Tim might never have bragged verbally about his rollercoaster escapades. Growing up in Ohio, he had plenty of world class options. Point is, whatever he thought he could handle for terminal velocity, sudden rollovers and hallelujah valleys, had nothing on what Gantus threw him into.

The three seconds between happy place, doobie time and chaos rockets-and-murdering sirens theme park, one could say it changed a man. Life bookmarked into before he had his skin ripped off and Murder Circus gassed him bitter, and after.

“Oh, stop your bitchin’.”

In the flipping, out of control turbulence. Gantus, the bastard, spoke from within.

While questioning that fun little ditty, G-Force resistance took its sweet time shaking his bones before an abrupt, body folding halt.

Then he was standing in a prairie warzone littered with carcasses and the birds gorging on unpicked flesh. His eyes peed all down his cheeks in sweet relief, even if it blurred the bleak world settling in around him. One might guess this were another enclave for naughty spirits and security on the lowest end of the totem.

His first step landed so suddenly it jolted up into his hip. Below his kids short, scratchy wool pants were webbed duck feet. Yellow scuffed and cracked by land travel. What in the world?

“It’s your camouflage. Brizicthi’s are the most common species willing to make deliveries down here.”

I’m a duckman?

“Yeah. More or less. You better get moving before one of the hordens pisses a stone.”

Hordens?

“Like wardens and mid-level managers put in an impossible situation for eternity. They’ll love to take their anger out on you.”

A flash of lightning and boom of thunder erupted so close it made Tim hop nearly out of his duck feet.

A giggling then cough-wrenched agony sounded somewhere nearby yet hidden.

Dryfu?

“‘Afraid not,” Gantus said. “It’s just the two of us in your head. Whatever that was....”

I get it. Tim waddled as quickly as his duck legs would take him. His vision clearing, the landscape revealed a decrepit town center, with pairs of eyes by the dozen locking on Tim from a plethora of locations. Tim chose a street far left, on the other side of once fancy, outdoor/indoor eatery with a bar and roof seating. He thought “once” because the shingles had long fallen, and its exterior infested with a nasty blue-purple menagerie of hairy thorned tendrils and black beetles swarming their nests. The agitation at the center, where they piled like ants, emanated an essence of hunger and fearlessness. They owned this place and were long overgrown their resources.

Tim’s waddling slapped stones and cast an echo along the restaurant wall, stirring the beetles into a race for Tim’s flesh. Yeah.

He couldn’t access a single spell. The inventory in his bouncing backpack read like a bathroom stock refill, with the meanest item at option being a half-broken plunger.

“Hell ain’t got shit on me.”

Really? I’m gonna die whacking a horde of beetles with a floppy plunger and your bad Denzel?

“I got it from your brain. Look; I’ll be real with you.”

Tim found that relieving as he rounded the street corner into a puddle of sewage and a tipped over bronze statue of some Greek guy bent over by a dildo. A crack riding up from the chipped section over its ear implied being dropped this way.

Tim kicked the statue. Its girth squished a baker's dozen of the claw cakes on the street, then was overrun in their black wave.

“I can release your spells.”

How about you send me back? Not the Spirit Memory, back to my body.

“I’m afraid you’re stuck with me, pal.”

The beetles closed in. A brick windowsill looked like his best chance of escape. If he reached it in time, barely an inch over an inch of clean ledge made up the crumbled frame. How could he land with these boots? He’d break right through.

Tim swept low, swatting a handful with the rubber end of his plunger. It flopped under their weight, ripping further from the handle. A few climbed under and gnawed through the wood with belly teeth Tim hadn’t seen yet. Lovely.

Give me my spells then.

“Come get me.”

Tim leapt. Wings opened from his back, restrained by his bag. He threw the stick into the chittering torrent behind him and shed the bag. Too late to catch up, his wings fluttered weakly against the smothering gravity. He barely made it to the wall, not high enough to grab the top of the window frame. His hands, opposable thumb and all, if furry and a bit cute, met glass with shattering impact. Shards sliced his hands red and springing with blood enough to blind his entry to the shop.

Tim turned over like his sensei, S’trace taught him, rolling into the fall and thankfully landing on a tabletop. A shard in his hand planted an inch deeper, spearing his palm in a fury of pain. Tim slid from his back to his feet and darted for an aisle where customers in mottled fur coats and skin rotted to the bone backed into hangers and tripped over dog shit left by their fellow with the purse pup barking at the wind.

