I didn’t even get to enjoy my blessed silence that long. The sweet alluring grip of black unconsciousness only held me in its embrace for the shortest eternity. One moment, I was smothered into the peaceful restoration of sleep and the next, I was shocked back to wakefulness.

  Literally shocked.

  I could see the bright, yellow-white sparks through my closed eyelids. The mini Flesh Golem sitting on my chest pulsated twice, each double contraction sending shocks of electricity down into the tendrils embedded in my chest, wrapped around my stuttering heart. Sitting up didn’t stop the fucking thing from doing it again. Only when I tossed my cookies off to the side did the fucker stop.

  “BLEerrrrghh, shit.” I wiped my mouth off with my glove after spitting a few times. “OW! FUCK! How is a Flesh Golem shocking the shit out of me?!”

  Reeanth conjured a small globe that emitted a dim light, just enough for me to see the winding stairs carved out of some dark stone. “It ate a mutated electric stingray when we were near the shore. I believe it will be a useful ability against living things.”

  “They don’t even live up here!”

  She raised a perfectly manicured eyebrow at me. “They do now.” I don’t think the Centauri use makeup but they certainly look like they do. Or their genetic fixes include unnatural symmetry that fucks with the primal part of men’s brains.

  “Not useful.” Versonae growled, glaring out into the darkness. Her almond eyes reflected enough of the ambient light for me to casually put her in the ‘can be creepy at any time’ column.

  “I beg to differ.” Versonae tilted her head down in submission as Reeanth turned her raised eyebrow from me to her. “Your leige’s liege was just saved by a whim.”

  Looking around, I could see that everyone’s mini Flesh Golem was considerably larger than my little shrimpy one. Putting me back together over and over as well as being drained for mana had clearly wrung that one out.

  “We don’t have long,” I muttered, rolling my shoulders and twisting around from where I lay on the cold, hard land just above the stairs. “Hey, where did Johnny go?”

  I was expecting a shrug but Versonae just hauled me up to my feet. She gave a little shake of her head with a meaningful squint but I plowed right on through that hint like an autist with an agenda.

  “Don’t tell me that fucker is out there?” Reeanth studiously ignored me, grabbing and mashing the Flesh Golems together a bit rougher than required before equalizing their mass and separating them back out. “We don’t know if Judy will stick her neck out for him. All she wants is powerful undead!”

  “My lord-”

  Kraken quickly inserted himself, stepping in between myself and Reeanth with his much smaller golem body. He had reconfigured it to be a very dense figure of a hulking medieval knight. It looked more like a beastly barrel than an armored figure but the tower shield and greatsword gave it away. What caught my eye the most was the fact that all of the light was concentrated in two spots, the head and center of the chest, instead of spread around the entire golem body.

  “Now’s not the time to fight. There are other undesirables who would be better served with our ire.”

  I turned to argue but Reeanth cut me off from engaging with Kraken’s good sense. “My student is more than up to the task of survival.”

  “What does, ‘finding your Dao’ mean?” Versonae asked, looking back and forth between the two of us.

  The large Centauri woman’s brow furrowed as nodded. “I do believe I heard him yelling that, something about ‘finding his Dao in the crucible of combat’. It’s just cultivator nonsense. They’re either unhinged battle maniacs or knock-eyed pill popping psychopaths.” I opened my mouth but she tupped my chin closed with an oddly clean gloved finger. “And Judy’s mission more than coincides with our own. In fact, this benefits her almost as much as it does us.”

  “How the fuck are you so clean?” I growled, looking down at my own gore covered mess that I was ashamed to call my armor. It was shit like this that made me even more pissed at Merlin. Water Sorcery right now would make me clean as a whistle but instead I was reduced to magical peasantry. “Why don’t I have a cleaning spell?”

  “STILL NOT THE TIME!” Kraken’s hushed insistence shut me up. I don’t blame him. I was rattled. Low on mana. Sorceries basically defunct. My main weapon being used to disrupt an undead portal antennae. Time itself being twisted by the displacement of my patchwork soul. Merlin’s fuckery making it all happen and then the consequences of dealing with all of that in the eventual aftermath.

  If this pile of shit didn’t kill us all first.

  And for what? For who? Some fucking tree in the middle of bumfuck nowhere? Especially a tree that put the mental whammy on me, screwing with my decisions and priorities since the beginning?

