Nora lay in front of me, her skin pale and her lips very blue. Her eyes were opened wide in a death mask of horror. Her lay axe beside her, the head of it twisted and broken and the shaft shattered to tiny splinters. I crawled across the stone floor and pressed a hand to her face.

I looked around, my breath coming in short sharp gasps as the reality of it all revealed itself to me. They were all here, all of them broken and bloodied, their bodies clustered around the corpses of dead Crocs. Theo, Gabby, Miranda, Jacob, Sob, and even Stella.

I bellowed my pain as I crawled to Stella. Her eyes opened for a second when I dug my fingers into her fur. She whimpered and tried to lift her head but it didn’t move far. Blood was spewing from the deep gash across her belly. Things that should have been on the inside were splattered over the ground.

“No, girl. Don’t leave me.”

Her next whine was cut off as her head dropped and she grew slack. I cried out her name as my head fell into her still-warm fur, swearing to every god and deity that I would do to her murderer what was done to her.

“Leave her be, Joe. She’s gone.”

I turned around and glared at Isabella. “Shut up, you have no idea what I’m going through!”

Tears streamed down her face as she looked back at Clara’s prone form. “Yes. I do.”

I frowned and climbed to my feet, Stella’s blood still coating my hands. This wasn’t right. Clara and Isabella didn’t belong in this place. A purple glow flickered at the edge of my vision but when my head whipped around there was nothing there.

“This isn’t right,” I said.

“We failed,” Isabella said with a wailing sob. “We were supposed to get stronger but what does it matter if everyone we know and loved is dead?”

The room darkened. Thunder boomed in the distance. I spun in a slow circle, my eyes lingering on my fallen teammates. I’d lost so much already and now this. It wasn’t just them though. Mrs. Percott was sprawled across the ground not far from the others, her neck twisted until her head faced the completely wrong direction. Gordon lay beside her, his body torn in two.

The room was filled with a reddish mist. The horrible stench of metal and rot filled my nostrils, making me want to gag. The sound of rolling thunder was broken by the vicious growls of the dog monsters that had chased me into the spire. A flutter and screech drew my eyes upwards to the swarm of harpies clinging to the ceiling.

Things existed here that should never be together. A snake's hiss had me spinning again, expecting to see the Djinn but it wasn’t him. Instead, chains snaked from the ceiling and dug hooks into the thousands of corpses laying around us, pulling them high into the air in neat rows. I didn’t recognize many of them but everyone I didn’t know had a number branded onto their forehead. I reached for Stella but she was too high above me, her body slack as it dangled from the hook.

“I can’t do this anymore!” Isabella cried, loading her crossbow and aiming the thing under her chin.

I rushed forward, yanking her arm away as the bolt released. The bolt whizzed across the room, slamming into Clara’s body, and making her swing on her chains.

Isabella wailed and tugged at her hair, yanking out thick sections of it. “Just let me die.”

“Shut the hell up!”

Frank weaved between the swinging corpses and dropped to the ground in front of Isabella, rubbing his feathered head against her knee. The woman cried as she reached out for him, stroking his chest.

“You can’t die here,” I said. “It’s just a trick. An Illusion just like the gold.”

“It doesn’t matter. All these people are dead, don’t you understand? We’re next. There’s nothing left out there for us. The Crocs have won.”

“She’s right, Joe. Come join us.”

I stiffened, my eyes lifting to Nora high above me. She was still rigid and lifeless but it had been her voice that had sounded out.

I climbed to my feet, my hands shaking as I curled them into fists at my side. “Let us out of this Ifrit!”

A cold hand slipped into mine. I yelped and turned about. Rory stood there, his body mangled by decay. He turned his white eyes up to me, the red marks on his neck standing out against the pale flesh of his throat.

“Joe, I don’t like it here,” he said. “Can we go somewhere else?”

I yanked my hand away and stumbled back. “No, you’re not Rory. Leave me alone.”

The boy reached out for me. “Don’t leave me, Joe. Please don’t leave me. You did before and the bad man came.”

I clamped my hands over my ears. “No, no, no! It’s not real!”

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

“I’m so hungry.”

I turned my back on my brother and squeezed my eyes shut on the floor-to-ceiling windows that framed the twin moons outside. I couldn’t think straight. My mind was buzzing and bouncing from thought to thought so fast I couldn’t keep up. I tried to take deep breaths to ease the tightness clamping around my chest but both options for that were horrendous. Through my nose and the smell made me shaky. Through my mouth and the taste of misted blood in the air made me want to hurl.

Isabella’s scream had my eyes flying open. Rory stood by her now, his hands wrapped tightly around her throat with a strength he shouldn’t have. Isabella was gasping like a fish out of water but no matter how she clawed at his rotting hands he didn’t let go.

“I’m hungry,” Rory snarled. “Leave the dream sense with me or she dies.”

Dream sense.