Little shit scampered after Tim’s feet, chirping threats and baring fangs evolved from a puma gene. Claws that also had no business on such a harmless canine ripped through her feet. An ankle claw cut through her rose gold anklet, sparking a spell that put Flash into her steps.

Tim planted and booted the pup in the throat. Velocity picked up in the slick shit activated swim speed sent his toes deep enough to collapse her throat mid-bark. She flew back into the arms of her sobbing master. The hand extending from a sleeve to pet her was mostly black bone and cancerous tendons.

Lovely.

Dryfu? Where you at?

Two guards built out of a mix of rhino and standing tall as black bears readied for a fight at the nearest exit. The line of customers hissing Ghostbuster red eyes at him as he passed the checkout. The sole cashier had one hand on his hip and the other pointing to the back, arguing about something with the swigity swag of his head.

“Trust me,” Gantus said. “I didn’t drop you somewhere you could escape without needing my deal to get your spells back. I’m not stupid. You can do this without your guide.”

Tim failed to find leverage out of the blackmail. Cutting left into an aisle leading to a signed-off escalator up to the next floor gave him a detour and time to consider. It wouldn’t matter if he asked Gantus why he wanted out, or what he’d do once free, because even with their spirit-to-spirit connection, he was too low a level to lie detector through all his tricks.

“True. So just accept. I have another deal I’ll offer to make once you get in my cell.”

Rhino Rent a Cops smashed through racks of boots and purses. One caught a strap around its horn and the purse swung back in the breeze of his charge.

Tim might make it to the escalator, but no way did he reach the second floor before they trampled him into the razor-sharp blades making up the steps. This place is whack. Deal. I’ll go to your cell next.

A glorious sheathing of powers fit over Tim along with a half measure of MP and AF. He cast battleground and queued Dragon Heads.

Rhino Guard 1 lowered his head and planted his front paws. The impact sent a tremor through the floor, burping Tim off his feet as he turned. Dragon Heads weren’t ready. He cast Protection and absorbed the upward thrust of Guard Horn.

Protection and Battleground created a forcefield enough to keep the bone out of his body. They didn’t do much for the jolt or pinpoint focus of impact. Ribs shattered. Tim flew ten feet before skirting the slick tile and wrapping his neck around the undertrunk of a clothes rack.

Rhino boot scoot to finish the job. Bless his heart.

Tim pushed up, examining the carpet burns through his pants, the material matted with rocks and gum, he presumed. Thankfully his neck slowed his fall and his backward slide halted him quickly.

Dragon Heads lit green means go. Cat, Tim thought as though the word were a red button to smash into nuclear explosion. Ravenous Dragon Heads shot from his bloody mess, Howard the Duck hands. Right through Rhino 1’s monstrous gut. Shaka! They burned a devouring hole into his ribcage well past when the lights went out up top.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

Rhino 1 collapsed in the path of Rhino 2, dropping loot the wise player picked up as he charged by. A boost to speed sent him on one more gallop before Tim’s doom.

Tim pulled the clothes rack trunk hard enough to spill it between them, then bought every millisecond of the time before Rhino 2 could catch him to charge a second Dragon Heads. He put them through the dude’s head, not taking any chance at point-blank in the boots section.

A rack of combat boots sized for several species, including Brizicthi, provided an alternative to the ones on his feet. Don’t mind if I do.

The loot from Rhino 2 gave him a stim sleeve he ate like gogurt, filling his health and stats up to eighty percent, roughly.

He charged Peel and took the two death mallets from the loot. The horns converted into relics and a key card rounded out the last of it.

Tim fit his boots and took off for the empty exit. Rhinos barged through the line from the other side, racing him for the runway out.

With Gantus’s help, Tim made it to a tunnel they locked from inside, and from there he jogged for the prison.

“You keep up this efficiency and I might even show you how to get into the tomb without going through the borderlands.”

Essence emanating from the voice emitted greed and urgency, which could be good or bad depending on whom Gantus planned to betray. How do I know this isn’t a trap?

“You’re a priest of the Wind God. Either have faith to fly or don’t. I’ll find another way out, but I’m taking you out on the way.”

This place felt like a humid summer baked in by a predatory haze. He had to cast Aura Light on a simmer to see.

“Save your strength. When you get here, you’ll have to get a key before the guards pummel you into Aura Form.”

Your plan sucks.

“I do what I can with what I got. You’ve a high enough Spirit Memory level to survive the return trip, but you’ll need to be in Aura Form.”

Do demons have some kind of ultra crack to smoke down here, because you must be high believing this plan will work.

“Not my fault it’s so low of a level the skill needs you to get your ass kicked to turn on. Your disguise was supposed to get you close enough to get a key, but not enough to escape before they pummel you.”

