Eik sat up with a sigh. The rotten wood crumbled like paper against his fingers now. To think he’d struggled the first time he came here. Water splashed lazily as he sat up and scanned his surroundings. Same as always.

“Does it have to be a coffin every single time? How about some damn creativity - ivity - ivity?” he shouted, not expecting a response. He looked down at his naked body. “And the clothes? I don’t think a pair of pants or something like that would be too much to ask for! I’ll catch a cold in this disgusting ass water – ater - ater!” The echo made it feel even dumber to be shouting to nobody but here he was doing it anyway.

“Whatever,” he grumbled to himself and sloshed up onto shore where he stomped off the worst of the filth. “I’m not here for you anyway, you shitty blue bastard.”

He walked around for a few minutes to pick out the nicest, coziest, and healthiest tree to sit against. Yes, the whole place was a literal swamp with no good places to sit, but he wasn’t going to venture to the more dangerous territories when he was planning to concentrate.

To be honest, he was a little surprised at the ease with which he had managed to enter the world of Profound Toxin again. For some reason, it felt like something that should have been difficult. No, it had been difficult, but now it just kind of worked.

Whether this world was even real or just some kind of mind fortress was impossible to tell. On the one hand, injuries carried over somewhat, such as his bleeding nose when he’d first be here. But on the other hand, he’d already experienced death here when the toxic beast dove into the lake after him and he’d come out of that just fine, more or less.

Saving that little existential question for later, he got comfortable and reached in for Profound Toxin. It responded immediately. He took a firm hold of it, like a dog by the neck, before he called on his Ak’ki.

“Alright, guys,” he breathed, heart racing with dread. “Let’s give this another try, shall we?”

With about as much caution as he had ever done anything in his life, Eik slowly began to move the two forces closer to each other inside his body.

He didn’t spin them quite yet, since the pseudo scientist in him felt obligated to double check.

Nope, it was the same as before. The moment the two energies touched, a pain like a white-hot, serrated blade being driven into his chest erupted like a fountain. Eik’s head rammed against the trunk of the tree with a crack as his back arched in agony, a scream ripping through his throat.

“No, no, separate! Break it up, for fuck’s sake!” he screamed and the pain let up instantly. He rolled over onto his elbows and retched. For a minute, every breath was a struggle. “That… sucked…”

Pulling himself back into a sitting position, he got his breathing under control and maneuvered the two forces back into opposing places. “Alright, I’m going to spin you a bit now, alright? Behave this time, please. It really hurts.”

Starting off easy, he rotated the two of them around their own axes and let them slowly build up speed before he set them in motion around each other. This was delicate work. It had to be in order to avoid causing more soul-throbbing agony. And Eik was all for delicate right now.

Once the two entities reached a reasonable velocity, they began to move gradually closer together like two galaxies on a collision course.

Despite their apparent contempt for each other, the Profound Toxin and the Ak’ki must have sensed Eik’s wish because as their swirling borders approached, tiny needles of matter reached out toward the barycenter of their shared orbit, straining to touch. With his mind’s eye, Eik observed this development with some fascination.

It had seemed a hopeless endeavor to force them to get along but maybe it wasn’t such an impossibility after all. He watched the moment of contact with bated breath, feeling certain that it would work this time.

Again, he was assaulted by a pain so intense that just maintaining consciousness felt like a challenge. On the outside his eyes were clenched shut in agony, but on the inside his eyes were wide open and following every second of the interaction between his two powers with unwavering focus.

Where the previous attempt, before his evolution to the rank of Instinct of Toxin, had resulted in only a flash of success, what he saw now was a clear blend of opposing forces. A light blue haze, lighter than the cerulean blue of Profound Toxin, flowing almost like smoke, had come into existence at the point of contact.

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The only problem was that it hurt like crazy so Eik couldn’t maintain that fused state for more than a couple of unbearable seconds before being forced to let the float apart.

“Shit,” he muttered to himself as he leaned his head back against the rough bark, concentrating hard to keep himself from throwing up right then and there. Overtaken by a fit of frustration, Eik rolled around in the dry, crunchy grass, cursing like a sailor.

It was terrifying to do these attempts. Although he was pretty sure he couldn’t die in here, who the hell could really know? He sure as shit didn’t. But even if it couldn’t actually be fatal, the pain alone made it feel like being inches away from death.

What doesn’t kill you makes you feel a bunch of pain instead, as the famous quote went.

