The world rippled around me, and then I found myself standing on a beach. It stretched on to my left and my right in a perfectly straight line, like the edge of a piece of paper. The white sand crunched under my feet. Distantly, I could see people swimming, sunbathing, building sandcastles, their motions erratic, their limbs long and flexible.
Waves brushed against the shore, in and out, in and out, like the steady rhythm someone's breath makes when they sleep. It was a perfect green, almost painfully bright, and the sunlight sparkled off it.
I looked up and saw the sky was the color of a deep bruise. There were no clouds and there was no sun, just a many-angled swirling vortex.
It sensed that I saw it and froze. Everything froze. Then the distant people turned, heads spinning on suddenly disproportionate necks, and dozens of pairs of eyes were fixed on me.
I realized they weren't all that far away, and swallowed.
The ocean started to move again, in and out, in and out, faster now, and something very far away began to rise.
The sand castles started to move too. Specks of white dust fell off them as the castles rose into the air, shifting into amalgamations of crab and octopi and shark and lamprey, with sucking mouths and vicious teeth and ripping pinchers and far too many limbs. Their eyestalks waved in every direction as they brought themselves up to their full height. Some were the size of a dinner plate, some the size of a diner.
And they were actually quite close, I realized suddenly.
How had they gotten there? Some of them could reach out and touch me with the tips of their hooked, gore-soaked tentacles...some of the people accompanying them were right beside me. Had they moved that fast? That soundlessly?
I hadn't seen anything. I hadn't heard anything.
I swallowed again. I could not panic. If I panicked, I was dead. There had to be rules to this, there had to be something I could do to fight.
I looked down at my hands. Though my palms were still stained with blood, there was no trace of the wounds. There was no sign of the heat beam I had created either. They were just normal hands.
Slowly, I lifted them to a boxer's stance and met the empty eye sockets of the nearest person.
"Screw off monster. This isn't your playground," I growled, and then I threw a punch.
And its head popped off.
I felt the heat in me surge again, and as the rest began to rush toward me, I found myself laughing. "Go away!" I howled, and let my power flow through me again.
Another crimson ray shot through my palm and I began to spin around. The monsters rushed into it and died, flesh burning and then vanishing into white flakes like the ones I was walking on. A tentacle lashed towards me from behind, and somehow I saw it coming and shifted to the right.
The limb shot past me and I grabbed it. As the monster pulled it back, I went with it, shooting up into the air.
"I am not going to let you hurt anyone else," I vowed, and I felt the air thicken under my feet.
A faintly glowing black platform spread out under me as I stood over the monstrous horde. They hissed and howled, spitting venom, throwing each other, desperately trying to reach me.
"I am Inferno Blade, Guardian. Go away monsters, or die! I don't care which, I just want you to stop. hurting. People!" I shouted, and lifted my hands.
Stars began to bloom in the sky, countless specks of light, jagged and twinkling.
I closed my eyes against their brightness, but even through my eyelids, I could see them fall.
When I opened them the ocean had consumed the beach entirely. There was no sign of any of the monsters, no land in any direction.
Only a distant presence, cold and cruel and hungry. It moved towards me, from the depths of this endless sea, rising up. Looking down, I could see its influence spreading like an oil slick.
Every second it got closer, and I began to make out more details. I saw an anglerfish's lantern, replicated dozens of times across a creature bigger than a whale. I saw a beetle's mouth, mandibles gnashing together, leading to a vast, spike-lined, sucking maw. I saw long limbs like the cross between a spider's legs and an octopus's arms, too many of them to count, twitching and bending.
It was surrounded by a swarm of parasites, or maybe attendants, but they were petty things, easily dismissed. Flies buzzing around a gore-soaked predator.
I could feel malice coming off it in waves that struck me with the inevitable force of tides. I could smell all-consuming hatred, thick and rancid. I could hear it's thoughts as it shouted them without sound. I had slaughtered the chaff it brought before me with ease, but this was something beyond it. The overwhelming sensations I received just from being near it hammered against my mind with enough force to stagger me, to bring me to my knees.
I need to kill, consume, destroy. Frenzy. Consume. Eat kill eat kill consumeeatruinkillfrenzyruindestroydespoilkilldeathkilll.
I couldn't tell where its mind began and mine ended. It was like being submerged into a vast pool of acid, like I was a scrap of meat in the stomach of a giant, being consumed, being devoured. I wanted to rip into it, to devour it as it devoured me.
Hatingkillingeatingbringobliviondeathkillfrenzyeatkilldeathruindestroykillfrenzyeatdespoilkillhate.
The platform I stood on melted away and I fell soundlessly into the ocean. Before I even realized what happened, the frigid water enveloped me, as I plunged into the depths, past gnashing teeth and snatching claws. Even as I descended, I reached out, trying to gouge out a wound, to inflict some pain.
Bloodruinkillfleshripandtearripandtearhurtithurtitmakeithurtallsuffersallscreamskillhatekillhate.
