It took Gal two seconds to realize something was amiss in the room, the sizzling gave it all away. But those two seconds were more than enough for Alexander to pop right out of the growing puddle of boiling tar. Morgana followed soon enough, both young mages carefully standing and dusting themselves, only to find a very confused, very scared Gal staring at them.

Where did these two come from? How did they move without tripping any of their wards? If they hacked through the electric circuitry, the internet or even through a portal, the alarms would have sounded instantly!

Whomever these people were, and however they had appeared, it didn’t really matter. They were intruders choosing the absolute worst time to come and try to do such a stunt. Gal immediately drew his pistol and pointed it straight at the pair. His radio activated immediately as he shouted.

“Freeze! Don’t move an inch, I will not think twice!”

The two looked at him with a mixture of excitement and pity. Morgana raised a hand and muttered an incantation. Before Gal could pull the trigger, the gun burst into pieces with a loud bang, forcing him to let go and shake his hands in slight pain.

“Urgh!”

“Huh. I expected it to blow up much more than that. Did I cast the wrong spell?” The woman looked at her own hand, casually annoyed.

“Dearest princess, guns these days have very little metal in them. You can’t just order the metal to blow up.” Alexander corrected helpfully. “They are made of plastic now. Mostly”

“Ahhhh, I am sorry. Sleeper weapons have always seemed so boring to me.” Morgana smiled calmly. “So, how shall we do this?”

The two invaders were involved in light banter, not really paying mind to Gal in the slightest… a part of him really wanted to just attack out of sheer indignation, but instead he decided to make a nuisance out of himself. He picked up his radio.

“Evacuate the package NOW!” He barked, right as the radio exploded on his hand. The searing pain on the side of his face was enough to make him stumble and cover himself, letting out a pained cry. “Argh!”

“Ohhh you really shouldn’t have done that, kid.” Alexander frowned. “You’ve just passed from annoying to outright troublesome…”

“Who are you!? What do you want with Mister Lombardi!?” Gal widened his stance, legs spread, both hands open and pointing their palms at his assailants.

Morgana snarled, her finger pointing at the young man as she shrieked another incantation. The Black Cloak frowned, immediately seeing that these two were branding their spells with foreign words, trying to make it harder to counterspell. He was confident that the trick would only work once, and after he saw the spell he would be able to identify the Critical Point to immediately interrupt it. Whatever it was, it couldn’t be instantaneous, right?

Lightning flew from the woman’s hand. Gal’s eyes opened widely, as he was barely able to create a shield in time to cover his face. The force was still enough to punch him back several meters, while a few of the barrels on the cellar exploded all of a sudden. Paradox, it was starting to show its ugly head…

“You’re so beautiful when you shoot to kill…” Alexander said dreamingly, before spreading his arms and shouting another loud word. Several of the barrels burst to flames in an instant, the others exploded immediately.

“A-Are you insane!?” Gal slowly got back to his feet, still panting from the impact. He was too dazed to really see how obvious that question was. “You’ll blow this entire building up!”

“Why does it matter? Your precious little ‘package’ is probably gone already!” The mad mage moved his hands, whispering a few words and summoning the flames to dance and gather in his hands, forming a growing, pulsing ball of fire. “Let’s just deliver the message and break this place down, then!”

A bullet flies from the basement’s stairs with a loud bang, hitting an invisible barrier surrounding the pair of invaders. Agatha, Gal’s superior, was descending as fast as she could with her own gun in her hands. A tall, powerful woman of dark tanned skin and blond hair, repeatedly shooting as fast as her fingers allowed it. Sparks flew as each bullet violently broke to pieces against the powerful shield. Every impact made Morgana flinch, as she closed her eyes and tried to reinforce her focus just a little more…

Gal narrowed his eyes, focusing on Alexander and his fire ball… until finding the precise moment to point at him.

The Critical Point, a moment during a spell’s casting where its logic is the most flawed, closer to failing than to succeeding. There are very few spells without them, and the more outlandish the magical feat, the more Critical Points it had. So as soon as Gal’s eyes identified an opening in the logic keeping that fireball together…

“JO!”