Maybe it was optimistic to think that it was even a possibility in the first place to mix the two forces. It was clear that it was possible, but there was no proof that it did anything positive. Maybe it did nothing at all. Maybe it made it weaker rather than stronger.

And worst of all, perhaps that pain that followed was simply part of it. An intrinsic function of the fusion that there was simply no getting around.

All those thoughts were there, aching in the back of Eik’s mind, but he still couldn’t help but feel like he was onto something big here. Everything about powers, abilities, Ak’ki, Profound Toxin, and all sorts of super natural stuff he experiences shared a common aspect.

They all seemed to be governed by will, effort, and trial. And this was a damn trial. It just had to lead to something. If not…

A noise caught his attention, his head snapping up to gaze at the crown of a tree a little ways away. It was rustling. But there was not a breeze to be felt.

The corners of Eik’s mouth quirked up. Those things just never gave up, did they?

He got to his feet before it could make its move and when it did, he snatched it out of the air deftly, holding the little bugger by the skin of its neck, if that elastic membrane could even be called skin. It struggled and wiggled like a regular snake would, tiny squeaks escaping its luminescent, blue body like a dog toy.

He held it up to so he could see it properly. As expected, there was an outline of facial features, but it was so faint that it was barely visible. The drake-like entity that had killed him on his last visit had been much clearer.

It was difficult to admit but it was actually kind of cute now that he could get a good look at the damn thing. “Why don’t you take it easy for once, little fella?” he tried, expecting no answer. “There’s nothing about this fight that you’ll end up enjoying, I think. Maybe you should take a step back from this and rethink your options a bit,” he said, eyes wandering to its legless existence. “Or… just inch back a little bit, I don’t know. Whatever, man,” he grumbled and chugged it into the bushes where it slithered away, having followed his advice, clearly.

“Cute little guy,” he mumbled and sat back down at the tree. “Alright, nothing to do but try again, I suppose,” he said with a sigh.

Getting Profound Toxin and the Ak’ki back into mutual orbit, they slowly began to merge once more. Eik was hoping for a miracle to solve his problem, but when the pain made another appearance it was clear that he had to try something else to fix the issue.

“Mmmm.” Lost in thought, he tried to think of a different approach.

But what the hell could he do? How was he supposed to know how to work this otherworldly power correctly? He hadn’t exactly gone to a god damned magic school or anything like that. He was practically a self taught amateur.

From here there was really only one way to go and that was forward. Well, except dying, of course. He could definitely still die. And experience copious amounts of pain. He sighed.

Keeping the revolutions at low velocity this time, Eik moved them closer and closer. It hurt even more than before. Okay, so for now at least, it seemed like faster was better.

He tried it again with the revolutions turned to near maximum of what he could realistically keep control, but with the orbit velocity turned down instead. To his dismay, this configuration was even more painful that the previous attempt.

Eik laid there in the dead grass, panting his lungs out from the worst case of heartburn ever. Was this crap really worth it? There wasn’t even any proof that something good would come of it. It hurt so much.

Groaning, he put a hand to his mouth as vomit threatened to come up unannounced before throwing himself back into the experiment. “Ah, man, here we go,” he muttered as he set the whole thing back into motion at as high a speed as he could reasonably handle.

Before allowing them to touch, he took some time to just feel the revolutions and the rolls, feeling it settle into a comfortable balance. And in that balance he found the forces speeding up further. At first he was about to force them to slow down to maintain control but there there didn’t seem to be a loss of control, even as he gave it more time to build up.

“Huh, would you look at that,” he mumbled to himself. “Sometimes, all you need is a little bit of patience.”

The longer he let them go, the more speed they built. He didn’t even have to force it. It just happened as if they had been waiting for him to give them free rein to do their thing.

The feeling of it was like sitting in a roller coaster — that deep rush sending tingles through his stomach, up his spine, and down into his toes. It felt like he was breaking through to something.

By the time the two energies reached what seemed to be terminal velocity within the confines of their environment, he almost couldn’t tell one from another as they almost seemed to flow into each other.

This might be a little much. With his mind’s eye, he watched them revolve like two stars, each shining brightly with their own color. It was a mesmerizing sight, no matter how you twisted and turned it.

Hey, he was the type of guy to swallow fatal doses of poison just to test himself. This was a peace of cake, right? No time like the present, as they said.

Taking a deep breath, Eik steeled himself against the pain that would soon come and smashed the two opposing forces into a collision course.