Olindar tossed a handful of bone scraps into the blazing ring that surrounded me. It ignited with a sharp crack that sent smoking tendrils sweeping towards me.

The tendrils cut into my skin and I felt the fire eat into my flesh. I let out a scream that descended into a hoarse sputter and as my vision faded and the sizzling meat of my body quickly ceased to provoke any sensations.

Voices babbled and meandering in the background. I no longer cared for them. The flames cut deeper. Deeper still. Right to the core of my soul. I could feel my ribs cracking and popping, as the tendons in my neck gave way. Surely my body would fall to pieces any moment. I had nothing left to give.

My mind wobbled for a moment, and then I felt a tug. The tug.

As though a giant had yanked a steel cable wrapped around my skull, the world dropped away from me at rapid speed and my body blew apart beneath me. I soared further and further upwards into an empty sky.

Myself, as I perceived it, was no longer a brain masked by blood and muscle but a distorted blob of soul.

My shattered vessel stretched and distended like molten glass as the universe descended into a ring shaped band of compressed light. The ring shrank down to a pinprick of light which inelegantly flushed away into nothingness.

I found myself present in the aether once again. I hurtled through it with no sense of speed as I bore the torturous pain of my mortal self. Wrapped around the gleaming distorted blob of colourless light that was my soul was a blazing orange cord. It dug into my amorphic midsection, looped together with a tight, balled knot. The cord’s tail extended off into the distant forever of the aether, tethering me to my fractured body laying limply in its prison cell a universe away.

The length of cord swayed and folded hypnotically as it extended greater and greater distances as I soared numbly onwards. The distinct emptiness of the void washed over me, dissolving my nerves and swallowing my sense of awareness.

I still maintained a dreamlike perception of things around me. A distinctly different perception from the last time I found myself trapped here. I could feel fuzzy shapes and prismatic emotions buzzing around me. I identified my detached feelings swirling around me. They danced through shades of violet, emerald and a deep, churning orange.

I noted the swaying tether slow its gentle drifting. Its swinging arc receded into tight ripples. The ripples expanded outwards into rolling waves. The waves flattened and the cord snapped tightly into a straight line with a deafening bang.

My inertia abruptly disappeared. No sound waves travelled through the aether, but the shock of the impact was relayed directly to my entire being at once.

My bodiless self stretched and spilled out from the tether’s embrace in response. The cord remained affixed tightly around my middle whilst my unstable membrane took the impact. My thoughts stretched alongside the distended vessel, growing increasingly thin.

The tether shivered and creaked. Loose threads of fire frayed at its midpoint. The border between universe and void sank its teeth into the weakened rope.

As I perceived myself extend and shudder, faded memories of the past descended upon me.

A reckless young child waded out into a shallow seashore in search of island-like shoals. The boy sketched imaginary islands on countless sheets of papers taped together with masking tape.

A teenager ran across ancient railroad tracks atop a cracked stony bridge encased in ivy. The teenager buried their head in their knees in a quiet house softly weeping. The teenage boy hunched over a small desk in a fluorescent classroom scribbling with a nearly empty pen.

A young man stood proudly before his mother with his first car. It was well worn and had a dent in its rear bumper, but it drove well. The young man worked overtime at home alone at the dinner table in the dark.

The man trembled with excitement aboard a crowded aeroplane, wedged between two sleeping strangers. The man stumbled home again, limping as his leg grew numb.

The man returned to work. More work was done. He worked. He ate alone. Slept alone. He worked.

Finally, I saw the man walking towards a concrete tower, a paper slip in his hand, a slight smile on his face. He would depart soon after.

Searing light erupted before him and the paper burnt away in his hand. The imagery faded.

The cord cut more deeply and I felt the distant pain of a cold, bruised hunk of flesh and metal reemerge fleetingly. My soul bounced backwards and the cord remained tightly stretched, twisting to one side imperceptibly as its centrepoint twinged.

My vessel snapped back into a deformed sphere. The cord that bound me was now loose and I could freely shift and revolve about within its midst. I was free, perhaps? The dead weight at the other end of the cord slumped deeper and the loop eased back across my surface.

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The pain, confusion and suffering of the past retreated to the back of my mind as a faint twinge. It was down there, on the other side. I could leave it behind.

The barren, infinite expanse of the aether reached out to me. It brushed against my soul and beckoned me forwards. Asking me to stay. Without the thundering voice of a pompous god-like entity grilling me, the calm cool sea of the void was immensely soothing. The cord slipped back a little further. The everpresent anxiety bubbling in the depths of my mind settled still. I was so close now. So close to finally being at peace.

The little boy’s determined face reappeared. The scene of his reckless adventure across the coast replayed in my mind. His expression was that of complete sincere determination. There was a distinct seriousness in his drive for exploration.