I remember that part.

“You should have accepted sooner. If this place were easy to escape, they wouldn’t have so many fans on the other side.”

The other side of what?

“One would say worse than Hell, but what is? We have many rulers who give it their own names, so let’s go with Hell to keep it simple for you, priest.” After a few strides, Gantus added, “I’ve never seen a more pathetic duckman. You had legs before, right? Can you pick it up?”

Give me my body back.

“No can do.”

What?

“That was a suicide spell you thwarted back in the woods. I’m being honest because you’re my biggest ally and I have information about Jil that will make you do whatever I want. Even dirty if I swung that way.”

Start at the Jil part but save the freaky stuff for the next time you’re in prison, without me.

“Well, word is our favorite hot rogue princess is on the run from her own country. Not only do I know whom she’s after, but why and more or less, where he is.”

Tim slowed, spotting a troll lying still in a runoff trough beside their path. Its bloated, rotting flesh was nearly translucent in its pale green tone. His outstretched hand lie near a hole in the wall, two fingers chopped clean through the bone. Tim issued a small enough cast of Analyze with Forage, lacing it in as untraceable of a c-mana spend as he could manage, and wrapped it in Danger Sense. If he found a clue to where they were or somehow a way of escape, he wouldn’t want Gantus knowing. The demon was in his head, but he was still a Ranger gifted in evasion, especially when alone.

As he cast, he focused on the threat of what had killed the troll.

The spell permeated instead of shooting out in a Danger Sense type ping, so it took longer to spread over the dark water holding globules of yellow and dark maroon remains.

“Keep going. There are worse threats than a sewer eel.”

A golden patch on his arm impressed itself with a glimmer. Tim stopped, pretending to see an eel, but really focusing through the murky pool at the half-submerged badge on the sleeve. If he knew what kind of soldier or worker he was, maybe he could track his way back here. Too bad the position was half-submerged and stained by soaking in the juices of his grave. Of the insignia, he only made out a brown inner frame and a green animal or plant along the middle.

A zap in his head pushed his spell into oblivion, as though off a cliff, and it took a second to remember what he’d been looking at. Fear of being watched drove his steps further into the tunnel. Its serpentine channeling had rubble fallen from the walls and cracks deep enough to lose a foot, or… are those flippers?

You didn’t have to turn me into a duck to get my tail handed to me in a fight, Tim added.

“We’re almost there.”

Molded over globe orbs paced the ceiling corners in their path, their clouding over most of the glass dimmed the glowworm light to little more than a haze in the nighttime dark. His focus returned to the mission and not tripping.

Passing through hazy channel of light, Tim’s vision trailed into a tunnel and an abandoned train track. The stained yellow paint reminded him of one of the enclave visions Pilk had summoned.

“Yes, I’ve seen that too.” Gantus’s strength reverberated through the mental connection.

Tim pushed back, resisting an invasion creeping along the floors of his mind for clues.

“Enclave Gates, huh? Hmm. I could see… You know, I could help—”

Tim suppressed a laugh. You honestly think I’m keeping you around? A demon. For my left shoulder then?

Too bad Dryfu wasn't around for that one. It was good.

“Your guide has to start his level from 1 every time he dies. You don’t have time for him to catch up, even if you survive and can afford leveling him up. I know about who killed Pilk and the real battle only those with an eye for the spirit realm could know. Dryfu and his Dutchy army—you haven’t asked him how many were trained by him as his prior leads, have you?”

Tim hadn’t. At first Dryfu was standoffish, then when he apologized Tim thought it best to move on.

“If he remains loyal to you in the face of so many he personally trained, he was still fighting the wrong war for too long to help you get through me, let alone your first month or year on the job. You have a target on your back from the Riftlord now too. You don’t even know about the guy Jil is chasing.”

I know enough. If you think we need you—

“I could have broken your sword when you tried drawing me in.”

Why didn’t you?

“Because that’s how you’re going to protect me. Your sword is now my castle. Dose won’t work, but I hope to make up for it once I recover my strength. And we return to Open Arms the nivelador you need.”

Who’s that?

“Not the one Jil is chasing, but both are in this dungeon. No more freebies until you let me out.”

Tim couldn’t build a city with the White Banner by making a deal with a demon. This was his chance to keep leverage while Gantus was stuck behind bars. He had to find a way back to his body, but also wanted the Spirit Memory spell to work so he could save Sa before he was kidnapped.

The first plan would be winning the fight against the guards. Duckman or not. Gantus had blind faith that Tim would be pummeled into 10% health and an Aura Form. What if he defeated them, then renegotiated?

