I sprinted through the dark tunnel, my footsteps echoing off the ancient stone walls.

Beast-orb powered hexasuits amplified my speed, but I could still hear them behind me, inevitably catching up.

Predators. Deadly, dangerous predators. Claws clicking against stone, growls, distant panting.

The air was thick with the musty scent of dark brown and gray millennia-old stone and stagnant water. My breath came in ragged gasps, creating small white clouds in the rapidly cooling air.

Moisture dripped from stalactites overhead, occasionally landing on my shoulders.

No time to slow down.

A growl echoed behind me, closer now. The sound reverberated off the stone walls, multiplying into a chorus of predatory intent. My heartbeat accelerated.

The tunnel stretched in front of me into the gloom, my boots slamming into hard, now frost-covered stone. A small Kitlix lantern dangled on my belt casting even, shadowless light ahead of me.

[383/28 mana]

I pictured myself as a wildfire, as a rain storm rolling across the land, as a determined wolf, as a cheetah sprinting across open plains, as a falcon diving through clouds, as a bullet cutting through air, as lightning arcing between the land and sky.

Reality wobbled ever so slightly as I somehow managed to pull on a distant, small part of myself, one that didn't entirely belong to me.

[372/28 mana]

Faster. Smarter. Better.

Focus! Dive! Dive now or they will catch up!

I imagined myself as wind itself, as pure motion, as a comet streaking across the night sky, as light bouncing between mirrors, as quantum particles tunneling through solid matter.

A living shadow etched itself across reality beside me, a growl of one of the monsters having caught up to me, almost akin to the mocking laughter of a hyena.

"Under," she growled, vanishing. "Now! DIVE! Follow me!”

I pictured myself as water flowing between stones, as mist seeping through cracks, as darkness itself sliding between reality. I imagined my body becoming less solid, more fluid, like ink spreading through water.

[268/28 mana]

The walls of the cave-tunnel blurred into smudged shadows. The hexasuit and magisteel-clad body of Katherine Kells, the Stollwurm, manifested beside me in the deep.

"Keep going!" She growled. "DEEPER!"

Reality blurred, colors bleeding away into shades of gray. Sounds became muted and distant, like I was underwater. The air felt thick and heavy, pressing against my skin.

[224/28 mana]

Dark roots bloomed around the tunnel. The end of the tunnel was approaching rapidly as we ran.

Katherine's eyes burned with brilliant inner green fire.

"Good," She grinned with sharp chompers. "Now bend before you crash into the wall. Like this!”

Her entire body twisted as if made from shadows, inverting itself. I failed to replicate the move and simply slammed into the end of the tunnel like a swimmer that reached the end of the pool. I manually spun around, pushing myself off the weirdly solid-rubbery-feeling stone wall.

Katherine grabbed my hand with her magisteel-clad claws, pulling me into a sharp turn. The deep wobbled around us, reality bending like taffy.

"Not like that, idiot!" she hissed. "You're still thinking too linear! The deep isn't a straight line!"

"I don't get it," I panted as we slowed. "This isn't like a... huff... doomed dimension or... huff... something?"

"No," she shook her head. "The Deep is an echo of reality, an extradimensional shadow cast by the living and the dead. A particular subset of the Astral Sea, accessible by some Omnids, one where curses persist."

"Curses?" I panted, catching my breath.

"Yes," Katherine growled. "The deep remembers all pain, suffering, misery and fear. It is populated by Echoes."

"What kind of Echoes?"

"Everyone's echoes," she purred, stalking silently around me. "It's what I feed on. But other people's Echoes are on a deeper level. You're still only two layers under. And if you wish to survive here without my assistance, little mouse, then you need to face the echoes of your... victims."

"Victims?" I asked. "What victims? Do I have to fight every cow I ate and every mosquito I squished?”

