I couldn’t sleep. Once the local authority had been filled in, they had rapidly sourced a hotel room, but [Talismania] itched and twisted in my mind. I was using my own horror at what the last lesson had informed me of, which [Talismania] was exacerbating to make it an enemy to myself.

An even more horrible trap than I had initially thought, but that didn’t help with sleeping.

I spent the night shivering feverishly under the covers. I spent the morning using coffee to stave of exhaustion as I waited for… news. Of any sort. There was none.

In the end, I held out for six days, and sleep took me before Talismania did.

I awoke in space of pale pillars that spanned rose out of endless darkness into gloomy clouds. In the very far distance, stars shone coldly, their light somehow piercing all the way through to where a woman drifted in front of me.

I could only describe her as sorrowful. Even the colour of her hair wasn’t… real. None of this was real.

“It is, and it is not, o [Hero].”

… And she could read me mind, and sound like a sorrowful sigh and a keening wail at the same time.

“I am Tragedy. You, o [Hero], are not doing anything.” I felt her eyes on me, for all that I was sure that they were like springs of water from all the tears that flowed from them into the endless void around us.

“This, naturally, is unacceptable, especially to my sister of All Harmonies. Go… Kill a dragon or something. Actually wait. You’re beholden to Hell. But You can’t kill an Angel because one, you’re a hero, and two! You’re also, somehow, beholden to the Lords and Ladies of the Third Sky.”

It was… an offensive, keening wail - a mix of despair and confusion. It annoyed me, beyond anything else.

“Right, but what does that mean?!” I yelled right back into the Void. “I got CUT IN HALF, and now I’m in debt to the devil for life, and to whatever the fuck these Lords and Ladies of the Third Sky are. AND I have a bunch of accursed old geezers trying to parasitize and subsume my mind!!”

“You’re a Hero - if any of the Archetypes actually manage to take over, they will only just live long enough to regret it.” The Void sighed, dismissively, back at me.

“As for how the whole system thing works, I don’t know nor care for it - it is a construct of the Upper Depths to bolster their warriors as they try to keep back the tide of monsters from the Deep Gate.”

“Heroes are older than all that. You are a champion of cosmic forces - of heaven, of hell, of the Lords and Ladies, but above all, of ours.”

Attention from Tragedy, and from distant watchers I only now was able to feel - or was allowed to feel - fell upon me.

“Seize. Uphold. Overturn.”

I felt defeated. “I… just want to go home.”

There was laughter from 8 directions, and Tragedy’s weeping became less mournful, and more longing.

…

…

…

I woke up drenched in sweat, high-speed reflexes active, and shards of breaking glass in the air above me. I moved, scrambling for a Talisman… And found nothing.

There was a woman with an unhealthy pallor crashing through the window, her mouth an almost perfect O. Like a lamprey, I realised a moment later. A memory from somewhere shoved the term vampire into my mind, and I synthesised blindly.

SPELL SYNTHESISED: CONSTRUCTIVE CONJURATION, FIRE VORTEX

NOTICE: WISH CRYSTALLISED(HOMESEEKER)

NOTICE: BASIC MAGICAL ART THEORY READY FOR ADVANCEMENT.

NOTICE: SYNCRETISM UNLOCKED ADDITIONAL ADVANCEMENTS, SKILLS & POWERS.

The system screamed in my head as I realised just what I had done before a howling storm of fire erupted around me. The wave of heat sent the glass shards back and blew out a part of the wall as fire scoured the room.

The sprinklers kicked in, and to my surprise the flames began dying down almost instantly. The vampire was… gone already?

I frowned and looked about. Something… about the room was wrong?

Flaws - I pondered them. The ashen stains, the weakly flickering flames, the empty window-frames… Through which there was just an empty void. I was still dreaming.

I opened my eyes, the system screaming in my head. The room was fine. There was no vampire. The notifications were real. I was pretty sure Tragedy was as well, given that everything else was beginning to fade from my mind…

And Talismania was quiet as well, humming contently as I finished putting the finishing touches on…

I almost hurled the robe I held in my hand across the room. It was a patchwork thing, obsidian shards, the flower and even the remnants of the scalpel torn apart and re-assembled on strips that seemed to have been laser cut from the blanket covers.

I stood there for a minute, then tightened up the last few threads. The resulting Talisman was basically useless for the Beams I had been focused on before, but for all that it was much, much better for Vortexes, which now I thought about had helped me out a lot more.

And then, I went down and found the nearest Gate that would serve for an advancement Trial.

It was in a forest, and several thousand kilometres away. I sighed, and went to get some train tickets, and check out of the Hotel.