The hezrou is the weakest of the large brute varieties. Looking like a person squished to be slightly flatter and being at least half again the height of a tall human male , they have great strength and toughness. They are hard to kill due to how much punishment they can take and if it were not for their slower movements and low intelligence they would be unkillable. They are skilled in earth magics along with more traditional schools of evocation and conjuration. They also exude a noxious stench that drives away almost anything that tries to sneak up on them and sickens anything even close to melee range.

Adrian ( Illusion/Dream)

. . .

I yawn and turn over to look at the newest distraction, some young pop singer. She was fun enough last night but I just feel hollow now.

What is the point in doing anything? I have more money now than I can ever spend and there is nothing I have to do but reach for something to have it.

A little over a year ago my parents died in an accident and I took the money from their life insurance to Vegas and cheated at games of chance with my powers. Eventually every casino refused to serve me and even had multiple investigations into me cheating but they could not find anything.

The feds couldn’t either when I won every lottery in the US a few days later.

I just don’t feel like there is a point to doing anything anymore. Everything is just a temporary distraction to the emptiness in my life. I don’t get it, I have everything: money, power, fame and yet nothing makes me feel anything but empty pleasure.

It just does not last. Maybe I should try something else? I get out of bed to wash and dress myself as I try to think of just what can drive the emptiness away.

In the end I am unable to think of anything, glancing back at the naked girl on sheets stained with our act last night, I walk out the door.

The following day after sleeping on a park bench and giving everything I had on me to a mugger, I will wander the slums of town.

The rich and the things they have do not fill the emptiness I feel. Maybe it works for them but that is not enough for me. I want something else and maybe the poor have it or know of it.

Eventually I walk by a soup kitchen and after my stomach rumbles the old black man who was working there calls out to me.

“Young man, come o’er and eat. There is enough for everyone.”

Lacking anything else to do I walk up to him and he passes me a bowl.

“So what’s yer story?”

I just give him a questioning look and he begins to explain.

“People don’t look like ye do with without a reason. So what is it? Run away from home? Got caught up n drugs or runnin from the police? Or somethin else?”

“Something else.”

Now it is my turn to get a questioning look. I don’t respond to his look and he speaks again as he pulls out a scrap of paper and a pencil.

“Ye look like ye need help, here’s tha address of one of mah friends.”

I look at the address on the paper, I’m not sure where this place is but I can just walk back home and find out.

It turns out the address is for an abandoned building. I still go there anyways as there is nothing else to do.

Picking up another girl or buying a new game would just leave me empty soon after.

When I enter into the building I see a woman in her early thirties maybe late twenties passing out clothes to a few semi starved children.

She looks up at me and smiles regardless of how I have not bathed or changed clothes in a few days. There is something about her that seems familiar but I cannot quite place it.

Probably a news article or story about the poor kids in the city.

“You must be the person Tom told me about, you can call me Alice.”

She says as she approaches with a hand held out. I smile and shake her hand.

“So why did he think you can help me?”

“This.”

Images of a different life flash through my mind. My real life, this one is an illusion a fake. There I was happy but I’m chasing power, here I have power but am chasing happiness.

I look at Alice again but she isn’t here anymore, me-but-not-me stands in her place.

“Why did you have me experience this?”

“To let you see what chasing our power its own sake will bring you.”

She gestures around the room and I find that we are in my apartment in this illusionary world. Everything I ever wanted is here, but it still retains the feeling of being empty as when I was still held in the illusion.

“Again, why?”

“You are chasing power at the cost of what makes you, you. You are casting away what gives you the reason to chase after the power in trying to obtain it.

If you don’t keep what is important then you will lose it. Without your family and friends this world is all that power can bring.

Remember why you need power. Do you?”

“To survive.”

Me-but-not-me raises an eyebrow, “No, to keep those you care about safe. That was your original reason. That is the one you need to remember or this is our fate.”

I had forgotten that. I had started to chase power for its own sake. Would I have left the girls and my games alone for what was over a week for me if I wasn’t casting them aside for power?

I need to apologize to them. My thoughts are interrupted by the world around me shifting.

We are now in my mind and not an illusion. Dragon-me is in control of my body and I try to pull him away but me-but-not-me grabs my hand before I reach the image of his flight away from a rest stop.

“Why do you fear the dragon?”

“He wants to take control.”

Me-but-not-me shakes her head.

“Do you fear me for that reason? I have the power to change places with you. Take complete control over our body.”

“You don’t want to, you are my magic a part of me.”

“So is the dragon. He is just a part of you. I should not have ever told you that you needed to worry about becoming him.”

“Why, isn’t that what has kept me, me?”

“No, the dragon is just like me. A part of you, the dragon wants the same things we do.

He wants us to be strong, wants us to have what we desire, but unlike your more recent actions he puts the 'hoard' first.

You taught him family and friends are real treasures and he keeps that. Look at the recent memories, why did he grab power?”

The more recent thoughts of dragon-me flow into my mind. He thinks we are the same person, aside from a few things he is the same as me. The only differences are that he thinks as a dragon would, he wants me to embrace his part of me and that he wants everything mine to be his and everything of his to be mine.

He just wanted a turn with what he considers ours. I don’t want to share the trio, they are mine.

“Is he really just a part of me?”

“As much as I am you but not quite you. Except you kept him at arms length and so he named himself and split further away from you than me.”

“Really Alice?”

“I am you-but-not-you, that includes your humor. Were we not in an illusionary wonderland that was but a dream?”

I find myself smirking at that. Not quite right but that is something I would do myself.

“Talk to the dragon, make peace with yourself.”

My surroundings dim and I cannot help but wonder why me-but-not-me can do so much to me.

I feel myself drift in darkness off a bit before I open my eyes to see I am where the image of dragon-me showed him going to sleep.

It is night, not daytime like when me-but-not-me sent me back to consciousness.