Randel was dead.

Dead? It certainly seemed to be dark in here. Like most people, I associated darkness with death. It was only natural. Natural, like death. What wasn’t natural was the rocking motion that I felt. Like a ship in a thunderstorm. Worrying. I had hoped that my death would be peaceful. Foolish, I knew. Things rarely turned out how I wanted them to be.

I put my hands on my hips and willed my glowing veins to give me some light. There, better. I now saw that I was inside of my sturdy trunk, standing on two pale legs in my semi-human body. My black flesh and my insectoid limbs were gone. It took me a moment to readjust. It felt cozy in here. My trunk was a safe place that shielded me from the cruel world outside—and I barely finished that thought before something hit the trunk from the side, rocking my cabin dangerously. The wooden walls creaked.

“What on Earth is going on out there?” I grumbled. I shimmered closer to the trunk’s top and pushed up the lid a fraction to glimpse the utter chaos outside. Black blood had flooded my mindscape, pouring like rivers from the dark clouds above, turning into a roiling sea that stretched all the way to the horizon. My trunk was floating on this black sea, bobbing up and down with the waves, slowly getting pulled toward the center of a whirlpool.

To Della.

She floated there in the air, just above the whirlpool’s center. Her body was black like the sea, made entirely of demon blood. Four shades – just vague shapes – faced the demon, standing on the surface of the sea, defying the swirling waves. Such defiance had severe costs I realized, as I felt their resolve weaken every moment. I felt it because I was connected to them by something intangible. A feeling. A current. A breath of the dreamscape. We were the different sides of the same coin.

Lee, Tamie, Wolf, and Suit were pointing their hands at Della, stirring up a wind that tore at her liquid body. It blew chunks of the black liquid away at a time, but after every gust a surge of black blood sprang forth from the sea, replacing what Della had lost. The shades stood united, but I could tell that it took immense effort to defend themselves—let alone counterattack.

Just then, Della flicked her wrists and an ivory fin broke the sea’s surface. A diversion. A bone-white shark sprang out of the sea of blood behind the shades. They were distracted, noticing the shark too late. The creature bit into Wolf’s extended arm and pulled him down below. A second shark jumped at them, and then a third, but Lee produced a saber of light out of nothing and sliced them apart. Suit conjured a wide net that came up from below, fishing Wolf out, while Tamie continued blasting wind at Della. Wolf seemed to have defeated the first shark, but he was missing an arm now. The whirlpool pulled my trunk closer to the fight.

More sharks attacked, splashes of white in the vast black sea, and Suit helped Lee hack the creatures into pieces. Tamie’s attacks weren’t able to keep Della pinned, and so the demon surged forward, ducking under a blast and grabbing Tamie’s extended arm. Wolf tried to intervene, but a stomp of Della’s leg sent a large wave in his way and washed him away. Tamie conjured a dagger in her free hand but Della had already bit down on her arm, black needle teeth sinking into it and tearing out a chunk of flesh. Tamie screamed in pain and swung her dagger at her own arm, cutting it off so that she could spring free. Della let her. She was about to gobble the severed arm down when Wolf reappeared, plunging from the sky, swinging his one remaining fist into the demon’s head. He squashed her, but Della reformed her liquid body almost instantly. Wolf, on the other hand, wouldn’t – or couldn’t – regrow his arm. He jumped back from the demon, standing shoulder to shoulder with the now equally one-armed Tamie.

I watched them, completely transfixed. This was a battle of minds without limits; only conviction and imagination mattered. The shades could have thought up anything to kill Della with—they just had to believe in it. But if they thought that a meteor falling from the sky was unlikely – and worse yet, if Della didn’t buy into such a thing – then it wouldn’t be of any use. That was the key here, I realized. Setting up expectations, forging new truths.

Della could have attacked the shades in any manner too, but she had chosen a thematic one with sharks. The sea itself must have been her own doing, setting the scene for the battle and making it certain that her liquid body could not be destroyed. It seemed so logical, so effortless—unlike the sword of light that Lee had created out of nothing. Oh, but Della was even more cunning still; I adored her. Literally. It was a sneaky sort of attack, a gradual change of my mood, but now that I saw it, it was only too obvious. There was this feeling of heart-quenching hope whenever I looked at Della. A hope that she would win this fight and save me. A hope that I knew the shades were feeling too—however illogical that feeling was. They were battling the demon while hoping she would win. Their fight could end only one way.

