Rain clouds rumble in the sky as I pull the front door shut behind me with a soft click it fastens in place. I look around. Where were the swirling, massive portals? Where were the shimmering spots of air that one could step into? I step out from my front door and onto my lawn. Was someone pulling a prank on me? The browning grass bent at my passing as I stepped onto the sidewalk. If I weren’t wrong in my calculations, there should at least be a couple in my immediate vicinity.

I look up and down the streets. On the sidewalk, near the rear tires of my father’s car, and tucked in such a way that it was invisible from the front of my house was a door laying on the ground. A door that looked exactly like the door of any of the houses here — a shiny white finish, with a brass metal knob, and shining brass knocker in the middle. Above these was a window; where just beyond I could see the gray concreted. It was attached to the sidewalk with a pair of dull bronze hinges. Someone must be pulling a prank on me. I pull out the Shard. The table shimmers in shades and hues of dark blue.

“Is this one?” I ask.

“Yes. That is one of the doors.” Its words are bright purple.

“But...it has a knob. And a window, and knocker...it looks cheap.”

“It’s a door.”

“Yeah, but I was thinking they’d look different.”

“It was made pretty clear during our past communications that there would be doors.”

“But why an actual, literal door? I was thinking the word was a like a metaphor or something and they’d look like giant, swirling pools in the sky.”

“That’s not a door. That’s a portal.” It emphasized the words with heavy dashes underneath.

I sigh.

“So what, ‘level,’ is this door at?”

It took a second for it to respond.

“A level 1. Generally, doors that are nearer to human habitation will have lower levels.”

I drum my fingers against my leg.

“Do I just open it or do I have to knock?”

“Just open it.”

I shove the Shard back into my pocket, bend down and knock three times before twisting the door knob. The door opens inwards and slams against an invisible wall. Blackness stares up at me as the door rattles. I squeeze my eyes shut. If I don’t take this first step; tens of thousands of people will die. I whimper as I step forward.

Winds whip and roar by my ear, as my heart rises up to my throat. The rising wind snags my loose, flappy folds of fat. Streaks of white and blue light flash through the darkness beneath my eyelids; a strange warmth builds up in my gut, and, as quickly as the fall had begun, it ends, and I come to a stop atop a pile of dust and clothes. I look back. The door I had come from was gone. In its place was the grate of a fireplace swinging open; though no soot or ash stained my clothes.

My ears ring, and the warm feeling in my guts settles like boiling a boiling pot of water being set off a flame. Once I steady myself I take in my surroundings as I slow my breath. White light bleeds through gaps between heavy wooden rafters and illuminates a small, triangular room. A small bed — no larger than those I had seen in the room of my brothers’ son, sat in the middle; pressed against the far wall beneath a small, shuttered, triangular window. On its right was a small end table, and on its left was a bookshelf. Most of the books were nothing more than shards of paper scattered along the ground.

The musk of rodent urine tinges the dusty air, and the sound of something rustling around the lower floors. I stay perfectly still as I pull the Shard from my pocket. Black and gray lights undulate

What am I supposed to do now? I think.

“Find the shrine and destroy it.” Was the answer that came at some length.

I shove the Shard back in my pocket. Shrine? How the hell am I supposed to find a shrine? How big of a place was this, anyway?

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Something casts a moving shadow beneath me through the wide gaps along the floor. I freeze and draw the machete from its sheathe and grip it until my knuckles whiten. I lower my body and press my eye against a gap between the floorboard.

In the room below me, a creature about the height of a small child, and as wide as a man sifted through the open cabinets. Wiry black fur poked from torn cloth, and a long, pink, segmented tail curled around the creature’s digitigrade legs. A spear made from black wood, and black metal leaned against a nearby wall.

It pulls its head from the cabinet and I involuntarily gasp as its black beady eyes resting atop its short snout glance up at the dust kicked loose by my presence. It grabs hold of the shaft of the spear, and dashes across the room toward the stairs.

I push myself up and also run toward the stairs to cut it off. If there was one thing I knew; it was the importance of the high ground. I grab hold of something hard and cylindrical off the floor as I spring forward, and throw it at the climbing rat-like humanoid as I could. It strikes it in the side, but the blow does nothing to slow it down.

