Perhaps the challenge can read my mind as the atmosphere around me changes.

While before I could feel it increasing slowly, it now seems as if it’s doubled or tripled the rate at which it increases. While I still manage to stay standing, the increasing pressure makes that harder and harder.

It starts to actually become painful, the pressure radiating through my whole body, making my bones grind together, squishing my organs.

Why am I resisting? I wonder. What is the benefit to this if I kill myself doing it?

And what if I am injured in reality? Last time, I had blood running out of my eyes and nose; what about if this time I end up with organ failure?

I need to leave today to travel towards the samuran village; this is no time to go too far.

Surely I could just give up now and then come back to it. I wanted to see what happened with the challenge and I now have. There’s no need to drive myself to the point of injury this first time.

There’s always next time.

I’m on the point of giving up. Somehow I sense that all I need to do to call an end to the challenge is to drop to my knees under the pressure. I almost do. The words slither through my head like snakes, all too logical, all too tempting.

But I don’t. Why? Because I recognise that voice.

It’s the voice of my doubts. It’s the voice of my temptations. It’s what led me into drinking so much the night before I came here. It’s what encouraged me to party and procrastinate instead of working on my first year assignments, meaning that I only just scraped by with a pass – the sobering revelation of my year’s marks is the main motivation for the effort I put in for the rest of my degree.

It’s what encouraged me to lie to my mother about that fateful sleepover; it’s the same voice that made me throw in the towel when the other boys’ bullying became too much for me. It’s what ultimately led to us being on that road at the same time as the drunk driver.

It’s a voice which has never led me anywhere good. Here in this space, I find it easier to identify: it seems to almost come from outside myself, rather than being an insidious thought inside which only becomes verbal when I’m already starting to consider it properly.

“No, I will not give up,” I grind out, needing the sound of my own voice to reassure me, to make it more of a promise that I must keep.

“Oh but you will – you’re weak.” I almost accidentally fall to my knees, my surprise reducing my resistance for what might have been a fatal moment of inattention. Fatal in terms of my hopes, that is: I doubt that failing this challenge would actually kill me.

My surprise is because that’s my voice, though more malicious than I’ve ever heard myself. Out loud, that is.

It’s the voice which scathingly criticises my friends and family when they’ve done something which I don’t agree with – the voice which says the things I would never express out loud because they’re so nasty.

And it’s the voice which says horrible things about me too – it’s the voice which drove me to drink, and the voice which drove me to the roof. It’s even the voice which goaded me to use the emblem in the first place, telling me how if I didn’t take this opportunity, it just proved how weak I was.

Suddenly, I think I understand a little more about this challenge. It isn’t only about dealing with outside pressure akin to that experienced during a Battle of Wills; it’s also about facing myself. And maybe that’s exactly who I need to ‘overcome’.

As a figure fades into view in the mists, walking towards me casually, I realise that my thoughts were actually more true than I thought.

The figure, as might have been expected, is me. Only, it’s not the me that I see in any vaguely reflective surface at the moment: wild beard, wild hair, and usually at least a bit dirty. It’s the me that I consider – considered? – the ‘perfect’ me.

His dark brown hair is short, neatly combed with a side parting. His face is clean-shaven. He’s impeccably dressed in a snappy suit, a neat tie around his neck and not a speck of dirt or dust on any of his clothes. His blue eyes are piercing, sharp.

And then there’s his bearing. He looks like he’s just walked out of a board room after having been an implicit part of the discussions, his words weighty, his hand one of the most important on the rudder of the company. In short, he looks exactly like I dreamed I could look, all those times I was denied a promotion, or sat in an information meeting, only able to receive the decisions which had come down from on high.

But it’s not all as I imagined. The look on his face, for one. His mouth is twisted in disgust, his eyes glinting in malice and contempt. He’s looking at me as if I’m a speck of dirt on his polished Oxfords. As if I’m almost below his notice, and that I’m going to regret having been brought to his attention.

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Is this what I would have become if I’d risen as high in the company as I wanted? I can’t help but ask myself, my eyes wide.

“You’re weak,” he says again, his mouth twisting further. Even though we’re the same height, he seems to be looking down on me. “You will fail. You always do.”

“I don’t.” I grind out, the pressure on my shoulders intensifying even more.

“You do,” he says. It would be dispassionate if there weren’t the slightest hint of glee. “Look at our mother. Lucy. Our father. Our friends. Our job. Our ambitions. All gone. You failed.”

The pressure redoubles on my shoulders, what had felt like bearing the weight of a single boulder now feeling like supporting two. The doubt and reminders of past failures steal into my heart like thieves. Perhaps the pressure itself hasn’t doubled; perhaps it’s that the doubt has just made it harder to bear.

