I.

I opened my eyes to an eerie calm.

After a moment of disorientation, I realized I had fallen onto my side, lying along the bench. The last light of the sunset illuminated the interior of the Amphitheater. People--normal, everyday people--were likewise splayed across the tiers of seating, leaning against one another or slumped forward in deep slumber.

Groaning, I forced myself into an upright position, my sensitive eyes narrowed into slits against the light. The familiar pain of a migraine squeezed my head, but now was not the time to wallow in my suffering. I needed to escape from this hell as soon as possible.

The first step was to properly evaluate the situation.

Here and there throughout the arena, wisps of strange color dissipated like drifting smoke into the evening air. Their purpose escaped me until I noticed one of the remaining demons in the distance, a humanoid with four arms raised to the heavens.

Its fingers dissolved into a flurry of orange and lavender motes; the process accelerated downward until moments later its arms and the top of its head were likewise deconstructed. The demon’s gaze focused on me from across the arena until it disappeared behind the growing swirls of color.

The invaders were, I hoped, returning home to Desolada. Their bodies must have been designed to withstand the environment within the tesseract. Once exposed to the purity of the real world, they evaporated like water droplets flung onto a fire.

An unnatural calm blanketed my thoughts, though it felt different than the hopelessness that had settled over me in the final moments before Astaroth’s triumph. Had the demon lord actually been foiled in the end, or was I stuck in some sort of purgatory?

For a moment I attempted to make sense of my fragmented memories, but their jagged edges refused to fit together into a coherent narrative. Half-remembered dreams of Brother Augur in some bizarre palace still lingered in my mind. Just thinking about the man threw my thoughts into chaos.

I forced myself to my feet. No one else seemed to have recovered to the same extent as I had, but a groan not too far to my left signaled that I might find myself with some company soon. Probably not purgatory, then.

A glance at the familiar faces around me made me pause. Mara in particular caught my eye. She sat with her chin propped against her chest, limp copper hair obscuring her features.

She had betrayed me before. Leaving her behind was bound to cause trouble. My hand drifted towards my hip, seeking the blade I usually kept there. Nothing. Dasein was missing, too, taken by Brother Augur as if he had been reclaiming an old friend, though it hardly qualified as a proper instrument for execution.

What was I thinking? The thoughts of a monster, a lunatic. Even if I planned to murder her in cold blood, I would have to do it with my bare hands, waking up the others with our struggles and drawing far too much unwelcome attention my way.

Another option was to awaken them in an attempt to recruit at least the Karystans into a small squad. Lisara and Johan in particular were skilled with the spear. They could prove useful.

While it appeared that Astaroth’s plan had been thwarted, it was possible that not all of the invaders had been banished from Savra. Several demons, such as the Captain and those sacrificed within the Amphitheater, had served as the legion’s vanguard long before the tesseract dropped over Odena. Their physical forms had been anchored into reality without the need for an artificial environment. Meaning that some very dangerous entities may well be lurking in the shadows.

      As if summoned by my thoughts, a vision of the Captain appeared no less than a dozen paces away. It observed me with its head tilted to the side, one of its many-fingered hands clasping the ivory sword impaled through its chest. A hallucination? Something more?

      I took a step back and raised one of my hands; it trembled with poorly suppressed fear. A white orb of void magic manifested in front of my open palm.

In the blink of an eye, the demon and the orb both vanished, their existence rejected from reality. Not as a result of my nullification magic--my reserves had not been drained at all. Both the demon and the orb had been nothing more than a visual illusion fabricated by my mind.

I lowered my hand.

It seemed Desolada’s subtle influence still lingered, leaking magic and abstraction into the world. The demon who had terrorized me and Felix within Amelie in Yellow had, in some way, imprinted itself onto my subconscious. While I doubted the phantasm was actually a true manifestation of the demon, it was an obvious warning that reality had not yet recovered from Desolada's influence.

I still did not understand what the demon’s home truly was. All the theories regarding its true nature felt hollow after experiencing it for myself. It was a realm of dreams, where imagination shaped reality and willpower made all possible.

Utilizing my powers seemed reliant on forming a mental connection between the physical world and Desolada, channeling its abstract laws in order to influence my own universe. Areas like this, where the veil between realms had all but disappeared, permitted all manner of arcane impossibilities.

The vision answered another question. While I would bet on Lisara or Johan over the average city guardsman, they would not have lasted more than a second against an entity like the Captain. Even Sensi had been mercilessly crushed in moments; and while she had not been a true physical combatant, she was in the heart of her own domain, no doubt with a dozen tricks up her sleeve.

Extra hands might help against some of the grunts, like those spider-demons that swarmed the Gardens, but I was best off avoiding such conflicts in the first place.

I turned my back to them and hurried towards the closest exit. Then, a stray thought occurred to me. There was one place I had avoided looking at directly.

The center of the arena.

Demonic magic influenced reality in various ways: altering memories, making the consciousness shy away from certain areas of interest, and the like. I shook my head and forced myself to stare directly into the spot they did not want me to look at.

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My vision swam, as if I was underwater, just about to break through to the surface. The pressure from my migraine increased until I had to suppress a whimper. After a few seconds, the discomfort subsided, granting me a view of the sands below.

A translucent barrier encased the center of the Amphitheater in a perfect hemisphere, ending at the base of the tiered seating. It resembled the walls of the other tesseracts I had seen, but there was an unexpected density to this one that blurred the view within.

The most obvious answer was that it was the same four-dimensional barrier that had covered the entirety of Odena, now compressed to a much more compact radius. I had witnessed for myself the complexity of that tesseract: millions of silver threads congregating on Brother Augur, who served as the nexus of that unfathomable space-time construct.

There was, however, one key difference. Viewed from the outside, the city of Odena had seemed like a painting, displaying the same frozen scene--probably from the exact moment the tesseract was erected.

