I got my legs up and raked them down once across his belly, splitting the “lips” of his stomach-mouth. Dark red blood, so dark as to almost be black, splashed onto me. For some reason, the Limbs of the Other Side didn’t react to it like it had with Forgettable’s blood.

Before I could think upon that further, Terrance shoved me off him, his massive palm slamming into me like a battering ram. I went flying, but I managed to take pieces of him with me. In a panic-fueled burst of concentration, I oriented in the air and flung my tentacles out, stabbing them into the roof of the ziggurat and arresting my momentum before I went sailing off the side to drop the thirty-ish feet below.

“Why won’t you just fucking DIE!” Terrance’s voice on the final word magnified as he sent out another one of his psychic attacks. In the instant before it hit, I chided myself for not having prepared another amulet or spell to protect against it. Now I’m going to die because of my short-sighted anger—

As the psychic wave hit me, I felt it crash against and wash over the parts of me that were protected by the LotOS—which was most of me, by this point. When the wave hit my face, however, I felt it fold and—and I can’t describe what I felt next. I felt, for the first time, the void behind the pits that my eyes had become. I had almost forgotten the weird effect until now, thinking it merely cosmetic. But as the psychic energy neared my face, unimpeded by my magic or other protections, I felt the void that lay behind my eyes inhale and consume the energy.

Other than a slight amount of discomfort from my stomach, where my navel was still uncovered by the LotOS, the attack had done nothing to me. In fact, I felt a slight sense of contentment. No, it wasn’t me feeling that. It was the other me. The one I’d been ignoring. That part of me that was always silently with me, ready to lend aid for an unknown price.

Whatever, no time to dwell on it. I decided to roll with it. I tensed my tentacles and used them to hurl me to my feet, charging across the ziggurat at the clearly surprised Terrance. The surprise didn’t last long, however, as Terrance’s expression—both the one on his smaller, “real” face and the stomach-mouth—set in a determined grimace. He set his feet and brought his hands up into a boxers stance, but had to adjust when his left fist blocked his face on his left breast.

I let out an insane laugh at the stupidity of the situation as I stepped into his guard, slashing. He brought his arms down on me, trying to drive me into the ground like a tent stake. I ducked and backed up, leaving slashes along his arms and raking the tips of my tentacles across his shoulders. I had to give up more ground as he pursued with a couple of jabs, each delivered with enough power to crack stone.

He said a word I didn’t recognize and made a clawing, uppercut gesture with his right hand. The ground to my left became sudden jagged spikes that shot at me like bullets. I barely got my arms in front of my face, the rocks slamming into me with bruising force. If I hadn’t had the protection of the LotOS, I would have been torn to pieces.

I retaliated by setting him on fire. He screamed in pained panic, his magical assault falling away. Unlike what had happened in the other dimension with Forgettable, my fire wasn’t white-hot here. In fact, it seemed to be weaker than it had been when I first used it. Was that other dimension closer to Trix’s? Or more conductive to the power? Something to investigate if I ever made it home.

Terrance hissed out another word and a wave of cold air blasted from him, coating everything around him in a thin layer of frost. He wiped one of his giant mitts over his tiny face, smearing it with a slight mud made from the soot of my fire and the water from the quickly melting ice. I noticed then that the wounds I had inflicted at the beginning of the fight were healing.

Fuck! Another asshole who was going to rope-a-dope me. I wish, just once, I could sit back and wait for an enemy to—

My eyes landed on the ward behind Terrance. I finally realized that the ash that blanketed the other dimension was gone, and I could see the entirety of the ward Terrance was carving out with his maggots.

“You fucking moron,” I gasped, horror slowly taking over my expression.

He was creating a doorway.

For the fucking Doorman.

A “doorway” is a specific magical term, just like “summon” is. When you summon an entity, it has several parameters it must fulfill in order to come here. These are a lot like magical legalese, except that they aren’t written in a language you understand and are based on the common understanding and interpretation of both the summoner and summoned.

Take Trix, for instance. When I summon her, the understanding is built into the spell that I would very much like to live through the encounter. It’s also built into the spell that there has to be something of interest for her for her to allow herself to be summoned.

