We stood over the body of the man-wolf, watching to be sure it was dead. The temple was quiet apart from the everpresent grinding of the beast beneath us.

  “How did you get here?” I asked Gastard.

  “A compromise,” he lifted his visor and gestured to the small phoenix who had alighted on the altar at the far end of the temple. “Your bonded imp has proved his worth, if not his sincerity.”

  “I am no imp,” Astaroth called, his talons clicking as he circled the surface of the stone altar. “And I am pleased to note that your sword-minded minion has at least become accustomed to the idea of the possibility that my loyalty is sincere.”

  Gastard grunted, nudging Valefor’s furry shoulder with his boot.

  “He carried you?” Esmelda sounded scandalized, and I knew how she felt. Gastard’s feelings on the subject of demons had always been crystal clear. It was one thing for him to have traveled with Astaroth to keep an eye on him, quite another for him to allow himself to be carried by magic he couldn’t trust.

  “In a basket,” Astaroth answered.

  Gastard’s face was reddening, so I changed the subject.

  “What do you see? Is it safe to be in that circle?”

  “It won’t activate without intent,” Astaroth said. “Valefor and the other demons were using this to guide the Kachua.”

  “You already knew what it was?”

  Astaroth flapped off of the altar and landed on my shoulder. He weighed almost nothing, though he was still too big for him to ride around like that.

  “Yes. This entity is not unique. Creatures of flame and shadow, notoriously difficult to kill. It’s higher ranked than any of Calcion’s demons. Many of them must have given up their essence to bring it through the veil.”

  “What if it isn’t fed?” Esmelda asked. “Will it return to Bedlam?”

  “An entity this size,” Astaroth whistled sadly, “no. Without food, it will eventually enter a static state. Pushing it back through the veil would be almost as costly as bringing it here.”

  “It can’t be banished?” I was thinking about what Torgudai had done to Fladnag. He had a lot of power behind his spells, but all the light he could summon wouldn’t cover one leg of this behemoth. We hadn’t been able to destroy the Pebbleheart either. “What about sealed?”

  “Both are possible,” Astaroth said. “However, I doubt there are any of this world who possess the raw force and will necessary to do so. Forcing it to slumber is your only choice.”

  Gastard looked at his weapon. “Perhaps if I had a longer sword.”

  I looked to the altar. “Can we use that circle to control it?”

  A roar from outside drew our attention, and we hurried out of the temple. A pillar of light had risen from the wheeling Atlans, a bright needle piercing the black cloud rising from the Kachua’s back. The titan turned its head, and I could hear it draw a great breath.

  “The circle allows a single entity to engage with the mind of another,” Astaroth said, “and I am not strong enough to command such a creature.”

  “It’s going to breathe fire!” Esmelda gasped. Hundreds would die.

  “Astaroth,” I snapped out, “go help divert what you can.”

  The phoenix lifted from my shoulder and zoomed ahead. There was no way he could challenge the kachua’s will, but fire was his element, so he had to be able to do something to soften the attack.

  “I should be down there,” Gastard said, his grip tightening on the hilt of his sword.

  “Noivern will take you,” I said. “We left our templars on the ground. If both of you go, you might be able to help the Atlans get away.”

  “Both of us?” Esmelda said. “What about you?”

  “He said the circle only works for one person. I need to try to get in this thing’s head.”

  Esmelda looked worried. “If Astaroth can’t, I don’t see how any of us will be able to. I felt its Presence, even without an aetheric sense. If you establish a link with its mind, what would that do to you?”

  “I’m the highest-level person here. Not high enough, but it would be crazy to leave this place without trying. If I can’t do it, I can’t do it. If all I can do is distract it, that’s still something. You guys try to figure out a way to get the captives away. There have to be more demons down there. If all of them are dead, the spawns won’t be able to coordinate. But we don’t have a shot if we’ve got this thing vomiting fire and lava wherever it wants.”

  “It is what he must do,” Gastard said. “This is the only path, even if it may prove fruitless.”

  She hesitated, then nodded, and I whistled for Noivern to come down from where he was circling above the temple. The wyvern gave me a pitiful look when the other two mounted and I didn’t.

  “Take care of them, buddy,” I said.

  My companions rose from the mountain and headed for the fighting. I could see the light of the fire pouring from the kachua’s maw, though my vantage didn’t give me any inkling of how much damage it was doing or how much of a difference Astaroth was making.

  That wasn’t on me. I had one job now.