"No. It takes sapience to make an Echo on this level. Here you must face the people you've hurt," Katherine's emerald eyes gleamed like green pools in the darkness of the deep. "Every action against someone leaves an Echo. And those Echoes... they hunger, they cling to you with fear and guilt, they chase you... They find you down here first."

I heard two voices, dull and distant. Two confused predators who lost us in the physical, looking for us. Two female, smudged Omnids were now standing right beside us but were unable to see us.

I reached out to one of them and my hand went right through the rainbow-winged figure as if it was moving through thick soup.

"Ignore them," Katherine said. "They don't matter here. Get ready to face your victims, Alexander Glock... face your past, Martin Kilborne!"

"Okkay, shadow-sensei," I focused, tensing up.

Skittering sounds echoed through the twisted tunnels. Dark shapes moved in the shadows, their forms indistinct.

"That them?" I asked.

"Yes," Katherine purred, tail lashing. "The pain you've caused. The lives you've disrupted. The people you've hurt. They're catching up.”

We waited.

A twisted, lanky, emasculated, ruby-scaled figure emerged from the gloom, its form wreathed in ghostly dragonfire. Empty gold-orange eyes stared at me with pure hatred. The familiar figure of the Rubicund Lindworm, Emerald Stratos, stalked forward, emerging from the darkness and suddenly looking very wrong. Her form was twisted, looking more like an overgrown centipede than a humanoid. It was as if twenty different angry versions of Emerald had been fused to each other by a mad German doctor who sewed people to people.

"Nul-ll-lie," around thirty mouths placed at random locations sang. "Hhumannnn! Yo-ou lying s-s-sack of sh-sheet."

"Dang," I winced. "Em's seen better days."

Behind her, more things appeared.

A Vespera-pede flickered into view, bodies fused to bodies, wings merged with each other and covered in hundreds of gray eyes filled with an unsettling mixture of fear and despair.

"You prrr-prrromised to sss-save me," the Echo of the Thunderbird spoke in an unnerving chorus. "But wh-aaa-at if you fail? What if I lose myself anyway?"

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

A twisted version of Cinder materialized from the gloom next - a mass of writhing rainbow feathers and elongated limbs, multiple heads twisted at impossible angles, myriads of ocean-blue eyes burning with fear and betrayal. "You ch-changed everything," her voices echoed. "My family... my life... my heart... What else will you take from me?"

Io's Echo emerged as a mass of fuzzy darkness with countless moth wings and antennae, his form constantly shifting and blurring as if trying to escape its own existence. "The Truth hurts," his hollow voices whispered. "Are you ready to face it? To see what lies beyond the gates? The ccccc-aaa-tastrophe that you are? The cccccaaaa-cause of it all?"

"Yeesh," I winced. "Weird flex, but okay. This is tolerable. So how do I...?

"Wait. There is more," Katherine said beside me. "The biggest one's coming."

Before I could respond, another figure emerged from the shadows. This one was different - more solid, more real somehow.

I choked when it fully manifested.

It was my mother's form twisted and merged with itself, her body a grotesque fusion of her weary, disappointed faces, green-brown eyes, dark hair, human and machine parts. Wires and cables sprouted from her flesh like veins, pulsing with a sickly blue light. Hollow screens were fused to parts of her elongated form, displaying scrolling lines of code.

"My little fox," her voice crackled like corrupted audio entwined with a million others, fused to that of Yulia. "Why didn't you save me? Why didn't you steal a Lazarus bracelet for me? Why did you let me die? Turn me into this? You had the skills, the knowledge... but you ran away, abandoned me. You always run."

Something broke inside of me. I froze, unable to move, unable to act. The Emerald-pede struck at me with elongated, hollow claws.

A split second before her claws went right through me, Katherine's extra-solid hand intercepted the Echo, pulverizing, going right through it as if Emerald-pede was made from colorful ink.

"Fight back, you knob!" The Stollwurm tisked at me. "If you let them attack you, give in, they will carve up and devour YOUR soul instead!"

“How?!” I choked out, staring at the twisted version of my mom. Her echo was doing something to my head, not allowing me to lift my trembling hands.