That boy. He was me. I knew this, but I couldn’t quite shake the immense distance between us. He was so foreign to what I was now. A mild mannered office-worker. Gutless. Swallowed by debt, frozen in pain and solitude. I had nowhere to go, nothing to do. Nobody cared. Nobody ever would. There wasn’t a reason to.

I looked at my younger self. I apologised. I have let him down. I never lived for him, not for myself. I had subsisted.

The cord groaned and I felt the body beneath me grow cold. I observed the pain, the dust, and the blood. I felt the callous eyes watching over Shale Kadran’s body alongside me. I could perceive the weakened heart struggling to beat within his chest.

I saw the scars sweeping across his back. The rough, icy fists, heavy with blight. An orange glow beneath closed lids flickered and dimmed. Strong, aching muscles sighed across a tall, thin frame. A strange, flickering energy sparked across his nervous system, arcing with blue light and firing invisibly into the air. The little warmth that remained in his body flowed into the frigid stone beneath him and death tightened its grip across Shale’s throat.

Across my throat!

No. I am not dying again! I looked into my own face, the face of that young boy one last time, and made a promise to him. That I would never be complacent again. That I would head out into the world and make an impact. That I would live!

The cord drifted further still and I latched onto it. With instinctive ease I dove into the burning brilliance and all at once, inherited the beautiful pain and suffering that awaited me below. It shot through my soul with a crackle and bloomed in my mind.

I screamed and Shale Kadran’s mouth opened along with it. My soul slipped into the tether that once bound me and raced down its length at dizzying speed, dancing across the tattered boundary between space and non-space and into Shale’s body. Into my body.

I rocketed off of the ground with a bang as the metal shackles snapped at the base. The blazing ring encircling me extinguished as I leapt across the dying runes. Adrenaline shot through my body and without thought I bounded towards the stone pillars fencing me inside.

My left arm hit the innocuous looking stone first. Sickly green plasma torched my hand the moment it made contact and I was sent blasting backwards through the air. I hit the back wall with a crunch and crumpled to the floor.

The group outside looked on with a mixture of shock and vigilance. The veteran soldier held his shortsword aloft outside the cage, whilst his less experienced counterpart hastily scrambled to draw his sword from the sheath.

Olindar knelt on one knee, his hands to either side of his head in apparent pain. It appeared there was some sort of aggressive feedback as a consequence of the severance ceremony. To his side, the lead mage held a radiant hand aloft, ready to fire off some spell.

Valerie the leader stood between them, her arms crossed and eyes squinting. The creepy man in the back had moved forward to a position just behind Valerie, his foul grin now reached his eyes.

I soaked in the agony upon the floor. My left arm burned as if thousands of electrified needles pierced through my arm - in through one side and out the other. A dozen welts and bruises lit up my back, legs and forearms. My face flushed hot, red and angry. Skin still peeled upwards off the burnt flesh.

Enough revelling in sensation, I think. I’ve meditated on the pain for long enough, thank you very much. The message has been received, I will live my life, okay?

The pain was apathetic. My body screamed in agony and I forced myself to continue irregardless.

I flopped over with a clang as my arms hit the stone and hoisted myself up. The onlookers outside had calmed down, and largely returned to their places, with the exception of the bald man who stayed closer to Valerie.

I stumbled forward trepidatiously. The deadened magic ring remained null and void as I passed it. I spotted a chunk half the size of my fist missing from one of the stone pillars as I approached the others. The pillar’s interior was precisely the same dull, spongy stone of an earthy, yellowish tone.

I stood before the stone barricade, doing my best to stand tall and strong. Although my hands were placed closer to my lower back than my hips since I was using them to prop myself upwards.

Valerie bent down to help a panting Olindar up off the ground. The blue-haired mage circled around him and lifted him up under the shoulder. Despite having been uninjured and well fed, the mage was now deathly pale and unsteady, more so than myself.

Upon his feet, he remained leant on the other mage’s shoulder as he collected his breath. I noted dried blood under his nose and bloodshot eyes.

All eyes were on the haggard mage now, though a few hands lingered over their swords. He coughed wetly and received a cup of water from the other mage. My eyes rolled back into my head for a brief moment. I wanted that water.

Having regained his footing and his breath, Olindar wiped his face clean and straightened his robes. Valerie watched him intently, her arms now uncrossed as her left hand rested upon the handle of a dagger.

Olindar met her gaze and put up his hand to reassure her. He turned to face me. His face was tense, his teeth gritted. I followed the taut line of his neck down to his clenched fists. His eyes flicked between the dead runes and the damaged pillar.

I held my ground and my gaze. It was just about all I could do before their scrutinous eyes.

Olindar inquired with a gravelly voice, “Where did you go, Shale?”

I caught the corner of his eye involuntarily quiver.

“Nowhere.” Was my answer.