Tia shrank against Li-Pang. Both stood atop a bloody stone slab, one of many along the ground of a deep chasm. Much as the demon terrified her, she couldn’t bring herself to step into the ankle-deep gore that covered the pit floor. Besides, Li-Pang wouldn’t let her. He’d ended the ritual and slaughtered the elfin sorcerers responsible from pique, not altruism. She wretched her eyes from the corpses and lifted them to the ceiling, where Saint Persephone’s dome groaned and cracked as a result of the murderous ceremony. Tia and Li-Pang stood at the base of a phantasmal blue shaft at the center of an arcane storm of white, orange, and violet bolts of energy. Far above their heads loomed the image of a crystalline city.
“Servants of Justice!” The demons voice filled the dome. “You sought to bridge realms meant to remain separate.”
“We were in disfavor,” said a perfect voice. “Our names hung by a frayed thread. We required a place.”
“You sought the material worlds advantages without paying its penalties. In so doing, you imperiled cosmic structure.” Li-Pangs features transformed into a mix of evil and exhalation. “Very well. You shall have a place in the material world. Henceforth, your spirits are bound to this realm in the cycle of life and death.”
The demon’s hands reached above his head. He braced himself against something invisible and heaved.
And the fantastical city dissolved into a billion glittering shards that fell and faded away to nothing before striking the ground. The bluish tint vanished.
Not-Li-Pang took a deep breath. Exhaled. He stared at the pits floor. “The portal is severed.”
The Cathedral trembled. Large and small stones fell from the ceiling, which seemed to be rotating.
Li-Pang eyes widened in shock. “My Other Self is manifesting its presence.”
Tia gasped. The destroyed city had been replaced by a barred spiral made of stars, suspended over a city of alien aspect.
A blackened bit of skin fell from Not-Li-Pangs upper arm and fluttered past Tia’s nose. The demons frame trembled. He rubbed his wrist. More charred skin fell away. “My grandeur overwhelms this flesh.” His gaze returned to the spiral. “My Other Self sends an invitation. It possesses the expertise to remedy my situation.” He nodded. “I accept its offer.”
A hand settled on Tia’s shoulder. She whirled. “Peter!” Her heart pounded with joy and concern.
Kyle stood next to the knight, on the brink of collapse.
“Tia!” Peter embraced her, a smile on his face.
Tears welled in Tia’s eyes as she wrapped her arms around Peter’s waist.
Behind Tia, the demon uttered an incantation. Then he grabbed Tia’s upper right arm as Kyle collapsed onto all three of them.
Darkness. Nausea. An impression of impossible geometries and massive unseen objects. Tia closed her eyes lest she glimpse mind shattering abominations. Sensation faded.
Then: Contact.
A hard surface pressed into Tia’s back. Tia opened her eyes and stared into the starry spiral. She took a breath and choked. The air was wrong. Thin. She turned her head. She spotted Kyle’s prostrate bulk. Peter’s back rose. The knight rubbed his neck. Past him, Not-Li-Pang stared at a black lagoon ringed by weird angular shapes.
Tia blinked. The weird shapes resolved into gargantuan seashells. Inhuman robed figures strode along the lagoons edge.
Lagoon? Tia remembered a lagoon from a dream vision. This lagoon. The dominion of a gargantuan tentacled abomination. Tia’s gut clenched as she spun her head in panic. Was it here?
A reddish-brown shape broke the water’s surface. Tia’s heart almost stopped beating. It rose and straightened into an immense fleshy spire. A second tentacle erupted from the lagoon. Then a third and a fourth. And still more of the creature emerged from the depths – wagon sized eyes, spear-like thorns, and a dull yellow beak that could bite through a castle wall.
God above. The vison was true. Tia fought to remain conscious. Her head pounded. Her vision contracted. She couldn’t think.
The abomination didn’t faze Li-Pang. “Greetings, other self.” He walked towards the horror.
An eye bigger than a horse, crisscrossed with fat crimson veins swiveled and fixed the demon with its stare.
Li-Pang halted in his tracks, swayed. Another bit of blackened flesh dropped to the ground. “Yes, I am inconvenienced. A consequence of unity.” His voice cracked on the last words.
The monstrosities eye shifted to Tia. Her mind fell into a liquid blackness. Slimy things brushed against her arms and legs.
A hand reached grabbed Tia’s elbow. “God above.” Peter’s voice sounded distant. Or awed. “What? Where?”
A portion of the monster extended towards the overhead spiral: a tree-trunk thick base capped by a ball of writhing serpents. The squirming mass swung in Tia’s direction, a tangle of brownish black tubes, pale suckers with spear-sized thorns at their center and obscene dangling pink polyps.
Tia’s vision contracted, turning black at the edges. All strength fled her limbs.
“No.” Peters voice was a futile protest against unstoppable doom. Steel scraped against leather as the knight unsheathed his sword. He planted himself before Tia, a man in ragged finery with a yard of steel in one hand and a bronze knife in the other.
The knot of twisted flesh descended.
Tia whimpered and buried her face in the flagstones.
“No.” Li-Pangs voice sounded distant. “They may prove useful.”
Tia opened her eyes. The tentacled abomination flickered back into focus. But the perspective was wrong. Li-Pang was underneath Tia, and she couldn’t move her limbs. And this immense dark mass was right above her. Then Tia realized her predicament – she was wrapped in the monster’s tentacles!
“Die, hell spawn!” Peter hacked away at a rubbery appendage wrapped about his waste with single minded determination.
A scream built in the back of Tia’s throat. This is it. This is my death.
The creatures scaly skin split beneath Tia, exposing a black and pink maw that emitted a noxious stench.
This is it! Tia struggled to no avail. Peter shouted and cursed to her side.
Then, with no hesitation at all, Li-Pang stepped into that orifice which sealed after him as though it had never existed.
The ground receded. A sharp pain pricked Tia’s arm. Her limbs turned leaden. Peter's cries subsided. Then, blackness.