Before his divergent essence met the demon all up in his aura, he turned that thought into truth by a similar wavelength. I came to the dungeon to save my fivel friends and my brother from some threat by the trolls.

Pipeworks clogged the sides of the path, forcing a narrow lane into darkness.

Tim continued quickly in the hope of further deceiving Gantus from reading his deceptive plan. He sent a Ranger born cloak over that train of thought and cast Ward in a small enough dose that it would be barely noticeable on his stats, he hoped.

I’d like to go back to help him and the trolls because I think what happens there will bleed into reality.

“You are correct.”

Tim suspected. S’Trace spent a massive amount to bring a notebook through an enclave, not to mention the portal at Open Arms. If Gantus spent that kind of magic or whatever fueled this Haunting, he spent enough to maintain Kari’s… he didn’t know what to call her spell. He used Spirit Memory to access the troll memory, but their goal there wasn’t to bring anything back but the knowledge to Ward demons. Before Gantus realized the mistake in revealing if Tim killed him here, it would stick, he had to say something.

What kind of goons are we talking for security?

“Banyan something, I bet. I haven’t seen them. Been working out of spirit. Someday I’d love to show you how many places you can go at once.”

Meanwhile, he queued a Protection spell and started a poem. Ol Dirty Demon, raging in bondage, thinking me to free him, once he hears these words, I bind him in Light.

At that point, he would cast Aura Light and say Hello.

They have a lot of your buddies in here? Tim asked.

“Always room for one more.”

Tim slowed as his enemies appeared in the distance. Shadows of long appendages and busy headgear blended into a canopy of branches. The security forces were compact pine trees with needles of a mind to poke a B and find out. Tim’s Analyze read a defensive aura strong enough to warn him not to poke or find out. Diamonds sealed into key points in their armor emanated a kind of blur power to hide their movement when sprung to action.

The banyan guards had a trimmed hedge around the midsection with narrow hips and flexible trunk.

“That’s for new sprouts to choke you with. Don’t worry. Your submission will be quick.”

A branch slowed, emerging in thick tone emerald firs to stretch for a watering spout. It lifted it over its head and poured the bright green liquid down its trunk. As it extended, a bracer lined with flechettes with diamond-tipped darts showed itself locked and loaded with a triple set poised on the launcher. “That’s if you want to make things interesting,” Gantus said. “It has about a thousand more waiting in a retort spell.”

Tim let Analyze expire so he could rest a moment before the battle. He hid in the bend as casually as if it were his closet and he’d come for silent meditation before the daybreak.

“What are you doing?” Gantus asked.

I need to pray and finish this poem.

“What?” Gantus’s essence bubbled with offense and humor. “You want to pray for a good beating? One for the ages? Make it last long enough to savor? We don’t have time. I’ll pray for you. Dear Wind. Blow your favor up his ass. May he remember little of their onslaught. Amen. Now, go.”

Tim focused on his core as he pushed the exhale out with his strands of aura weakness.

“This plan only works by my say,” Gantus added.

Like his security days, Tim knew a bully when he met one, pushing people like himself on their heels through urgency and self-imposed authority. If the obstacles in their way perish, that’s on them for permitting weakness. Seeing straight through Gantus’s act, Tim loved nothing more than to make a bully stew. Tim inhaled a long breath, calmly laying aura threads like cloth strips soaked in healing ointment. A spasm shot down his back. The aura pull through two layers of spell realities made every effort in Aura Form a high tension balancing act.

His AF was only at 46%. Not close enough to the sixty Tim estimated as required before daring to fight. Even that felt too stingy as he reconsidered their flechettes. Maybe this was where he landed his first Tripple Whammy. He needed more time. What would that look like in Duckman form?

How do I know they won’t kill me? He thought to Gantus. I’ve leveled through polluted Eiyero and suffered chronic fade. My body doesn’t respond well to full Aura Form. They aren’t pummeling my AF, but if I don’t get it higher before I go in, I won’t have what I need to get to you.

“If you mess this up, I’ll let you die in your true form so they can track you down.”

Tim considered the threat for what it was worth, pithy threats. He’d made up his mind to fight back. Not turning back, he charged a Light Burn mix with Healing Bridge to concoct a Cleanse perfectly matched against the dark blessed and Venom repugnant guards. Hopefully the Bridge would keep him together when the flechettes started flying. Sure, he could submit to a beatdown, and maybe the death by a thousand cuts would be swift in this case, but that didn’t feel right. He was meant to fight.