The Banshee was waiting for me as I flung open the cellar door. The door smashed into it and sent it sprawling. As it stood up, I pulled energy from around me the power coming easily in the whipping, wind and rain. I screamed and let loose a jet of crackling power that slammed into the creature.

The banshee gave a surprised croak before it exploded, spraying out in a glowing crater of goo that splattered all over me as we ran forward. I ran directly for the lake. “Climb onto my back Kai!” I said and the girl leapt on my back and I sprinted, my head spinning as I clutched my statuette and drew on both it and the power and fury of the storm.

Behind me I heard the enraged bellows from the man I had downed, and the pleading calls from his companions. “Come back! He’s not going to hurttttt yooooo” Their voices were drowned off in the storm, replaced only by the pounding of my heart in my head as I ran, the girl clutching me.

The more power I pulled into myself, the more the storm seemed to grow. There was a flash then a boom that made my ears ring and my body tingle as a lightning bolt slammed into a nearby tree not a hundred yards away.

I kept running feeling like I was on fire. My body thrummed and coursed with the storm and I ran faster, and as it filled me with power.

Abruptly, the lake’s edge was there before me. I gave a giant leap, clearing the heads of a few startled creatures resting under a propped-up raft before icy water slammed into me and I swam for all I was worth, my shoes becoming flippers.

Behind me was a gathering set of screams, wails of pursuit, and the roar of monsters. I swam, and it was as if I was nearly weightless in the water. My vision became nothing more than my struggle to swim, desperate gasps as my lungs heaved in a rhythm and I tried to breath as Kai shuddered against me and clutched me like a drowned rat.

At first, I had the thought of going towards the castle, but one fleeting glance between gasps as I struggled to stay afloat in the lake was enough to make me realize that was a very bad idea. The battle was brutal and, the island was a maelstrom of death and destruction. Between gasps and glances, I saw beam of light, lances of fire, the booms of explosions and the crackle of magic as a fleet of airships, and creatures, fought desperately above me hidden in the howl of the storm.

I turned to the far side of the lake and swam for a rocky little crag I could see in the distance, even as my body finally started to lose its initial stamina and I started to swiftly flag.

Kai’s struggling body was dragging me under and I felt faint as if I couldn’t draw air into my lungs as I swam.

Screaming in frustration, and sobbing in rage and terror I swam for all I was worth, even as the combat drifted past me. I caught glimpses of a sinking airship before it crashed into the water not far from me waves thrown up, and men and women flung into the lake all around. It bobbed there for a while, discharging lances of fire and beams of light before it detonated when a massive bolt of dark energy slammed into it, shards of wood and bodies spraying out along with a rain of burning canvas and glowing crystals.

The screams of the dying and battle drowned out my gasps and sobs as I continued to swim, my vision narrowing into slits as I focused on the little rocky crag. It was a surprise when I slammed into it, my body carried up into the rocky beach by a billowing wave filled with debris. Scrabbling at the rocks I turned and looked at the wreckage behind me, and then up at the distant far shore. Against the dark sky I could see winged shapes rising up from the shoreline and coming towards me.

“Nooo…” I sobbed. And I knew it wouldn’t do any good to run, I would have to stand and fight. “Kai… get into the rocks…” I pointed at the rocky ledge jutting up out of the lake and she nodded. I went to the top of the crag and sat down closing my eyes so I could focus on the storm around me.

I was the champion of the god of the tempest and I was going to make them pay. My hair stood on end as I gathered power around me, my entire body tingling before suddenly I felt white hot power slam into me as a lightning bolt crackled between me and the sky. I screamed and pointed it at the lumbering form of a black dragon, a massive creature filled with things riding it. It had turned from the nearby battle and towards me. The energy thrummed and spun around me, then lanced out and slammed into the dragon. It glowed with a dark purple barrier for a second, before the barrier shattered and my power slammed into it. The creature screamed, as it writhed in the air, shedding its crew as it bucked, screaming figures flung away to plunge into the roiling lake. Abruptly, the massive creature decided it had enough, and fled back towards the enemy encampment.

I nearly passed out from the wave of dizziness and pain that lanced through me as I swayed. I stood up, as if I suddenly knew what I had to do. Thrusting out my hands I spun, letting my body be guided by the overwhelming power around me.

Twin circles of glowing fire curled up and down my arms and I could clearly see the outline of twin serpents as the wind, and water slowly began to turn and spin in front of me. The wind howled with a shriek that would have made the banshee sound like a kitten. Slowly out of the clouds themselves descended a dark pillar of grey, spinning and whirling in the tempest around me. I had conjured a funnel of terrible size and power.

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When it touched the water, it sucked up both lake and wreckage alike into the heavens, tearing rafts away from the walls of the castle, sucking flying creatures and airships into it, and I cast the monster I had created in the direction of the enemy camp as it continued to swell in size and monstrosity.

From here I could see the full terrible scope of the encampment, something I hadn’t been able to gauge properly before. It was a sea of lights and tents, and massive hulking engines, it was a writhing sea of monsters that bayed in fear as the massive vortex bore down on them. One of the airships it had dragged along was slammed into a tree along the shore where it detonated in a shower of power and shuddering explosion, the debris being sucked back into the spinning fury of the winds.

