The void spread out around me, infinite and empty.

No doubt time and space were warped here, in this discontinuous place, but Bullet Time was internal, not external. It affected only my own perception, and was thus untroubled by outward temporal flow, forcing me to savor the numbing cold of pure nothingness upon my flesh.

My newly made Fire’s warmth was barely enough. This manner of chill affected more than just the body. It cut right through to the soul.

I was all too grateful when the telltale shimmer of tiny cubes condensed by the thousands to surround me, shimmering entrancingly in quartic patterns until they finally faded away and my new environs made themselves known.

The seventh room.

Two more to go.

I looked out unto its tight, cubic, confined expanse, and swore. I’d fought bitterly, tooth and nail, making use of absolutely everything I knew, to condense my knowledge of Fire and triumph over the last room. And for a brief moment I’d celebrated, hoping that surely, absolutely, there couldn’t possibly be a way for the World Titan, nigh omnipotent though it was, to predict my epiphany.

But, yet again, I’d underestimated my adversary.

The sea of lava I’d grown to love was gone, replaced by a shimmering expanse of purplish-green ichor.

It was a sordid, disgusting color, glittering with the same revolting slimy sheen of spilt oil I’d seen from cracked and shattered lamps, or putrid, rotting flesh. It was absolutely still, too. Flat, glassy, and tepid, not even a single ripple disturbing its mirror-like surface.

It, more than anything else I’d seen thus far, was unnatural. Something about it just made my skin crawl. I didn’t want to stray anywhere near.

But neither could I progress until I knew its effects, for sure.

Sighing wearily, I approached the foul waste, creeping over towards the point where white metal met brackish ooze, and lowered my hand to just above its thick, visually impenetrable exterior. Bracing myself to lose the limb, I dipped my hand in and whipped it swiftly out.

No pain.

No effect at all, really. My hand was no different than it had ever been; the sludge hadn’t even stuck to it.

“Huh,” I muttered, gazing distractedly out across the slight perturbations my trespass had left in the loathsome liquid, watching the bright green lighting above glint sordidly off its shiny surf.

My hand itched slightly.

Absently, I flexed it open and closed. Strangely, my sensation felt ever-so-slightly numbed. Frowning, I glanced towards the offending appendage.

Fang abruptly howled with rage.

He interrupted my gaze in a swirl of bone-white fury, severing my arm from the shoulder, leaving it to flop lifelessly onto the sterile floor below.

The pain made me stumble back, recoiling from my floating sword, who angled my way and growled warningly.

My eyes were wide with shock and fear. Had Fang been corrupted? Did the water possess some kind of memetic effect? Draconic Blood flooded to restore my shorn limb, as I remained stock-still, paralyzed by the possibilities.

For a moment, my madly-roving eyes swept over the dismembered limb, lying just behind Fang’s aggressive form.

It was unrecognizable.

Horror swelled forth from my gut and threatened to overflow into my mouth. I swiveled around and retched emptily onto the metallic floor, my stomach convulsing as I attempted to purge the image from my mind.

Somehow, in mere seconds, the hand I’d placed into the toxic sea had mutated, skin warping and muscles morphing, flesh and blood changing into revolting, rotting, decaying plant matter. Despite the miniscule time that had passed, the limb was entirely converted, untroubled by its savage disconnection from my own flesh.

I hadn’t even felt it.

I shivered as I imagined the creeping corruption taking over my whole body. Potent though it was, I doubted heartily whether Draconic Blood could fight that. Without turning around to lay eyes upon its repulsiveness any longer than necessary, I stuck out one palm behind me, and used my newest Blessing.

Fire gouted from between my fingers, washing over the hallway’s whole floor like a living liquid, white-hot and purifying. I let it run for five long seconds before turning around.

The warped arm was gone, purged by the flames.

Fang growled vindictively by my side.

“Thanks, buddy,” I said, gently petting his sword form. “I shouldn’t have doubted you.”

My Soulbound Weapon huffed in a manner suggesting somewhat indignantly that no, I shouldn’t have, whilst equally magnanimously declining my apologies, maintaining that my protection was why he was here, after all.