  It took us a few moments but we did get started moving down the big but dingy looking obsidian stairs. My mind wandered back to Sheila’s innocent smile and her cute blonde bob haircut as she gave Lovera a hug. Memories of helping New Richmond get off the ground and playing the part of doctor to the anxious pregnant couples firmed my resolve. While I didn’t appreciate that fucking tree messing with my head, there were other very legitimate reasons to get off my ass and start kicking it instead. Those kids don’t deserve the potential horrors coming their way if I didn’t finish what I started. That little community wouldn’t stand a chance-

  Cutting myself off from further pointless horrific musings, I felt an odd crackle of power thrumm through my soul.

  “Ben, time is running out.”

  Kraken’s reminder was more gentle this time, being tuned in through our connection to my mental state. He couldn’t read my mind perfectly anymore but he could more than pick up on the surface thoughts and emotions.

  He was right. I didn’t take the time to look but I could feel it, the widening cracks of my soul being in two timelines at once. Merlin’s revamped mana generators were producing more power than ever, but even they were beginning to strain—like a river eroding its banks faster and more violently with each passing moment.

  Worst part was, I couldn’t actually tap into any of that raging power. It sat behind an invisible wall of Wyld Magik, courtesy of my asshole-ic ancestor.

  This calls for another backup plan buried in my brain.

  “Kraken, it’s time for the ‘Subtle Sorcerer’.”

  My spirit familiar froze, but just far enough ahead of me that nobody ran into each other.

  “Risky, and it leaves your team a bit more vulnerable.”

  The nervous sigh pressed against my chest but I let it go. “True, but I’m the one that has to shut all this down, and you have to be with me to help. We’re coming down to the wire here and I’m basically tapped out.”

  Kraken nodded, and his golem suit flared gently for a split second. All of the Flesh Golems fell off my teammates and rolled into one big consolidated mass in front of me. Thinking quickly, I scooped out a handful, a super mini one for each and handed them back. “Sorry guys, these should be enough to close up small wounds or repair internal damage. But I need the rest.”

  Versonae looked askance at the baseball sized golem in her hand. “For what?”

  “For this.”

  I stepped into the big golem, its gray flesh quivering as it molded itself to my will. For a span of moments, I looked like a nightmare made real. Gray flesh wove itself out to form a bulky body suit devoid of skin across every part of my body. Extra muscles and tendons attached themselves to my bones, finding ingress at any exposed point.

  Before it had even finished subsuming me, Kraken’s golem opened up like a tin can, stepping forward and encasing me in the middle. I couldn’t even scream, not that I was in pain, but for the simple fact that I couldn’t see or hear or feel anything.

  Total blackness became my existence while the Flesh Golem integrated itself into my body, invading my spine and nerves before diving around and into the marrow of my bones. New support bones sprang into existence creating a secondary frame above my armor. Flat keratin overlay everything, thickening at the awkward points and thinning where iron hard muscle dominated the ‘new me’.

  “My lord, this is gross to watch but could you please hurry this up?”

  Opening my eyes wasn’t the experience I thought it would be. It wasn’t two singular points of visual intake, it was an omni-directional visual intake in a way that would’ve made me vomit if I weren’t encased in a Flesh Golem meatsuit. At least the visual input faded in the directions I wasn’t concentrating in, like I could focus on what was directly in front of me but there was more available brain power if I wanted to see what was happening above me for a split second or verify if nothing was trying to stab me in the back.

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  If I stopped moving, I could literally see Reeanth looking at me with a mix of concern and disgust and Versonae staring intently at the slick stone walls as if something were about to tunnel right through them.

  “You are lucky that I am actually incapable of puking on you right now,” I joked with a tired wheeze. “I tried for a second there, but this damn thing cannot afford to spew calories in any direction. Fuck this is disorienting.”

  Kraken’s oddly neuter voice interjected directly into my brain. [I’ll be helping you drive and offsetting the excess neural sensations is fairly easy compared to my usual duties.]

  Focusing down at my new hands, I opened and closed them a few times. It didn’t feel like the awkward armor my brain kept expecting it to feel like. It should’ve felt heavy, restrictive, but instead it was just another layer of skin.

  “This is a mix of minotaur and dragon skin.” I said with an evil grin even though nobody could make out my face through the flat mask of skin the Flesh Golem provided all around my head. “Combine all of this madness with the golem body and I’m halfway to indestructible!”

  Armored to the teeth and serving as our new vanguard, I led the way down the stairs that changed without warning from a standard staircase to a widening spiral staircase that grew into an ornate version of one. Suddenly, there were sculptures of horrific scenes carved into the walls and the railings were skeletons laid out, their hands grasping the ankles of the next one going down the line.

  Even the sconces grew more creepy, vacillating between a soft blue light that mimicked a soul’s sputtering glow to bowls of blood that gave off a hazy red cloud. Without enhanced vision to cut through the madness or a mana sense to determine the surroundings, normal mortals would have been caught off guard by the things peeling themselves out of the walls.

