Within a maelstrom of burning sands, Beef stood with arms outstretched and eyes clenched shut.

“C’mon,” he muttered, ignoring the burn of heat on his tongue.

The fury of light and heat around him shifted, sands and golden radiance pulled into alignment by the slightest of margins. They shone, the sands turning red hot as they ground each other into molten glass, and the light flashed through it all, a corruscating circle of wild, untamed potency.

A ring.

“C’mon!”

All at once it collapsed back into a chaotic roar of power. Beef fell to his knees, hands slamming into the bones that lined the ground and letting loose a frustrated scream. “Damn it!”

The bones scattered, blasted by his pummeling fists, sliding away from him even as more rose from the ground beneath. An endless, churning supply. Patellas clattered and spread, arranging into the lipless mouth of his least favorite person. Beef hurled a handful of joints at the face as it formed. “Damn you too! Leave me alone! I have to finish this!”

YOU MUST—

“Nope!” Beef shoved himself to his feet. He set his hooves in the shifting bones and reached out once more with his Intent. “Felix can only hold this for so long, Boneman. I don’t have time for your stupid visions!”

YOU SEEK TO BEAR MY POWER. YOU CANNOT ACCOMPLISH THIS ALONE.

“Watch me!”

Yet no matter how Beef threw himself at the storm of light and sand, it did not budge. The light failed to bend to his Willpower as it had, and his Intent felt almost bruised. He gasped, several minutes later, sweating profusely and cursing.

“Don’t look at me like that!” he half-shouted through his panting. The Primordial’s bone face had not twitched since it last spoke. “I can feel your judgy eyes.”

MINE IS NOT TO JUDGE. MINE IS TO SHOW.

“...Show what?”

TO BEAR MY POWER. YOU MUST WITNESS THE COST OF ENTROPY.

“Entropy? Like rotting stuff? Hard pass.” Beef steadied his breathing once again and felt tenderly at the edges of his Intent. It wasn’t a physical sensation so much as a mental one—there was nothing to touch—but the comparison felt appropriate. His Mind was sore and strained, and his Body and Spirit weren’t far behind. The light and heat still baked and boiled his skin; it was fighting constantly to repair itself. “It’s not more memories of my parents, is it?”

I AM THE POTENCY. YOU ARE THE FILTER, UNBOUND.

“Doesn’t really answer anything…”

WITNESS.

AND CHOOSE YOUR PATH.

“I choose this!” Beef said, flaring his Intent with all the strength he could muster. Felix had instructed him back on the boats, but reality was far different than practice. “I don’t need to see anymore dumb, cryptic things about my dad or my old life! All I need is to focus! On! Now!”

The liquid light surged, swirling faster and faster, burning the world. Burning him, as sand turned molten once again, joining into bands of brilliant glass.

Don’t force it, guide it.

The words seemed to drift from somewhere beyond, but Beef couldn’t be bothered to source them. They felt right, so he pulled back, letting the maelstrom rage. It surged, spinning faster and faster, propelled by its own momentum. The bone face beneath him stared blankly, but Beef swore he saw a frown cross its weird eye sockets. He ignored it, just as Felix would have; he didn’t have to give in to some spooky face just because it offered him power. The power was here.

He just had to take it.

There!

The voice spoke again, just as a mote of something flashed by—it shone only slightly brighter than its surroundings. Beef seized it, guided by instinct and the ineffable pressure of that whisper. His Intent snagged it within fingers of steel and chitin, drawing it close.

You have it! Hold tight and visualize!

“That’s Felix—!” The moment the words escaped Beef’s lips, the energy around them shifted to show his friend poised as if diving through deep, dark waters. Beef sucked in a lungful of scalding air.

Don’t visualize me! The vision’s eyes flashed a cyan-blue so bright it overwhelmed the golden dust, and the entire vista collapsed. Visualize your new core space!

“O-oh! Right!” Beef bore down, flinging the remnant bits of his Intent and Willpower at the mote that, even now, the maelstrom was attempting to pull away. “Visualize!”

The chaos tightened again, more sand compressing into molten glass with every heartbeat, shimmering into an unstable, liquid ring of riotous color. The golden light, the yellow, and the orange were overtaken by a veritable rainbow of hues. Mana types surged, drawn from somewhere deep inside of Beef’s scattered core—the unchained potential of an Unbound warrior.

I can’t be everything. His skin was blistering and his fur had caught fire in three very uncomfortable places. But I gotta be something! Visualize!

Thoughts skipped through his Mind, too fleeting to catch, but he bore down on them anyway. The colors flashed, throwing up spikes of solidified Mana around him in random shapes. This one a blue beam, that one a yellow shelf. Again and again, it happened faster as Beef caught onto his own thought process, his own desires. Colors shifted, muting and turning earth toned and mundane as the shapes solidified. Flash. A chair. Flash. A bedframe. Flash. A tall window casement, lock rattling as a storm brewed outside.

Flash.

Beef fell to his knees, and for a moment, could do nothing but breathe. But…the pain was gone. Beef felt at his arms, his chest—his burns were healed as if they never were—but he clutched at himself in sudden, terrible fear.

He wasn’t a Minotaur anymore.

