Felix (that’s me, by the way, in case you had forgotten already) didn’t see any of this, of course. If he had, he would have breathed a light sigh of relief at his party’s salvation. But he hadn’t. He was too busy being knocked around by Dalia after his arm had finally shattered.

  It had been a long time coming—frozen arms just weren’t meant to be used as clubs. They were just a little to brittle and prone to flaking off in pieces. Not to say that wooden clubs didn’t do that, but wood was a little bit more durable than muscle, skin, and bone gone frosty from a spell made of the very fabric of reality. Well, all spells were technically made of that, but you could really feel it in annihilation spells. All that space and time and, well, thingness screaming at you that you shouldn’t be alive anymore, let alone in one piece, or in many pieces for that matter. Thingness didn’t want you; and if thingness didn’t want you, nothingness was perfectly happy to accept your soul.

  Felix was out of weapons, but he wasn’t out of fight. Instinct wouldn’t give up the battle until one or the other of them was beaten six feet into the ground, thumped solidly in the head with a caretaker’s shovel, salted and burned, and then finally buried in a couple tons of dirt and topped by headstone with the message ‘IN NOMINE CHRISTI I AD INFERNUM’ chiseled jaggedly into the marble. Yeah, he was that kind of aspect. But honestly, it could be worse. Instinct could have been bound to Envy and Lust instead of Wrath and Pride.

  Just thinking about that made him shudder. Those were nastier, more insidious sub-aspects. At least Wrath was straightforward with it’s cruelty. Lust was just hideous.

  Meanwhile, while he was thinking about these things, his body was taking a beating. That meant nothing. He had already taken a beating three times over in this fight, one more couldn’t hurt.

  His ribs were most certainly cracked at this point. There was just no getting around that. He had taken an explosion to the face, and was now being treated as a magical punching bag. The punches being blasts of pure force coming from waves of Dalia’s hand as she walked towards him, other hand twisting in knots as it drew deep blue, arctic ice colored lines through the air.

  It was a spell not too unlike the first annihilation one, except perhaps ever so slightly more sinister. From what Felix could tell, it was designed to latch on to him and start slowly corroding his soul.

  No. Thank. You.

  Felix started metaphorically banging on the confines of whatever cell he was contained in. He wanted out. He wanted to get out of the way. But he was stuck where he was, trapped and helpless, having given up control to the madness. It frustrated him to no end.

  Of course, Instinct had better fighting IQ than even he did, so he was gone by the time an abyssally cold blob of something squirming sailed by and plopped onto the ground with a hollow squishing noise. It dissipated a moment later, having not found a target for whatever torturous demise it held in store for its prey. That was a nasty spell, whatever it was—parasitic in nature. Soul mimic, maybe?

  The tides had turned against him rather quickly. The moment his arm had shattered he had found himself on the back foot once again.

  By now, his body was covered in patches of ice and bitten by frostbite, but Instinct didn’t care. He just kept fighting. Each blow Dalia threw was either dodged or blocked or straight up ignored in favor of a devastating counter. That was how Instinct fought. It was brutal and unimaginative, but unquestionably effective.

  Dalia was down to four healing patches, then three. Blood streamed from her side and she had a large gash in her side that had frozen shut somehow. Both of which refused to heal no matter what sort of time magic she put into them. She was also missing a patch of hair that she hadn’t bothered to replace. No point, really.

  Felix, on the other hand, had the previous injuries, but he had also lost a solid chunk of his side to yet another—hastily cast and albeit underpowered—annihilation ritual thrown together on the spur of the moment when he had spent an extra few seconds snapping the witches neck. A set of reddened fingernail marks streaked down his front like claws from a vicious beast, and a few holes had been poked into his upper chest and belly from thrown icicles that had broken off and melted inside the wounds. Small trails of blood leaked out of the punctures, but not enough to be particularly worrisome.

  He also seemed to be missing his appendix. Some thin-bladed piece of ice had split his lower right abdomen open in a thin line that had suctioned itself shut and was now dripping blood. A small organ had dropped out the back a little bit ago, perhaps having frozen to the blade as it passed through. He had felt it go, and while it could have been a chunk of his intestines, he was rather partial to the idea that the useless bit of flesh had decided to abandon ship. The intestines were too important for him to think about losing them at the moment. All the appendix did was cultivate beneficial bacteria, and he could do without that for the rest of his life if necessary.

  And right then, something entirely unexpected happened, even for instinct. Dalia’s fist clocked him across the jaw. It was so completely out of the blue that he didn’t really know what to do with it. He stumbled backwards, dazed and off balance.

  Don’t be too surprised that Instinct could be taken off guard. All sorts of things in the natural kingdom can. Deer get hypnotized in the headlights of cars, cats get startled by cucumbers, goats can feint after sneezing too hard, and cuttlefish camouflage can short-circuit with flashing lights. Everything is fallible, it’s just a matter of what their weakness is. Instinct’s, as it turned out, was physical contact in a magical battle.

  Dalia took advantage of this moment of hesitation, stepping in and driving a spell-laden fist straight into his gut. Felix’s insides jumbled about painfully. It wasn’t a lethal spell by any means, but it was supremely uncomfortable and very disorienting. And by the time Instinct had recovered from the shock, he was already sporting a good many new bruises and cuts, one of which was alarmingly close to the artery on his inner thigh.

