Another awkward ride, another half hour spent running in circles casting out mana pings, and Levi finally found the Control dungeon as evening began to fall.

He’d only been in a handful of these in the past, and that handful had been more than enough.

Control dungeons were one of the rarer types, and notably harder to survive than most. Destruction dungeons had well-documented strengths. Control, not so much. They seemed to fit somewhere in the vicinity of light or illusion, or perhaps mental manipulation.

Due to their intensely disorienting nature and the difficulty of escaping them alive, items or materials from Control dungeons were among the most expensive and valued.

The last time Levi had been in a Control dungeon, it had slowly convinced each of the delvers that their allies were foes, and the resulting chaos led to less than a quarter of the team surviving. The whole dungeon was full of a mind-numbing miasma that made it hard to think clearly and made everyone more susceptible to the dungeon’s suggestions. He'd only made it out by sheer luck.

At level 1 this one shouldn’t be so extreme, but he still approached with trepidation.

For good or ill, the location was correct.

Control Dungeon: Level 1

Levi didn’t step into the dungeon just yet; he pulled out the map and pressed it against the glimmer in the air. The map turned yellow, glowing with an ethereal light, then disappeared entirely as its substance collapsed and funneled into the dungeon.

Control Dungeon: Level 1+

“Let’s go see what our bonus is.” Levi had a moment’s regret that the map had led him to a Control dungeon of all possible options. He was best suited for physical confrontations, the type of mental games a Control dungeon played were outside his forte. Still, he wasn’t going to back down.

The first room gleamed, palatial white marble walls and floor polished to a reflective shine, with no shadows or any place for an enemy to hide.

Entirely empty.

Levi tested the ground for traps, scanned for tripwires or an ambush, and found nothing. The room was perfectly square, with only a flat rectangular opening into the next room.

Gremlin Two clung to his leg, making small fearful sounds.

“Yeah, I agree,” Levi murmured. They crossed the room without incident, though everything about the situation set Levi on edge.

The hall was dim, but just as eerily empty.

Levi spent as much time looking back over his shoulder as he did scanning ahead, sure he was missing something. But the walls were utterly flat and solid, no seams, no sign of anything but solid marble.

The second room tilted downward, forming a faint slope, but otherwise identical to the first room.

Empty. No traps, no enemies.

“Has someone else already cleared it today?” Levi wondered, as they entered the next corridor, this one branching off to the right.

The third room was the same. Empty of adversaries but tilted slightly more downward.

The door was in the floor this time, and it was closed.

Levi stared at it, conflicted.

“I have a really bad feeling about this.”

Gremlin Two nodded vehemently.

But he’d already used the map. If he didn’t follow through and claim the treasure, whoever came here next would get it instead.

He circled the room slowly, pressing on every part of the wall, then backtracked through the dungeon, checking every wall in the same way. Nothing. All were as solid as they looked. He found no secret branching, no hidden panels, no cunning traps. Only three empty rooms with halls connecting them, the last of which had a door in the diagonally-tilted floor.

Levi cautiously cracked the door and peered inside. Another short hall, this one sloping quite steeply downward in the opposite direction from the room they were in, and another brightly lit white marble room just visible beyond.

Levi cautiously stepped into the hall, ducking to avoid hitting his head on the transition between floor and ceiling. The floor was smooth enough he all but slid down the steep incline. He kept his balance, barely, and skidded out into the next room.

A wide golden eye met his gaze, staring into his soul. Sudden panic choked him, strangling him as shadow tentacles reached out for him—

Levi gasped awake, disoriented and confused. His heart was racing. Sweat soaked his pajamas, the thin fabric clinging to his arms. He sat up, staring wide-eyed around the dim room.

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Sunlight peeked through the window, sliding in cracks around the blackout curtain and giving the room a cozy ambiance.

He blinked and stared into the sliver of golden light. Something wasn’t right. He couldn't bring to mind exactly what.

Irene mumbled sleepily and rolled over, tugging the sheet away. He turned and tucked it around her reflexively, doing his best to preserve her bubble of warmth before it could slip away in the crisp morning air.

He sat up and swung his legs out from under the covers. His feet found his slippers right where he expected them. His robe lay draped over the chair beside the window, and he pulled it on against the autumn chill.

“Bad dream?” Irene murmured hazily, eyes closed, still half asleep.

Levi frowned, unable to articulate the feeling nagging at him. He paced for a minute, trying to think through the haze.

Irene’s breathing returned to a steady rhythm as she slipped back into slumber.

Levi couldn’t concentrate, thoughts fuzzy and dancing away just out of reach, but he knew he couldn’t return to sleep either.