My hands were pressed against my ears, my mouth was torn open in a scream even as water flooded in, drowning me, killing me. I sucked more in, trying to drink the ocean dry, to consume all that was not me. Something scuttled down my mouth and I crunched on it, chewing happily, even as I felt the void inside me grow greater. Even as I drank and inhaled, I felt myself weakening, fading. A distant terror clutched my heart as my vision darkened.
Hungryhungryhungryneedpainpainneeddevourdespoildestroykillkillkilleatkillhungryruinkill.
And then I looked up at the monster lurking above me, and forced my mouth shut. This beach, this ocean, even this monster, none of them were real. My hatred, my hunger was not real. It was not me. And I was not drowning
KillkillEatHungry destroy kill make it hurt and hurt and hurt. All is pain, all is suffering. Embrace it.
My fingers dug into my palms. It was just a trick, an illusion, a deception. It was in my head. And I was not going to allow it.
The screaming, raging insanity that had pressed against me, that had forced its way into my head, vanished, popping like a soap bubble. An instant later, it returned, but it was distant now. I ignored like it was a distant siren and I rose to my feet, the water becoming a surface for me to stand on. My lungs still burned for air, but I ignored it as best I could.
"The pressure should be crushing me," I said, and I felt myself get squeezed, but I ignored it.
"The cold should be freezing me," I said, and I felt myself begin to shiver, but I ignored it.
"The salt should be burning me," I said, and I felt myself weep in pain but I ignored it.
"I am not drowning, I am not dying, this is all just so much nothing," I whispered, and my words stabbed into the world around me.
I stood on a new platform, this one still black, but glowing with an inner light. I could still feel the water around me, still feel the cold intensely enough to make my muscles ache, but the pressure, the desperate need to breathe, the insane, unwavering hunger, they were gone. My mind was my own.
I frantically gulped in precious oxygen and found myself shaking as I realized how close I had come to death.
Flashes of images ran across my eyes. Things it had shown me, things I had done, things I had wanted to do. My vision blurred and nausea welled up in my stomach.
I vomited and fell to my knees once more. The insidious whispers of the monster grew louder, closer, and noisier. The scuttling, many-limbed servitors swirled around me, and new horrors joined them: elongated ghosts of slick black ectoplasm, made from hundreds of faces stitched together with threads of weeping viscera.
Above me hovered their immense master, watching with distant interest. I raised my head, ignoring the bloody tears that dripped down my cheeks, the squirming things that had come from my mouth, and my eyes met one of its.
The weight of its thoughts redoubled as it tried to crush me with its contempt.
I looked up at it and bared my teeth.
"You've tried your best, wretch. But I have felt the weight of your scorn, and found it wanting."
The platform I stood on started to rise, water parting around me. Some of the servitors hurled themselves at me, their rage as hideous as their forms, but they simply dissolved.
"Let me say this loud and clear since I'm not sure you understand what you are dealing with, even after touching my mind. I am Inferno Blade, Guardian, defender, champion."
The words poured from my mouth. I was the hero slaying the monster, and I was going to act like it. My familiar had said this was a contest of belief, that stating our goals could make them easier in this nightmarish place.
"You are not welcome here, despoiler. The world rejects you, the people defy you. I will not allow you to hurt anyone or anything, no matter what you try. You have two choices. Begone, or burn."
I raised my hands in clenched fists, and the ocean ignited.
An instant later, the fire was smothered in purplish ink, the color of a just-given bruise. Then the ink vanished, leaving the two of us hovering in midair. The beach was miles above me, the depths of the sea floor miles below. I very carefully did not look down, at the quivering scavengers waiting below with tongues that were far too long and far too sharp, or any of the mind-ruining horrors that clung to the spiraling underwater grottos and rotting ruins.
Twenty tentacles swept through the air, swift as a hurricane's winds, aiming to crush me with sheer physical force instead of the mental kind. I jumped, the platform vanishing and a new one appearing under me at the apex.
I kicked off it, the platform tilting to give me an angle, and the many limbs crashed together with a thunderclap. I pointed at them, and another crimson beam shot forth.
An angry red line appeared on its rubbery hide, but the monster didn't notice. Instead, it spat a noxious, putrid cloud at me, forcing me to jump back. Platforms appeared whenever my momentum slowed, giving me surfaces to launch from, as I dodged every attack it tried.
Beams of burning toxins from its projections shot past me by fractions of inches, carving gouges into the world around us, ripping into reality to expose what lay beyond. Looking there, at the place of empty hatred that created this all, made my eyes hurt.
Clouds of acid and venom filled the air around me, leaving me with stinging skin, teary eyes, and rasping breath just from the mere hint of the fumes. The touch of it banished the horrid ghosts, who fell to the scavengers below, screaming all the while.
Tentacles whipped around and around, the sound of their impacts so loud it made my ears bleed. These had no special horror, no dread revelation, just raw force. Only the fact that I dodged them - barely, and by less and less each time, kept me alive. And all the while, my retaliations could barely cause cosmetic harm.
As we fought, the world around us changed. Mountains rose up and were smashed to powder. Chasms formed around us and we scrambled out. Storms blew in and turned to nothingness in the face of the monster's fury.
Panting with exertion, hanging onto a sudden spur of rock, concealed for an instant by a cloud of freezing cold water, an idea came to me.