I let my trunk’s lid fall back and slumped down in the darkness. There, isolated and all alone, I was able to think more clearly. Now I knew what my shades had been doing while I was running around in the research facility. I had trouble accepting that the four of them could be so easily beaten. Considering their origin and how ancient they were, I would have bet on them wiping the floor with the demon. Then again, even I had managed to capture Suit. Della would—no, this wasn’t Della. This was nothing more than a fragment of her. An influence. Della’s shadow. The imprint of her soul that infected me when she gave me her legs. Powerful, but not as powerful as the demon herself—and still, plenty enough against four shades.

What would happen, once she defeated them? Shades were immortal, as they were so fond of reminding me, but they had recently admitted that there were ways to end their existence. I remembered Della’s disturbingly wide grin, her maw full of needle teeth. I didn’t know much about demons, but I knew that she hadn’t been the slightest bit concerned when she called me little shade. If anyone was capable of devouring a shade – or four – it was Della.

Would that be such a bad thing, though? After sharing my body with them for so long, they would be gone. This was perhaps my one and only chance to be truly rid of them. Even if I had managed to close them into a corner of my mind, they would have always been there, lurking. But not this way. Della’s shadow would devour them. I could just sit this fight out, waiting for the demon to finish them off—and then, before the shadow could recover from the fight, step forward and strike her down. If I played my cards right, I would come out on the top. I would get my body back. All I had to do was to sacrifice four friends.

“I really am an idiot,” I sighed, then pushed the trunk’s lid all the way open.

The battle had changed little since the last time I saw it, except for the fact that the shades were in even more trouble now. The black sea of blood churned relentlessly and Lee was struggling to stay above the waves—his legs were missing. Suit was standing over him, covering behind a riot shield. Although her limbs were intact, her body seemed faded and somewhat transparent, almost as if she were just a ghost of herself. Tamie and Wolf were closely engaged with Della’s shadow, both of them backing away while their opponent was doing something ridiculous. Her maw was wide open to form a deep black hole, and she was sucking the air into it like a vacuum cleaner. Tamie and Wolf were falling apart bit by bit, getting sucked into the shadow’s mouth. It looked funny! Della’s shadow was adorable—or so I felt.

I furrowed my brow. I didn’t want to hurt Della’s shadow. The longer I watched her, the stronger my adoration got. She was cute and funny. It would have been even funnier if a gigantic cork suddenly plopped into her mouth, though. There was a loud pop and Della’s shadow gagged, a gigantic cork suddenly clogging her mouth. I smiled to myself, feeling like a mean older brother, then looked at the sea of blood outside of my trunk. It was made of demon blood, like Soul Eater, and I was able to turn Soul Eater into any solid object. Therefore, it stood to reason that I could turn the sea solid too. I climbed out of the trunk carefully, stepping onto the frozen black ground. The whirlpool, the waves, the sea—everything up to the horizon had turned solid.

“Roland!” Lee groaned on the ground. His voice sounded incredulous, as if he hadn’t expected me to show up.

“What,” Suit gasped, “what are you doing here, Roland? What happened outside?”

“Got away from Della, got outplayed by the Inspector,” I said, then pointed at Della’s shadow. “And our body is kinda dying because of her.”

“Little human,” Della’s shadow hissed, narrowing her eyes at me. Her body had grown twice as large as before, turning her into a giant so that the cork would drop out of her maw. “You don’t really think that you can defy me, do you? I am your savior. I will purge you of these parasites! You won’t have to worry about shades anymore.”

The feeling of adoration intensified. Uh-oh. I had to admit, she was making a good point there … or was she? I had trouble thinking straight. It didn’t matter though, because I had already set my mind on what to say.

“I want to help you.”

The shadow smiled.

“Good. Now—”

“I want to help everyone,” I went on, and the shadow’s smile fell. I gestured at Lee, reshaping some of the solid ground to give him new legs. “See? There’s no reason why we can’t all be friends. You’re one of us now, Della’s shadow.”

