Darkness engulfed us like a body bag.

We’d been thrust into The Between, a forsaken rocky wasteland that spread out in all directions.

It was everywhere, and nowhere.

It was here, and now. It was never.

I was not afraid.

The Dearg Due may have killed my father. But Nehemiah had blood on his hands.

The wizard’s hand gripped my shoulder. “I’m sorry that you found out who killed your dad, Sean. We all hope that our loved ones will go in peace. No one deserves to go like that.”

I ripped my shoulder out of his grasp.

“Sean…”

“I saw what happened,” I cut him off. “I walked through your memories.”

I explained to him everything I had seen.

Even in the dark I saw his eyelids twitch while I explained, my voice steadily grew louder, trembling. “Tell me it’s not true. Tell me the Dearg Due cast a spell on me and fabricated that vision.”

He paused, trying to find the right words. “Whatever you saw, Sean, it wasn’t the whole truth. The Dearg Due twists the truth. You only saw a snippet of—”

“I saw enough. You betrayed my dad! You handed him over to her.”

Silence hung like a gavel poised to strike, a vindictive judgment. His lips trembled like he was going to say something but then stopped himself. I could see the smallest spark of amethyst magic emanating in his eyes. And then it dawned on me.

When I went to his house to ask him for help to get Charice back from Tech Duinn, I had seen an amethyst blaze, a spark of fire in his eyes, but it faded as soon as I noticed it.

For some reason that night he had memory-wiped himself.

And he had done it before as well.

“You memory wiped yourself didn’t you?”

The wizard’s eyes locked on mine but I could not decipher the truth. But if he didn’t want to talk, I had a way to be sure. With unreal speeds I unsheathed Fragarach and held the edge up to his throat. Charice shrieked and Rob flipped out. They thought I was going to lop his head off.

“I can make you talk. With Fragarach, the Answerer. Did you betray my father and memory wipe yourself out of guilt?”

Nehemiah’s eyes spun white as they rolled up into his head. He twitched and convulsed as if trying to hold in the truth. But he could not fight it forever. After a few breaths he broke. “Yes,” he whispered.

It all made sense now, why he was so secretive about leaving the Shepherds Guild, why he never spoke of knowing my dad, or anyone else on the Guild for that matter. Why he didn’t know me even though he should. It was because he didn’t know me or my dad any longer.

He had wiped away the memories, wiped away the guilt.

He wasn’t helping me as a friend any of those times that he had aided me in my fight against all the monsters I stood against. He was helping me out of guilt, out of some need to redeem himself for his past sins, his betrayal of my father at the hands of the Dearg Due.

Charice put a hand on my shoulder. “Put the sword away Sean, before someone gets hurt.”

I did. But that didn’t mean I was not going to hurt Nehemiah. I clenched my fists so tight, my arms trembled.

“Gavin warned me. I should have known.”

Under my shirt emerald light bled out as Celtic knots and runes ran down my arms like they were sleeved with magic tattoos. I felt electric, alive, and ready to right past wrongs.

Tain barked at me. Charice yelled something, tugging on my right arm. Rob fluttered in front of my face, hooting. I shrugged past them.

Nehemiah eased one booted foot back, his left palm raised. “Sean, there’s something in here with us. I think it’s attracted to the dead vampire corpses. We’ve all got to work together if we want to all get out of here safe and sound.”

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

I barely noticed, but now that he mentioned it, my Keening scar was going off. I didn’t care. I’d rip to shreds whatever was out there after I finished with the wizard. Nehemiah was simply trying to do what he always did. Ignore the main problem at hand and focus on a new one.

He took my silence as a confirmation that I agreed with him. He spun around and raised his purple glowing wand, using it as a beacon to lead the way.

With his back turned to me, I couldn’t resist. After all, he’d stabbed my dad in the back. Why not return the favor?

My self-control gave way to unbridled fury. My pupils disappeared. Emerald rage spilled from my eyes. The green glow pierced the unending dark like I had a pair of LEDs attached to my face.

I launched a Luck blast at him.

He turned like he expected it, and deflected the blast with his wand. My Good Luck shot off in the distance, arcing like a thrown grenade before landing and exploding. I sent another blast, and another. Again he deflected each one.

