Upon spying My beloved Wings, Teuila, the fact that we both simultaneously ask, “What took you so long?” gets my heart racing and sets me on edge with anxiety.

No. No no no. Okay, if Teuila lost an hour or two going through a crazy tunnel, then it would make sense that her call didn’t come in til I’d been out there for an hour or two. It would also make sense why I supposedly took a long time, when getting to the location was less than five minutes, and the tunnel was only about a minute and a half, maybe two.

Gulping, I explain, “I was soloing the horde so long that I literally read a book before you called. Literally read a book. The Tempest one. I can prove that I gained its hour-long-read enchantment benefits. I literally came moments after you called, and it only took me at most a couple minutes to walk down that freaky long spiral tunnel ramp.”

Quirking a brow as her face contorts, Teuila asks, “What freaky long spiral tunnel ramp? It’s a straight shot from the foothill to here, and not even that far. I can just see the edge of it from the door of the chamber. I was only here for a quick check before contacting you Airhead. You’re the one who took hours. I’ve been freaking out a bit.”

Dread creeps up and down my spine, it tastes like someone drizzled chocolate sauce in motor oil. And unfortunately, it joins my other passengers in spreading the oh so joyous sensation of every nerve ending in my body, slowly, bit by bit, organ by organ, becoming gustatory.

Slowing my breathing, and steadying my heart rate, I try to find some center of calm in the chaos that this place seems to be. Teuila is familiar, should be familiar, should be washing away all dread. But every look she gives me, every flicker of her shadow where it bends in two locations despite only one light source, it all makes it worse. The scent of ozone, and the fading echo of the crackle of lightning are the only things binding my sanity together like some sort of frayed knot.

Oh. That’s an unfortunate and ironic simile. Shudders run down my spine. I’m not part of Terrorzin’s crazed cult of endbringer worshipers though. There’s something off about our reunion. Well, more than one something. Quite a lot of things are off. If Te was frantic, why didn’t she fill me in on the exact details as soon as I arrived? Or if her emotions were overwhelming her, why didn’t she nail me in a torpedo hug like usual?

Please no. Please, please please no. Drop it Reggie. Just don’t try to rationalize this. There was a weird tunnel, and time differential. That’s it. That’s all. Do *not* press this line of thought any further. You will not like the consequences. My right wrist trembles, and my whole right forearm spasms as I’m thinking about consequences. Am I going to assign meaning to that now too? Consequences reminds me of the thunder and lightning staff that I shattered inside the head of a Fel Portalspawn, and ended up embedded with all its shards coated in Fel blood?

Because of that, and using so much lightning that I redirected through myself, my nerve-tunnels were cored out, nearly everything that could be a pathway from brain to most muscles were dead. Was dead? Were dead? It’s a plural singular past thingy. Ugh, brain no worky. Yeah, I can tell, ya goober. No worky? Really? Hush. I’ve got a migraine building.

Anyway, my point was, the consequences were that I developed spasms and tremors much worse than I’d had previously in my life, after that point. Some of which was even required just to locomote myself around, in a jerky floppy motion. Pft, you’re a jerky floppy motion. Snrk.

Facepalming, my hand brushes my hair up betwixt my horns. Features I’m still not used to having. Will I ever get used to my new body? It’s not like I hate it, or have some hyper-specialized image of what a Reggie Shellcracker looks like internally. Knowing your luck Reggie, you will someday finally start to get used to it. Oh? And then immediately be mutated or reincarnated into a body with entirely different features you’re not used to. You’re just that kind of sucker. Oh. Bluh. Screw you too buddy.

Hey, you took the bait, don’t blame me. Wait. Did I bait myself into a punchline to end with roasting myself? Who even does that? Well, Reggie Shellcracker, that’s who, obviously. Let’s see Reggie, if you had to give your insanity a scaled percentage, where do you think you rank on an average day?

Well, today is anything but average. I know, we’re starting with a baseline. What’s an average day? Uhh, help me out here. How? Describe what percentages correlate with what sort of traits? Well how should I know? You’re the one who asked! Oh no. Oh wow I’m losing it. I’m still in range of whatever effect is taking over all my senses and replacing them with taste. And of course I’m still stuck with revolting tastes swimming around me like some sort of—Reggie. Yeah? Do not try to think of an analogy for that.

Fine. I’m sure it would have been lame anyway. I’m too tired to be witty and quippy in my own head. Oh, but not too tired to bait and roast yourself? Oh shut up. Get out of your head, back to reality, which is much safer, I’m sure. Are you sure you’re sure? No, now go.