There’s the loud sound of several crystals breaking, as the flames burst and explode on Alexander’s hands. There’s a flash of light… and when it is all done, two bodies lay on the floor, scorched.

Agatha walked over to Gal, panting softly. Now that had been a bit too close.

“Jason! Your cheek is all red, are you okay?!” She quickly checked on her little protegee, while he pouted and complained.

“I am fine, I am fine. J-just a bit burnt but I will survive.” Gal smiled a little bit, before looking at the charred bodies. “What should we do?”

They both turned and walked close to the pitchblack, burnt corpses. The smell was so intense and revolting Gal could feel himself needing to puke if he didn’t abandon that room soon. Agatha shook her head softly.

“First we call central, then we pack them up for interroga–”

If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

The woman’s voice was cut short, turned into a wet gargle as a black spike suddenly pierced her neck. Gal’s eyes opened widely once again, looking down at the burnt, male body that spawned the spike. The damn thing had shot right out of the corpse’s back, leaving a bloody hole on his flesh… then, the second body started to rise once again, trembling and twitching, panting heavily before howling in pain.

Pieces and pieces of black, dead skin shed like a coat, exposing the throbbing, red mass of tissue underneath. Young Gal, still new to violence and duty, couldn’t bring himself to move and much less cast. Two words came to his mind all of a sudden.

Flesh sculptors…

He could fight, but his first instinct was to run… but he wasn’t going to leave his superior like that. He immediately grabbed Agatha and, with all of his power, he forced them both out of the First Plane of existence. It would trip every single alarm in the manor, but he needed an escape fast.

The spike fell down, no longer having a target to lodge itself into. Slowly, Morgana twitched and trudged towards the spike and painfully kneeled to grab it, feeling precious blood fall off her skinless body as she returned it to the body of her beloved. It slowly sunk back in, as Alexander whimpered softly.

“There, there…” She whispered, gurgling her words a little bit. “Come here, my love… let me alleviate your pain…”

The mad woman kneeled, an extremely painful motion to a skinless body, and embraced the burnt, suffering form of her husband.

“We will get out of this… together…”

Magic began to flow between them once more, as a pool of tar and blood began to build on the floor underneath… and they both slowly sank into the liquid darkness once again.

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That one dream is always the same when I get it. In the middle of a brightly lit room I stand, balancing on top of a huge blue ball while I’m surrounded by everyone I’ve known and loved. I know that sounds exaggerated, but I am certain it’s true every time this happens, I just feel it in my blood. I whine and whimper, trying so hard to keep on top of that ball, while my so-called ‘audience’ laughs and points at me.

“What a loser!” They say between fits of snorting, loud laughter. I try to smile and take it, but honestly, between their constant jeering and the complexity of my punishment, I can’t bring myself to do it.

I feel tired beyond any measure, and I didn’t even know you could feel tired in their dreams.

Every time this happens, it feels like this dream is eternal. Every time I am afraid that I will never wake up, that I will be trapped on top of this damn ball forever.

But luckily for me, morning always arrives. It must be one of the few times I am actually happy to wake up…

As I open my eyes though, I realize I am not on my bed. I am not even lying back! My body is standing upright, tightly squeezed by four huge, scaly fingers that keep me in place. I am trapped in a huge chamber, a circular room with a vaulted ceiling and piles upon piles of golden coins scattered all around the place. There’s light around me, coming from spikes of pure amber that pierce through the floor and raise through the coins littering around them.

I don’t want to look at the beast holding me, staring me down… I want to ignore it, to pretend it didn’t exist and erase it from my memories forever. But my eyes eventually land on it: a red scaled reptile, a creature bigger than several trucks piled up together, a black-eyed dragon.

I want to scream again, but I only manage to gasp.

“FINALLY YOU WAKE UP. I WAS GETTING TIRED OF WAKING.” A voice shakes me to my core, reverberating across the room. It was coming from the dragon. “LO AND BEHOLD, HUMAN. FEAR NOT, FOR I MEAN YOU NO HARM.”