Instead of displaying a single moment, a sequence of uncertain gold and white blurs indicated motion within. The sand remained still, as did the corpses of the priests who had killed themselves at each of the gates leading into the arena. Their bodies flickered, one moment intact, the next, skeletons adorned with strips of rotting cloth.

The gold and silver blurs must have been Brother Augur and the demon trapped within. Was that General Lost Moment, or had Astaroth actually managed to step foot in physical reality? Such an event should have shattered space, but perhaps the tesseract served as a specialized prison able to withstand his metaphysical weight?

Making sense of the blurs was impossible. They vanished the moment I attempted to focus on any particular spot, leaving behind only faint after-images.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. A white and silver orb appeared within my mindspace, thrumming with chaotic energy. To my surprise, they had swollen to half-again their normal size; even better, they seemed more solid, more tangible.

At least this brush with Desolada seemed to have improved my magic, though the impetus behind their change remained a mystery. While I doubted--or rather, I hoped--I would not be in a similar situation any time soon, any possible insight into expanding my powers was welcome.

I forced my wandering thoughts to a standstill. Concentration is integral to proper magical control.

Deep breath. Clear mind.

Within my imagination, a clear lake spread in all directions from beneath my feet. Tranquil. Still. Intrusive thoughts battered at the edges of my consciousness, but I willed them away.

A drop of water coalesced in front of my forehead. It plummeted, an ethereal little meteor, breaking through the tension of calm water to spread a great ripple throughout the lake.

Such visualization always seemed to amplify the effects of my magic, though dropping into a trance mid-battle seemed like a good way to get a blade through the throat.

Another water droplet followed the first, but this time, it fell at half-speed. The ripple it formed traveled at the same reduced velocity.

I had learned this technique prior to the fight with Champion Jokul. That felt like a distant memory, though from my perspective it seemed like it was only hours ago when Felix and I had escaped from captivity. Impossible to tell how much time had truly passed once the city of Odena had begun to merge with Desolada, distorting the fundamental laws of my universe.

I opened my eyes and took a step forward. To my disappointment, the blurs of movement remained as elusive as before. I repeated the mental process, this time slowing the water droplet’s descent to a quarter speed, but a sharp pulse of agony through my head shattered my focus.

Grimacing, I pinched the bridge of my nose. These stupid experiments were getting me nowhere, though it was useful to explore the limits of my current capabilities. As the pain faded, I began to consider reversing time for a few seconds, until I noticed a strange tugging sensation around my head, almost like a physical compulsion guiding me towards the tesseract.

I resisted, remaining in place. It only grew stronger as time passed, forcing me to grit my teeth and flex my neck as I struggled.

In a flash of inspiration, I visualized the twin orbs of my magic. The void remained a stable white sphere, but my reserves of time energy had transformed into a silver stain, like a drop of mercury splashed across the world. Tendrils of time magic stretched towards the tesseract, drawn towards it by some irresistible force.

Somehow, activating my time magic in the presence of the tesseract must have caused a reaction. Was it trying to feed off my reserves?

This particular tesseract required a monstrous amount of energy to maintain itself. Brother Augur and I harnessed the same form of time energy, even if his abilities far exceeded my own. My amateur use of compatible magic had, in some manner, drawn the tesseract’s attention.

While it seemed like a decent working theory, the knowledge did nothing to free me from its grasp.

“Help,” gasped a hoarse voice off to my left. An elderly man, slumped over in his seat. He had managed to lift his chin enough to feebly glance in my direction with confused, watery eyes.

The lapse in focus let the compulsion overwhelm my willpower for a moment. I took a step forward.

Cursing, I forced my panicked mind to slow down, to consider the situation.

Brother Augur was my ally. Possibly even some alternate form of myself. He may have behaved in a strangely aloof manner towards me, but he had also seemed in control of the situation. Would he have overlooked something as simple as this, allowing one of his creations to threaten my life if I used time magic in its vicinity? A grown-up copy of myself could not possibly be that stupid.

Could he?

That seemed a thought better left alone.

“Help,” the feeble old man called out again.

You and me both, I thought, straining my neck to stare back at the barrier around the arena.

I had a couple options.

First, attempt to disconnect my time magic from the tesseract. Visualize a blade slicing through the tether, something like that. Reversing time to before the connection formed was a possibility, but risked potentially strengthening it instead.

Second, investigate why, exactly, my powers resonated with the tesseract. It was a potential opportunity left behind by Brother Augur. I would have preferred he sat me down and explained everything thoroughly, but no matter how frustrating it was, the man must have had his reasons behind keeping his secrets.

Once I stopped resisting the compulsion, the tension in my body disappeared. Careful, measured steps took me closer toward the barrier.

Now that we were no longer in conflict, the true nature of the energy forming the barrier revealed itself to me: an incomprehensible tapestry, threads of silver interwoven into impossible geometries.

While my mind could not begin to decipher the patterns and ideas contained within the barrier, the gaps in its construction became more and more obvious as I approached. These tesseracts merged both space and time magic into a single, united form.

Usually, I could perceive an associated aura or flare of color in my mind’s eye when faced with various forms of magic. Even the void, the supposed absence of magic, appeared white. When it came to spatial energy, the only proof of its existence was its absence. It was either invisible, or simply beyond my abilities to distinguish without true understanding of the concept.

The complexities of the tesseract threatened to overwhelm my mind. It was mesmerizing in its grandiosity, looming over me as I came within arm’s reach of the barrier. A seed of my personality struggled to remain unimpressed with the situation--to retain my individuality in the face of something that approached the divine.

I reached out, fingertips alighting on the rigid exterior of the tesseract.

My voice sounded hoarse and unfamiliar to my ears. “Let’s see it, then.”