Enna gaped at their bizarre, inimical surroundings. "What the fuck happened? Are we dead?"

"Not yet," grunted Jiann, "but we will be in short order if'n we don't watch ourselves." He steadied her for a moment, then released her once he was confident she wouldn't fall over again. "We're in jest about the most dangerous place you could imagine."

"Really? Because it looks a lot like that Hell dimension did." She shivered. "And I'm guessing it'll kill us just as dead, too."

Jiann's expression was grim. "Ayup. An' that ain't the worst of it." He drew his revolvers, glancing around in apprehension. "We ain't in no conceptual realm here -- we're in an internal domain."

Enna blinked. "Wha... what are you saying? That we're in another mindscape?"

"If only." Jiann began to stalk carefully upstream along the bank of the river of blood; treading carefully to avoid walking beneath any of the hanging figures in the trees. "Mindscapes're bad enough, but at least they ain't real -- they can only distract ya from real danger. Internal domains're the other way 'round."

Enna followed along behind him, poking curiously at the horrors surrounding her each time she had to pass near one. "So, you're saying this is real? Like, physically real?"

Jiann nodded. "More so than even th' dimension we visited in Wales. Even that was more a kinda... filter over physical reality." He carefully snaked around the foot of a particularly low-hanging corpse. "This sorta thing's more like... a manifestation o' the mind's will in reality. Dreams made flesh, that sorta thing. If we're lucky, it won't have spread all the way to Rankin Inlet yet, but if it does, everybody livin' there is gonna have a real, real bad day."

"As opposed to just us having one?" Enna stooped to pluck a strand of sword-shaped grass, attempting to manifest her will on it; despite her efforts, it remained a blade of grass. "Huh. Guess it's not a two-way street?"

Jiann shook his head. "We can use our powers in here, sure, but th' powers o' th' controllin' mind will always override 'em. S'why it's so dangerous; attacks from th' owner of an internal domain cain't miss or be dodged, and always affect ya even if you'd normally be immune. Ya can block or absorb 'em, but only by expendin' yer own power." Poking his head carefully through a bit of scrub brush, he winced.

Beyond the confines of the forest, a vast ziggurat loomed in the distance, arising out of a sea of blood not too far from where their boat had picked Orton up. The stones of the structure were skulls, of course, but not inanimate ones; they jabbered, screamed, and ranted in thousands upon thousands of voices, all speaking many different tongues. The vast majority of the languages were lost to antiquity, but Enna could pick out a few and shuddered at the horror and depravity of the few words she could pick out.

Atop the ziggurat, a titanic shape brooded; it looked vaguely humanoid, but it was twisted and misshapen, a grotesque and hideous form equal parts corpse and fetus, and its bottom half merged with the stonework of the structure in a blasphemous and diseased manner which made the eye water to behold. Its glistening skin was mottled with many colors, ranging from bronzed gold to moist pink, and its gaping maw was filled with hundreds of teeth jutting every which way as it cackled to itself, its wide and staring eyes glancing shrewdly about in every direction.

Jiann's eyes narrowed. "Well, shit."

Enna squinted; looking at the creature seemed to stab through her eyes, giving her an instant migraine. "Eugh. What is it?"

"A god. An' one whose name you don't need to know -- keepin' that sorta stuff in your noodle gives 'em power over you, so best you jest think of it as a ugly, ugly baby." He holstered his guns for the moment and screwed up his lips, thinking.

"So? What do we do?" Enna cast about for a weapon, but kept coming up empty-handed. Idly, she wished she'd thought to bring a pen or a pair of nail clippers to reify into a sword or something. She wondered in an offhand fashion if she should be feeling more upset or panicked, but her mind seemed abnormally calm, as though someone or something else were sending her clarity and serenity.

Jiann sighed. "I think I got me a inklin' o' what happened, an' I might know a way to stop it. But it ain't gonna be easy." He squatted down, rubbing his temples despite the lack of a physical headache. "The short version is that this is Orton's internal domain, but he ain't in the driver's seat at the moment -- the thing growin' outta the top of that buildin' is. I seen it before, back when Orton an' I were sharin' a noggin."

Enna blinked. "When you were sharing... you know what, never mind. But what's it doing here? And how did it suck us into this place?"

Jiann scratched his chin. "Well, I'm guessin' somethin' happened between it an' Orton while we were gone that gave it a foothold in 'is mind. Then it waited, an' got in between him an' th' power o' the seed, and hijacked th' ritual; an' Orton along with it." He pointed towards the boat they'd left on the shore, which had now taken the form of a makeshift raft of lashed-together tree trunks. "We could mebbe use that t' get over there an' try to find out more, but we'd have to cross that water -- an' we don't want Lord Gerber over there noticin' us. If'n it catches sight of us afore we reach th' pyramid, we're dead." As Enna craned her neck to see, a glint from the area near her feet caught her eye.

"So how do we hide from it? Conjure a shield, or something?" She began digging in the dirt for something Jiann couldn't quite make out.