For some reason, his first thought was “I went back in time again?”, which didn’t make any sense. He hadn’t gone anywhere. Time travel was one of those fanciful things that made for a thrilling TV show but had about as much relevance to his life as winning the lottery.

He softly opened the bedroom door and slipped into the hall. Somewhere in the house the drip-drip of a leaky pipe was the only sound to break the morning stillness.

Levi reached the familiar door, pale wood with childish scribbles still faintly visible behind the racing poster and personalized nameplate. PETER MORRISON, the letters stylized and colored to match the poster.

Drip. Drip.

Drip.

Levi pushed open the door, and his heart froze in horror.

Vorish the Scythe sat on Peter’s bed, licking blood off his too-long blade-like claws, a pile of cracked human bones in his lap.

The Demon Lord’s eyes gleamed with violet flame in the darkness, lighting up his obsidian black exoskull in eerie light. Purple flames flicked off his body from every opening between plates of black exoskeletal armor, as though he were a being of pure fire barely contained in the mockery of a human shape.

Blood dripped from his fingers as he slowly licked each one. Then he leaned over and plucked two mangled fingers from where they lay among Peter's superhero figures, now toppled and scattered and splashed with blood.

“Hello again, human.” Vorish laughed, a harsh cruel sound that pierced Levi’s heart. “You thought you’d be safe from me here? That running to the past would save your family?”

The demon crunched on the tiny fingers, one joint at a time, watching Levi with a mocking grin. “I’ve already killed you once. Don’t think I can’t do it again.”

Rage flickered faintly in Levi’s heart, but stronger was the deep grief, the certainty that he’d failed.

No, not even that. It didn’t feel like loss, but like... a return to normal. Like letting go of a hope he’d half known all along would end up being futile.

This was as it should be. He’d only been deluding himself, imagining he could have them back.

Levi was meant to be alone.

Drip. Drip.

Vorish licked his fingers one last time, then slowly got to his feet, stretching his wrongly proportioned body with a series of sharp clicks and snaps, purple light flaring beneath his intricately patterned obsidian exoskeleton.

Easily half again as tall as Levi, Vorish’s presence made the house feel small and tight. “Wait here, I’ll be back for you soon.”

As the Demon Lord left the room, some of the paralyzing terror eased. Levi still felt choked and stunned, but his emotions remained oddly blunted. He should have felt something more, shouldn't he? It felt disloyal to be so dispassionate now.

He stared at Peter’s galaxy bedspread, the stars stained red against the dark background, the pile of broken bones stark in the bright sunlight streaming through the window.

Shouldn't he be crying? Or raging?

He remembered being someone who fought, but now he couldn’t think of any reason to do so. He only stared, sorrow pressing against him in subdued waves. Dampening rather than heightening his emotions.

From the master bedroom, Irene screamed.

Still Levi couldn’t move. Even as his rational mind whispered that he should do something, should at least try to fight back, emptiness smothered any motivation.

Wet squelches and the repeated snap of bone. He shouldn’t be able to hear them so clearly.

Irene’s pained, desperate voice cut off in a gurgle. Silence.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

Shouldn’t he be grieving? Fighting and screaming? His hand twitched, grasped uselessly at his waist, feeling for... something, something that wasn’t there.

“Why would you bother fighting?” Vorish asked. He stabbed one clawed finger through Levi’s stomach and lifted him into the air, like a piece of meat on a fork. “You know how this ends.”

He did know. Earth, humanity, all doomed. Children screaming in futility against inexorable fate.

“Give up,” the Scythe whispered, fingers tightening around him, sharpened claws pressing into Levi’s vulnerable skin.

It would be so easy. Just let it happen.

Why had he been fighting so hard? Nothing but pointless anger.

Throwing a tantrum at the universe. It had hurt him, and he wanted to hurt it back.

What a waste of energy.

“Yes, give up... ”

The fingers tightened around his throat, the claw in his stomach slicing slowly upward, leaving a line of dull discomfort in its wake.

He should have died already, Levi knew. Why hadn’t he?

It didn't matter. He slumped in defeat. What was the point?

Something pierced his leg.

He looked down, confused. He saw nothing, but this pain felt different. Distant yet more acute. Demanding in a way the claw through his stomach wasn’t.

Familiar?

Something tickled at his memory, something he was forgetting, something...

Green. And this pain...

Someone?

Memory sparked alive. An alternate path. A truth that had been obscured but could not be fully hidden.

Levi mentally grabbed that brief spark of realization, dragging back the past day of memories that had slipped hazily from his grasp, but now returned in vivid detail. The future; the past, his second chance.

It wasn’t too late.

Fighting wasn’t futile.

And this wasn’t real.

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