  “CONTACT!” I screamed, lurching forward to smash my crystalline fist into the first of the awakening undead. Its skull pulverized just a hair splitting second after it called out its own hate at my existence.

  Unfortunately, that was more than enough to echo up and down this trap of a stairwell.

  “We’re moving too slowly, run and fight!” Reeanth modeled her own advice by tearing ahead, each pair of strides accompanied a brutal swing of her mana-maul that acted like a wrecking ball with a bad attitude and an old grudge.

  I just rejoiced in the maddening thrill of piloting a sunstone mech, where every move of my overly armored body heralded a second death for each shrieking monster. Darkness could not encroach up me or my team as I could just pulse a bit of mana and from all directions, purest sunlight pushed back with a cleansing scour.

  Even their blackish gore that sprayed out from a quick smooshing burned away in my glorious light.

  “Is this what angels feel like?” I asked, directing my question at Kraken. “Bigger, faster, stronger, and then a slight act of will and your enemies evaporate in front of you?”

  “While your question is perilously close to blasphemy, I surmise that none of Heaven’s Hosts walk among us in this dank hole. We’re too close to Hell.”

  The bottom of the staircase led to a small room with a much bigger door that clearly led to where we wanted to go. I averted my eyes from the horrific scenes sculpted into its frame and instead focused on its guardians.

  Hulking slabs of demon infused flesh hurls threats in a guttural language that would’ve made my ears bleed if I weren’t protected by Kraken, the sunstone mech suit, and the minotaur/dragon combo.

  But momentum has a logic all its own. Going down the stairs stopped being a careful affair of trying not to trip to being a super-powered lunge of blazing light. The ends of my mech’s hands shone brightly as they transformed into brutally spiked maces the size of watermelons.

  Like a divinely sent comet, I cannoned into the monstrosities. Their shields shattered under the sheer force but one was clearly more skilled than the other. As I picked myself up and out of its friend’s devastated remains, its chest and head being completely unrecognizable, the other tossed its ruined ax and shield at me and lunged for my throat.

  Barely a whisper of will was required to form a solid but quick outwardly bowed hexagonal ‘Mana-Shield’ that deflected the projectiles but I loved this shield for its utility. Its unique structure being bowed out allowed for a devastating combo. If I fired a ‘Mana-Bolt’ into the backside of the shield, the shield would shatter outwards like a claymore.

  I had practiced this before but never gotten the chance to use it yet.

  Simply beautiful.

  My improvised ‘Shield of Sacrifice’ tore through the snarling demon like tissue paper.

  I caught Kraken humming a little Toby Keith in the background and I joined him, “We’ll put a boot in your ass, it’s the American way!”

  At the perfect moment, I kicked in the set of double doors but it didn’t go as planned. Instead of flying open or off their hinges, my foot just went straight through it and I had to take ten seconds to lever myself backwards to stop looking like an absolute retard.

  I expected laughter at my mistake from Reeanth and Versonae but instead I heard the clangs of desperate fighting. “Fuck!”

  Whipping around, I concentrated to form condensed ‘Mana-Bolts’, carefully firing off rounds just as my team disengaged from an enemy to dodge a particularly vicious blow. Most of the small fry were nothing but bone powder but a few had leathery wings or spider-like limbs giving them unpredictable mobility.

  Within two minutes of furious combat, we had finished the last of what was present but we could hear more howling from much further up.

  “It’s time to go.”

  This time, since we were definitely missing the element of surprise, I readied a few spells and pulled Reeanth and Versonae behind me from where I stood behind the wall instead of the door. This way, even if someone shot anything through the doors, it would go right past us.

  “Are we ready for this?” I took Versonae’s caution seriously. Taking a deep breath, I catalogued everything at my disposal. I was out of Nephilim cryo-cards, Gungnir was stuck on the top of the fortress screwing around with the portal’s antennae, I didn’t have a my dwarven/Centauri rifle, and I was down to my last ten percent of personal mana reserves. My Flesh Golem suit and sunstone mech, however, were sitting at just over half full.

  At my signal, Reeanth reached over my kneeling form and gently pushed one door open with her maul. The door swung open without a sound. I squinted at the obviously rusted hinges and then glared at the opening, every part of me tensing to annihilate whatever walked through.

  “You might as well come in, Sorcerer. I was getting a bit bored.”

  I know that voice. Impossible.

  “It’s been so long since I’ve tasted the untethered blood of a Sorcerer.”

  The pucker factor shot through the roof.

  Creeping around the corner with a wall of hexagonal ‘Mana-Shields’, I pulled on the dregs of my energy to the fore. Each careful step edged me around the wide open door gradually opening up the angle.

