“Overwhelm.”

Color faded from the world. Raindrops, as if suspended in mid-air, stung his eyes as he launched his body at the tarnished Knight. Pale, pastel-colored buildings and the ground of corpses melded together in a sickly grey blur, and the thick air protested in a drone at the man-shaped, halberd-wielding projectile. Ben watched his mentor fall to her knees; the head of her great mace impacted the bloodstained cobbled street, and stone chips made airborne, floated almost serenely due to his heightened senses. An armored foot on the old woman’s shoulder slowly pushed her form off the rusty, chipped broad sword that had impaled her chest.

Ben aimed his spearhead at his opponent’s center of mass, above its ochre heater shield, and a loud clang of steel echoed in the bleak market street. The Knight had moved to deflect the thrust with a nearly imperceptible swiftness. His weapon was sent in a wide arc, haft gripped tightly in one hand, fueled by desperation at the thought of being disarmed. His momentum and the deflection caused him to pass behind the armored warrior, stopping in an awkward stumble as he used the trajectory of his outflung polearm to turn and face his opponent.

Uncountable dents, cuts, and splatters of black grime enveloped the tall Knight’s grey-brown, tarnished armor. A tattered grey, threadbare cape, billowed in a wind that Ben could not feel; it ignored the rain as if it didn’t exist in this world. A horned helm with slits running vertically to meet in a pointed jaw appeared to have been caved in on the upper-right side. Ben thought it would be a fatal blow to an average person. The armored warrior approached with a rusty, battered shield held high, the tip of the broad sword dragging on the cobbled street.

The beast growled within him, and Ben drank deeply of the concept of Overwhelm. His veins burned with the terrible power, and he felt his bones strain as he crouched and propelled himself at the Knight once more. Gone were the melodic currents of battle. His ears went deaf to the rhythm and tempo of conflict. All he felt was pure, undiluted rage.

Fury and hatred spurred him onwards. The impact of his deadly overhead strike, empowered by the overwhelming strength of his Avatar, rang out in another clang against the large heater shield, forcing the Knight to take a backward step as it braced for the onslaught. And an onslaught it was. He thrust, sliced, and battered the Knight, who blocked and deflected each attack in an impenetrable defensive stance. Ben didn’t relent, and the color of his surroundings had completely receded to blanket the world in black, grey, and red.

After an indiscernible number of flurries and deflected swings, Ben hooked the top of the Knight’s heater shield with the beard of his crescent blade and pulled the barrier toward him before lunging with a deliberate thrust to its helm. The creature in armor tilted its head to avoid the spearhead and countered with its own thrust. A searing fire bloomed on Ben’s cheek as he felt the chips along the rusted broad sword, as a serrated blade, scored a jittering line along his flesh. With the head of the halberd having missed its mark, the young man twisted the crescent axe head horizontally and pulled with all the strength he could muster. The beard of his weapon found purchase once more and hooked onto the base of the helmet, causing the Knight to stumble forward. Ben held the armored abomination in a clinch as he drew the plain dagger from his hip with his left hand and plunged it deep into a slit of the creature’s visor.

The Knight dropped the broad sword behind Ben, and before he could hear the clink of the rusted weapon hit the cobbled street, his vision flashed white, and he found himself tumbling ungracefully to collide with an armored corpse. He scrambled to stand, yet his equilibrium was off. He swayed and stumbled before regaining his footing and noticed that his jaw had gone numb and unresponsive as it hung, slackened. Ben flexed his fingers and saw his halberd lay about five paces from him on the street, behind the armored creature.

The Knight took slow, measured steps toward him. The bright burn of his Avatar’s power had begun to wane, and his body grew leaden with the early stages of fatigue. His heart thrummed in his heaving chest, lungs failing to draw enough air. The hissing of rain grew louder, and Ben, without a means to defend himself, scanned the corpse-laden street, hoping that Ainsle had somehow survived and gotten to safety. He noticed two slain Knights amongst the dead, in similar armor to the horror walking toward him, most likely defeated by his mentor. Ben had the passing thought of the Berserker’s ridiculous mace slamming into the helmet and causing the deep furrow.

If this thing beat her, even if it was three on one…, did I even stand a chance?

He chided himself as his posture slackened. His arms grew unbearably heavy, and his body was spent. The Knight lifted its wicked broad sword above its head as Ben saw the source of the hissing sound against the cobbled street. It wasn’t the downpour; instead, the sound came from the barefooted slaps of feet against stone. A seemingly endless mob of undead sprinted around the corner toward his position in front of the orphanage.

The rusted blade fell from the sky in an arc curved into a low horizontal sweep. Ben tried to evade the attack; however, his body didn’t respond. A tug at his thighs sent the world to tilt on its side. He impacted the wet street with a dull thud. He looked up at the Knight and snarled with bared teeth in a futile act of defiance. Ben tried to scramble away, yet his feet could not find purchase on the slippery stone. He looked down to see the blood pulsing in fountains from the stumps that were his legs.

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He felt his Keeper's chilling, sorrowful wail pour into his being. Ben’s vision darkened as he gazed at the nightmare in tarnished plate armor. A pack of undead rammed into its form, piling on top of the Knight as it attempted to bash and pry the corpses clinging to its shoulders and legs, dragging it down. Darkness took the young man, and the pain that had begun to overwhelm him fled as swiftly as his consciousness had.

