When the dire unicorns rushed at me with their black horns lowered, I ran at them with my shoulder forward in a standing tackle position. Dire unicorns went flying upon impact. All except one.

It was the largest and meanest looking dire unicorn, and its horn had stabbed me in the side. It hadn't punctured the skin, but it still hurt. It would probably produce a decent bruise.

I grabbed it by the head. It struggled against me. For a moment, we were locked in combat, neither one of us budging, until I realized I didn't need to throw the unicorn. I needed to jump on top of it. So I did. I jumped up, doing a twisting front flip over the unicorn until I landed in a seated position on its back.

Yes, I know that was very action movie of me, but I couldn't resist the urge to do it. The dire unicorn who I will now start calling Fred reared up on its hind legs and neighed. Then it bucked and kicked, trying to knock me off, but I was glued to its back. I had very strong thighs.

I smacked its butt, and it took off. I mean that in a literal sense. It shot into the sky. How? Happy to explain. Normal unicorns have an interesting ability to run on air. Well, not exactly.

They generate a rainbow under their feet that they run on. They can control where the rainbow goes and its angle. Fred, the dire unicorn, did the same thing, except there was something different about his rainbow.

It had no color. It was comprised of stripes of varying shades of gray and black. And it didn't assemble in the misty magical way that normal unicorns' rainbows do. The rainbow assembled like pieces of rock and stone forming under its feet.

It was solid, too. The rainbows normal unicorns make are literal rainbows. They're just light refracted through water mist. The rainbows can take very non traditional shapes like loops, ribbons, and Mobius strips, but they are still immaterial like other rainbows.

This rainbow was a solid object. It was hard and opaque. It became more fragile the longer and taller it got until the base of the rainbow attached to the ground crumbled and collapsed.

Cracks formed in the rainbow and it began crumbling up towards us, which I suppose was terrifying, but all I could do was hope no one was standing underneath the falling pieces of gray-scale rainbow far below us.

We were hundreds of feet in the air in seconds. We were traveling far too vertically for my tastes, so I grabbed Fred by the mane and pulled down on him until the rainbow became horizontal.

He didn't like that and tried to buck and jostle his head out of my grip, but I was too strong for him. I wasn't trying to hurt him and I hoped I wasn't, but he was really thrashing against my grip and I needed him to get me somewhere.

"Whoa, Fred! Calm down! I'm not trying to hurt you. I just need your help," I said.

He didn't seem to understand my words, but he calmed down slightly. He still occasionally thrashed when he thought I wasn't paying attention, but otherwise, we ran forward, away from the shadow wall and toward the Breach.

We were high above the forest of the Dire Wilds at this point, and I could see quite far ahead of us. I looked out over the forest for half an hour until we came to a flat red plain sprinkled with black and purple grass. Green and blue flowers were spread sparingly on the grass.

My eyes caught sight of clouds of red dust being thrown into the air. Taking a closer look, I saw a long line of cars speeding away from us towards a dark and overcast area with gray cracked ground that must have been the Breach.

The cars weren't anything to write home about. They were a mix of different weird-looking electric vehicles. They had the aesthetic of cars designed by some douchebag business guru who knew how to cash in on market appeal.

Getting away from my opinions about marketers and business gurus, they were pretty close to crossing into the Breach and I couldn't let that happen. While I was having a great time bonding with Fred, I needed to focus on my goal.

I had been talking to Fred over the last thirty minutes and calling him Fred repeatedly, hoping to instill the concept of his name being Fred into his brain, in case I needed his help in the future. I'd just have to hope that would be enough for now.

I focused on the line of cars and concentrated. I imagined myself several hundred feet in front of the moving line of cars and then I was gone. I popped back into existence in front of the cars.

I had enough time to be dramatic before they reached me, so I drew sword Steve and pointed him at the middle car like I was calling the people in it out as my target.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

My target was Judas Iscariot. I didn't know if he was in the middle car or not. But it looked cool and intimidating, so I did it anyway. As they drew closer, I readied my sword for a swing.

The middle car tried to avoid me by going left and then right, but they were boxed in by the cars next to them. I swung down on the hood of the middle car when it got to me, caving it in, and sending the car flipping over me.

Teleporting another several hundred feet in front of the line of cars, I readied myself to take another swing. The cars were starting to spread out and maneuver away from me.

I smashed another one, sending it flying through the air, but I realized this process was too slow. They were getting closer and closer to the Breach but I had only taken out two cars out of nearly forty of them.

So I decided to resort to something more basic. I teleported right in front of a car and let it slam into me. Now is probably a good time to tell you I have the ability to stand in one place without moving.