  “We gotta update that translation amulet.” I growled, finally entering the room enough to see a small bald figure leaning casually against a support pillar. I hated being scared and feeling that particular emotion just made me angry. “Did you get that from the Dwarves or did you make your own?”

  Eyes blacker than night framed a face that screwed up with twisted amusement. “Food dares to talk to me? How novel?! Usually the cattle doesn’t low before it screams.”

  My temper grabbed ahold of my mouth before I could. “Yeah, well you sound like you suck dick for a living and still don’t make enough money to get by.”

  Confusion marred the Sun-Strider’s features. “While I do not understand the particulars, do not mistake my patience for kindness. I know when a bloodbag is insulting me but such malice only sours the flavor. Take a moment for yourself and compose your mind.”

  The vampire’s presence grew and the shadows in the dimly lit room gained substance.

  “It is simply inevitable that you bow your neck to me. And if not to this lowly Splintered Soul, then to the Prime Vessel when this forgotten plane has ripened. It matters not.”

  Being pushed off as if I were nothing more than an annoying fly only served to twinge that ember of rate burning deep within me. My focus blinked as I took a deep breath and suddenly the vampire stood directly in front of me. It was barely four feet tall and yet it felt like it towered over all of us.

  “Your aroma is buried deeply in all of that useless accouterments, but your companions fear will serve me well enough. Well, that and their essence.”

  The shadows flashed a deeper black before pulling back and before I could react, the vampire stood in front of the portal’s control panel with Reeanth’s neck in one hand and Versonae in the other. Due to his height, they were awkwardly sprawled on the ground, writhing futilely in an attempt to breathe through his iron grip. Drips of crimson crept down their neck and shoulders.

  He took a deep breath and his long ears wiggled with delight. “Do you harbor mortal sentiment for either of your companions or is your suicidal mission of high enough regard to let them be the pawns that they are?”

  I just grinned, leaning forward so that the fucker could hear me loud and clear. “Oh trust me, pawns can be queens but you know the best part about pawns and games?”

  He cocked his head, waiting for my answer.

  “I don’t have time to wax eloquent about sneaky tricks in Vietnam with kids put glass shards in water or guerilla warfare tactics in the Middle East where burkas hide suicide bombs. Pawns have their place but this definitely isn’t a game.”

  My rambling wasn’t out of fear- er, mostly not out of fear. It was strategy, just strategy on the fly. The vampire’s grip on my teammates’ necks was just loose enough for Reeanth to turn and look at his face. That was my cue to ramble harder.

  Stepping forward, I pointed one armored limb at him. “The reason this isn’t a game is because you’re just some washed up midget with a blood complex and a Vitamin-D allergy.” His face froze with anger. I caught Reeanth palm a small object from off her maul, gripping it tightly.

  “It can’t be a game because you’ve already lost. And losing makes you a bitch, which you haven’t even had the chance to realize it yet. Go ahead, look at the worthless morsels of meat in your hands.” I laughed, letting my armored form exaggerate how funny this was. “You got one furry thing that probably tastes like moldy charcoal and the other one has just the barest hint of sorcery. Oooooh- delicious! The tiniest taste of what you can’t have. Go on, bitch. Take a bite of her and see what I care.”

  But I hadn’t forgotten, and neither had my Centauri vassal. Her particular bit of sorcery was a slice of ‘Vision’ or ‘Sight’ Sorcery. While initially, we thought it was a peculiarly weak ability, she had been experimenting with it and found an oddly useful quirk with it. She could briefly channel different kinds of magic through her eyes, using Vision Sorcery as the medium of distribution.

  Just as the Sun-Strider gave her a shake as if she were nothing more than a child’s doll, Reeanth gripped the small crimson gem until it shattered in her fist. I knew that crystal. That was one of my earliest experiments. I thought I had successfully captured Fire Sorcery in a ruby so long ago. This meant Reeanth had gotten a five-fingered discount at my expense. But I couldn’t argue with the results. Raging orange and white energy burned through her arm, directly into her heart and up through her spine. The vampire, enraptured by his hunger and the exposed neck of his anticipated prey, did not notice until it was too late, the rivers of fire exploding out of Reeanth’s eyes.

  His roar of agony, cut off by the volcanic fury of Reeanth emptying herself of mana to bolster the blast of magically enhanced arcane fire, was superseded by Reeanth’s screaming as her own eyes crumbled to dust in her skull.

  Versonae crumpled to the ground, scooting back while trying to get some air, coughing desperately as the faces of both her friend and her enemy burned with an unnatural fire.