I snapped my fingers and he returned to my now-regrown palm as I began to ascend into the sky and make my way across the room.

There was no trick, this time.

No lava for me to swim under, no drones to avoid. The lasers were thick as flies in the air, and they moved quickly and erratically, entirely impossible to predict. Running Lesser Levitation and Sensory Projection simultaneously wasn’t as trying anymore, but my numerous run-ins with the green-black beams of death caused me to lose many a limb during my traverse.

My wounds were rarely mortal but always severe, requiring the addition of Draconic Blood to my arsenal for every blow I suffered. And each time I did so, my headache flared, my focus weakened, and moving onwards grew more and more difficult.

The drones hadn’t left, either, and I encountered them intermittently across the corridor. I always located them before they could do the same to me, and Flash Stepped towards them as soon as I did so, but destroying the things wasn’t always an easy task.

Sometimes they hovered just above the water, making me hesitant to combat them so close to the source of such a horrifying death. Once, when I’d dispatched just one such drone, an errant piece of chassis had fallen so quickly into the sea that a mere few drops of the toxic liquid splashed upwards, just barely brushing the tips of my toes.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

I’d severed my leg immediately, at the hip, and climbed as high as I could into the sky.

My boots wouldn’t regenerate like my enchanted wear, so I’d just lost one of them outright. I didn’t care. I didn’t want to risk anything when it came to the not-water. I’d had to take a couple of moments to calm my nerves, after that.

There were no platforms. Not anymore. There were no places to rest, at all.

Flight and perception didn’t cost that much to maintain, but exercising the two at once meant a constant, if miniscule, drain on my reserves, both Entropic and mental. I couldn’t rest, even in the air. My stores were large and my movements practiced, but they wouldn’t last forever. The longer the passage took, the closer I came to running dry.

And falling to an agonizing death beneath the waves.

So, having no other choice, I forged onwards.

The seventh room fought me at every turn. Bright green lights stained my eyes, corrupting my vision, causing me to rely ever more on my newly-made powers. Lasers followed my every move, requiring increasingly back-breaking, brain-squishing acrobatics to avoid. Camouflaged drones, robotic ghosts, kept me always on-edge, necessitating an exhausting, perpetual vigilance.

Throughout all, the toxic, mutative sea lapped quietly from below. Stagnant. Watching. Waiting for me to fall into its lethal embrace.

I forged onwards.

The machines began to spawn in groups of two, then three, then countless more. I slaughtered them by the tens, and hundreds took their place. Draconic Blood repaired the myriad cuts their shrapnel left in my skin, but did nothing to clean their fuel, which stained my arms and legs, clumping in my hair.

The fumes made me giddy. I didn’t have time to wipe them off.

I forged onwards.

Minutes turned to hours, and the hours swiftly multiplied. Time began to lose meaning. My watch was covered in thick, congealed oil, and my mind was swimming. I was sure I’d passed the finishing mark long ago, but still, the corridor continued. I didn’t have time to stop, to catch my breath.

I was fighting constantly, my entire world subsumed by a desperate struggle to survive.

I forged onwards.

Fang’s self-actuated movements grew more and more sluggish, until he tired so completely that I was forced to use him as nothing more than a mundane sword, though his edge grew no duller. My reserves reached half, then a quarter capacity. Every moment that went by, I was learning, evolving, finding new ways to channel my energy, to drag every last scrap of efficiency out of my powers.

It was never enough.

I forged onwards.

I started seeing things that were not there.

Things that could not be there. My mother waved to me, smiling, her gorgeous hair fluttering as she rode atop an all-white drone.

Why do you need to be strong? She sang, sweetly, to me.

What does it mean, to be a Hero?

I ignored her, and forged onwards.

The faces and voices of Burrick villagers called out to me, polluting my mind.

Their mutated arms and grasping hands clawed at me from beneath the putrid, purple waves, scraping and scratching at my feet, threatening to drag me down below. I’d known them for decades, all my life. I’d dined with them, celebrated with them, lived with them, and failed them. Left them to the tender mercies of bandits, abandoned them in the bowels of the Titan that now tormented me.