  If there had been a complex ritual involved in activating the circle, I would have been at a dead end right there. As soon as I stepped up to the altar, however, I extended my aetheric sense and could feel something else reaching back for me.

  It wasn’t the titan. The circle itself had a kind of spirit. Vague, insubstantial. The ghost of a ghost. Maybe some fragment of the demonic essence from whoever they’d killed to make it. It responded to my intent, my desire to engage with the kachua, and the chamber seemed to dim.

  The titan’s Presence was everywhere, and it felt like I was swimming down into a well, the pressure increasing with each stroke of my descent.

  The kachua’s aura had layers, and I was experiencing the outermost. Its spirit grew denser as I mentally approached its center. Slow going, and after a few minutes of intense and uncomfortable focus, it noticed me.

  Its awareness was like a blast of heat and wind. The kachua didn’t care about my intentions. I was no more than an insect.

  A moment later, I found myself lying on my back just outside of the circle.

  It had worked. Kind of. I was just too weak, too inexperienced, to use the tool in front of me.

  Valefor had done it. He was a rank above me, and we’d only been able to kill him by working together. It was also likely that the demon only told the kachua to do things that it had already wanted to do. Walk, smash, eat.

  I had my work cut out for me.

  After two more attempts, I was exhausted. The temple tilted as the titan shifted in place. The battle was still raging, and I was sitting in an empty building, wasting time. The attempts didn’t cost essence; they just wore me out. Though I’d gotten closer to its mind each time, I couldn’t count that as success. Even if I dove in far enough to where it could hear my commands, that didn’t mean it would obey them.

  More likely, it would squish me like the bug I was and leave me to live out my days as a vegetable.

  Still no information from the Discord System. I wouldn’t have been able to do even this much without Calcion’s eye helping me manipulate aura and Presence, but it wasn’t a cheat code.

  What was this thing, really? Not a dragon. It was too blocky for that. The mountain on its back was practically a shell. I called up an old System notice.

  “Are kachua’s a species of turtle?” My question hung in the air, unanswered. It kind of looked like one, and it couldn’t hurt to try.

  I didn’t keep the Potions of Turtle Mastery in my inventory. It would have been a waste of a slot, so I had to summon a chest and dig one out. The bottle held a moss-green liquid that was noticeably more viscous than average.

  It tasted like grass and had the consistency of syrup. It was hard to get down.

  A timer appeared in the corner of my vision. Ten minutes, just like the other potions.

  Back in the circle, it only took a moment to get myself back in the headspace to shift my perspective to the spiritual. Its outer aura felt different this time. Still huge, still heavy, but no longer oppressive. I wasn’t being treated like an intruder anymore.

  For the fourth time, I reached the point where the kachua noticed me. This time, however, I was not immediately ejected from the circle. The pressure increased, and my knees nearly buckled. Still, I could keep going.

  Totally motionless, and yet swimming, swimming down. Its core was somewhere in the great mass of its body, close to where a heart would have been in a normal animal, thrumming with power.

  Hello?

  I wished I’d told Astaroth to come back so I could ask him how to do this. I knew that trying to think verbal commands wouldn’t work. Whatever happened here, it wouldn’t be a conversation in English. Whenever I’d been able to influence spawns aside from Noivern, it had been almost instinctual. Aura pressed against aura, and the greater will won out.

  Only here, there was no question that I was the lesser party.

  It didn’t fight me. Despite the intense pressure, I felt welcomed, and I extended my aetheric sense a little further.

  My perceptions shifted abruptly. I was not a speck traveling within a vast entity; I was a part of that entity, and I could see everything within the domain of its Presence.

  “See” was too strong of a word. Feel, vaguely.

  The Atlans were a soft, nearly indistinguishable mass. Needles poked from the mass, the shamans, or their spells. The lesser entities were all around us, and they had a few sharp edges among them as well, whereas the spiritual signature of the human captives was as fragile as a spider’s web. Not good food. We had to eat so many to receive even the barest satisfaction.

  The kachua was hungry. We were hungry. It was so frustrating to have that hunger restrained. But no one was restraining us now.

  We sent out a pulse of our will, incapacitating a group of lesser entities and mortals alike. It was only a bite, but we could always eat more.

  We lowered our head, maw gaping, and then drew back. No. Why no? We didn’t want to eat mortals? Strange. They were not ideal prey, but they were prey nonetheless. No matter.

  There were a few sharper points among the indistinguishable masses. Mortals touched by Harmony. They would offer more sustenance than a thousand of the unchosen.