I continue to stare at this beast for a moment. Then the memories hit me: the vision of what was left of Mustafá. I feel like vomiting for an instant, but then I remember: she can’t die, can she? Does this creature know that?

“W-What do you mean ‘no harm’!? You killed my teacher!” I whined loudly, shaking and trying to free myself. Mostly for the show, although I do have a silly hope of maybe being able to slide off this beast’s grasp. “You bastard…!”

“YOUR MASTER’S FATE WAS THEIR OWN CHOICE, FOR DARING TO LIFT A HAND AGAINST ME. YOU WILL SHARE HER SAME END, IF YOU DON’T BEHAVE.”

I immediately stop moving, gulping and looking down with another soft whimper. So this thing really thinks it killed Mustafá, huh? Then all I need to do is stall until she somehow stands back up.

“Are you sure she will come back? What if being crushed to death was too much for her bullshit magic to overcome? Or even if she can come back, what makes you think she will come for you instead of running away?”

I am choosing to believe in her. Now shush, I have to focus! I need to look sad and terrified.

“That will be easy. You are sad and terrified.”

Exactly! I look back up, facing the dragon once again and taking a very slow, sharp breath.

“O-Okay… I will behave, I promise! Just, please… let me go” I whimper, sobbing softly while looking into the beast’s eyes.

“NAY. IF I DID THAT, YOU’D IMMEDIATELY RUN AWAY, DON’T PRETEND YOU WOULDN’T.” At least the thing is self aware. “NAY. YOU SHALL STAY AND ANSWER MY QUESTIONS.”

“W-Whatever can I actually tell you that you don’t already know? You’re a dragon!” Casually stroking this thing’s ego was an obvious move. I needed to see if this creature was responsive to such things.

“I MAY BE A WISE CREATURE, BUT I AM NOT OMNISAPIENT. THERE ARE THINGS I’M NOT AWARE OF, PARTICULARLY… WHY HAVE YOU COME HERE? HAVE THE BLACK CLOAKS SENT YOU TO FINISH THE JOB, FINALLY?”

The black cloaks? From all I’ve heard, I wouldn’t be surprised if they were trying to kill off the dragons that apparently still exist in our world.

“I-I assure you we have nothing to do with Exodus… we may even be working against them, for all I know.” I sigh softly. That much wasn’t a lie. “My teacher, you know, the one you crushed to death, she was quite the vocal contrarian to them.”

“THEN WHAT BRINGS YOU TO MY DEN?” The beast seems confused. “HOW DID YOU KNOW I WAS AWAKE?”

“We didn’t. It was a surprise to us all! How long have you been awake?” I tilt my head to the side, struggling a little bit on the grip of this beast.

“LONG ENOUGH TO KNOW THAT YOU’RE LYING. YOU FOUND MY TRAIL AND FOLLOWED ME HERE.” I mean, I don’t blame it for not believing me.

“Your trail? So you’ve been outside and everything?” I blink. A dragon has been living in my city all this time and I had no idea?

The beast remained in silence for a moment, staring me down. It probably realized it had spoken too much. Its grip tightened around me.

“W-Wait, wait wait! Don’t crush me!” I squeak and whine. “I-I am sorry!”

“THEN TELL ME WHY YOU’RE HERE.” The dragon’s enormous paws relaxed a bit.

“W-Well… the Emperor of Bisontia is dead, and–”

“WHAT.”

I was immediately pulled to the side as the creature turned around and pushed me into a pile of gold. I am buried neck deep in coins, it feels way too heavy to try to escape! But even if I could, maybe it was best to just stay put and watch…

In front of me, the creature began to transform into pure red smoke, flowing and turning around itself, and then compressing into the form of a regular human being: a tanned, amazonian lady with thick black hair and a red dress. My jaw drops, but she pays no mind to my gawking.

With a clap of her hands, a desktop computer (and a fancy wooden desk) fly straight from one of the golden piles and in front of this woman. She starts to furiously type, probably trying to fact-check me…

My eyes finally get away from here to focus back on the entrance to this chamber: the cracked stone slab blocking the way.

Mustafá… you better hurry up…