Who are you? They moaned. You are not our brother. You are not our kin. How could you do this to us?

How could you be a Hero?

I tried desperately to block out their cries, and forged onwards.

As I cleaved through the hundredth, or thousandth, or millionth drone, my sword was stopped by something.

By someone.

A figure from my past, a spectre from another life with short-cropped hair and eyes like iron. His dense muscles rippled as he contested my strength with disdainful ease, despite not being Blessed.

Is that what you call a strike? Master Ewan sneered at me. Pathetic. You have abandoned practice for power. You have squandered the diligence I worked so hard to teach you in favor of your own ambition.

He threw off my blade, and scowled at me.

I stood tall against an Aristocrat, all on my own. I laid him low, without any Blessing. What have you accomplished?

He spat at my feet.

You will never be a Hero. Give up.

“I’m sorry, Master,” I sobbed deliriously. “I cannot.”

Ewan made no reply, but I pushed him aside amidst the tears, and forged onwards.

A dainty figure with long black locks and pale white skin floated delicately in the air, gazing forlornly at the remnants of five drones I’d just dispatched.

Thaum.

The young, unsure girl to whom I’d pledged my loyalty, and promptly allowed Vox to Master. Now, I didn’t know if she was alive or dead. I didn’t know which would be worse, either.

I trusted you, she accused, quietly.

I thought you were a Hero, she continued, shaking her head sadly. My Hero. She looked up, and her lime-green eyes pierced into my soul.

But you left me to die.

Her words were a whisper in the wind.

Heroes do not exist. Not in this world.

From somewhere in their entrancing depths, a seed of blackness was taking shape.

This world is sick. Evil. Damned.

The seed grew larger and larger, until it became recognizable, a coal-black tome wrapped in clanking chains, with a single red apple emblazoned on its cover. Alyss smiled, but it was no longer beautiful. It was the rictus grin of death.

But I will grant it peace.

Her phantasmal form faded away until nothing was left of it.

I wavered unsteadily in the air, drifting in and out of consciousness. Was this my trial? Why hadn’t I progressed to the Marble stage? What more could it possibly take?

I didn’t know.

I didn’t know where I was. I didn’t know who I was. The walls melted and the corners of my vision blackened until my sight winked out entirely.

My sea was dry, and every last whisper of Entropy I tried to draw from it tore dreadful rents in the precarious reality that was my soul. My Blessings were silent. My world was naught but darkness and despair.

At last, my reserves ran out.

As I fell from the sky, I felt strangely at peace. In a way, I was proud of myself. I’d done absolutely everything I could do, to prevail. I’d pushed myself to the very breaking point, in body and in soul. And I didn’t fear my own end. In this numbing void, death would come swiftly and without pain. Faintly, I felt the air stream past my tumbling form, and smiled as oblivion drew near.

The whisper of an ancient memory, barely stored but not quite forgotten, surfaced from the depths of my manic mind.

Shall I tell you a story, my son?

It was a voice as cold as the sea, a voice familiar to me, but I knew not from where.

Once upon a time, far, far from here,

At the very center of the universe,

There was a nameless, grey world,

Filled with crawling things.

It spoke to me, but I didn’t truly hear it. My mind was no longer my own, my consciousness borne far away on dregs of used-up Entropy.

Two Kings ruled this world, and all its people.

The world had no name, but the Kings had named themselves.

Abbadon the Hunter and Azathoth the Dreamer.

An explosion of pain lit up my back, and my eyes snapped open.

I’d landed on solid ground.

The all-white corridor’s ceiling, and walls, and floor greeted my vision, as well as the softly blinking symbol writ upon its end.

The room was over. Somehow, I’d made it through.

I began to weep.

Fang’s lupine form, more real than ever before, nuzzled me through the tears, and I buried my face within the silvery shards of his fur.

“We’re not dead yet, are we, my friend?” I choked, through the sobs, grinning shakily as I did so.

“Not yet,” I murmured, before passing out cold on the metal floor.