Ah, hubris. How ironic it is that the first moment I believe myself invulnerable is the moment I learn of my greatest vulnerability.

Certainly, dying is painful, and being digested is gross. But to those blessed with immortality, these things are temporary, and ultimately inconsequential.

Of course, permanent death is still possible. Nothing is truly immortal. The Phoenix believed himself unkillable, and was proven wrong. I’m sure, some day, the same will prove true for me.

But I’ve had some time to think recently. Death, whether it be of the mind, body, or soul, is not an immortal’s true fear. No, what an immortal fears more than anything else is being trapped. Their mind active, their eyes open, but forever limited to the confines of their monotonous surroundings. only able to wait for the universe to end before them, so they may drift through eternal nothingness as they come to understand inevitabile fact that neither man, nor god, nor monster is left to save them.

Had the Dominus Fortitudinis coccooned me, I would have met this fate. And the ancients, weakened and trapped within me, would have met this same fate.

And we may yet still.

I peered through the portal to the outside world. It was too dark out to see, but through the various senses of my forms, I was able to get a rough picture. The web beneath me was horizontally laid in a traditional cobweb pattern. Around me are various monsters, many of which I didn’t recognize, were in pieces, or rotted beyond recognition. And a lot of humans, some of which I recognize from the adventurer’s raid. Dozens of cocoons lay scattered atop and below the web. Some of them vibrating, or making faint noises. Some of them human shaped.

The Dominus Fortitudinis periodically crawls over some of them, softening their cocoons just enough to force-feed them, then closing and hardening the web right after.

If I had to guess, the deciding difference between what the Dominus Fortitudinis leaves out and what it cocoons is whether it’s dead or not. Which means two things.

Firstly, there are people still alive in those cocoons. Some are obviously force aligned, having been there for god knows how long, being kept alive by the force-feedings, unable to muster the mana necessary to end their suffering. The rest are likely food, being kept alive to keep them fresh.

Secondly, the only reason the Dominus Fortitudinis didn’t cocoon me is because it thought I was dead. Should I resurrect myself, it will know, and it will trap me as it did them. If I want to escape, I have exactly one shot. Only one, or my greatest fear will be brought to fruition.

* * *

I was peering through the portal, watching the Dominus Fortitudinis force-feed its captors, when something seemingly caught its attention. It suddenly faced away, inverting its shape through itself rather than physically turning around. After a few seconds pause, it reshaped itself, thinning out to be long and snake-like before tunneling into a wall. I waited, letting the Dominus Fortitudinis gain some distance before I made my move, and faced the first obstacle of my escape.

My portals aren’t actually the 2-dimensional portal it appears to be on both sides. Whenever I make a portal, the entrance is always a 2-dimensional hole, but on the outside the portal is a 0-dimensional point, centered somewhere around my previous form’s dead body.

I can peer around by moving the inside portal to face the direction I want to see, but anything that goes through the portal needs time to “unspool” into a 3D form. I’m basically defenseless during this transition, and can’t even control how I leave the portal. Generally, I end up with my “feet” touching the ground, but it’s not exactly a reliable position, and I’ve tripped more than once on my way out. This has never been a real problem before, as I’ve never been in a position where the floor was dangerous outside my subspace. But now, the floor is metaphorically lava. Only metaphorical, though. If it were real lava, I’d be out of luck.

I left the portal, and immediately stuck to the webbing. No matter how I struggle, there’s no way to physically wrench myself free from the web’s sticky, slimy coating. But freeing myself was never the plan. Though the webbing itself is impossible to damage, the sticky slime coating around it has a few weaknesses.

For example, it can only stick to what’s touching it.

Thus, I shifted into Scolopendra form, and detached my lowest section. With the remainder of my body, I stretched upwards and rotated as I shifted into a Spiderilla, doing a handstand with its oil-slickened palms to keep myself from sticking.

I drenched my arms in force mana to hold up my massive body, then in one push, threw myself in the direction of the wall furthest from the Dominus Fortitudinis. I grabbed onto another silver bar of web mid-jump, then hit the wall just as the Dominus Fortitudinis came smashing back into the cave.

What? How is it here already? I didn’t even hear it coming! Why was it so much faster returning? damn it!

I shifted into the rock-worm, and dug sideways into the cave wall. The labyrinth stone was harder and denser than it was up by the goblin cave, but only just. It was still soft enough to burrow through, and that’s all that matters. Of course, had it been less dense, perhaps I could have outrun the Dominus Fortitudinis. Instead, it smashed into the wall around me.

The stone crumbled around me, turning to dust in an instant. My body ripped and tore as the shockwave crashed through me, even as my mana barrier and the wall that had once been blocked part of the blow. If the rock worm had bones, surely they would have all shattered as well.

The Dominus Fortitudinis shifted its weight upwards, and delivered one final blow to the remains of the shattered wall, killing everything within.

But I had already constructed my portal, barely big enough to cover my head, and slithered into it with my last vestige of strength.