I opened my eyes to hell. Fire and thick, choking smoke filled the black sky with flickering shadows. Bits of ash flew through the hellfire-hot air on invisible updrafts. Nothing remained of the audience hall I’d last left. Not even the sour scent of motor oil. Instead, all I smelled was hot metal and brimstone.

A world-shaking detonation blasted past. It nearly dislodged me with the force of the tremor, and I barely held on as I was pelted with sharp, hot, or heavy debris. All around me, broken fragments of rusted sheet metal clattered and twisted as they were tossed about like confetti by the violent shockwaves. A distant warehouse revealed by the suddenly open tableau collapsed inward as its foundation was obliterated by the quake.

“What the hell happened!” I screamed at no one in particular.

Staccato gunfire sounded in the distance, and what looked like a cadre of missiles arced high overhead. I shot to my feet, more out of instinct than anything else, but the moment I did, a great sense of wrongness filled me. Shaking that had nothing to do with the insane environment shook the mindscape, and I immediately sat back down to prevent a different type of apocalypse.

“Guuaghhh...”

I screamed, snap-kicking a goddamn zombie sitting at the foot of my throne in the face. It toppled over, falling face-first into a pile of sharp debris before lying there lethargically. I froze as I suddenly recognized that I’d just kicked Thrun in the face. He looked up at me dazed, with no recognition or intelligence in his eyes. Several ethereal blue threads hung torn and limp above his head.

“Geez, dude,” I gasped, struggling to slow my pounding heart. That’s right. I had left the man at the foot of the throne last time I’d rushed off to the real world. I just hadn’t been expecting him to still be there when I returned. I’d also not been expecting a full-on war to have demolished everything in sight.

The missiles landed in the distance, dropping another building and killing hundreds of ghosts in the process. I flinched as a wave of dust washed over me. It temporarily pushed aside the choking smoke to reveal the battlefield.

At its helm, a grinning silhouette floated above the devastation. Skeletal arms held up the edges of his sable cloak as if the man was posturing to be the next Dracula. His eerie grin seemed to glow vindictively as he eyed the havoc he’d caused.

The Phantom.

From underneath the wings of his outstretched cloak, rows upon rows of armored tanks and camo vehicles trundled over the broken ground. Foot soldiers jogged between the vehicles of war, holding M16s tightly to their chests as they threw grenades at any structure still standing. A contingent of trucks with tubes of missiles bolted to their tailbeds were parked in the back and launched waves upon waves of dark projectiles that caused the huge detonations I’d experienced previously.

The clamor and screech of broken concrete and tortured metal were everywhere. I could barely hear myself think. Despite this, Crusty’s robust voice pierced through the cacophony.

“CHARGE!”

The command was simple and to the point. I spun, seeing a horde of thousands of ghosts dressed in full tier-4 steel armor sprint over the broken ground. At their helm raced Crusty in the largest suit of plate mail I’d ever seen in my life. He carried an eight-foot-long steel battleaxe on his shoulder that gleamed a crystalline white through the smoke.

A tank fired its main barrel, and the battle began. Foot soldiers fell to their knees and unleashed clipped gunfire towards the charging knights. Bullets pinged off of breastplates and kite shields, but some managed to pierce the thick steel. Knights fell in droves as they ran across no man's land to close the distance with the modern army.

Before they collided, the knights pulled out steel daggers from their belts and unleashed a volley of deadly steel at the foot soldiers. The thin blades landed amongst the unarmored foot soldiers and ripped through them like machine gun fire. The blades bounced off the huge tanks, but that was where Crusty came in.

He collided with the oncoming force first. His huge axe howled through the air as it moved, tearing apart flesh and steel with equal ease. Nothing stood in his way. The first tank unfortunate enough to turn its barrel on the giant bodybuilder was left in pieces as my Custodian tore a hole through the line.

Chaos descended over the battlefield, and I lost track of who was winning. There was just too much noise. Too much flashing steel and flickering muzzle flash. What I could see was the missile trucks in the back raising their barrels on the last few structures still standing in the mindscape.

One of which was the throne.

Time seemed to slow as a single particular missile launched into the sky. It flew over the clashing armies and began its descent directly toward Thrun and myself. A thousand thoughts seemed to flash through my mind in an instant.

Did my stats carry over to this strange place? Would I survive the impact? Would Thrun survive the impact?

First and foremost of these, however, was a single glaring observation. If those missiles could destroy buildings, there were even odds they could destroy the throne I was sitting on. If the throne broke...would I be able to return to the real world?

I couldn’t risk it.

With a flicker of thought, I was suddenly armed and armored. As I stood on the metal throne, my silverback boots glittered in the reflected light of the fires. My left arm held my shield, but my mace was sheathed. Instead, I held the huge magical tome in my right.

I pushed my will into its dense pages, and it responded. Crackling frost tamped down the nearby fires as energy coalesced. Snow materialized out of nowhere, glittering in its purity, as a shard of an ancient glacier formed above my head. The Ancient Spellbook thrummed with my will. Its pages rippled, and I couldn’t keep the feral grin off my face as I launched the spell into the sky.