  No? We grew frustrated. The demons had been a nuisance, but they would not have refused us this meal.

  Demons.

  There was one now, busily working its meager magic. We seized it with our will, lowered our head, and snapped.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Delicious.

  We felt surprised at how far our neck could stretch. Odd that we would feel surprised by the working of our own body. Nonetheless, there were a few more morsels to take, and the strange compunction that had prevented us from devouring mortals did not rise in defense of Discordian entities.

  Our feet crushed scores of lesser entities. Wasted meat. Still, a pleasant sensation.

  The best morsels were gone now, but the crumbs remained.

  I blinked up at the vaulted ceiling of the temple and had to remind myself to breathe. That had been…intense. The kachua was shifting again, more active than ever, and I scrambled to get up and find the right speaking stick.

  “Gastard! Can you hear me?”

  I had to yell a few more times before I got a response.

  “I’m here.” There was a pause and something that sounded suspiciously like a zombie moan being cut off by a beheading. “The beast is wild. What are you doing?”

  “Trying to get it to eat demons. Was it working?”

  “Ah. Well done. It did attack the enemy, though I could not see its victims.” Chop. “The Atlans are not faring well.” Chop.

  “Are you fighting mobs right now?”

  “Of course.” He didn’t even sound winded.

  “I had to use a special potion to commune with the kachua, and I’ve only got one more. I’m going to try to get it to turn around and stomp some mobs on its way out. Can you and the Atlans try to separate the hostages from the monsters?”

  “I will speak with Torgudai.”

  “Thanks, talk soon.” I clipped the stick to my waist and fished out another potion. Dawn was still hours away, so the mobs wouldn’t despawn the moment the kachua and its protective cloud moved off, but if we were lucky, some would follow it. Then the goal would be to survive until morning.

  After downing more liquid grass, I dove back into the mind of the titan.

  So little essence in this world. Why should we remain? The portal that brought us had closed, and we are too large to slip through cracks in the veil. Still, there had been much food in the place where we were summoned. More than here.

  No more demons. Disappointing, but some of the lesser entities still had flavor. As we turned toward the storm, we dragged our will like a net across the ranks of the little ones. Why leave morsels behind? The humans were not good meat, and less susceptible to our command as well. Not worth the effort of pulling them in our wake.

  An exhausting realm, with so little essence to sustain us. Perhaps we should rest and allow the morsels to come to us. Not yet. The land under the storm is more pleasant than the land under the sun. Hateful sun. It cannot harm us, and yet, it persists in trying.

  Perhaps we should eat the sun. A pleasant daydream. What warm sustenance. The sun would fuel the fire in our belly for an age.

  A shift in the aether. Worthwhile prey at last.

  Once again, I was ejected from the circle, my head pounding. What had we—No, it, the kachua, seen? Out of Turtle Mastery, I collected my chest and went outside. The titan had turned around and taken a few steps in the right direction, and the plan had worked even better than I’d hoped. It had come up with the idea of using its will to bring the mobs with it as food on its own. Without demons to direct them, the lesser entities were helpless to resist its desire.

  A few small stones rolled by me as the mountain shook, and a spurt of lava erupted from the smoking volcano atop its back. I didn’t need a mental link to the titan to feel its eagerness or its anger. The aether was charged with the kachua’s killing intent.

  Working my way back down to the edge of its shell near its neck, I kept an eye out for the “worthwhile prey” and did a double take when I caught a glimpse of the offender.

  A glimpse of red-gold feathers through the cloud of smoke. Astaroth? No, it had been too big to be him. Way too big. Oh, crap. Had the kachua already eaten Astaroth? I hadn’t been able to differentiate the demons we snapped up when I was inside the titan’s mind. Hopefully, he’d gotten away.

  I could worry about that later. For now I needed to get down from this things back and go help the others. My boot slipped as the mountain shook again, causing me to stumble. As I grabbed a rocky outcrop, the new arrival showed itself.

  A burning crane the size of a 747 burst from the cloud and hit the kachua’s head like a slap. His Presense wasn’t as intense as the titan’s, but it was still powerful, and I recognized the feeling.

  David, formerly known as Captain Murderface. I didn’t know enough about the rules governing entities at his level to guess if he was breaking them by coming back to Plana, but seeing him sent a wave of relief through me. The kachua was out of our league. Was he out of David’s?

  The giant shapeshifter flew off as the kachua snapped at him. A wave of flame followed, but David dove under it, flying faster and more nimbly than any harpy, and countered with flame of his own.

