In a barren landscape which may or may not have been created by the fracturing mind which I believed once inhabited my form, there was nothing but pain. An endless world of burning sand, blistering sun and unexpected pools of acid stretched on forever, further than perception could pierce. Despite the fact the world held no true promise of anything but further strife, I pushed forward with a singular truth held firm in my mind.

  I would never hate anything as much as I hated magic.

  Time had weathered away all other truths but this. In the brief moments of lucidity which brushed across my mind and proved I had once been something more, I could remember nothing but this singular fact. Something had happened. Something magical. The landscape of inescapable torment I found myself in was one of magic. Then, a new wave of torture would arrive and cast the gathering ego to the darkness once more. After the pain, all which remained was the shade of whatever I had once been.

  The vestiges which made up my mind were broken and feral things. I held onto the hate at the core of my being with a vice grip, using it as a ballast to retain the fragile identity that stopped me from slipping away. Through the wrath, another truth appeared. The anger was a compass to find a way out of this place. Like a beacon in the darkness, I followed the direction given to me by my disdain. The revulsion which held my wispy thoughts together told me to never give up. Somehow, it was holding onto this anger which stopped me from fading away.

  Despite the pain and the hate, the idea of being Nothing created true fear, even in a being of pure instinct. My feet pushed through the molten sands, more bone than skin at this point. While the desert was a hell, it was the destinations I moved towards which filled me with dread. The punishment of the desert sun was nothing compared to the pools of pure, boiling, green suffering. I didn’t even wait a moment before throwing myself into the liquid where I found it, though.

  They were where I performed my work, after all.

  For a single, blessed second, the heat from the sands and sun disappeared. The acidic poison had not realised it had a target in its midst, and even though I could not breathe, I could think for a moment.

  My name is Grant Kaeron. I am trapped, both within a dungeon and within some magical effect. It was this or death, which means this isn’t death. Keep working. I will not die here.

  As the poison began to assault me, intelligible thought was wrung from my twisted form. I was once again the shade of Grant Kaeron, a creature which was built for three things. To endure. To hate. To complete the task. Having followed the threads of both loathing and survival, I was left with the only action available to me.

  Drain it all.

  The emptiness of my being came in handy as I opened the void and took the venom into myself. Then came the pain which brought true oblivion. Less than a shadow, the autonomous fragment of memory did its work in stoic acceptance of the truth. This was the way forward, so the shade pressed on.

  Like a portal to somewhere else, the shadow of me drained the pool until it was empty. The shade had no power of its own, so the poison was necessary. Bloated, destroyed moment to moment by the pain, the shadow took a deep breath. It did nothing to relieve the feelings, but it felt natural, so the umbral vestige did it all the same. The caustic power inside me was gathered like a drill and it took a staggering amount of force to lift the mana-laden leg. Then, with a devastating stamp into the dry sand, the world of agony buckled.

  An explosion scattered the nearby sand even further and revealed the true enemy. A grey and purple rock waited below the silver sands, a poisoned world ready to be destroyed. The calcified ground hidden beneath the sand cracked loudly, but did not crumble. Just a few more, the shade of me knew. It had convinced itself of this thousands of attempts ago, but as the sand fell onto the shadow like sparks from a forge, it didn’t matter.

  Though the reasoning had long been forgotten, I still did not stop. Each completed pool only added to the agony, but it was active. I trusted myself, even if I could no longer remember why this was my choice, why I thought this would work or what I was truly doing with the mana. When clarity returned, it did so with all the subtlety of a screaming meteor. When it left, it vanished without a whisper, leaving only a single truth.

  I would never hate anything as much as I hated magic.

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  The moment of change came completely unexpected. Eight hundred and nineteen more pools of venomous mana had been required to finally break through. There was no recognisable difference in power to the stamp which sent my shadowy foot through the crust of the world, but it caused a chain reaction. Like the slow drip of a stream which would eventually become a waterfall, my stamps chipped away at the rock below, and now everything was falling. No longer touching the world of agony, the pain which mobilised the shadow of me began to ebb.