“Sean, stop!” He yelled. “We’ve got to —”

With Luck empowered speed I dashed at him, a glowing tail of Luck trailing behind me. His eyes widened as I approached fast. He raised his wand, pointing it at my face. I sidestepped him and punched him in the jaw before he could utter his spell. He crumbled under the right hook and went down to the rocky surface.

“Get up,” I growled.

He tried to rise but he wasn’t fast enough so I helped him up. I grasped his trench coat with both hands and flung him further into the darkness. He spun, twisting like a cat and landed on one knee skidding to a halt. He launched his first real attack at me and I raised the circular Luck shield in front of me absorbing the attack.

It was on now.

Emerald and amethyst explosions showered the darkness of the Between with massive sparks, like a lightning storm during the Fourth of July. We flung so much magic around that the darkness around us retreated. Light fell on onyx stones under our feet that had not been illuminated for eons. The shiny rock surface reflected our battle like a blurry broken mirror.

I was no longer Sean, and he was no longer Nehemiah. We were simply vessels for Order and Chaos, truth and lies, a battle as old as time itself.

We left the ground, launching skyward. I caught the wizard with a flying kick and sent him back down to the ground. He created a crater when he crashed, like an asteroid. The onyx surface burst into a million pieces exploding like shrapnel. Somehow he rose to his feet, bent his knees and lunged at me. We met in the air again. I launched a flurry of attacks at him using all four of my limbs. My arms and hands were a green blur. He wasn’t as quick as me, but he brought up an amethyst orb around his body. I beat on the orb until I cracked it like an egg. I grabbed him by the throat and head butted him. He blacked out and tumbled backwards, flipping head over heels as he plummeted.

I fell headfirst into a dive. My fists shot out in front of me like I was Superman, a speeding bullet about to pierce his heart. I could’ve ended it there. I could’ve killed the wizard in the black of the Between and left his body to rot, forgotten in endless darkness.

But a towering shadow caught my eye.

I caught up with Nehemiah’s falling body and grabbed him. I whipped my feet around and landed hard.

Peering into the darkness, I scanned the horizon for the massive shape. In the distance I saw it, a strange thing. Whether a long neck, or a single rising tentacle attached to a larger monstrosity, I did not know. Wings extended from the shadow. An odor that smelled of dread filled my nose.

Of pure instinct I knew that we had to flee.

I had to put my vengeance aside and get us out of there. Whatever that thing was, it made the eldritch horrors of H.P. Lovecraft’s imagination seem like a comic strip in the Sunday funnies.

My girlfriend, my hobgoblin, and my dog caught up to the unconscious wizard and me.

“Sean!” The way Charice pleaded my name told me all that I needed to know. She sensed it too, that wicked vile hatred creeping closer.

The Between was its domain, and we were trespassing.

Rob stammered, almost unable to get the words out. “We’ve got to get out of here boss.”

“I need to find a threshold.”

“There’s no time,” he screeched.

A tremor sent vibrations up my legs. The thing moved closer, and the Between quaked beneath its approach.

Rob was right. But Nehemiah was the one who led us through this darkness before. And I had no idea how he kept his bearings in here. The wizard sagged in my arms, still unconscious. Rob and Charice looked at me wide-eyed. Tain whined and spun a quick circle. It was up to me to get us out of here.

But there was no threshold in sight. And I couldn’t open a rift like the Dearg Due had.

Or, maybe I could.

I lay the unconscious wizard down on the ground. Then I gripped Fragarach in both hands. Closing my eyes I envisioned Tir fo Thuinn. In my frantic state, my thought process was that this sword belonged to Manann mac Lir. Being a magical item, it probably could return to its port of origin. And I had called the aquatic mare, Enbarr. I had summoned the majestic steed of the Sea King with the sword through a watery rift. Why couldn’t the sword slice open a rift here?

As I focused on reaching Tir fo Thuinn I felt the weight of something in front of me, something that could be cut. I don’t know how to describe it, but the rift presented itself to me and I raised my sword to strike.

A tremor from the Thing in the darkness quaked through my bones.

The thought of a great entity of Chaos approaching us in the darkness reminded me of the last time I had been in Tir fo Thuinn. Images of the massive Fomorian called Tethra, flashed in my mind. But I didn’t have time to clear my inner vision and I swiped with Fragarach.

I felt the sword bite into the barrier. It rent a hole in the fabric of the Between.

“Quick, through the rift,” I commanded my friends.

I sheathed Fragarach and hefted the unconscious Nehemiah over my shoulder.