The lance of frost flew up on silent wings, becoming nearly invisible against the dark sky. It collided with the incoming missile, shattering the fragile metal and detonating the payload safely in the reaches of the upper atmosphere.

Broken bits of missiles crashed harmlessly around me as the crackling power of the ancient spellbook receded. In the distance, another building collapsed as the rest of the missile salvo crashed into its foundation.

“I need to help them,” I murmured quietly. The battle was going...ok. Crusty was dealing massive damage to the modern soldiers, but the assault rifles toted by the other side were taking their toll. My army was holding out for now, but who knew for how long? At the very least, it couldn’t be good metaphorically if my side of the conflict suffered extreme casualties.

I couldn't just up and go help. The throne locked me in position, and there was also no way in hell I was leaving it unprotected. I needed a replacement. Someone to keep the throne safe from the missiles so I could operate freely.

My eyes instantly fell on Thrun. He was sort of like me. In theory, he should be able to protect the throne with his scary ass revolver. In theory. In practice, he was currently a vegetable, and while I was confident I could restore him with a single word, I didn’t trust him any farther than I could throw him.

Especially not for such an important purpose.

I shook my hair out of my face, turning back to the conflict. It didn’t matter. I could help the battle from here. The missile trucks reloaded their shells in the distance as I raised the ancient spellbook high above my head.

The spellbook in the real world was limited. It contained a series of spells that each required a set magic level and were unlocked sequentially. Each one was stronger than the last, but each one still was bound by the laws of the world. It was structured. Magic, but not magic.

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The mindscape, however, was my mind. In my mind, magic would follow my rules.

The ancient spellbook rippled as I poured my will into it. Frost rose in the air into a maelstrom of swirling snowflakes. I unleashed it over the battlefield, and the storm howled in glee. Flames snuffed out at its passage, and ice crystalized over the missile trucks. Their metal components creaked as the storm embrittled their structure. Fuel solidified and cracked while fragile rubber hardened as the temperate plummeted.

I set the storm out of my mind and reached deeper into the spellbook. Gibbering shadows greeted me, unlike the clinical darkness present in the real world. I accepted it and gladly set it free. Demonic arms covered in claws and teeth slithered out of the spellbook. They gleefully jumped into the flickering shadows covering the battlefield, making the dancing shadows writhe and twist as if in pain. All over the battlefield, the shadows of the modern military rose up to rend and tear their hosts.

The shadows, however, could do little against the hardened plate of the tanks, so I dug deeper into the spellbook. I dumped power I didn’t know I possessed into the merciless pages of the tome to command the smoke choking the landscape to my bidding. Smoke so dense it was more akin to black sand fell from the sky and onto the tanks. It filtered through the gun barrels and the cracks. Through the armor plating and the treads. Filling up the soulless shells and choking the operators hidden within.

Ice, shadow and smoke silenced the battlefield. The only things that remained standing were a few empty tanks and my sides ghostly knights in their shining steel. As one, my warriors turned on the Phantom, ready and eager to finish off the final threat. The Phantom gazed back, unfazed. In fact, his grin only widened as a faint melody of thrumming chords rose over the battlefield.

“CHARGE!” Crusty roared, following his own command with an immense leap. The rest of the knights followed suit, but none of them reached their target. The phantom raised his hands, and the cloak shrouding him morphed into a set of tattered wings. They flapped hard, blowing back my soldiers and launching the man up into the sky.

“So good of you to return!” the phantom hissed from the stratosphere. I had no trouble hearing his words despite the distance. “Come to save the day all on your lonesome? How...droll!”

With that, the phantom dove. His trajectory took him to one of the last remaining buildings still standing: Crusty’s Vault.

“Stop him!” I screamed, launching a salvo of ice strikes in his direction. The projectiles whizzed through the air but phased right through the phantom instead of dealing any damage. Crusty roared in acknowledgment of my command and raced across the battlefield, but by then, the phantom had already landed.

The walls of the Vault blew outwards. The phantom's tattered wings rose menacingly as he lifted one of the steel safes above his head. The thick steel tore like wet cardboard as the cloaked figure ripped his hands apart. An item fell out of the safe, but before I could identify it, the phantom whipped out his prison shank and sliced it in two.

One of the blue threads above my head tore, falling limp and lifeless around my temple.

I gasped, falling to my knee as vertigo fell over me. It wasn’t pain so much as a sense of wrongness. Like a sucker punch that paralyzed my diaphragm without actually hurting all that much on its own. I shook my head, pushing aside the disorientation and looking up just as Crusty, with his axe raised high, flew at the phantom.

“Begone! Pest!” The phantom exploded to his feet and caught the massive blade with one skeletal hand. Crusty froze, his mouth locked in an O of surprise. With his other hand, the phantom slammed Crusty’s chest, launching him hundreds of feet away with a detonation of force.