My body felt like it was on fire, and my mind screamed in pain and agony as I fought to control my power. Around me the entire storm began to spin, and lighting coursed up and down the crag I was standing on, explosions sounded from the nearby castle as lighting crackled into its wards. I felt fear, true fear then of what I was capable of and it was that terror that snapped me out of it.

I fell to the rocks, and lay there, my entire world spinning around me as I fought off a yawning pit of darkness, happy darkness that wanted to swallow me, into blissful oblivion. I failed, and the weariness, the deep sinking ache that called to me claimed me.

My mind drifted… I was in a grey void, and I looked around for that death counter that I knew would be there.

I couldn’t find it, and I felt like somehow something was very wrong. I felt darker, as if somehow, I had become something… wrong, and yet… disconnected at the same time. Something very bad had just happened, and I felt as something deep within my soul was missing.

Above everything else I remembered that fear, of losing control and how… how good it felt to break and rend to destroy and how good that power had felt. I wanted to feel it again, somewhere deep down where I had always felt powerless. At the same time, I was horrified at what I had done.

I let out a breath of laughter that echoed around the greyness, a hysterical laugh that broke into sobs of grief.

I… had been a monster, and it had felt so good. I had been more powerful in those few moments of destruction than I had ever been in my short life that was filled with disappointment from my father that I could never be anything more than an invalid. This would all be over soon no matter what I did. Nothing could change the fact that I was dying in the real world, no miracle of medical science could save me. It was all I had now, these last few months… and I was proving everyone right.

I remembered that last look down from my rock, as I had gazed up past and out from the crag. Kai had been watching me, she had been scared not of the monsters coming towards us but of me. That instant frozen in my mind of her looking at me in horror made me clutch my head and sob.

“Where is the respawn timer?!” I shrieked, knowing I must have died.

“Child… be still.” A kindly voice said, and it sounded very close. I snapped my eyes open and found myself standing on a stone path in the void, one that had not been there and instant before. Ahead of me the path grew, the gloom of the void retreating until I was standing on an island of stone in the void, with a small lantern on a pole. Under the lantern was man in dark grey robes. He was a thin man and watched me intently.

I could see the path continue to form, until it met a gate far in the distance, a shining gate.

I looked behind, me away from the gate, I saw a dark void yawning in the distance. It was slowly moving towards me.

The man in dark robes studied me for a long moment, and smiled. “Ah… one of the younger god’s chosen. Aegaeon must have had a feast today for you to be here at the crossroads…” He chortled, and pulled out a small set of brass scales that hung from a loop in his fingers. He studied them for a moment before he looked up, almost startled as he fixed his gaze at me.

“Tell me traveler… what is it you seek in our world?” He asked and I gave him a confused look.

“Do you seek power?” He asked almost absentmindedly as he idly studied his scales, then me as I looked behind at the slowly approaching void.

“What does it matter? None of this is real… Nothing I can do can stop death.” I began to sob as I sank down and leaned against the lamp post. I knew that dad hadn’t added me to the test group in Endaria because he thought it could cure me, he just wanted me to be happy before my frail body finally gave out.

I pointed at the onrushing tide of dark void and shrugged. I was never a brave one, I was scared to die. I had to admit it, I knew that some people that I’d met in the hospitals, the ones that were dying like me had made peace with death and could accept it. I was never religious, not an ounce of faith in me, or any expectations of what would happen to me when the end came. I had fought so long and hard against reality, and I knew it was soon my time. Still the idea of actually dying, even if I would slowly drift away within game made me so scared, I could barely think.

“Fear is good, it makes us feel alive, but do not be ruled by it.” He said and pointed at the shining lantern above me. It swayed in the darkness, as if nudged by an unseen wind.

“There is always hope… it is the light that guides us, and teaches us what is worth fighting for.” He said and reached up and plucked the flame out of the lantern. It twirled and spun in his hand as he leaned down, his bony body drawing close to mine as he held out the light to me.

I looked at it dancing on his palm, before I reached for it. As my own fingers cupped the light, it converted into a ball of spinning wind and lighting. I could see spray and fury of the storm in that ball.

“What does hope look like to you?” He said, as he slowly picked me up, as if I weighed next to nothing.

I felt frozen within his arms, unable to move a muscle as he carried me towards the gate, and I smiled as memories of father as he had often picked me up and carried me.

He had held me and sung to me when I couldn’t sleep through the pain, when the drugs would wear off and I would call out for someone, anyone to help me.

My eyes fixed on the dancing light in my cupped hands and silent tears streamed down my cheeks as I remembered.

The door opened in front of us and I felt myself cast into a blinding light, a light that made my eyes hurt before I suddenly felt sound, and voices rush into my awareness. “She’s coming around! Hit her again!” I heard an angry voice in my ear before my side exploded into pain from a bone-jarring kick. I writhed, but felt my limbs unable to move, I was bound.