“Shadow?” she thundered, growing even larger, turning into a giant. “I am Della. I am—”

“If you were Della, I would already be dead,” I cut her off with a dismissive wave. I restored Tamie’s and Wolf’s arms next. “It breaks my heart to say this, Della’s shadow, but you’re just an imprint that the demon left in my body. A pale likeness of the real thing. I know it’s hard to accept, but I’ll be there for you every step on your journey of self-discovery and acceptance. As your new friend, I want only the best for you.”

“If you want what’s the best for me,” the shadow roared, “then you’ll do as I say!”

“Oh, but I can’t. You’re not in the right state of mind—you must be traumatized, Del. That’s your new name, by the way. Del. Cute, isn’t it?”

But Del was done talking, raising an enormous foot to stomp on me, much like a petulant child who wouldn’t see reason. I lifted a hand and pinched my fingers as if I was using a touchscreen, zooming out until she was small like a ten-year-old. Her foot fell and thumped against the ground quite far from me. She looked up, staring at me with wide eyes. Almost as if she was surprised and full of wonder, like little children tended to get when they saw what their parents were capable of.

“You—” Del sputtered. “How?”

“First off,” I said, raising a finger, “I am the smartest guy in the universe and this is my mind, Del. In here, I could teach naughty children like you a lesson anytime!”

“You’re just a human!

“Secondly,” I went on, “I am not just a mere human. Haven’t you heard what I told Della? I am a creature born of chaos, someone who walks both the Waking World and the Astral Plane. I am like a demon with a heart. Like an angel without wings. I am—”

“You are nothing,” Del screeched and the ground around me began to boil and bubble. “You have no idea how this place works!”

“My mind is a mysterious place,” I agreed, nodding sagely, “and I won’t deny my ignorance. I am, in all my wisdom, not against learning more about this place. Can you say the same, Del?”

But Del had run out of words to say; she just launched herself forward, turning into a great white shark while making the ground under me boil over so that hot blood enveloped my feet. The shark flying at me had a terrible maw full of teeth, but the whole thing looked a bit unrealistic like a cheap plastic toy that had been rushed through production. I batted away the small child’s toy with ease and thought about how comfy and warm the boiling blood felt; my new demonic feet had been going numb lately, so it was good to have some feeling massaged back into them.

Del was, I supposed, once again surprised—though she recovered quickly. Her body changed from the toy shark into something bigger; a sky eel, flying up high, disappearing among the blood-pouring dark clouds. The sky darkened further, the clouds converging, forming a thunderstorm. But dark as those clouds were, I couldn’t help but notice that I could see just fine. I could see, which meant that there was light. There was light, which meant that there was a light source. I reached up with both hands, parting some of the cotton-like clouds a bit to reveal the sun beyond. It was glowing orange; made of angel blood, able to defy demon blood. Yeah, that seemed fitting. I knew it was hiding somewhere around here! I reached up and plucked the sun off the sky, holding it above my head.

My mindscape changed yet again. The gathering storm dispersed as warm light pierced through the clouds, but the orange glow didn’t stop there. It shone down on the endless black sea, boiling it all over and making it evaporate. I fell only a short way, dropping down onto a smooth pane of glass. See-through glass with nothing on the other side. Hmm. I pushed the sun through the glass so that it filled the nothingness. Yes, fitting. Darkness on one side, light on the other.

Del, the petulant child, didn’t let me appreciate the beauty of this duality for too long. She swept down from the sky in the shape of an enormous blood dragon, breathing white-hot fire, with no less than four gigantic eels joining her flight. They looked powerful and terrible—an overwhelming force. But as horrifying as they were, I could not allow myself to feel inferior. If I did that, I lost; this was all about the right mindset. Del was a giant dragon with four monsters at her side, but I didn’t have to face them alone, did I? And so, in the conveniently stretched time while Del flew toward me, four glowing figures broke through the plane of glass to stand by my side. Four allies. An insanely brave wolf, a cold-blooded martial artist, an all-knowing Inspector, and a big ugly sweller.

“Are you kidding me?” the sweller asked in Tamie’s voice. “Couldn’t you have thought up something nicer?”

“I could have, but this is funnier,” I said, shooing her off. The dragon was flying straight at me still, but it seemed far less scary now. It was just Del, playing dress-up. She opened her maw and spewed fire, and I watched the rolling flames expand and consume the space between me and the dragon. I braced myself, gathering my thoughts, shoring up my mental defenses—and then let go of them. Willpower was how the shades had fought and lost. I didn’t focus my mind; instead, I let my imagination loose.

