"I come from a world of conquerors," Calypso said, chucking the apple I'd given him earlier. He scoured the table for more food and settled on a turkey leg. "We would find new worlds, wipe out the population, and steal their treasures. Sometimes, we would inhabit the worlds we conquered. Other times, we'd leave them desolate. Most of the time, we harvested the treasures and then burned the worlds.

"We had a perfect system; we implant our people in other worlds, and they then learn the ways and customs of the new world and report what they learned. Our agents would help us devise plans for conquest. On softer worlds, with low-level cultivation, we simply overpowered the residents. Stronger worlds required extra resources. Using the cores of worlds and the techniques known only to the eldest mages among our people, we created the Monarch Stone. It was a powerful device for creating a mindscape that allowed the user to shape reality."

"The loops are all just a mindscape?" I asked.

"It is much more than that, but broken down to its essence, the loop a mindscape."

"Wait, does that mean we are in your mind?" I no longer leaned back on my chair and placed my feet back on the ground.

"You are an anomaly,” the flayen said. “I hoped you knew why you got pulled into the loops with me."

"Why would I know that?"

"You seem to know a lot about the mind, and it has only been a few months since you started practicing the mindscape."

"That's a stretch."

Cal clicked his tongue and nodded his head. He sized up his turkey leg as if looking for impurities, smelled it, and tossed it over his shoulder. A new leg was in his hand before the discarded meat hit the ground. He inspected the leg once more and took a bite. I took a few sips of ale while I waited.

"Something must have tripped the loop to pull you into awareness; perhaps it was all the wild mana that was unleashed. One way or the other, you got caught in the loop—inside my mind but aware. I was the host up until I bonded with you. I still hold the key to the Monarch Stone, but you have all the influence."

"Did you know I was aware of the loop?" I asked.

"Not at the start. Like I said, you died pretty fast at the beginning."

"But you became aware eventually? Why don't I remember any interaction with you?"

"Because I did nothing. I activated the Stone too late. I wasn't even supposed to be the one to activate the Stone. Balthazar was our champion. However, he was taken out too soon, and our guards were tied up in battle. It came down to me, an attendant, to use the Stone. At that point, preservation of our secrets was my only concern. I devoured the Stone and entered my mindscape, but…" The flayen trailed off.

"Your back was broken." The image of a boulder crushing Cal's back came to my mind. The memory was so vivid it caused me to wince. "You said you lived two hundred years?"

"I did. Two hundred years in agony, some of the time I spent crawling towards you. The rest, I hunkered down in my mind and tried to work out a solution. It was two hundred real years. In my mindscape, I lived dozens of centuries." Cal finished a cup of ale and started on the next choice of meat, grabbing the bone handle steak and taking a hearty bite. It looked good, so I grabbed a steak and ate with him. "This is delicious…"

"I know. It took me a while to get the taste to match that of wolfbears, but I think I've created an accurate representation."

"You really should not mess around in your mind like that."

"A little too late for that."

"And you have never had any training or knowledge about mindscapes?"

"Does the blank cell in the mind you locked me in count?"

"The holding grounds?” It wasn’t a question, and Cal spoke too fast even if I wanted to answer. “That was only meant as a preparation stage. A place to get your mind accustomed to the recursion."

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"I spent a long time there."

"I might have locked you in that state."

"I knew it," I said.

Cal scoffed, waving his food at me in a taunting gesture. "You had no idea."

"A bit of a hunch."

"Never crossed your mind. I was reading it and watching it the whole time."

"You know that schtick about being a memory fragment…"

"I know." Cal clicked his tongue. "I was trying to minimize my threat level. If you were open to me, I could have taken over as soon as your soul transferred."

"So you locked me in the preparation stage while you did what—rummage around in my memories?"

"Essentially. I had already talked to you in my mindscape on several occasions. You were much more amicable there. So when I actually entered your mind, I needed to get acquainted. I did more than that, though. While your mind was adjusting, I managed to freeze your body with mana to preserve it from death. Before that, I created the holding block you rested in… you called it a blank space."

I took another bite of steak and chewed on it for a while. Squids were more gross than I gave them credit for. Sometimes the flayen would use his hands, other times he fed himself using his tentacles. That was a particularly unpleasant image. The problem was that the steak was too good to put down. So, the two of us ate more steak, and I helped myself to some sides.

I wasn't just eating. A lot was running through my head. The fact that I was almost possessed sooner was chilling. I kicked my legs up and took a drink of ale. Cal was searching for his next snack.

"You got out of the holding box sooner than I had planned," Cal said, noticing I was looking at him. "How did you do that?"

"I really don't know. I dove into my mind and crawled around in darkness until I found myself on the outside of the box looking in. At that point, I could feel tethers pulling my being to another source. I accepted the pull and ended up in the clone. I don't know how the clone got to my body, though."

"Remarkable. It is a shame you do not have ties to mind mana. With your natural skills, you would be a savant. With the smallest training from me, you would blow past the realm of mages." Cal shook his head, clicking his tongue twice—almost sounding like a 'tsk-tsk.'

I shared his disappointment. If mind mana let me do a fraction of what I could in my mindscape on the outside, I'd be a powerful cultivator.

"Your clone walked to your body on its own,” Cal said. “It was how I became aware of you in the first place. You would pass out, and then a few minutes later, your clone would arrive. It would stand by your side; when you died, it collapsed as well. It took me over a hundred iterations to get the transfer to your clone right. Once I locked it down in my mind, I began taking action. And before you ask, I needed an actual mind to attach to. I didn't have the power to control an empty vessel."

"So you and a party of flayens come to Helm to conquer us, but it goes wrong. Did your agents undersell our power level? You brought the Monarch Stone, so you considered us strong." There was still so much I needed to ask, but before that, I wanted to figure out what was going on with the invasion first.

"We did not use our agents before coming to this world. We didn't have the time to thoroughly plan out the invasion. Our worlds were under attack, and we were losing the fight. We were down from hundreds of worlds to two. Both of which were showing signs of a scourge infestation. The same infestation that wiped out our worlds before.

"We came to Helm looking for a chance to escape ruin. We were conquerors; now, we were being conquered. Upon arrival, we established contact with one of our agents. We discussed our plans with our agent in this secluded forest when everything went wrong. Your world's hero killed my world's hero, and the rest of us ended up dead."

"Your people are still planning on coming here," I asked.

"Yes."

"To a conquered world."

"To a world of enslaved soldiers."

"And they are bringing with them the scourge?"

"Inevitably. We can not escape them. We can not defeat them. This was our last resort."

"Seven years?"

"Yes, but your world will be destroyed much sooner than that. In five years the Shadow Plague will wipe out existence. What's left is a shade of life."

"You created this in your mindscape; how accurate do you think that is?"

"I used my mindscape to survive in my broken state. I didn't create the Shadow Plague. I experienced it. When I recreated it in my mindscape, it took me several attempts to figure out how to survive. The solution was always to hide. Except those wolf bastards had a keen sense of smell, which made my task all the more difficult.

"The wolfbears?"

"Much worse and more human."

"Bloody abyss."

Cal nodded and took another drink of ale.

Saving my friends wasn't going to be enough. What good would it be to save them if the world ended shortly after? I needed to start thinking larger. Making bigger plans. I needed longer loops. Ao's bloody abyss, indeed.