The rat thing was just a few feet away by the time I reach the stairwell. It jabs the point of the spear up as it takes the next step, I weave a bit to the side out of instinct. I wasn’t quick enough, however, to avoid all damage. The cuts through my layers of clothes, and rips a small line of flesh from the side of my stomach. Hot blood flows out and stains my clothes. I grit my teeth against the pain.

I grab hold of the shaft of the spear with my left hand before it has a chance to retract it, and lock it in place in the crook of my elbow. I brace myself against the banister so I don’t lose my footing as it pulls to get the spear free and swing the machete down at it. Its left-hand releases the spear and snatches my wrist before the blade can make contact with it.

We stand there; deadlocked to one another. My shoulders and chest heave, and my side stings as motes of dust find their way into my open wound, I waver for a second, and a second was all the rat needed. It yanks the spear forward, and I come with it; down the steps and towards the rat.

The top of its head rams into my solar plexus, and all the air in my lungs was suddenly and violently expelled. I can’t catch myself as I fall forward, so instead, I wrap my arm around the rat and take it with me. It yelps as we tumble head over tail down the flight of stairs; striking and clawing and biting at one another as we lose our weapons in the fall.

I somehow end up on top of it at the end of the fall. I straddle it and lay into its face with haymaker after haymaker; using all of my weight as a vicious bludgeon. My knuckles crack and shatter, yet I keep going until it no longer twitches at my blow. Only then, does the adrenaline leave my body and I slump forward and I suck in air as if it were water, and I am a man lost in a desert.

A pair of sharp teeth grip my right ear. Pain, unlike I’ve ever felt in my life, blossoms across my entire body and nearly sends my body into shock, as I pull away. Hot blood pours down the side of my face, and the bottom half of my ear is left within the creature’s jowls. I press one hand against my ear.

Thoughts of Clio waiting for me feels me with purpose. I know my mother and father wouldn’t take care of her. At best, they’d drop her off in the middle of a field somewhere. No, I had to live. I had to, if not for my sake, for hers.

The rat still struggles beneath my weight. I guess it’s an advantage in this situation. I shrug off its pitiful blows, and the chunks of skin it tears off with every bite and draw my wand from my front pocket with my blood-soaked hand.

“I allow the Salamander’s blood,” I begin through gritted teeth; and a sharp exhalation on every word, “to flow through me.” I finish the triangle just as I finish speaking and wand right against its glassy eye.

A small wave of burning, smoldering ash pours over the creature. It screams as the ashes catch the creature’s wiry fur on fire. The putrid stench of burning hair and searing flesh fills my nostrils and I nearly gag. It gnashes its teeth and I cast the spell again; this time shoving the wand down its gnashing, gnawing jaws — its large front teeth tearing ribbons of flesh from the back of my left hand. I finish the chant, and the embers flow.

The rat thing gags and sputters and spits up black globs of black inky soot that stain my face as it burned from both the inside and the outside. With the last gasp of a dying beast, it jolts and knocks me off of it. It dashes, grasping at its throat with both of its clawed hands before it collapses and vomits up blood and stomach bile black with ash.

I reach for my bag, a few feet away, and unzip it. Its ears twitch as its head shoots toward me. Black foam oozes out of its mouth as it raises its claws and charges forward. I draw the kitchen knife from the inside of my bag and stab forward.

The blade sinks into the rat’s clavicle, yet that only slows it. I pull the blade out again and stab it down into the back of its neck. It cuts through flesh and snaps the bone, and all at once, the rat creature is still.

I pull the knife out of its neck and stab at it again, and again, and again and again and again. The knife chips as it slices past bone, yet I keep going. My knuckles have turned to mush beneath the weight of my punches, and it hurts to grip the knife, yet I stab again.

At some point, the blood-slick knife falls from my grasp and I fall forward. Copper flows into my nostrils and I vomit up the food I had just the hour before. I leave the knife in the rat’s back and grope around its sticky blood pooling on the floor for my wand.

I hear nothing move around me. Nothing bothered to come in during our fight, so I assume this is the only creature that was beyond the door. I put the wand to my forehead.

“By the light,” the words are sputtered, “of Yahweh. I tap. “The king of kings.” I move the wand down to my navel, “and the God of gods.”

Some of my pain is lifted.

“By the light...”