Suddenly it seemed very unreasonable that I fought in my human body. If Del was able to change her shape, why couldn’t I do the same? I had been using Soul Eater for a while now; I reckoned I was just as good at shapeshifting as she was. Del went wild, but I just smiled. She roared. I soared. I fell into a trance.

So began our dance.

I turned into a turtle to retreat from the heat. Not an easy feat with my long hands and feet, but I tucked myself into my shell as the world turned to hell. Hiding under my cover and smelling burnt air, Del’s fiery spell was only a distant affair. My shell held. Del yelled and the flames swelled, but my defense stood unparalleled. Never in history had a turtle died to dragon fire, so it made sense that this was no pyre.

The flames passed but heavy jaws bit down on my shell; stinking breath and sharp teeth, that much I could tell. Del believed this battle was for epic creatures, so she had picked a form with mighty features—but in so doing her health was neglected, which her infected teeth clearly reflected. I was an amateur, but I wanted to help her—and so I turned into toothpaste to clean her teeth with great haste. I let her have a taste of my care, like a mother bear in her lair doting on her cub. I gave her teeth a good scrub as her draconic head lay in my lap—but with a startled flap, she ended her nap.

“What are you doing?!” Del said as she sprang free, but the lair’s walls didn’t let her flee.

“I just want to help you,” I said as I produced some shampoo.

“Dragons don’t have hair!” Del said, then saw herself in the mirror and stopped to stare. “I look like a nightmare.”

Indeed, the girl in the mirror was no mere dragon, but a piece of demon that fell off the wagon. As Della’s shadow, Del’s hair looked off-brand too; sparse, dirty red, and fading in hue. Yet as a bear I had lots of care to spare, and I didn’t judge her for what she was! I patted her hair with my paws.

“No,” Del yelled. “Fight me! Hate me!”

A decree. My adoration fled, and I felt an urge to crush her head and see her dead. The friendly pat turned into a punch, breaking her skull with a crunch, but Del just grew another head and bit me, hit me, kicked me until I swayed as if I was tipsy. The lair’s stone walls shook as four shades battled outside, giving the flying eels one hell of a ride—but I, on the other hand, wasn’t much of a fighter; Del got my neck in her jaws and squeezed it tighter and tighter. It was far from over, this fight of ours, but she hurt me so bad that I was seeing stars. I reached out and took those stars in my paws, sprinkling them into Del’s eyes to give her a pause.

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We wrestled in the dark but star-filled vast space, and then I soared like a rocket while Del gave chase. A space battle, or perhaps a race. I entered hyperspace with my hyperdrive, taking a few hits—but still alive! Del flew after me as a terrible space snake, her eyes shooting laser beams and making my thrusters shake. My immaculate polish was at stake, and so I activated my hyperbrake and made a sharp hyperturn, becoming so hyper that Del stopped in concern. She couldn’t discern where I went, but my scent was all around the galaxy and that meant—

“I am present,” I spoke as I poured the Milky Way into my glass, “and I’m so thirsty that I cannot give this a pass.”

Millions of stars swirled in my cup en masse, and I wanted to drink them but Del was crass and cut a small hole into the glass. I tried to stop it but couldn’t avoid the spill, and tiny Del slipped out with a huge measure of ill will. She wanted to kill me but I went for the refill, while she ran downhill on the spreading white stain—straight into the drain! She cried out in disdain but my malice was plain as I grabbed the plunger and pushed her deeper down into the water-clogged domain, into that disgusting terrain.

“I’m at the top of the food chain!” I claimed as predator turned into prey. Del wanted me to adore her once more, but this time it was easy to ignore; adore, hate, adore … my feelings couldn’t constantly swing and soar! Del’s tricks got old and I was no longer sold on the shape of her mold. Her cute ploys were childish and brute, making all of her intentions moot. So! We had come full circle back to where we started, but now she was humbled and I felt lighthearted. In the end, this mental tangle had been loads of fun. If Del weren’t on the run, I would have told her that we had only just begun! But she was fleeing and our dance was done.

“Oh.”

I stared at the plunger in my hand. How symbolic. Well, I supposed it was symbolic somehow.