But since these things rely on the agreement of both parties, there’s a significant amount of wiggle room. Nothing is clearly stated. For instance, if I made a summon where I wasn’t allowed to die at all, and that only I would benefit, nothing would answer my summons unless I somehow had leverage on the entity I was summoning, or a pre-arranged agreement. The more powerful an entity you summoned, the more fluid and lax these rules—at least for our side—became.

Also, when you summon something, you are essentially summoning just a part of them. The physical or mental part. Being from other parts of reality or other dimensions don’t follow the same rules as being from this plane of existence do, so if they were to come here fully, they might be so small as to not be able to be interacted with or so huge as to destroy the Milky Way. Beings on these orders of magnitude were very rare, as you can imagine. Contacting something as big as a galaxy isn’t something you should try unless you are very confident you have something they want to hear.

A doorway, on the other hand, is just that. An entrance. Something that facilitates travel. Completely. No restrictions.

This motherfucker wanted to give the Doorman complete access to our reality.

“Are you out of your MIND?!” I screamed as I lit him on fire again, my rage instantly vaporizing the water on him and scalding him with steam. While he recoiled I targeted the nearest maggot and set upon it with my pyrokinesis, targeting it from the inside out. It burst like a hot dog in the microwave.

I focused on another but was interrupted by Terrance tackling me. It felt like being tackled by a train. My whole body hurt as he slammed into me and pinned both my arms to the ground.

“You little fuck,” Terrance said, his “face” close to mine despite him being a foot or two taller than me in his current form. “You were supposed to be an easy target. Away from all your little protections, miles from authority. Do you have any idea how fucking aggravating you have been—“

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

“Aqua removere,” I hissed, casting a spell and interrupting his little speech.

Terrance screamed as several rents appeared in his “suit,” which I now realized didn’t have a texture similar to skin: it was skin. The rents first appeared as blisters that grew obscenely fast, and burst into shooting jets of steam. Terrance recoiled, standing up and away while also knocking me across the roof like a hockey puck. I slid a dozen feet, catching up against one of the bodies of the guards I had killed earlier.

You know, that fat rendering spell is highly effective. I’m going to have to use it more often.

But it was raising my body temp way too fast, so I cut off the power to the spell as I climbed to my feet lethargically. I felt like I had been in a car crash. I glanced down at the guard, hoping he had a rifle I could use. I didn’t see one with a cursory look so I returned my attention to Terrance. He was still between me and the doorway spell.

He turned bloodshot eyes toward me and screamed a word similar to the one he used earlier, something ice? I used my pyrokinesis to create a plow of flame in front of me and sent it forward. The two powers slammed into each other, creating a miniature whirlwind. A moment later the two powers consumed each other, dumping mist over the ziggurat similar to the effect of dry ice. While Terrance’s vision was momentarily blocked I darted to the side, searching for another one of the maggots.

Maybe I could destroy it? Looking at the thick lines, and the sheer presence of it, I doubted. The ziggurat was more than just a building, it was an edifice of Terrance’s intent. He had built it for the purpose of helping his magic, and here he was doing more magic. I’d have to destroy a significant amount of the design as well as the ziggurat if I wanted to stop it at this point. Or maybe I could nudge his elbow?

I spotted another maggot, but it was far away. I created another, smaller, blade of fire, and send it forth, burning a furrow into the ziggurats roof before slamming into the monstrous larva. My efforts attracted another blast of ice from Terrance, one I couldn't dodge in time. Biting cold slammed into my side and sapped energy from my body. A moment later Terrance appeared through the fog, swinging a haymaker for my head.

I ducked the blow, barely seeing it for the feint it was before almost braining myself on his knee. I twisted sideways, catching his rising knee on my shoulder and was once again sent into the air. Jesus, I’m getting so much air, I should learn to fly—

With a sudden bit of panic-induced inspiration, I focused on my tentacles and manipulated them like I had when I swam to the island. Instead of creating flat, paddle like protrusions on the end, however, I forced them to spread and flatten like six extremely gross tapeworms growing out of my back and shoulders. I awkwardly flung them out and managed to use the added wind resistance to arrest my momentum somewhat, landing painfully on my left knee and elbow.

I let out a snarl of anger, my voice touched by the double-harmonic that had briefly possessed me when I had been with Ida. I dug my claws into the floor and shot myself forward, my tentacles once again returning to their original shape. Well, wait, that won’t do.