He fell toward a clear starry sky. The angry clouds of grey and crimson were absent, and as he passed the threshold between his subconscious and his inner domain, it felt as if his form pierced through a thick membrane. His vision flashed red, and he stood in the clearing near the cave outside the blight woods. Jagged, obsidian shards that appeared to claw at the purple-tinged, starry sky stood where the burnt trees of the forest had before. He turned to see the half-sleeping orbs of the red and blue twin suns at opposite horizons, their radiance somewhat muted from when he had first observed them.

He felt the presence of the beast stir, and when he faced the source of the presence, he found the entity sitting atop the rocky outcrop that had been vacant mere moments before, staring at him intently.

He sighed. “I’m dying, aren’t I?” he asked the feline entity, who ignored the question, black flames billowing ethereally from its angular obsidian form. “Do you know what happened to Ainsle, at least?”

Its massive tail droned through the air, swinging in front of the entrance to the cave. A thought of annoyance brushed his mind, and the young man frowned at the beast’s unwillingness to converse. Ben recalled the incident with his Keeper in the cluttered store earlier that morning, and his frown turned into a scowl. His Avatar had heavily influenced his thoughts, and he had almost fundamentally changed who Ann was.

The beast reacted to the emotion by huffing and turning its large head to face the jagged forest of glass.

“You know what I’m going to say,” Ben said, tone laced with disdain. Ben was deeply disturbed by her abuse, and he resolved never to allow her to be manipulated again. Even if it meant he’d have to tear apart the temple of her former God, brick by brick.

The thought of an army comprised of subjects caressed his mind. The Champion of Domination had shaped each of them to be unfaltering and loyal to death. He beheld a terrible battle against similar creatures to what he had seen in the port city. Lives were spent in the hundreds, an attempt to quell the unending tide of monsters and terrifying beings that invaded a land raw from conflict and war.

“Who did that? Was it Deidre?” he asked.

The form of the first Herald appeared in his mind, with tears running down her pale cheeks. The entity conveyed the emotion of distress, reflected by her rigid posture and clenched jaw. She stood motionless, shoulder-length hair of black locks fluttered in an uncaring breeze amidst chaos and carnage. With each loss of her subjects’ lives, he felt the searing pain mimicked by the expression of the tall, grey-eyed woman.

The beast’s thoughts faded from his mind, and Ben felt his cheeks warm with his own tears. He collapsed to sit on the damp pine needles covering the foggy ground of the clearing.

“I. I think this is the first time I’ve cried since coming to this shitty world.” He paused and met the gaze of his Avatar. “Was there no other way?” he asked before thinking it was largely irrelevant, as his body was bleeding out in the rain. Although the passage of time was much slower in his domain, he doubted it would be long before his life had seeped into the gutter of the garishly pink city.

He stared at the area in the cave where Ainsle had slept during their time in the actual clearing. “I guess you could get used to it.” He chuckled as he remembered his mentor's words before the cold ache of regret gripped his heart. “I should’ve made more time for Ann,” he said aloud to no one in particular before addressing the entity again. “Could I have run? Taken her with me to some cottage out in the countryside?” he asked the beast. “Let the Champions of their shit Gods tackle the threat of the Convergence while we laze away the last days of the world.”

An idea of amusement was the response from the entity, and Ben sighed. He approached the beast and sat below the rocky outcrop.

“It's too late now, but I wanted to tell you… well, before I got diced up by that bloody Knight,” he said and shook his head in resignation. “I wanted to set some ground rules. Specifically, about you influencing my thoughts… I’m kind of sick of going through trial after trial with no damn time to catch my breath, and your ‘well-timed’ influence just makes things so much harder,” he said, frustrated.

The Avatar sent the thought of resting in his domain after a day filled with conflict.

“No. That’s not the same thing. I wanted to rest in the real world. You know? Spend some time getting to know Ann better, sparring with Ainsle. Kieran too. Seems like a good guy, even though his teeth and black eyes and…” Ben shivered. “Anyways. It’s done.” He sighed and leaned back to recline on his elbows.

More thoughts and emotions of amusement were conveyed before the beast’s massive head snapped to the glass forest behind Ben. He looked in the direction the large entity had faced, yet he neither felt nor saw anything. His attention was brought back to the giant feline as it leapt into the clearing in front of the young man before it sat with its head resting on extended claws.

The entity conveyed a thought that Ben should rest, and the young man complied. He crawled over to lie against the smooth rib cage of obsidian and dark, slow-wafting flames. He closed his eyes and let the exhaustion take him.

Ben slept for what felt like an entire day, waking in the same position against the large feline. The entity’s head was fixed on the same area of the obsidian forest when the low rumble of rhythmic footsteps suddenly caused Ben to startle. The dull thuds against the pine needle-covered ground shook the air in his lungs, and he felt a pressure pervade his being.

A tall figure, roughly twice Ben’s own height, appeared between the glass shards comprising the forest. Its nude, male form had deep red skin and a slender frame wrapped in thick, corded muscle. Two long, upswept obsidian horns protruded from its forehead, and gleaming crimson eyes observed the pair as the creature approached the clearing.

Ben saw a short, beautiful nude woman sit lazily atop the giant’s shoulder. Her long platinum blonde hair swayed with each step it took. Steel-blue eyes met Ben’s gaze, and a mocking grin bloomed on her face.

She spoke in a sweet voice.

“Well, well. If it isn’t Benjamin-fucking-Bones.”