I found myself on my knees in what looked like a lecture hall. The whiteboard was covered in illegible, skitting scrawls graffiti, the desks were torn from their mountings and scattered about like scraps of paper, and the carpets were thick with mold. Choking in disgust, I spun around and abandoned the empty room.

The door collapsed into pale dust at my touch as I ran out, and I found myself on a vast avenue. Buildings towered up before and behind me, tall and broad and tilted. They were proud, even in their decay. The windows hung askew, the doorways gaped open. I began to step off the graying sidewalk, into the center of the street. I needed to get across. The asphalt was soft and sticky under my feet, making every step a struggle. Slowly and irregularly, it pulsed up and down underneath me, like an old man’s dying breaths.

But everywhere I looked, there was no dying, only the dead. As I first walked, then, harrowed and horrified, ran along the narrow street, past rotting edifices so close I could touch them with either arm, I saw bones.

They were sticking out of the ground beneath me, forming tangled cages to trip me up. They were rising from the walls, reaching out to grab at me. They hung from windows and collapsed in doorways and dangled down from roofs.

I could hear them laughing at me. Their chattering echoed through the air. I grabbed at a lamppost, clutching at it like it was a liferaft in that terrible sea I had just endured...

I felt the bones clawing at me, trying to tear into me. They whispered hateful things.

“See what becomes of all, see how the world rots away. See how you fail and falter, see how all die. See how everything is suffering, grinding, pointless, eternal,” they sang to me, every note as sharp as a dagger.

I saw drops of red falling to the thirsty asphalt below me.

And as a chorus of horrors sang to me, I smiled back.

“I have a model of the world in my head, of this whole grotesque universe. It is a terrible place, cruel and full of suffering.”

Pale, weak flames flickered in my palms. I let their warmth wash over me.

“And yet the sun still rises red and beautiful. People share their last dollar with the homeless and the hungry. You try to claim the world is a place of unending suffering, of relentless nightmares.”

The bones that littered the city started skittering together, forming a many-limbed, many-mouthed colossus. I gazed up at it and smiled.

“I name you liar, I name you abomination, I name you invader. Go back to the emptiness that spawned you, or with fire and steel I will cast you out.”

It laughed at me, the force of the sound enough to crumble buildings and send me flying. But I would not be moved so easily. I simply reached out and dug my fingers into the oozing ground and refused to let go.

“I am Inferno Blade. Guardian. Defender. Begone, Hungry Thing. Bring down the stars upon me, and Still I will stand against you,” I gasped out.

The terrible blow of its laughter, striking like winter wind, bringing with it dagger-sharp shards of bone, struck me unrelentingly, but my fire ignited around me like a corona, and I felt neither cold nor pain.

“Let’s see if you can say the same.”

In the heavens above us, light ignited in the empty, dead sky. Even through my flame, it glowed bright enough to bring tears from my eyes.

The new star did not move. The space between it and the oozing colossus of bone simply ceased to be. A wave of heat washed over me, followed by a gentle press of force. The buildings slowly collapsed into nothingness, the detritus of the dead, all vanished under the weight of the star.

Once more, blackness enveloped me, and I thought myself triumphant.

But then a figure in the darkness stood. I could not see them, I could not hear them. It was some other sense, one that originated deep in my gut, that told me what stood before me.

I turned to flee.

And found myself back within that same lecture hall I started in. But the seats were filled with rotting corpses, lolling back, eyes fixed on me and glowing with pale light. I lashed and cut at them with my knives. Skin parted and flesh burned, but the glow in their eyes did not fade, even as I crushed one’s skull into powder, ripping its head off and throwing it to the ground before I stomped on it in a relentless frenzy.

I hated that glow. It made my head hurt and my skin itch. I hated it I hated it I hated it, more than I had hated anything else.

Heedless of what it was costing me, I called upon my power once more, shaping a great disk of flame, brighter than the sun and hot enough to melt steel. It wasn’t enough. No matter how intense the heat, they could not extinguish the monstrous light. No matter how bright the fire, it could not drown out the monstrous light.