My eye’s twitching slowly starts to pull my right cheek into it. I’m sure I look like the worst first date to roll up on. The one that’s hanging out on the curb outside the club, giving fingerguns and fifty winks in rapid succession. That’s… oddly specific Reggie. Also, should be nowhere in your lexicon or memories. So once again you’re getting sidetracked by random Fakeworld crap. Also, be glad Teuila isn’t in your head right now to hear about how you ‘baited yourself.’ Snrk. Ugh, you dink. Back to reality! Alright, alright, back to reality it is. It’s a scary reality though.

Since Teuila insisted it’s a straight shot, with a sight range nearly far enough to see the exit, I really want her to be right. I want that whole twisted tunnel trip to have been one too many dragon-stomps to the head. Slowly turning my head, keeping one eye on Teuila so she doesn’t disappear, I gaze back over my shoulder at the yawning cavern of the twisted spiral tunnel I came down. It still appears as it did to me during my jaunt. My horrific, sensory-filled jaunt. My vomit-inducing, flavor-filled jaunt. Blurghle. Despite the absolute nausea, at least I don’t horf, especially not on Teuila. Wait. Teuila.

Oh for the love of—please really be Teuila, and not some cosmic horror imagination hallucination. Every bit of me vibrates intensely as I freeze, torn between looking at Teuila, and the tunnel. No, no no no. Please. Please don’t do this to me.

Not again. I can’t have her be a trauma trigger again. It would destroy me. Please, please don’t be some horror using Teuila’s face. The last time, I went catatonic for months. This time, I’m not sure I’d ever be able to claw my way back. My pulse is racing, and my body is not responding to any attempt to move. It simply vibrates in place. Well, vibrates and tastes. Could really do without that part.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Dry throat, sticky tongue, forced to swallow once again to breathe. I really, really, really don’t want to. I don’t want another flavor passenger. Please no. Gulping, swallowing in order to breathe, I’m not granted any mercy. Instead I’m granted a new passenger, the flavor of every condiment ever, rubbed on asphalt that someone cooked an egg on three and a half months ago, and ran over with tires that left melted rubber today. It’s so unsettlingly specific.

My right eyelid begins spasming much worse, twitching hard, and I fight to keep it from blinking completely, as it’s the eye keeping an eye on Teuila. Yes, I heard my mental redundancy. So at least I’m pretty sure my brain is still my own if it’s doing stuff that’s that stupid. Swallowing my fear, and another gorram awful taste, like nucleotides infused into a three in one body wash, shampoo, and conditioner. Why-y-y-y!? Only one time have I lucked out so far to not imbibe another passenger on each swallow.

Yuck, oh glubbing fronds that is sickening. Who even knows the taste of shampoo and conditioner? What does a nucleotide even taste like!? For the love of everything holy, or hellish, please for the love of everything in general, stop adding new flavors to my palate that I never wanted! Somehow, I’m fairly certain my mental plea falls on deaf ears. I mean, at best I cast my wish out into the void. The void of me. Me being the Void Dragon. Yes yes, I know who you are. Wait. BSOD. My brain’s fritzing out. That phrase. Time… and relative dimensions in space? Stolen… soil? Stolen… Earth?

Well, those are certainly applicable concepts. What with the likelihood of some cosmically horrifically distorted tunnel that treats each traveler differently. I mean, at best. That’s the best case scenario. And you don’t want to know the worst. If there were some sort of log of events, of cases, best to worst, I wouldn’t want it. I’d want it destroyed, so that no one ever had to suffer knowing it. No log? Sounds like a Can’Z’aasian stuck on Rayileklia, doesn’t it? Pft. Yeah. Also, why does my tongue keep swelling up all sticky-like, while my throat stays dry?

Before my body can make another involuntary swallow, I conjecture, “Te… you did call me, right? Because you saw something horrific, right? Like, like our rescue target, is maybe, not entirely—well, or possibly, I mean. I can’t find the right words. The only thing that comes to mind is Nala said the phrase ‘pan-dimensional womb’ once.”

Thankfully, despite the lack of gravity in her response, Teuila nods while answering, “Yeah, Airhead, I called. And, I guess maybe that could describe what I saw. Maybe. It’s safe at least. Well, safe enough. There’s nothing to worry about. Getting there is easy peezy lemon squeezy. The room is three doors down this way, deeper into the ruins.”

My brain bluescreens, BSODs hard, fritzing out, and I can no longer control the spasmodic twitch of my right eyelid. Teuila begins walking towards the door, and unfortunately, the eye keeping an eye on her blinks, and she’s gone. Just as my world and mind are about to shatter, she pokes her head from around the door frame back into the room, and raises an eyebrow.

While glancing at me curiously, Te queries, “You comin’ Airhead? Pretty sure our rescue is on a time limit.”