"It'd see right through anythin' I can think of." Jiann wrung his hands in dismay. "I hope you got a heck of a good idea, 'cause I ain't comin' up with much."

"Hmm." Enna pulled up the rock she'd been excavating from the ground; it was a skull, like all the other rocks in this place, but it was turquoise in color, which was what had attracted her attention in the first place. "You say Orton's mind formed this place?"

Jiann nodded. "Th' big fella over there's likely holdin' his actual will captive inside th' structure. If'n we can get inside, we might have a chance to free 'im -- an' doin' that might collapse th' domain, puttin' us back in th' real world. But that's a mite easier said than done."

With a quiet grunt of effort, Enna broke open the skull; a shining blue gem, cut into the shape of a dodecahedron, was revealed inside. "I thought so." She showed the gem to Jiann, letting it turn and flash in her hand. "When Orton was first teaching me magic, I made something like this. I think he's leaving us clues -- things we can use to help rescue him."

Jiann blinked, then shrugged. "Aight, say he is -- what do we do with yer bauble, there?"

"I'm not sure. But it's a good place to start." She began turning the gem this way and that, watching the light from it dance over the multifarious hideousnesses around them. At first, it seemed to have no pattern she could discern; but eventually, after careful observation, she noticed that the reflected glow seemed brighter in one direction than the others, and began to follow it as Jiann tagged along behind.

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The path didn't go far; after only a few dozen yards or so, she found herself climbing down a switchback into a culvert. Underneath the twisted black roots of a tree, a yawning cave rapidly descended into a sinuous slope downward. Enna smiled triumphantly. "Bingo. How much you want to bet this is a back door that leads under that water?"

"Let's hope you're right, and it ain't a one-way ticket to that thing's dinner bowl." Jiann drew one of his revolvers again, then checked the rounds in the cylinder with a long-practiced motion. Moving up alongside Enna, he nodded, and the two of them crept forth into the cavern.

The interior of the cave quickly became pitch-black, but the gemstone in Enna's hand began giving off a bright blue glow, painting the dark walls of the cavern with a comforting luminescence; the path plunged precipitously downwards, but never at a grade so steep that they needed to climb. Orton must be smoothing the path for us, she thought, picking her way over a tangle of tree roots. Behind her, she could hear Jiann following, as well as the occasional clicking sound when he checked and re-checked his guns every few minutes.

As the cavern wound onwards, they eventually glimpsed a dim golden glow up ahead; Jiann cautioned her to hold a moment, then silently crept forward with special-forces stealth for a peek at the lit area beyond. After a minute, he returned, his expression grim. "Coupla sentries up ahead -- they'll see ya for sure with that light." He clutched the handles of his revolvers nervously. "I can think of a couple options, but I ain't a big fan o' either of 'em."

Enna cocked her head. "What do you think we should do?"

"Well," sighed Jiann, "one option would be ta double-team 'em -- try to take 'em both out before they notice us. But that's a big gamble -- either of us fails t' hit our mark, and we won't get a second shot."

"We won't?" Enna blinked. "Why wouldn't we?"

"Because everything in this domain is linked ta th' domain's sovereign," continued Jiann wearily, "and th' instant they see us, King Buttface on th' pyramid will know exactly where we are, an' will come right for us. An' don't think th' ceiling o' th' tunnel or however many meters o' water will even slow him down," he cautioned over Enna's incipient protest.

She sighed. "Okay. So what's our other option?"

Jiann squeezed the handles of his revolvers a few more times, obviously not pleased with what he was about to say. "You stay in th' shadows, an' let me handle 'em. Then you slip by an' try to bust Orton out while th' big fella's busy with me."

Enna frowned. "I thought you said that was dangerous?"

There was a moment's pause. "T'ain't so much 'dangerous'," responded Jiann quietly, "as it is 'certain death."

Enna's mouth dropped open. "Wh... what the shit? You're saying it's a suicide mission?!"

"Well, now, I don' rightly know about that," smirked Jiann, though Enna could tell his bravado was completely hollow. "I figure I got a shot at holdin' out against 'im for a mite longer than you would. An' between the two o' us..." -- his voice failed him for a moment -- "...I reckon you got the best chance o' freein' Orton's dumb cracker ass."

"Jiann." Enna moved forward impulsively, putting her hands on his shoulders. "Things can't be that serious. This is just a... I don't know, a bump in the road! You don't have to do this. We'll figure something else out!"

Jiann shook his head. "Lil' lady, you don't know what we're dealin' with. I do." He looked away. "Trust me, I got this."

She held onto him, forcing him to look at her as her gaze searched his face incredulously. "You're serious. You're... Jesus, you're really talking about getting killed?" Her fingers dug into his bony shoulders in desperation. "Christ, Jiann, aren't you terrified?"

Jiann laughed -- an ugly, brittle sound. "Oh, I'm scared all right. If'n I wasn't already dead, I'd be shittin' my drawers." Gently, he tugged her hands from his shoulders and held them for a moment. "But bein' scared don't actually stop you from doin' what needs t' be done."