“Huh.”

My mindspace felt weird after—well, after whatever I had just put it through. I put the plunger down and looked around in the kitchen that I had unconsciously created while thinking about sinks and stuff.

I knew this place. It wasn’t the enormous kitchen that I grew up around in my father’s house, nor the tiny kitchen in the cheap apartment I rented during college. No, this was the modest kitchen that I owned in Nerilia. The kitchen I had shared with Devi. The sink even had those faint acid-marred spots that Devi left when she poured one of her failed attempts of a soup down the drain. Well, that was what I thought had happened, but Devi had denied everything and blamed Nosy instead. I smiled. Yes, this was a nice kitchen. The best one I ever had.

“Where is she?”

Newcomers. I turned around and saw that there were four of them. Two men, two women. Leaning against each other as if they had just arrived from a long night of drinking and couldn’t stand straight on their own.

“She?” I asked. “I left her in the big pile of mess in Fortram. I left the city and left her. Oh, but I was cruel enough to give her hope that I’ll be back. Just the tiniest hint, so that she would always have to wonder. I really don’t deserve her—”

“Not Devi,” one of them snapped. “The demon’s shadow, Del! Where is she now?”

I furrowed my brow, thinking.

“Gone, I think.”

“She can’t be gone,” one of the girls said. “She is just as much of a part of you now as we are!”

“She pulled you into a memory,” the oldest of the group said. “One of your memories. I can only guess why. She wasn’t able to best you in the present, so she tries to break you in your past. She will drag you back to a point in your life where you cannot resist her.

“Uh, sure,” I said, scratching my head. “But who is this person you’re talking about? And for the record, who are you?”

Their jaws dropped in disbelief.

“You can’t be serious,” said one.

“No way,” said another.

“We’re doomed…”

“Okay, everyone, calm down,” the big guy of the group said. “We’ll stay close to Roland and protect him from his demons—I mean, his bad memories. It won’t be easy, but we can help Roland face them.”

“From what we’ve seen so far,” one of the girls said, “he has never been very good at facing them. He just tucked them away, ignored them, let them fester. If he faces those memories now, it will be a disaster.”

“He has no other choice.”

“The demon found his weakness.”

“Demon’s shadow, not demon. Don’t give her more power than she already has. Roland did well to relabel her.”

“Whatever. We’re done for either way. His memories will break him.”

“Or, perhaps, they will help him grow. Perhaps this is his chance to face his past and overcome it. To become a better person.”

“Uh, hello?” I said, raising my hand. “I’m still here, you know? It’s kinda rude to talk about me like this. Like I was some kind of tragic, broken person instead of just an average human with his usual burdens.”

They gave me weird looks as if they weren’t sure whether to agree or not. Then, just as the big guy opened his mouth to speak, the dreamscape began to change. The walls pushed closer, hemming us in, but for some reason there was still enough space in my apartment’s doorway for the four newcomers—and one more. Sarah was standing right behind the group, having come back from the beauty salon. I noticed that her hair was dyed red. The others jumped in alarm, looking at my girlfriend and then back at me, doing their best to block her way in. I sighed.

“Listen, you’re worried for no reason,” I said. “This is all happening because this Del person is rummaging through my memories, right?”

“Yeah, pretty much.”

“But we’re still in my head, aren’t we?”

“In a sense, yes.”

“So if that’s the case, what’s really stopping me from playing this bad boy?” I asked, holding up a card. Two arrows were pointing in opposite directions on it.

“What’s that?”

“A reverse card,” I said. “If I play it, it turns everything around.”

“Eh?”

As the four newcomers stood dumbstruck, my girlfriend used this chance to push past them and step toward me. She looked beautiful even while scowling. It was a familiar kind of scowl, one that she reserved for when she was about to list my failings.

“You’re delusional, Randel. You can’t just simply turn everything around like that.”

“Can’t I?” I pondered, watching the card in my hand. “I dreamt about this, Sarah. Whenever you were in the mood, I would always imagine—”

“I don’t care what you imagine,” hissed Sarah. “That’s the problem with you, Randel. You always imagine things, but in the end you’re just a big pile of useless disappointment, you—”

“No, you,” I said, then slapped the reverse card against her forehead.