Why was I fighting the monstrous light? Why was I standing against it? There was no evil in it, no malice, not like the cruelty I witnessed so much. It was natural. Proper. It was a suffering that made sense.

The monstrous light was...good.

I stopped trying to destroy it.

Instead, I looked into it and smiled as it made my skin begin to redden and blister, as muscles melted from the heat and bone softened and ran like wax, as my hairs and robes ignited.

And out of the light came the same figure I had seen before. They were tall and terrible, with maggot-white skin and bruise-purple eyes and venom-green hair. Behind them came the creatures I had fought, the creatures I now understood.

“So easy, to make these Guardians see the truth of the world, to peel back the layers and show them what reality is,” it murmured, and their entourage of abominations laughed.

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I laughed with them, even as its words pressed at something in my head. “The nature of existence is to suffer. The world does not care about us,” I said, and it nodded enthusiastically.

“Yes! Yes! You understand! It is the way of things, it cannot be fought, no more than a wildfire!”

I laughed again. “People do fight those, idiot.”

And once more flame burst from me. With it came a sucking sensation, sharp and painful in my guts, but I ignored it in favor of sending out a barrage of Crimson Spears. The creatures died to them, dropping like puppets with cut strings, but their leader simply ignored the blows. They cut through its body, leaving burning holes, and yet it stood, proud and defiant.

“And if the universe seeks to make people suffer, I’ll fight it too!” I growled.

It sneered.

“It seems you are in need of more understanding.”

I didn’t see it gesture or anything, but I felt a wave of jagged force strike me.

I fell back into the dark.

I awoke on my back in a lightless hallway. Immediately, I sprung to my feet, calling my knives to my hands, but I was alone.

For a moment I relaxed, then I realized something. Quickly, my eyes flicked upward, checking the blue bar across the top of my vision.

It was almost empty. I swallowed a curse. Now was not the time for losing my temper. I needed to get out of here!

Quickly, I spun around, but the hallway stretched on, the same in every direction: dark stone walls, thin green carpet on the floor, a ceiling that hung too low to be really comfortable. The dark walls, encased in thick cloth, suffocated all sounds. The air was thick with dust.

And under the dust I could smell the acrid scent of vomit. With no better ideas, I started walking.

Slowly, almost imperceptibly, things began to change. Eerie ghost-lights hung from the ceiling, filling the space with a dim glow. Veins of pale green and dark red began to shoot through the wall. The air grew thicker, moister, heavier, and the ground felt warm and slimy through my shoes.

I was certain I was going the right way. I understood this place now, this rotting hellhole, this wretched nightmare. I hated it, I hated it, but I understood it. It had infected me. Tearing out the infection would hurt, but the world was pain.

I just needed to go a little further, and then I would be able to kill it. I would rip it apart and watch it die slowly. I would hurt, but that was the way of the world. And then I would go out and show that horrible, evil world what I had learned here...

What had I learned here?

I shook away the distracting thought, swatting it like it was an annoying fly and then ripping its wings out.

The corridor was looking distinctly institutional now. The walls pulsed rhythmically, and the detritus of work was scattered about: doors with screaming faces pressed against barred glass, gurneys soaked in stinking gore, sobbing apparitions that fled at my approach, stacks of paper written with jagged words that made my eyes hurt.

Just like any other hospital....just like the last one I had been to....right. Right?

When was that? What was it like?

I tried to shake away the memory, to drive it off, to tear it apart, but it clung to my head.

The burn of pepper spray in my eyes, the gentle hands helping me along, the scent of adrenaline and tear gas...

I let out a growl of rage. It burned in my chest, searingly hot, and I welcomed the pain. It was my pain, honest and earned, not part of the lies I had been fed. “You think this will convince me! This is just a lie, just a fake! By fire and steel, I will not forgive this!”

Heat raged through me, running along every surface of my body, inside and out, waves of flame so intense they shifted from red to white, consuming me. I let out a howl as sharp needles began to stab in the back of my head, my stomach, my chest.