Crusty slammed into the ground beside me as the phantom vanished deeper into the Vault. My knights raced in after him, but none of them could hope to match his unyielding power. I needed to be over there and fight him in person. I needed to figure out why my attacks couldn't harm him. Not trapped on this throne. But...

To do that, I would have to make compromises.

“Dammit,” I snarled. I jumped off the throne and grabbed Thrun by the collar. The mindscape immediately started shaking, but I ignored it. “Phogik! Return Thrun to his original state!”

“Yes, my sky,” I heard a seedy whisper. I turned to see Phogik bowing over his clipboard while perched on a particularly precarious ledge. He’d appeared entirely out of nowhere. Whatever.

“Wha...” Thrun blinked in my arms. His eyes went round as saucers as he beheld the shaking cataclysm around us. I grimaced at what I was about to do, then tossed the shell-shocked man onto the throne. The moment he hit the seat, the shaking stopped.

“You,” I pointed at Thrun with steel in my tone. “I need to take care of something. After that, we’ll talk. In the meantime. Don’t do anything...stupid.”

Without letting him respond, I waved to Crusty and bolted toward the Vault.

“What is he?” I asked Crusty as we both paused at the threshold of the warehouse. “Like, if this is my mind, how did he get in? And why do my attacks go right through him?”

“Dunno. Nightmare. Maybe,” Crusty shook his head sadly.

“Bloody hell,” I glared into the burning warehouse. It didn’t seem possible to fight this thing. If fighting it didn’t work, maybe I could just get rid of it. Just then, another thread above my head snapped. I gritted my teeth, fighting the nausea. “What are these threads, Crusty? Memories?”

“Connections.”

“To memories?” I clarified.

“No. Connections. To life.”

“That makes no sense. Whatever. Tell me straight. Can I get rid of these memories in the vault without turning into a vegetable?”

“Maybe...” Crusty frowned. “But. Crusty no job.”

“We can make new memories, Crusty. You can be the custodian of those. These memories are nothing but trouble, and I’m going to be real with you. I’m not that attached to them.”

“Hmm, already done.” Crusty turned to look at my armor which had sprouted several brilliant blue threads that floated up to my temple. “No forget Crusty, yes?”

“That I can do,” I stared up in wonder as the massive mass of blue threads leading into the Vault melted away to reveal just a scant few. They pointed at Crusty. At my armor and weapons. With the largest mass pointing back toward the throne.

“NOOOO!” A tortured scream emanated from within the burning Vault. “What. In. Damnation. Have. You Done?”

“Uh oh,” I said ruefully to the sounds of heavy footsteps coming from the warehouse. “Gotta work fast.”

With that, I lifted the spellbook, but instead of calling upon any of its traditional spells, I crafted one of my own. A sliver of light, so small and thin that it could cut through anything. I crafted it in the image of the sharpest thing I knew. The ground in the real world.

It floated before me like an avenging angel. Tiny, but impossibly bright. With a gesture of will, I commanded the spell to do its business. It whizzed to the ground, embedding itself a quarter inch into the black asphalt. Then it paused as if asking me if I was sure. With a melancholy smile on my face, I nodded.

The sliver shuddered, and then it zoomed to the right. It arced around the Vault at ground level with eye-watering speed. Its passage left a rupture in the ground. A deep cut that couldn’t be repaired with simple building materials. In an instant, the sliver of light had made an entire loop around the structure and returned to my feet. It buzzed once, then winked out.

Suddenly, the phantom appeared before us. He stood hunched and enraged with glowing, seething breaths giving his expression a manic cast.

“GIVE IT TO ME!” he snarled, pointing a skeletal, overly long digit at me.

“I don’t think so,” I shook my head, causing my new blue threads to flow around me like a halo. “I don’t know what you are or how you came to be in my mindscape. But this is goodbye.”

The Vault fell like a stone. The entire landmass succumbed to the merciless grip of gravity in an instant. Thousands of tonnes of stone, steel and forgotten memories jettisoned out through the bottom of the mindscape like so much junk.

The phantom’s eyes grew wide with shock as the vacuum of space bulged them from their sockets. Then they narrowed in rage. He flapped his cloak, transforming it into tattered wings again, but I simply shook my head again.

This was my mind. And I was its ruler. It was time I accepted that.

With a flick of my wrist, the massive hole left behind by the vault was sealed by fresh, perfectly white ground. The faint outlines of tiles flickered darkly every 1.75 meters.

Thump.

“Careful,” Crusty rumbled, gesturing to the edge of the mindscape. “Fly around.”

I looked up to the edge of my mindscape and realized Crusty was right: The phantom could simply fly underneath, but that was a simple fix. With a thought, I twisted the city. The ground on the edges lifted as the center dropped like a stone. The edges rose high in the sky, and fused together to form the inside of a sphere. Debris began to fall down from the extreme heights, but I simply swiped my hand and twisted gravity like a pretzel so that down was always down.

The debris fell up, and I vaguely heard a monstrous — but frustrated — scream through the thick ground.

“And good riddance,” I spat.