I realized I had been neglecting to fully explore my abilities granted by the other “me” residing in my mind. I had always thought of them as a temporary thing, something to be used only when in a dire situation and then locked away again. Like the mentality one had when picking up something gross, like dog poop. You confront it for as long as you need to, but you don’t actually think or look at what you’re doing. I had never thought of these powers as something to be utilized, only to be endured.

As I charged across the roof I focused on my tentacles again, forcing them to become thinner, longer and sharper. This time, when I raked them across Terrance’s shoulders, they bit deep. I wasn’t just relying on their strange, destructive makeup anymore—now they were sharp.

Terrance batted the tentacles away, accepting the cuts they drew over his baseball glove sized hand. A couple were so deep in his shoulders that when he knocked them away, they aggravated the wounds on their way out, similar to twisting the blade. With his other hand he gestured at me as if shoving, shouting an arcane word.

I brought my hands up and down in an X, slashing through the energy he sent my way. The LotOS shredded the energy like a sheet, allowing me to continue my charge without missing a step. I saw him shift his stance, ready to defend himself. Instead I sent my tentacles at his face, forcing him on his back foot as he blocked to avoid being blinded. I circled him at a distance, poking and slashing with my tentacles with half my attention, while I frantically searched for another maggot to burn.

And find one I did. I repeated the same move I used before, creating a little plow of fire and slamming it into the maggot. The blade burned another furrow into the roof. I can do this—

Terrance made a vomiting sound and another half-dozen maggots spilled from his stomach mouth onto the spell design. This distracted me so much that I didn’t notice him reaching for a couple of my tentacles until he had them. They bit deeply into his hand, but if he noticed it didn’t show on his face. He gripped them like a pair of ropes and yanked me off my feet, towards him. He had his other fist cocked, ready to pulverize my head.

I was tempted to let him kill me. After all, if I was dead, there’d be nothing for the Doorman to torment. If Terrance finished crafting the doorway, the Doorman would probably do everything it was planning on doing to me to Terrance, for failing to keep me alive.

But no.

Fuck Terrance.

And fuck the Doorman.

I slammed my will into the three tentacles on my right side, flattening them out again and stretching them to catch the wind. I then slammed them forward. What followed made me pivot in the air, just missing colliding with Terrance’s fist. I then relaxed the tentacles and wrapped them around the giant warlock, digging them into his flesh as I moved behind him. Two of the new maggots hadn’t been as fast as the others and I burst them both with quick applications of fire.

“I’m,” Terrance began, struggling against my tentacles. “Going to watch. Every second. Of what the Doorman does to you.”

I was tempted to taunt him. I wanted to say something to really get under his skin. I was so sick of this motherfucker, of everything he stood for. I was reminded of what my mom said the first time I had come home with bruised knuckles and a bloody nose: The best revenge is living well. I don’t think that applies here, but I think my own spin on that saying will suffice: The best revenge is victory.

I slammed my hand into his side, digging deep with my claws. From there I summoned my flames at the tips of my fingers and put as much power/effort/will into it as I could. Terrance screamed as his side bloated up around my forearm, flames shooting out, burning half of my shirt off as the flames washed over me. I had to stop after only a few seconds as the fires were in danger of burning my face.

I kicked him aside and turned, creating more blades of flame and killing the maggots that remained, one after another. Maybe I could stop this—

I felt movement along my tentacles and turned just in time to see Terrance shakily regain his feet, ignoring my eldritch appendages burrowing into his flesh. He took one step and fell forward, slamming his hand onto the edge of the doorway spell.

His hand covered in his own blood.

“By my blood, I invite you,” Terrance whispered.

I watched in horror as the design carved into the roof lit up. The parts of the spell that hadn’t been finished, now filling in, fueled by the stored intent of the ziggurat. Oh, God. I hurriedly disentangled my tentacles from Terrance’s still form, anxiety growing in the pit of my stomach like a maelstrom.

Just above the altar at the center of the ziggurat, a pinprick of darkness appeared. Over the next several seconds it grew. First, to the size of a baseball. Then a beach ball. Then to the size of a small shed. After maybe ten seconds, it settled.

Inside that darkness, a familiar shape was revealed. An empty, dark, pinstriped suit. It floated out of the darkness to land almost gently on the roof of the ziggurat.

“Hello, Colm,” the Doorman said, its tone like it was greeting an old friend. It was somewhat at odds with its horrific voice. “It’s been such a long time.”