Turning away, he checked the rounds in his revolvers for the hundredth time, then nodded towards the tunnel up ahead. "Get ready. Only gonna be a brief window after I take out th' guards, but before their daddy shows up." Enna started to protest again, but before she could get the words out, he was already moving -- a flicker of shadow darting around the corner. Swallowing her words, she moved to follow.

Jiann readied his revolvers as he approached the turn -- the walls of the cavern were more solid than most physical barriers to his partially-astral sight, but even they weren't totally impenetrable. He could just barely make out the tall, spindly shapes of the golden-skinned guards through the intervening earth, and sighted his shots carefully. He'd only get one chance at this, and his odds were very dismal indeed. Gathering his energy and his nerve, he thumbed back the hammers of his guns, paused for exactly one instant to wonder what in the hell he was doing, and struck.

As he leapt around the corner, he squeezed off his shots at the figures which appeared in the soft golden light they emanated; they were unnaturally thin and only vaguely humanoid, with faces like squashed pumpkins and too many spidery limbs. His first shot took the rightmost guard squarely in the face before it could even turn, exploding its misshapen head in a fountain of bright emerald gore, but his second only managed to drill a huge hole in the chest of the second guard. His third shot blew its head off as well, but not before it got a glimpse of him. From somewhere far above, a screeching, reverberating howl warned him that his day was about to get very, very unpleasant.

"Run, ya dang idjit!" he hissed at Enna urgently, reloading his guns -- nodding, she darted past him into the caverns beyond. Jiann didn't bother even contemplating escape or subterfuge; he knew what was coming. As Enna disappeared into the darkness, he raised one gun in a salute. Good luck, apprentice.

With an earsplitting crash, the tunnel above Jiann dissolved; a cyclopean claw punched straight through the fifty feet of rock and water between the surface and the tunnel as though they were nothing more than wisps of fog. Jiann wasted no time, and shot the enormous hand as soon as it appeared; he was rewarded with a howl of pain that brought a smirk to his bearded face. Bullets might not be able t' kill ya, but they still don't feel too good. Welcome to corporeal reality, you big ugly sumbitch.

Darting forward, he slammed as much qi as he dared into his limbs and leapt straight up; like a majestic trout, he soared free of the tunnel through the gap just before the avalanche of water and mud flooded it. With a graceful somersault, he alighted on an outcropping of rock and turned to face his foe, his coat fluttering around him as he did so. He was still a hundred meters or so from the ziggurat, but the space of the distance between warped and twisted as the creature loomed over him, bringing it close enough to turn his stomach (metaphorically, at any rate). Its immense, hideous face leered down at him; its hate and power blasted him like the heat from a furnace.

"Jiann. So good of you to come." Its voice, like a dentist's drill inside his mind, impaled him with its innate evil both aurally and mentally; it was like having a drill plunged into both his ears simultaneously. "Will you make obeisance to me, in hopes of another few moments of pitiful existence?"

Jiann smirked. "I ain't remotely attached enough to existence to make that trade, you festerin' overgrown bumper sticker." He twirled his guns. "I seen more impressive gods than you on Orton's Dungeons n' Dragons character sheets."

Tecahapoatl let out a howl of rage, but Jiann simply began firing; bullets sizzled into the avatar's vulnerable eyes, nostrils, and mouth, pow-pow-pow-pow-pow-pow-pow, with a precise staccato rhythm that could only be achieved by the steeliest, most controlled level of gunplay imaginable. The colossal monstrosity shrieked in pain, reaching out to crush the tiny figure stinging it, but Jiann kept firing, pushing its reaching fingers away with hammering lead blows. He knew, from long and unpleasant experience, that attempting to dodge or leap away would be fruitless; space would twist and contract, like it had in Orton's dream realms, to deliver him into his foe's clutches. So instead he stood his ground, guns thundering, and took what solace he could in the sheer unadulterated manliness of the situation. If there's anything still left of you in here, Cameron, yer probably 'bout to pop with excitement, he thought with amusement to himself. Ain't no more macho way to go out in your mind, I expect.

Around them, the wind began to thrash and howl; Tecahapoatl's pain and rage whipped the very air itself into a frenzy as the waters churned and boiled, and the mournful gasps of the strangled forms in the trees grew louder and more strident. The dead god roared and renewed its assault, hoping to strike when Jiann's guns ran empty, but the revenant cackled with glee and spun one revolver through the air while his empty hand tossed six bullets upwards in a spiral of glittering brass; like a film running in reverse, the bullets floated gently into place in the empty chambers just as the revolver reached the apogee of its arc and was snatched out of the air by the same hand, flicking his wrist to snap the cylinder closed and firing again without even a breath's worth of pause. A pure, savage joy welled up in him, and unbidden, a laugh erupted from his throat as he screamed defiance at the deformed behemoth: "I can do this shit all day!"