"By accepting it," Katherine growled, dark claws tearing through Cinder's Echo as it lunged at me. "By embracing what you've done and who you are. Focus, remember - these aren't real people - they're manifestations of your own fears and regrets, imprints of pain you've inflicted on others!”

"Right. Hey, where are your echoes?" I exhaled, retreating away from the centipedes.

"My Echoes?" Katherine casually tore through another twisted Echo. "I devoured mine when I was seven. All of them. I don't let the new ones grow on me. That's how I can walk down here. Their pain, suffering, misery - it all feeds me, strengthens me, lives in me now."

I gulped as twisted versions of my friends advanced.

"Come on. You hurt people all the time," Katherine pointed out. "Without giving a damn. What's the problem now? They're just ghosts!"

I squinted my eyes, refused to look at my mom and kicked at the nearest Echo. It didn't come apart, felt far too physical, solid.

The Echo of Emerald caught my leg in her claws, ruby scales gleaming with an unnatural inner light. I tried to pull free but her grip was like iron. The Emerald-pede pulled me into her embrace, jagged, lanky hands clawing against my leather jacket and hardening hexasuits. “Die, hiiuiimannnn scuuummmmm!"

"You can't just kick at them," Katherine sighed. "You have to mean it. Accept what you did to them. Own it. Embrace it. Make her afraid of you!”

Forest fire. I'm a forest fire. I'm a storm. I'm Alexander Glock, an idea with a memetic gun.

"I..." I started, looking at the twisted version of Emerald. "I ruined your delving troupe. I turned your friends against you. I stole your identity, your money, used it against you. And I'd do it again in a heartbeat!"

The Echo's grip loosened slightly, wobbled, warped.

"Because you deserved it," I continued, feeling something dark and cold rise up inside me. "You're a bully, a tyrant, a dragon who delights in causing pain and controlling others. You needed to be stopped, needed to atone for your actions against the mixie students. And I enjoyed every second of it!"

The Emerald-pede's form wavered, becoming less solid. Myriads of golden-orange eyes flickered with uncertainty.

Katherine's tail obliterated the other approaching echoes, not letting them attack me. "That's it," she encouraged. "You know this Echo. You know what she's afraid of, use that against her!"

"I'm the voice, the hand of the people you killed, tormented, pushed out of Skyfall!" I growled, advancing towards Emerald-pede. "I am not merely a single, lonely Mixie you can torment. I am a firestorm of revenge! I am Sarah Nisteroff! I am Elek Rodrigov! I am Marcus Chennik! I am Thomas Willard..."

Emerald's face paled, she retreated in fear.

"...I am Petv Yavna! I am Olga Kcasnik! I am Datri Volk!" I continued, each name of her victims making the Emerald-pede's form waver more. "I am every student you've driven to their demise and suicide, every life you've destroyed! I am their vengeance made manifest!"

I struck the Echo with my fist and its form rippled, came apart into shreds. Panic was in its eyes.

"I'm not even close to being done," I snarled. "I'm going to destroy everything you are, everything you stand for! Your power, your control, your very identity - it's all going to crumble! And the best part? Everyone will think you did it to yourself! The people of Arx are going to learn of your crimes and they will judge you for all of them! It's already begun, you cannot stop it!"

I delivered another punch to the warped ghost. The Emerald-pede shattered like glass, fragments dissolving into wisps of silver and red.

"Step in, inhale her fear, consume it," Katherine ordered.

I did.

As I breathed in the silver-red fluid-smoke I felt... something flow into me. Power. Understanding. Her fear. A deep, primal satisfaction that warmed me from within.

[System error. Unable to parse experience.] Sparks danced in my eyes.

[Delineating current state. Reassessing stats.]

[Level 2 state approximated!]

[Level 2 skill gained: Umbramancy]

[Level 2 skill gained: Deep Diving]

[Level 2 skill gained: Echomancy]

“Ah yeah,” I grinned. “Level two. About time!”