“No no no!” Beef stood in a panic, but not nearly as tall as he used to; instead he was barely five and a half feet tall, which threw him off as he tried to run. His feet tripped over themselves, the ground far closer than before, and he fell, just barely catching himself on the edge of his desk. He lifted himself with a grunt and stared into the blank glass of his computer monitor…where he could see a small, freckled face with big, chunky glasses hanging off the edge of his too-large nose. “I’m…Michael again.”

A knock at the door. “Michael? Can I come in? I brought another beetle.”

Thunder accompanied those words, along with a flash of light that nearly blinded him. Beef stood up, pressing his thick glasses up his nose with the knuckle of his forefinger. “Dad?”

WITNESS.

Beef walked from his computer monitor to the door of his room. Yet before he could reach it, the door burst open and his dad stumbled inwards. “Did you…did you block the door with your figurines? I—Oh.” His dad’s face fell as he looked into the room, toward the bed. “Oh you saw them.”

“Yes,” said a defiant voice, seated atop the twin bed. Beef blinked in surprise to find himself there too, a perfect replica of his current—old—form. “Leave me alone!”

No. No, I don’t want to see this. Beef backed up, eyes flicking between his dad and his own form huddled atop the bed. I thought I said no visions!

YOU MUST WITNESS THE TRUTH.

“Mikey, I didn’t want you to find out like this.” His dad had something clutched in his hands, apart from another taxidermied beetle. Papers, Beef remembered. “Your mother and I were gonna tell you tomorrow…”

“You lied to me! You said it was gonna be alright!” Beef shook, not wanting to see this but riveted to the spot as his younger self quivered as well—only it was in anger, instead of fear. “You said!”

“Mikey, listen—”

“You said!”

Beef couldn’t blink, though he wanted to howl and turn away, as his younger self lunged forward. Small hands hit his dad’s slight paunch, shoving with all the strength he had in his teenage arms. Surprise registered on both their faces at the same time as his dad’s feet hit one of Michael’s vinyl figures on the ground.

“Dad!” Beef and Michael screamed together.

His own memories and the vision before him collapsed, crossing paths until Beef was Michael, hands outstretched, staring in abject terror as his father tripped into the window. The broken latch snapped, giving way beneath his dad’s bulk, and the whole thing flew open…and his dad fell.

Beef ran out into the rain, which was coming down sideways at that point, driving into his skin like freezing needles. The small stretch of roof outside his bedroom window was empty, but Beef remembered this entirely too well. I tried to forget! He spotted his dad’s hands hanging at the very edge. “Dad! I’m here! Hold on!”

Lightning forked in the sky, illuminating the twenty-foot drop to the ground below. His dad clung desperately to the gutter, eyes almost totally closed due to the rain. “Mikey! Mikey get back inside! Call 911!”

“No! No, I can help this time!” Beef shouted. His other self was gone. It was just him now, and he wasn’t going to let it happen again. “Reach out to me! Gimme your hand!”

His dad grunted, shifting his bodyweight to reach up—only for the gutter to give an alarming groan. It lurched, dropping away by several inches, and his dad let out a startled yelp. “Mikey! It’s okay! It’s not that far, a-and I’ll be fine! Just get inside!”

Beef knew he was lying. Twenty feet might not have been a lot back on the Continent, but people died from less on Earth. Beef got on all fours, reaching out over the edge. “Gimme your hand! Please!”

Finally, his dad did it, leveraging enough of his weight up to grasp Beef’s hand…except he wasn’t a Minotaur anymore. He was just a kid again, and when the gutter tore away from the house, Beef—no, Michael—couldn’t hold on.

His dad slipped.

He fell.

Lightning speared down from the sky, brighter than before and far more liquid than it had any right to be. Beef remembered this too, but he could barely see it through his tears. His dad fell in slow motion, falling into the wet shadow of their yard, as Beef was seized by the lightning. With an awful, definitive lurch, Michael had been taken away.

Beef blinked. He was back in his room, and the window was securely latched…but his entire body was soaked through with rain. “Did he survive the fall?”

A LIE.

A TRUTH.

A WAY FORWARD.

“That’s not what I asked, you bone-faced idiot! Did he live?”

WITNESS.

The room flickered, becoming a vast, endless expanse of water. Beef floated, listless and increasingly angry, as huge creatures frolicked through the depths around him. They looked like whales crossed with dinosaurs, and were entirely too big as they swam around a huge, floating mass of bones.

WE CANNOT GO BACK.

The whale-things—leviathans, he somehow knew—twisted in sudden pain, dying by the hundreds. Their corpses turned to a sick, purple-blue ooze that instantly stripped them to the bone, before spreading to the next. And the next. The mass of bones waved an appendage made of femurs and skulls, turning them all to dust.

WE CAN ONLY MOVE FORWARD.

ALL THINGS DECAY.

The waters themselves turned to sand and hot, fetid wind. Bones were scattered, and dunes rose up to swallow any remnant of the majestic creatures.

BUT.

ALL THINGS RISE.

In the distance, a blaze of power split the sky as an image of a sword was lifted in a hand of black scales. Water burst from the sands, swelling to fill the desert once again. The ocean returned, and storms dominated the heavens.

ALL THINGS MAY CHANGE, IF WE CHOOSE.

The face of bones vanished, as did the water and the sands, leaving Beef alone with the storm outside his window. In his old room that he crafted from Primordial Essence and his own Willpower. There was a knock at the door.

“Michael? Can I come in? I brought another beetle.”

WHAT DO YOU CHOOSE, UNBOUND?