No. I’ve come too far to fall now. There has to be an end to this and I’m determined to reach it.

“Past failures don’t mean future ones,” I force out, barely managing to keep standing with the pain running through my body, the weight on my head and shoulders. I can’t deny his words: I have failed. But hope springs eternal and tomorrow is another day.

It sounds trite even in my own head.

“No? But look at your track record just in this world,” the figure of me says languidly. “How long did it take you to start to properly pay attention to your surroundings? It’s only by pure luck that you survived the first month. And look at how much you’re leaning on your Bound now. You can’t stand by yourself; it’s pathetic.” The words hit me like arrows to the heart.

“That’s the nature of a Tamer,” I protest weakly. “I can’t do everything.” He flicks his hand, like my words are flies buzzing around him.

“You can’t do anything. What have you even done for them anyway? You promised River to save his village and yet you’ve been spending days, weeks doing everything but. You’ve been messing around with magic and tanning and petty concerns where, for all you know, his village has already been engulfed by the trees.”

“I’ve been preparing,” I respond quietly, the explanation sounding all too insipid in this context.

“You’ve been procrastinating,” he accuses. I close my eyes, my legs wobbling, my back starting to curve. This is too much. Murphey must have been listening to my thoughts, must have taken offence at my determination not to bow to the pressures of the heavens. I didn’t know then that they could release my inner demons to torment me like this. And this is only level one!

The reminder steadies me. This is a challenge. Moreover, it’s a challenge from one of my Class Skills, something designed to help me get stronger. It’s not something like the Pure Energy where my life was something I had to struggle to keep.

I also realise something important: though this demon has insulted me, derided me, tried to tear me down – is doing so at the moment, even, though my own thoughts are drowning him out for the most part. But not once has he touched me. He’s not even come close. He’s stood still, and talked to me. At me.

Understanding goes through me. His only power over me is what I give him in listening to him. If I let him destroy my self-confidence, I will fall and I will fail. Just as he wants me to. But if I don’t? He is powerless.

This is good. My inner demon has been given life, and is giving voice to the doubts which have plagued me both recently and in years gone past. He wears the visage of all I aimed to be – once.

But I’ve changed, and my desires with me. My Wisdom has grown, and I realise that it’s not only a stat, a number on a screen. I realise that the answers to all his insults and questions lie within me already.

The knowledge steadies me. The burden on my shoulders suddenly feels a little lighter; my back straightens, my knees lock once more.

The demon stops talking and eyes me. He seems slightly wary, like he’s suddenly aware that the pitiful animal he was poking with a stick has grown teeth and claws and is growling at him.

“I am human,” I say. The words are difficult to get out, but easier, somehow, than the weak protests I was giving before. “I make mistakes. Before, I interacted with other humans who also made mistakes. I failed to achieve things I sought, but in some cases, my true mistake was in seeking the wrong things.”

Images of Lucy’s upset and angry face flashes through my mind. Not the stone one which she wore when she walked out of our relationship, but the ones she wore before then, every time she discovered that I would put my job before her.

The demon in front of me looks like every ambitious career dream I ever had, but I doubt that Lucy – or any other significant partner – is part of the deal. And if they are, it’s probably because they’re seeking something other than intimacy and relationship: where there’s money, there are always those willing to prostitute themselves for it. But that’s not what I wanted.

“I did fail,” I admit, but the admission doesn’t make me weaker; if anything, recognising my mistakes makes me stronger. “But the good thing about surviving a failure is that I have the possibility to learn from it, to become better and try again. As for not saving River’s village? Yes, I recognise that perhaps I haven’t been as focussed on that objective as I should have been. It’s true that I was preparing, but I admit that I have also been procrastinating a little. Or not procrastinating, but allowing other concerns to take precedence. I will apologise to him for that.” I swallow, then say the words which really don’t want to come out of my mouth. “Thank you for raising it to my attention.”

The demon looks rather taken aback; I don’t blame it. It’s not something I would have done before. But now, I’m becoming more self-aware, more humble, more willing to admit when I have been wrong. And that’s a good thing, as long as I don’t let it stymie future growth.

Because that’s what the demon wants to do.

“I am human, and I have made mistakes. I will make more. But all I can do is try to be better. And that’s what I’m determined to do.”

With that last pronouncement, I feel the pressure on my shoulders intensify one more time. I stand my ground, holding my position through sheer force of will, the determination filling me and steeling my spine.

And then suddenly, it vanishes, the figure of my alternate self vanishing along with it, as if neither were ever there. I guess that in many ways, that’s completely true.

For a moment, I stare around at my misty surroundings, and then a box forms in my vision.

Challenge completed: level 1

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