  How could I help? There was still one more massive block of TNT in my inventory. I jogged to the end of the Kachua’s neck and lodged it under the edge of his shell below me, used flint to light its charge, and ran.

  David was strafing the kachua, going for its eyes. The titan roared, and the world shook. After that, the explosion of the TNT was an anticlimax, but it must have hurt, because the kachua punished me a moment later. I went from a full run to flat on my face against the rock, its will crushing me.

  I guess we weren’t friends anymore.

  The next few minutes passed with very little progress on my part, crawling forward foot by foot until the pressure lessened. Though I couldn’t overcome its Presence on my own, the kachua was busy. The noise of its fight with David filled the air: roaring flames, grinding stone, screeching and bellowing, an avalanche in a fistfight with a hurricane.

  I drank a healing potion so it wouldn’t feel like half my bones had been ground to shards, and I could actually walk to the side of its mountainous shell and look down. It was a long way to go without an Elytron. Trying to mentally summon Noivern was a no-go; there was too much aetheric interference from the giants. The kachua had stopped moving forward, and mobs swarmed around its feet like ants. A few flying spawns had risen in its defense, and David burned them to ashes as soon as they arrived.

  I’d already had one big fall today, and I wasn’t looking to repeat the performance. From where I was standing, it looked like the Atlans had taken up a position guarding the captives from Gundurgon, and they were holding their own. The battle had largely moved on, and they simply had to deal with the monsters that hadn’t been caught in the kachua’s wake.

  With a sigh, I summoned my chest and grabbed a handful of material coins before dropping a worktable beside me. My looting orb was topped off with monster essence, so I could imbue a few runes without having to dig into my experience. I crafted a full stack of ladder sections, converted most of them into a much smaller stack of ladders with Fixation runes, and then made more regular ladder pieces.

  Casually crafting on the back of a kaiju while it dueled another kaiju felt a tad odd, but there was nothing I could do for David at this point. After shifting around my inventory to make room for the ladders, I pointed at the air in front of me and affixed a ladder segment. It hung there, suspended by magic, and I summoned additional segments until it was ten feet long.

  When I jumped off the back of the kachua, the rung I grabbed gave a disturbing crack, but didn’t break, and the ladder held my weight. Extending the ladder while I was on it was awkward but doable, and I used most of a full stack of unruned segments after running out of the enhanced versions.

  It had to look ridiculous, a man in full armor climbing a rickety-looking ladder suspended in midair. I was also nowhere near the ground. The fixation runes, however, had a weight limit. Adding to the ladder segment by segment allowed me to find the point where the runes couldn’t quite do their job without giving out entirely. When the ladder was forty feet tall, it began to sink, bringing me gently toward the ground and the mobs.

  The descent gave me time to watch the fight. It seemed to be going well for David. He’d taken out one of the kachua’s eyes. Still, faced with a much larger and sturdier opponent, hitting and running was his only option. One mistake could lead to disaster, and it did.

  The kachua’s head lunged suddenly, its neck extending, and its massive jaws clamped on one of David’s brilliant wings. It shook its head, and a moment later, David’s wing had been ripped off. The great crane fell, blood streaming like fire, and began to change.

  Feathers fell away as scales grew in their place. David grew and grew, and in the few seconds it took for him to hit the earth, he already had new limbs, and he had become a totally different monster. A void dragon, dark and gleaming, roared up at the kachua as it swallowed a stolen wing. They were still no match in size, you could have been a town on the kachua’s back, but David had grown large enough to swallow a wagon whole.

  A titanic foot moved to stomp the dragon, who launched himself out of the way, returning to the air. I was so absorbed in the scene that I didn’t notice my ladder had touched ground until a zombie tried to climb it to get at me.

  Hopping down with smaragdine in hand, I cleared a path through the mobs and set out at a jog. A flash of light from the Atlants informed me that the shamans still had essence left, though they had to have used up most of their strength already. Dust rose from the pounding of my boots, and a voidman flickered in front of me before being cut down. I didn’t see Esmelda, but Gastard and the templars were easy to spot, clad in diamond armor.

  Dead mobs, zombies and trolls, and a chimera that was made entirely of snakes lined the ground. The Atlans had spread themselves thin to shield the throng of captives from Gundurgon, and they had suffered losses, but they had won.

  Gastard saluted me from a distance, and Torgudai rode to meet me. He was so covered in gore that I barely recognized him, his leathers and face slick with the blood of monsters.