"Good," Katherine purred. "Now get the rest."

The twisted versions of my friends advanced again, but this time I felt... different. Stronger. More aware of the deep and its rules.

I turned to face Vespera's Echo, its gray eyes staring at me.

"You're afraid I'll fail you," I said, stepping toward the Thunderbird-pede. "That I won't be able to save you from your arranged marriage. That I'll abandon you to your fate, leave you to be rewritten into someone else."

The Vespera-pede's form wavered, countless gray eyes blinking rapidly.

"But I'll do much more than that," I grinned dangerously. "I'll tear down the entire system that made you. The corporations, the arranged marriages, the social pressure to 'optimize' yourself - all of it will burn. And you know what? Deep down, that's what terrifies you most - not that I'll fail, but that I'll succeed too much. That I'll change everything you've ever known. That I'll unmake your father, Lord Ceter Kalik Simmi. That I'll bring the Abystall dungeon core to Earth, dump a billion mites on him, make him beg for death as his mana drops to zero. That the Duskbloom mites will spread across the Earth like glowing snow and unmake all of the Omnids leaving only magic-free humans to rule the world!"

Vespera-pede's mouths screamed.

I lunged forward, my hands passing through her hollow form. The Echo dissolved into crackling arcs of electricity that I breathed in, feeling another surge of power flow into me.

"Oh wow," Kat commented with a smirk. “Impressive. You managed to scare me with that one."

I ignored her, advancing towards the retreating Cinder-pede. It heard me and was already quite thoroughly horrified by my Abystall-final-solution for Omnids.

"You're afraid of how much I've already changed your life," I declared grabbing the Cinder-echo "How I've wormed my way into your family, your heart. You're terrified of losing control, of being vulnerable. But most of all..."

I struck the echo with my imaginary claws. "...you're afraid of how much you enjoy it. You're terrified that you're becoming addicted to me, to the changes I bring, to the way I make your world spin."

The Cinder-pede's ocean-blue eyes flickered with recognition and fear.

"And you should be," I growled, slashing her shade. "Because I'm going to keep changing everything, keep making you question everything you thought you knew. I'm going to tear down every wall you've built around your heart, every defense you've put up. Until there's nothing left but the real you - wild and free and unafraid to be yourself!"

The Echo dissolved into rainbow mist that I inhaled. Io’s Echo retreated away into the darkness. It sensed the doom I would bring it, the words I would say to the Mothman.

The twisted version of my mother was still there, watching with hollow screen-eyes. Unlike the others, she didn't retreat. She stood her ground and faced me, cables and wires writhing like tentacles.

"My little fox," she crackled in Kaska and English at the same time. "Always running. Always hiding. Never facing the truth. You failed to save me. You stole and lied and deceived so many… while I died alone."

The twisted version of my mother surged forward, cables and wires wrapping around me before I could react. Her hollow screens blazed with images of her face filled with accusation and pain.

"I..." I choked as the cables tightened. "I tried..."

"Not hard enough," her voice crackled. "You had the skills. The knowledge. But you chose to run around with my fox of a brother, to save yourself. You let death take me." Mouths reached out to my face, open wide, breathing in, devouring currents of mana flowing from me. "You turned me into this. Into code. Into a false copy. Into nothing. Infinite glorious nothing. You lie to yourself. I'm dead. I'm dead because of you and..."

Katherine's tails slashed the echo, obliterating it into wisps of silver-blue shimmers.

I slipped down, my eyes filled with tears.

[2.42/28 mana]

"You can't save yourself or your friends, little fox," my mom's voice crackled, distorted and wrong as her Echo reformed. "You couldn't then, and you can't now. All you can do is run. Hide. Pretend. But deep down, you know the truth..."

I saw an Echo of myself standing behind her. A Martin fused into about twenty other Martins of various ages looking lost, hollow and broken.

His eyes stared at me accusingly.