In a dozen places, my skin tore open and many-legged metallic insects burst out, the heat making their bodies turn liquid and melt into puddles on the floor.

The figure from before was back, standing in front of me with disappointment in its eyes. I lunged forward with a punch, propelled by rage and spite as much as anything else. It was clumsy, my balance was off, and yet it didn’t matter.

I connected, and my strike was simply absorbed. Flesh parted around the blow, and when I pulled my hand back it returned. I tried to summon my knives but nothing came. I threw another punch, and another, and each one was utterly ignored.

My breath was coming short, my arms were trembling, and still I fought, even as I slowly began to recall what I had come here to do.

As my foe looked on, bored, I stumbled back and tried to destroy the Tear. I called up my flames, as bright and hot as I could make them, trying to form another star, to shatter this wretched place.

I barely managed to make a wisp of smoke before I collapsed to my knees. Slowly, I got back up, wobbling on my feet. I had no magic, no knives, no stamina, no clever tricks.

“You see it now. No matter how you struggle against it, your fate still comes. Your suffering is inevitable, it can only be escaped through acceptance.”

I had no words to respond with, no witty remarks or defiant speeches.

It stepped forward and grabbed me by the throat, lifting me off the ground. I lashed out, trying to rake at its eyes, I kicked at its torso, I clawed at its hand.

It laughed at me. The sound was like rotten blood boiling, like maggots chewing on my flesh, like the keening of an army of damned, tortured souls.

“How bravely you Guardians fight for a falsehood. How much greater you would be if you simply understood.”

I couldn’t breathe, or I would have replied, but I was not going to allow this vile arrogance to go unmarred. With nothing left, I stuck out my tongue and spat at its eyes.

I could feel myself begin to bleed, crimson tears pouring from my eyes and burning their way down my cheeks, my mask melting into dust, as I struggled to endure the weight of this horror’s attention.

It was speaking still, but I could not understand it.

And then my vision flashed with a whirlwind of white and black, and I found myself on the ground. Frantically, I sucked in a breath and rose to my feet, and found Swan Victorious standing in front of me.

“You helped me today, let me return the favor,” she said softly, and down her feather swept, glowing with power.

The monster did something and space shifted, bending in ways that made my stomach hurt.

I tried to speak, to warn her about what she needed to do, but my throat was bruised and I could not force the words out.

I had no magic left to destroy the Tear, and no way to tell Swan what she needed to do.

I could see her beginning to fade, just as I did. She was roaring as she fought, her sword twisting and bending, cutting through vast swathes of space in a single blow, but not a single one landed.

I tried to cry out some sort of warning and no sound escaped my mouth. The hall we were in was twisting and bending. I could see Swan fighting furiously, but it was far away, and I was once more alone in the dark.

Except for the monsters. There were always monsters. Everywhere were monsters. Why was I fighting? Why was I hurting for this?

I looked at the silly, foolish girl fighting to save a world full of cruelty and misery and smiled with a mouth full of blood and vomit and insectile abominations tearing their way out of me.

“No,” I spat, finally finding my voice again, and I dug into myself and called upon my magic.

At first, nothing came, but I dug deeper, clawing into my memories, into my soul, seeking fuel anywhere I could find it.

I remembered the rage of countless evictions in the midst of a plague. I remembered the bright blood spilled in the streets and the burn of tear gas in my eyes. I remembered the demands, nailed to every government building in the city. I remembered the fierce high of victory and the vicious low of the prices we had paid.

Older memories flowed through me like sand in an hourglass as I dug into myself and lit my mind on fire.

Smoke puffed in my hands as I howled in pain, but through the agony I smiled and kept going, kept working, kept struggling. My first kiss, an awkward clacking of lips and teeth. Finding treasures hidden in the back of my high school library. A wave of blue caps flying through the air.

From smoke came fire, and from fire another star. The sheer heat of it blew me against a wall. My coat melted, the fabric scorching my skin, but it was just one pain among many and I kept going.

The light was so bright I tried to look away, but I couldn’t make my muscles move.

There was more pain, and screams, and a howl of outrage, and then I knew no more.