The words echoed in my head, pulling the strands at an old memory that didn’t want to surface. I held my palms up and took a step toward Isabella.

“Let her go and we can leave, I promise.”

Rory loosened his grip and looked at me with those same all-white eyes. “You promise?”

“Yes, now please just let her go.”

Rory’s arms dropped and Isabella crashed to the floor. Her eyes were closed and she was still but I could see her chest rising and falling in the dull purple glow. Rory ran for me, the harpies overhead screaming and flapping their wings at the sudden movement.

He wrapped his arms around my waist and squeezed. “I’ve missed you. It’s scary in the other place. They wouldn’t let Mum in. They said she was bad.”

I wanted to hold him but the repulsive state of his body held my arms at bay. His words tugged at the pain I’d buried deep inside me. This wasn’t Rory though. No matter how badly I wanted it to be, or how much it sounded like him, it just wasn’t.

It’s just an illusion. I reminded myself. I have to escape.

But you can’t, the phantom voices screamed inside my head. Nothing can escape the hold of a Djinn.

“Shut the hell up!”

I flinched at Frank’s shout. He dropped onto my shoulder and leaned forward, screaming at Rory who yelped and stumbled away from me. I reached out, some part of me not wanting him to go no matter how gruesome he was.

The harpies shrieked and flapped away from the ceiling, hiding away the neat rows of hanging corpses as they covered the large windows with their bodies, blocking out the light of the twin moons. I held out my arms blindly, stumbling in the direction that I’d last seen Isabella. I dragged my feet to keep from stepping on her.

“Where are you going? You promised!”

“You’re not Rory,” I bellowed. “I won’t fall for your tricks, Ifrit!”

My foot hit Isabella’s prone body and I dropped into a crouch, grabbing ahold of her with one arm and pulling out my sword with the other.

The Djinn’s hearty chuckle filled the room but he didn’t appear. The harpies shuffled sending brief purple flashes of light dancing across the room before casting us back into the darkness.

“I like you puny human. You’ve got heart. No one escapes the dream sense though. Give in. Let it fill your body and soul like it has Isabella.”

“No!”

He who walks in darkness falls harder for the light.

Understanding hit me like a freight train. My sword clattered across the floor as I dug my hand into my bum bag and yanked out the Stone Orb of Noxim.

“Wait, what are you doing?” the Djinn asked, his tone different than before.

Smash it, the voices screamed inside my head.

I bellowed as I lifted the orb high above my head, feeding my toss with the entirety of my stamina as my arm came flying back down. The orb hit the stone floor and shattered.

“No,” the Djinn screamed.

A ball of bright fire lifted from the shards of the orb, slowly floating into the air as it filled the dark room with almost blinding light. The harpies screamed and took to the air, disappearing in puffs of smoke. The hanging corpses did the same, flashing from existence one by one. I reached for Stella but she disappeared just as quickly along with all my friends. The room was empty now aside from me, Frank, Isabella, and Ifrit. The rolling thunder quietened and the howls of the dog-like beasts were replaced by the heavy breathing of the Djinn.

His arms were raised, shading his face from the blazing glow. His eyes were wide as he stared at me, his cheeks reddened and his body shaking.

“How did you do that?” he asked. “No one can escape. No one!”

“I just did.”

The Djinn screeched and flung his arms out, hurling a ball of ice at me. My movements were sluggish with my depleted stamina. I couldn’t get out of the way.

Frank screeched and dropped from my shoulder, throwing his wings wide as he took the hit.

“No!” I bellowed but I needn’t have.

The ice ball bounced off the bird without leaving so much as a mark. A trail of mist chased it as it hurtled back and slammed into the Djinn’s chest. Ifrit screamed and flung his arms into the air. The dull purple glow that surrounded him flared before blasting outward. The Djinn disappeared in a puff of smoke, just as his illusions had.

I stood there panting in the silence that followed. The globe of floating light from the orb sparked and shrunk until it disappeared entirely. I had no idea what some low-level boy playing security guard had been doing with such a powerful object but I thanked my lucky stars I had picked his pockets before locking him and his friend in that cage.

“Well done, little worm. I knew you would be the last one standing the moment I found you.”

I looked up at the towering woman in front of me. She looked as she had before, her black robes of smoke billowing out around her matching the hue of the tumbling curls atop her head. Her enormous wide-brimmed hat made her face look even thinner than it actually was. She smiled at me with her white jagged teeth, her eyes twinkling in the purple light.

“I’m not the last,” I said, kneeling to the woman sleeping by my feet.

My fingers froze on her cold stiff body. I rolled her over, grunting from the effort. A bolt was skewered in her heart. She was clutching an amulet in her hand emblazoned with Clara’s name.

My head dropped and my eyes closed as it dawned on me what she had done. I rose and ran my fingers through my hair. It shouldn’t have ended this way.

“It is only you, Joe. You are the last of all of them. My Chosen One.”