  Sand, rock and the enduring soul all fell together, pulled to the powerful core of the world. With a jarring thump, I landed on something hard. Almost more jarring was the immediate return to intelligence which came like a tidal wave. Thankfully, this wasn’t the first time I had returned to myself, and I was getting better at handling the mental whiplash.

  I am Grant Kaeron, I told myself. I trapped myself in a poisonous bubble of mana and Spirit. I don’t hate magic, I hate the damage done to my magic. I have no idea how long this is taking, but I have nearly no mana regeneration to speak of. By letting it attack me, by jumping into the pools of my mental world, I was able to overpower the energy around me and use it for myself. So, I used that energy to…

  I slowly opened my eyes. I was laying on a floating platform, with only a pitch black void visible all around me. The sand and rock of the diseased world of pain had been used, but with my full mental facilities suddenly shoved back into my brain, it was easy enough to ignore the remnant heat from that place. As trains of thought continued to pull into the station my eyes widened. That was my plan?! I groaned, looking around a little more before finding what I was expecting.

  Black on black, impossible to see if I didn’t know it would be there, was an immense shadow. Larger than a world, larger than anything I had ever seen, the shadow was unmoving in the darkness. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. The shadow didn’t stir, so I sat and waited. If anything had been trained in me over the eternities of struggle, it was patience. I reflected on where I was and how I got here.

  During the battle with Reysault, Scorpion Queen, I had made mistakes. Luckily, the most egregious blunder I might have made was one of the few things I managed to get right. Reysault had died. Before the surge of experience from that victory could fill me with strength, the poison hit me. A harsh lesson learned in giving everything I had all at once without preparing an escape. With no energy left, I had taken the full brunt of the Grade One creature’s final revenge.

  Rather than allow myself to die, I had done the only thing I could think of. By using my newest skill Catalyst, I had been able to change the consistency of the boiling hot poison all around me. It wasn’t a process I couldn’t truly control, my body and mana acting as the catalyst in a chemical reaction more than the scientist performing the experience. The resulting fallout was confusing and painful.

  Yet, it hadn’t been all torture for no reason. “I said I’m sorry,” I repeated. I didn’t hold back my eyeroll this time. Was this theatre really necessary? The impossible shadow detached itself from the void and began moving closer. Definition began to appear as the Aspect of the Dragon opened its amethyst eyes with a vicious, furious glare. Within that gaze was an ocean of admonishment and disapproval.

  We are broken.

  The voice of the dragon was my own, but with a dearth of power hidden behind it which made me twitch with envy even in this situation. Knowing that strength wasn’t actualised did nothing to stop the smouldering desire from crackling in my heart. Once more confirming that my ultimate goal was to not just survive, I focused on the words.

  “I did what I had to do,” I answered. The dragon’s statement was accusatory, but there had been no other way. I refused to be cowed. “It was your prompting which demanded we stay and finish the fight.”

  A dragon does not fear an insect!

  The booming retort shook away portions of the floating island I stood on, but I didn’t even flinch. Child, I accused privately. The Aspect of the Dragon was more than a bundle of magical programming, it was a new version of my own mind. While the Aspect came with a history and legend within itself, it was still learning. I shook my head. The draconic version of me still had a lot of growing to do, despite its size.

  “I didn’t argue at the time, so you can’t be a baby about the way it worked out. I won’t apologise again.” The dragon huffed in response and I snorted in laughter. It was not lost on me that my own stubbornness was the source of this conflict. Well, that and…

  I am tainted, the Aspect of the Dragon moaned. We are broken, it repeated.

  I sighed and looked around. Impossibly far in the distance, behind the shadow of the dragon, a weak light could be seen. My core, flickering and weakening by the minute. The empty blackness in between was a bad sign, I conceded. My seemingly endless wandering of the scorching desert had just been the way my mind interpreted the work I needed to do to free myself from the painful prison.

  “Yeah,” I nodded solemnly, reaching out gently to see the true extent of the damage. What I saw caused me to look away quickly. I couldn’t allow myself to get disheartened now. Even the dragon was wavering. A single wrong choice or loss of impetus really would mean the end here. I could fix the damage later, when I survived. “We’re broken,” I agreed.

  “Will you help me fix us?”