I mean it. It's like an actual power. When the car hit me, the hood folded in half around my body, setting off the airbags and knocking out the driver and passenger.

I did this to several more cars before they started shooting beams of energy at me from their stolen pitchforks. They started shooting continuous beams in front of the cars, right where I might show up, so I had to get creative.

I teleported to the front corners of the cars, sending them flipping, spinning, and careening in all directions. Once I had crashed the final car, and everyone in the cars seemed sufficiently injured, I stopped teleporting.

It was a few moments before people started climbing, crawling, and walking out of the cars, and moving toward me. Someone yelled something in demonic and the people all pulled out those energy beam ball traps that Genghis Khan had used on me.

This time I was ready. They started throwing them at me and I teleported around the battlefield before any of them could activate and trap me. I kept doing this until I saw a white canister fly through the air and land among the escaped souls.

Uh oh. It was a gravity well. The canister exploded, and a loud sucking sound could be heard over the shouts of the souls. The souls got sucked into a ball of darkness on the ground about one foot in diameter. And so did I. And so did the cars.

We all got sucked into the same place and we would be held there for as long as the gravity well lasted, which was just a few minutes, but it would be enough time for whoever threw it to escape.

Luckily, I was on the outside of the ball of bunched-up people and objects. I could see who threw the canister. It was Judas. He was wearing what looked like a climbing rig with a bunch of pitons attached to a cable. The cable looked weird. It was glowing red. I had never seen anything like it. It had to be a Hell thing, but I didn't know what.

He had a gun in his hand that was attached to the rig. He was shooting pitons into the ground in front of him and pulling himself forward with the cable.

I teleported to Judas and grabbed onto the glowing red cable trailing behind him. My feet lifted off the ground and I had to pull myself with just my arms. Judas was wearing spiked boots that allowed him to stay standing by sticking the spikes into the ground.

He was incredibly prepared. This had to have been planned long in advance. There was no way he had time to gather up all this stuff right after escaping from the lowest circle of Hell.

He had to have had help. He was smart. I'll give him that, but he was clearly also connected to someone very powerful who could get him equipment and weapons he needed to complete his journey.

This connection between Cain and the escaped souls of Hell was starting to look intentional as I thought more about it. But who could it be? That question I had no idea how to answer.

Getting away from that, I pulled myself up to Judas and grabbed his shoulder. "You don't have to do this!" I yelled.

"I know! I want to do it!" he yelled back.

"Why?" I asked.

"He tricked me! If it wasn't for me, he wouldn't have been able to forgive all of mankind! And then he left me all alone, and sent me to Hell!" he yelled.

"You sent yourself to Hell! All you had to do was ask for forgiveness and he would have given it to you," I said.

"Why should I have to ask for forgiveness when I didn't do anything wrong? He built a kingdom of Heaven on the fruits of my labor and abandoned me! He should be made to suffer like me! It's only fair!" he yelled.

"What are you going to do?" I asked.

"Tear it down, of course! What else can I do?" he yelled.

"You could stop this and come to your senses," I said.

"I'm not listening to you!" he yelled.

"Real mature," I said, as I reached over him and slashed the cable with my sword.

I expected the cable to cut and for Judas to lose his tether and fly back into the gravity well with me, but that didn't happen. The cable flamed in response to the impact of the sword.

"Damned steel. Holy weapons don't work," he said, grinning.

"Damn you!" I yelled.

I tried to stab him in the back, but he grabbed me and wrapped the cable multiple times around my neck. I tried to stop him, but I couldn't do much. I only had one hand. I needed to hold on with the other hand to keep from flying back.

He pulled the cable tight, cutting off my oxygen. I struggled against it, but he had the upper hand. He was strapped into the rig. He could use both hands and he had the benefit of being able to stand up, which in a hand-to-hand fight, is a huge advantage.

I was losing oxygen and I couldn't unwrap my neck from the cable and I couldn't cut it with Steve. So instead of trying to escape, I did the next best thing. I let go of the cable, wrapped my hands around his neck, and tried to choke him.

It seemed to be working at first until he managed to wrap the cable around my wrists. He yanked my hands off his neck using the cable. Everything began to get dark. Being fully restrained, I just had to watch as Judas reached the Breach.

It was a huge silvery mirrored wall. He plunged his hand into it. Then the substance began pulling him into it. He was fully submerged and consumed by the wall of silvery liquid in moments.

And then it was my turn. I got pulled into the liquid after him right as the edges of my vision blurred. Then, once again, annoyingly, everything went dark. I was getting really tired of this passing-out bullshit.