It worked. It worked because I believed it would. Sarah’s eyes widened – whether in surprise or fear, I wasn’t sure – and then she burst into mist as the walls of my apartment fell away. I found myself in a dimly lit hospital room full of sleeping people. Only one of them was awake, a red-haired freckled little girl with a bloody knife in her hand. She was taking sharp, panicked breaths as she stared at a dead body on the bed she stood over.

I frowned as my thoughts clicked into place. A tragic backstory? I should have known. Della’s story. It didn’t fill me with joy, that much was certain. She wanted to break me and take my body. I didn’t want to sympathize with her. I really didn’t. But then, what was I supposed to do? Turning the table and diving into Della’s memories was cool and all, but where would I go from here?

I had told Del that I wanted us to be friends, but that had been when I adored her. I didn’t actually want to befriend her. She wasn’t like the shades. No matter what had happened to her in the past, she was too dangerous to trust in the present. I had to get rid of her … and to do that, perhaps it wouldn’t hurt to learn a few things about her first.

The little girl began to cry. She dropped the knife and fell to her knees. With shaking hands, she adjusted the blood-soaked blanket on the corpse. A man with red hair. I felt sick, and not only because of the resemblance between the girl and the man she had murdered. No, what twisted my stomach into a knot was the eye behind her, watching her closely. It peered through a gap in the fabric of reality, grey and pupilless—like a demon’s.

Next memory. The environment blurred and I found myself in a dark prison. Apparently, locking a little girl behind bars was perfectly acceptable in this place. I wasn’t on Earth, I could tell that much. The prison’s only light source was a narrow window, through which I could see other planets and stars. The light was just enough to hint at the dead bodies strewn all over the cell’s dirty floor. Grown men and women, mutilated as if a beast had ripped them apart. Only the little girl breathed, lying amongst the corpses, pretending to be dead. It had to be done, she told herself. A terrible face hovered above her, watching with its large oval eye, grinning with its wide maw. It spoke a single word in a wretched, sinister voice.

“Clever.”

Next memory. Blood dribbled from the slightly older girl’s bent elbows. Dead soldiers lay around her, and the only one alive was being strangled by her tiny, cruel hands. Her face was full of agony, her eyes wet with tears of misery. She had been hunting down all the soldiers on this ship. It had to be done, and she was the only one who could do it. They would run out of men soon, she hoped vainly. They had to run out of men, or else she would never be able to stop. There was a grotesque creature behind her, hunched over, with too many sinewy limbs to count. It had a hole in its torso from which black blood oozed down its pale skin. The demon, contrary to the girl, was having a good time. It rasped out a laugh as the last soldier died. The girl whipped her head around at the sound, seeing the demon for the first time. She didn’t scream. She didn’t gasp. She didn’t so much as utter a word.

She smiled.

Next memory. The demon put one of its limbs – a stumpy tentacle – on the anxious teenager’s shoulder, almost as if to reassure her. It seemed to work, in spite of how creepy it looked, because the red-haired girl stepped forward and addressed a crowd of ragged people. It had to be done. I couldn’t hear her voice for some reason, but I knew that her words rang with power. The group of dirty people stood mesmerized, their eyes on the girl, unable to see the demon behind her. I shuffled closer to get a better look at them, but then the demon’s single eye suddenly focused on me and the scene ended.

Next memory. The girl, a young adult now, knelt in a pool of black blood. Sirens blared and red emergency lights flashed, but the girl was calm. The grotesque demon stood above her, stroking her chin with one of its tentacles. It pressed a clawed limb against her chest, right above her heart, poised to strike.

“Say it,” hissed the demon.

“There’s nothing left in me,” said the girl, her voice hollow. “I give you my heart.”

The demon’s lips drew back in a triumphant grin, then thrust its clawed limb into the girl’s chest and—it looked straight at me. The scene froze. The lights stopped flashing and the siren’s noise was prolonged into an unending wail. The grotesque, multi-limbed demon’s single eye narrowed as it bore into me.

“And just who you might be?”

Fear. Sharp, bone-deep. I wanted to turn and run, except I couldn’t bring myself to do it. An alien pressure settled on me and I knew it would have been a terrible idea to take my eyes off the demon. Why, why, why? Why was this happening? This wasn’t Del. This wasn’t Della. This couldn’t even be real.

