn baby? Pain, fear perhaps even horror or is it joy at the first sense of power. The power to cry? The reach to make people bend over and strain to care for you.

I cried as I came to consciousness.

“I am awake. I feel different.”

Who am I? Who am I? We are in pain. Memories of Leokan. But I am August.

Tears pour down my eyes as my body wracks with agonising pain.

“Must return home.”

I pull out the scroll and snap myself back to my world as I blink into the land of nod.