  “Have you seen it?” He said, “The Great Eagle fights for us.”

  “Hard to miss,” I replied, glancing back at the kachua. Their clash thundered across the plain. “Did you know he would come?”

  “We cannot summon the Great Eagle,” Togudai shook his head. “But we did call, and we have been blessed with his answer.”

  Esmelda appeared out of the line of Atlans a moment later—she had found herself a horse. A little phoenix was riding on its rump behind her, his head tucked into his wings. I couldn’t sense him, so Astaroth was masking his Presence. I was glad I hadn’t accidentally killed him.

  “Is there anything we can do?” She asked, looking past us toward the titan.

  “Our spells are nothing to that evil,” Torgudai said. “It is in the hands of the Eagle now.”

  A purple cloud swallowed a cone of flame, competing breath weapons. The void dragon’s breath burned essence and destroyed souls. The kachua was not pleased. It roared again, a sound that resonated in my chest, and David was pushed back by the force of its will alone. But the shapeshifter didn’t have to kill the kachua, he just needed to tucker it out. Still, this battle had to be costing him as much as it cost the turtle. If he ran out of steam first, the kachua would devour him. There was no telling how long it could sustain itself with David’s essence.

  “What are you doing?” Esmelda asked.

  “Making sure I have ingredients.” I’d dropped the chest out of my inventory and begun sorting coins while thinking. I had base elixirs prepared, and some leftover shells. All I needed was the brewing stand, and that was in the collapsed airship. Noivern landed nearby, trilling happily. What a good boy.

  “Please continue explaining,” Esmelda said, annoyed.

  “I need to make a potion to help with the kachua situation. It’s perfectly safe.”

  “Perfectly safe? Why would you feel the need to add that qualifier?” Her voice rose in pitch.

  I grabbed what I needed from the chest and didn’t bother putting the rest back in my inventory before climbing onto my wyvern’s back.

  “Perfectly safe!” I yelled, and we took off. “Get the civilians farther away if you can!”

  Getting to the brewing stand was a bother, but after cutting through the deflated balloon, I got into the gondola and started the process. The Base Elixir bubbled as powdered baresh shell filtered down through the tubes, the elemental core that powered it all burning contentedly in its compartment.

  The kaiju battle continued outside as I waited impatiently for the process to finish. Interfacing with the kachua hadn’t left me with any negative side effects so far. It was a surreal experience, and my identity felt less solid while I was in there, but it would eject me whenever the potion ran out. Nothing to worry about.

  As soon as the potion was finished, I snatched it out of its holster and jumped back on Noivern. The wyvern made a noise of complaint during the rough treatment and then took off a moment later.

  The immensity of the kachua was hard to comprehend. Flying up to it didn’t feel like flying toward a monster, it was a landscape all its own until you noticed it move.

  It shifted, launching a spout of lava from its back. The stream was meant for David, but globs of superheated stone were flying everywhere, and Noivern had to swing around to avoid them. A few droplets sizzled against my armor, and the wyvern gave a pained cry as cinders burned small holes in the flesh of his wings, but we made it to the temple. A glowing river of lava, excess from the attack, was flowing down from the caldera.

  It probably wouldn’t get into the temple. Probably.

  “Take care of yourself,” I told Noivern as he deposited me at the entrance. He gave a sharp chirp, gnashing his sharklike teeth as if to chide me for not doing the same.

  “Yeah, yeah, I know.” It was darker inside the temple, and my eyes adjusted in a blink. The potion made me gag. Three in one day was a lot. Then I was in the circle.

  Troublesome. This prey was troublesome. One of Mizu’s chosen. Stronger than it appeared. We would win. It could not kill us. Nothing can kill us. Its breath, though painful, was only a shadow of the true void. Shapechanger. Imposter. We had faced true dragons and devoured them. This creature was not a threat. It had taken one of our eyes, but we did not need our eyes to see.

  Its power was waning. Our core was the greater of the two. A vast store of essence. Our flesh would restore itself in time. Damage to our body was a superficial concern. So quick, so sharp. Without a head, our capacity to eat would be diminished. Would we lose our head to this echo of a dragon?

  Unacceptable.

  If we retreated within our shell, it would waste the last of its strength in seeking to destroy us. We could rest while the prey exhausted itself.

  Yes. We could rest.

  This hateful, empty world. We would devour it entirely. Every morsel. Every speck. But not now.

  We pulled ourselves within ourselves and hardened our aura. Foolish pretender. We have your scent. We can always find you now.

  But first, we sleep.