“This is just a dream,” I said. “A memory. You aren’t real.”

“Answer my question, mortal!”

“R-Randel, I suppose. I am Randel.”

“No,” growled the demon. “You lie.”

“Y-Yeah? Well, next memory.”

“What?”

“Next memory!”

Next memory. The girl was no more. Della stood tall, her brilliant red hair brushing her shoulders, her pale white skin stained from the black blood that dribbled out of the hole in her chest. She walked out of the wrecked burning ship with a gaggle of thralls behind her. The grotesque demon was already waiting for her on the edge of the desolate crash site, gazing at the planet’s setting sun. It held a glowing orange gemstone in one of its clawed limbs, the gemstone’s pulsing colors not unlike the sun’s.

Della’s progenitor glanced at her as she arrived, but then its grey eye slid past her and settled on me.

“Della, my dear, would you care to introduce me to your friend over there?”

I cringed away as Della turned my way, frowning as if noticing me for the first time.

“I feel like I’ve met him before,” said Della, her tone pensive.

“I’m sorry, but this is impossible,” I found myself saying. “I mean, I’ve done lots of impossible things today, but this is kinda even less possible than those impossible things. I’ve been playing with Della’s shadow, Del. No harm done, right? I think I got here entirely by accident, and I’ll be leaving now.”

I turned around, but of course—

“Wait,” said Della’s progenitor, and it was a command. “Come here.”

I stopped. I looked back over my shoulder. The two demons were watching me, waiting. Ah. Too bad for me. Too bad for them. Too bad that I had never been a very obedient person! My legs weren’t the ones I had been born with; they were Della’s legs, demonic legs, able to resist a demon’s pull by my reckoning.

I ran. I defied the demon’s command, making myself scarce before it realized what was going on. I ran out of the memory at full tilt. This was all in my head, I told myself, even though I was no longer certain that it was my head. I sprinted across the pooling black blood of Della’s awakening scene, crashed into the ragged gathering of people and pushed through them in a hurry, dove into the memory with the murdered soldiers and stumbled over their bodies to reach the bloody prison, and finally arrived at the hospital—all without looking back, without acknowledging the two demons breathing down my neck.

I startled the little girl as I burst into the scene, making her drop her bloody knife. Our eyes met for a split second and I reached out to her, grabbing her hand, pulling her with me.

“Come,” I said, “we need to escape.”

“W-What?” the girl asked in a teary voice as I led her out of the room. “Why?”

“The demons are coming. We need to hide.”

I ran on, dragging the confused child with me. Through the silent hospital, straight to the exit behind which light could be seen. Two pairs of dirty feet slapping against cold stone. Breathing hard, eyes set on the finish line. We made it. We reached the light.

We were in the little girl’s home. The living room looked clean, cozy, and warm—with an atmosphere that was anything but. Vague shapes argued with each other, tall people with red hair. I dragged the girl across the room, ducking under a slap or two, shielding the girl’s head when the figures turned on her. The kitchen. We had to make it into the kitchen. We hurried out of the living room, onto the terrifying corridor beyond which the kitchen lay, but one of the side doors was open just a crack and a voice could be heard from inside.

“It had to be done,” the girl’s father said to himself. “It had to be done, and I was the only one who could do it.”

The little girl stopped in her tracks, eyes wide with horror. I held her hand tighter, but she pulled away to peek inside her father’s room. Her other hand was clutching a toy shark, holding it close to her chest. I pulled on her arm, but she didn’t budge. The living room behind us exploded into screams. The girl paid it no mind.

“Come,” I said, pulling harder.

The walls began to shake. The girl resisted.

“Come!”

The demons were coming.

“Come, please come with me,” I begged, fear worming its way into my voice. “We need to—no, you! You. You need to defy them. You need to run. You’re the only one who can do it!”

The girl snapped her head around, looking at me with wide eyes, hanging on to my last sentence as if I had just changed her entire world—and then she ran, brushing past me, pulling me with her. Into the next room. We stumbled straight into the shades in my very own lovely, oh so very lovely, kitchen. I elbowed my way through the crowd, pushing the little girl deeper into my home. There, in the corner! I hurried to my trunk, my sturdy inescapable trunk, and opened it.

“In here!” I said, gesturing for the little girl. “Quick, hide!”