Unnerved, I nod hesitantly and begin following Te, My Wings, deeper into these ruins. Heavens and hells, I’d walk to the other side of the world right now to ease my troubled mind. Or I’d just send my mind there, leaving my body lying here in these sandy timeless ruins. Everything is a bit floaty, lacking in gravity. It almost feels bouncy, like an astronaut’s first steps on the dark side of the moon. The whole world is floaty, and there’s nothing I can do about it. I’m going crazy. I’m going utterly crazy.

If I go entirely crazy, will Luni still consider me her hero? Will she call me, “My Hero,” if my mind is spinning through outer space, the cosmic void? Gods I wish she was here holding my hand, guiding my brain through this. I’d keep her tightly by my side. Ugh. I’ve also got a lump on my head from smacking that outcropping earlier. One too many hits, bumps to my head today. I wish that explained all the crazy in here.

Also, what I wouldn’t do for one normal flavor. Just something stupid and pointless, like I dunno, bubblegum, or a root beer barrel. Some kind of candy. Which is a bit odd, since I’ve never had candy in any of my lives. Still, a candy man can mix all kinds of flavors, and make a world as revolting as one where all my senses are gustatory taste good instead of tasting like existential dread lined up with a side of chemical-heavy perspiration.

These skeletal ruins of some ancient life, now a husk, yet one somehow animate in its spite. I shudder and vibrate harder with every step I take deeper into the ruins. With every step I take closer to Teuila. My hand shakes worse than Induul’s when he’s fiending from withdrawal.

We pass one doorway, two, and now we’re three doors down the hall. Once again, suddenly for no reason, my brain fritzes, and it feels like the flavor passengers are dancing raucously in my stomach. Dancing to songs only they can hear. I wish I was here without them. They’re like my Kryptonite.

I could really do without them enjoying the ride so much. Or, just without them in general. I can taste the inside of my clothing through my skin. This is the most horrific thing I think I could possibly imagine. Remember how I really, really, really wish I could find a new phrase instead of putting one’s foot in one’s mouth? Yeah? Did ya ever wonder what—? Eww friggin’ no, gross. Yeah, exactly. The inside of sweaty metal is no picnic. Hurf. Oh gods. Please just let me throw up all these flavors, or let me stop tasting everything. Something, anything.

I would kill for one normal sensation right now. I’m sure Te would feel the same if this place were affecting her the same way. Speaking of, she’s immensely nonchalant for waltzing through a realm of absolute horror. She’s treating this whole thing with almost no gravity, after her earlier call. And that’s hella ironic, what with her Latent being, “precise control over the forces of attraction.” Really Reggie, hella? Since when do you use hella? I don’t know, since maybe my mind is fracturing from cosmic dread as I become a walking giant taste bud? Shut up.

Ugh. I need to stop arguing with myself. No you don’t. Yes I do. No you don’t, it’s keeping you sane. You call this sane!? Errr, maybe give yourself just a little bit of a break. Te would tell you not to beat yourself up for beating yourself up. And speaking of Teuila, it’s a bit odd that Te’s scrying feed is so dark, completely blacked out almost, when we do cast a bit of glow ourselves with our magic equipment. Or do scrying feeds just not pick up magical aura light?

As we arrive at a large crumbling room, a thought occurs to me, and I really wish it hadn’t. While making note of what looks like a sealed vault on the wall opposite the entrance, I express, “Te, your goggles’s scrying feed was dark, too dark to see any scrying feed through, they still are. Why didn’t you look through the incoming feeds though to see mine? Or come drag me along while I was walking down the straight shoot tunnel if I was being a slow butt?”

As I’m waiting for a response, one that I’m more and more certain will never satisfy a rational mind, I see and hear something glitchy fritzing about in the room we’re in. My mind wants to break. My mind wants to cave in on itself, positive that once again, some farce is occurring, wearing the face of the one I love most in all the worlds.

The trauma, like at the beaver dam tunnel complex, threatens to send me spiraling into the depths of my own mind, burying me beneath a cyclic panic, possibly forever this time. I’m not ready to cave in just yet though.

The glitchy frizting thing has hints of vertical lines like some sort of sci-fi transporter effect. Or maybe a will o’ wisp, or ball lightning, slapped into two dimensions in a three dimensional world. It’s like someone sketched a gif of these vertical white lines with asymmetrical velocities, alternatingly spaced out unevenly, that scroll up, fade out at the top, and fade in at the bottom. It approaches me at mach speeds.

The Teuila near the vault door cries out, “Look out Airhead!”

Despite every fiber of my being screaming to get out of the way of this seeming attack, I stand my ground and hold my arms out wide. What strikes me strikes at ludicrous speeds, but with zero mass, or, well, at least no gravity. No force.