It was foolish, insane, and desperate. But I had said that I was the hero, here to slay the monster. And this was a place where belief mattered.
So maybe it was time for something foolish, insane, and desperate.
I conjured up another platform, angling it carefully. The cloud around me vanished as the monster inhaled, ready to spit a glob of something else at me.
I sprung from the platform, rays of heat shooting from both hands as I flew toward the mouth of the monster. Its mandibles were open, its lips spread wide enough to swallow a whale. I could see into its mouth, and I even caught faint, stomach-churning glimpses of what previous meals had consisted of.
Crimson beams spat forth, striking the giant horror on a flabby tonguelike appendage. I saw flesh blister and melt, running like ice cream on a sunny day, and smiled.
I had managed to hurt the damn thing. Now all I had to do was get into its mouth, and I could do some real damage.
I hurtled towards it fast, faster than seemed humanly possible, and then I slammed up against something.
It had slammed its mandibles shut, and I had crashed right into one. I clung to the hard, slippery chitin, dazed and hurting.
I could feel cracked bones inside my body, jagged ends grinding against each other. The mandible opened again, and I clawed at it, trying desperately not to be flung off.
Somehow, fueled by adrenaline and anger, I clung to the jerking appendage. As the strength of my grip failed, I used my powers, melting a hole into the mandible and then jamming my arm inside it, letting the flesh cool and solidify around my limb.
Again, I thought of what this place was, a place where mind ruled over matter. As I felt the bones in my forearm snapped, I hissed out a rejoinder.
"I am a Guardian. My body is magic, my soul is a gem. I am unbreakable," I proclaimed.
And the world responded. Not wholly, for the monster contested my statement, proclaiming in a voice without sound that I was weak and fragile, a morsel it would devour once it was done playing with me.
In response, I ripped my arm loose and started to climb down the mandible. I willed the air around me to heat and it responded as I pushed the energy inside me to my skin, mantling me in a cocoon of flame. My touch made its body burn with an eerie green and purple flame, and for the first time, it screamed. A foot at a time, I descended, leaving behind a scorched ruin.
And then a tentacle swung down from behind me. I could sense it coming, but it took an instant to shake off the heady feeling of my burning shield and register the danger. And that was an instant too long.
I was smashed off the mandible. The force of it took the breath from my lungs, making me crumple in agony. The fire around me winked out. And down I fell, towards the deepest depths and the hungry things that waited below, eager for their turn to feast on the leavings of the monsters better able to touch reality.
But I was not about to die without a last blow struck, for the sake of spite if nothing else. As the words of a prayer half-remembered sprung to my lips, I pointed in a direction. Which one didn't matter.
I wasn't trying to hit the monster that had killed me, the scavengers that would rip me to shreds, the servitors and spawns that had terrified me back on the beach. I was trying to hit the space around me, the substance that made up this nightmare realm, just like the monster's eyebeams did.
Once more I called upon the power inside me, and once more I demanded it make things burn.
There was a knot inside my head, just between my skull and my brain. It gleamed with vivid intensity, and from it, my power exploded. It was like coming out of a cave into the daylight. My eyes burned with tears that I tried to keep from falling, my skin reddened and blistered. I couldn't hold back a scream as I formed a star in front of my face.
Slowly, far too slowly, I descended from it. Its heat grew, the burning I felt grew with it. My coat caught fire, the gems on it shattering from the raw intensity of the forces they were exposed to.
The monster let out a bellow. All the hatred I had sensed from it paled before a surge of vileness I only distantly sensed. But even that mere touch had something crack inside me, and with melting fingernails, I clawed at myself. The scavengers below let out a great scream of outrage, many voices shrieking in one unholy harmony, the force of their shock sending me flying back up towards my star. Bones shattered, organs liquefied, and squirming monsters spawned from my flesh, ripping themselves out. They attacked the wounds their births formed, but I was beyond pain.
All that mattered was my star. It was growing in size and complexity, incorporating all that was in this place into its structure. It consumed my mind, my vision, my senses. All that was in this place, this tear in reality, this weeping sore, could only be seen by watching how they changed the star. They were mere shadows on the wall, and this was the light that made them dance and stretch and contort.
Through my star, I saw every monster in this place lunge for it, trying desperately to destroy the power inside it.
But finally, I had given enough of myself. I could not close my eyes, or say any last words. I couldn't even let out one final exhale. I had no body to do any of this with.
So I simply let go.
To call what came next an explosion was accurate, but only in the most limited sense. It was a cleansing wave of energy, a burst of magic, a rejection of a demand that the world be full of suffering made manifest.
And it was also an incredibly powerful explosion.
The scavengers below, the monster above, all that was in this twisted space, howled. First in outrage, then in despair.
I was enveloped in darkness, hopeful, unrelenting, and everlasting.
And then I found myself standing on the mall floor, smoke coming off my body, wetness on my face, and waves of bone-deep exhaustion battering me.
I collapsed to my knees, then to all fours. An alarm in my head blared about danger. Slowly, fighting back double vision and flashes of gut-twisting nausea, I raised my head.
And saw Joe pointing a taser right at my face.