The little girl climbed into the trunk without hesitation and I slammed the lid shut over her. I let out a shuddering breath and slumped down onto the trunk. The shades looked at me as if the trunk might explode at any moment. The pressure of the demons chasing me vanished.

“I think it’s over,” I said. “We’re safe. But just in case two demons come knocking on the door … please tell them to leave.”

“Two demons?” Lee asked, taken aback. “Two? Roland, where have you been? What has happened?”

“I, uh, I’d rather not talk about it. Let’s just say that I’ve been properly humbled. I mean, you gotta admit that I was really on top of my game tonight, so—I might have gotten a bit overconfident in the end. I received a sharp reminder that I have, in fact, no idea about how this mental kung fu actually works.”

I braced myself to get a few jibes about being a silly mortal, but the shades just continued to stare at me in awkward silence.

“So,” Suit hesitantly spoke. “You won? You locked the demon’s taint in that trunk. The same trunk you held me in.”

“The same trunk, yes. Demon’s taint, no. She’s Del, a not-so-innocent little girl. She had a difficult life and now she’s hiding in there from her future. Please treat her with the respect she deserves.”

“Oh … sure.”

I blinked, then rubbed at my eyes. Odd. There was something odd about the shades. They were all meek and cautious and unsure what to say. Had something happened to them? Had they lost some of themselves during the battle with Del?

“As a matter of fact, we did,” Tamie said. “This isn’t about that, though. We … you see, we heard your thoughts during that fight. You considered waiting out the fight and let the demon’s shadow erase us.”

“Oh. Well, that’s awkward.”

“We also heard what you thought afterward.”

“Even more awkward.”

“We have to admit that we never considered you as a friend. We rarely do that with mortals. Anyway … all we’re trying to say is that we’re sorry. We’re also very grateful that you didn’t lock us into that trunk with Del.”

I raised an eyebrow at that. “You think I’d be able to do that?”

“Yes, we do. We’re not beyond admitting it. If it weren’t for you, our existence may have very well ended tonight.”

“Hey, that almost sounded like a thank-you,” I said, breaking into a grin. It waned quickly as I noticed the shades’ somber mood. They even looked different now, I realized. Wolf looked less muscular, Tamie less feminine, Lee less aged. More than that, their presence felt small and not quite so significant anymore. Hardly the evil entities that terrorized my mind.

“Are you alright?” I asked.

“We?” they spoke at once.

“Who else? Yes, you. I’m worried that you lost too much of yourselves in the fight.”

“Ah. It matters little, Roland. Shades change all the time, so we’re alright. We always are.”

“Well, your behavior worries me anyway. I haven’t yet heard a single boast about your eternal ass being so much cooler than my pitiful mortal existence.”

“That’s only because you wouldn’t be able to comprehend our greatness,” Lee said.

“Yeah!” Wolf said. “What, you thought that a brief tussle with demons would somehow make you worthier of our attention?”

“He is getting quite ahead of himself, doesn’t he?” Suit said. “Thinking that he’s so witty when all he did was run around all night. From one opponent to the next. Hardly a great achievement, is it?”

“See, Roland, everything’s fine,” Tamie said with a smirk. “Happy now?”

“You know what?” I said, “I’m not an emotional masochist, but—”

“You sure? Sarah begs to differ.”

“Ouch. Alright, Tamie, that was too much.”

“Sorry.”

“Anyway, I don’t mind if you’re mean from time to time. I don’t mind the banter. It shows off your character and your differing opinions, and I like that.”

My words must have sounded terrific because I had once again shocked the shades into an awkward silence. I sighed, then snapped my fingers and made the room larger with comfy seats all around. The shades sat down—each in a decidedly different posture, which made me smile. We rested there, sitting in a loose circle, allowing our minds to roam free. Turning the silence into a comfortable one, though of course the nature of it could be debated. Was it really silence, when our thoughts soared so much?

It was finally over. We won the day, or in any case, we kept our lives and our sanity. A bitter victory, but we were getting used to the taste of it. Wouldn’t have minded having something sweeter next time, but if bitter victories were all we could get then we weren’t about to complain. So long as we came out of it alive and sane.

There was just one last thing to do before we could afford to celebrate.

“Now then,” I said. “Let’s see if we can wake up, shall we?”