  He coughed up blood. There was always something disconcerting about that. Blood was supposed to stay on the inside; and if it didn’t, you weren’t supposed to taste it in large amounts. It was completely fine to bleed from a knee or a paper-cut on the finger or a skid on the hands. Even tasting it from a bleeding tooth or a crooked nose was within expectations. But throwing up blood was a different thing entirely. It weirded out the senses and caused heightened concern. Of course, his emotions weren’t in control enough to do anything about said concern, but it still didn’t feel right.

  Felix, now reoriented, took a step forward and slipped on something, falling face first into the ground. He rolled over, now bleeding from a newly formed cut in his forehead, and looked down to see what he had tripped on.

  It was his shield.

  He had thought the thing lost when he had dropped it back during his first encounter with Dalia, back when he had first experienced the overwhelming force that was madness itself. It was in far worse shape now than it had ever been, even after the beating the treant had given it. The explosion, as well as the annihilation spell, had done quite a number on it.

  The boss was flattened completely, and the hickory boards were warped and bent cruelly. A critical fracture ran from top to bottom through the center. Ice coated a small strip of the aluminum on the outer edge. The shield looked as though if it had a mouth it would groaning from the pain. In all fairness, though, it was an absolute miracle the thing had lasted this long. Still, while it wouldn’t be protecting him anymore, as it was too structurally compromised to resist more than a single blow, so it was only good for one thing—taking the place of his arm.

  Felix snagged the shield in one hand and, in a brilliant show of acrobatics he didn’t even know he had been capable of in the first place, spun in a circle bringing himself to his feet and winging it backhand to slam edge-first into Dalia’s neck.

  Her spine snapped sideways with an ugly crack and she was flung off into a pile of rubble. She sprawled there, cold eyes watching Felix as her third sigil burned and her neck righted itself with a series of grotesque pops. The time magic was getting weaker, taking more time to set her body back to normal.

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  Two left.

  She stood, tanking a bludgeon to the face from his shield, and drew a sign in the air. Deteriorate. Then Felix stepped in and whaled her across the face again, knocking her sideways again. It wasn’t quite enough to draw a heal from her, but she did a bobble-head for a little bit before she righted herself and drew a second symbol in the air. Degrade. Another hit, another symbol. Decay. She lost yet another healing mark.

  One left.

  Defile. Dilapidate. Degenerate. Desolate.

  A crushing blow to the top of her head, caving in her skull and squashing her brain flat. She was forced to burn her final mark. This was it! She was out of healing! He could get her if only Instinct…

  Instinct was far ahead of his thoughts, disorienting Dalia with a swing of the shield so hard it finally snapped the thing in half. He didn’t let up, pounding on her with one half until it shattered then switching to the other. Silver lines were forming at her fingertips, then wiggling into a symbol. His only hope now was to kill her and stop the ritual from being completed.

  Instinct leaped forward in one last desperate attack and drove the piece of the shield through her chest and out the back.

  But it was too late. The ritual was complete. Dalia’s last symbol flew to join its counterparts in a circle surrounding the two of them. The final word had been added to the ring of magic. Fate had been sealed.

  Die.

  The wind picked up, wild blades of invisible energy digging slices into flesh. Blood was whipped in a circle, drops turning into deadly needles and becoming a storm. The temperature plummeted, snap freezing the blood and icing the very water in the air. Skin whitened and split. Eyes shriveled and blackness closed in. Ice began creeping over bodies. And through all of it could bee seen an eerie silver glow spelling a single word in a forgotten tongue from a forgotten time.

  Felix saw the word blaze across the dust and blood in a blinding, eye-searing halo of silver and palest blue. It was a spell, not a ritual—perhaps one of the only true spells a ritualist could learn.

  It happened again. And again. And again. Over and over that silver light raced the wind and lit the slowly darkening sky. It erased the black borders from his vision, his dying eyes comprehending it in full despite their near inability to see anything else. And to his horror, he watched the wounds on Dalia’s body creep back together and seal, leaving nothing but small white lines behind to remember the once odious gashes that had threatened her life.

  She couldn’t heal the shield sticking through the center of her chest, but she didn’t have to immediately. She could afford to be patient and pull the shield out little by little while healing the damage behind it. Felix could not. He did not have infinite mana like she did. He was not blessed by a goddess.

  But was it the goddess that was supplying her with mana? Was it even possible for a being so high on the scale of existence, yet still without absolute power, to bend down and gift a puny mortal with so much power without squishing them on the spot? Felix’s consciousness churned as he tried to remember the rules of the demonic gods. What was it that they had to do in order to have relations with humans, in order to pass down prophesies and warnings… Ah, they had to have an intermediate—a being of middling power as a go-between.

  Felix’s dry and cracking eyes moved instinctively to the Shadow. It was still there, on the edge of the circle, watching. Those white eyes stared back at him, emotionless, infinitely deep, twisting with a strange force that would have made his consciousness fall into them if he had been in control. He needed control.

  He slammed his metaphorical fists against his cage, futilely trying to take back his body from the madness. But it was just that: futile. He railed and raged and bargained and pleaded to no avail. The bar between him and control was stiff as iron and cold as steel. There was no way for him to get back in the drivers seat no matter how hard he tried.

  He was going to die.

  Consciousness turned away from the rather pitiful sight and started an argument with Soul, who had warped internal time again to give them an opportunity to fix things.

  “Come on! You have to do something. If you don’t we’ll all die. I don’t even need Mind to be there. All I need is an instant of access and we’ll be fine. If we can just cut Dalia off from her source of mana the ritual will stop, she will die, and we will survive. Can you not tell Instinct to back off for just one moment?”

  Soul shook his head sadly. “I could. But if I do, we will suffer greatly for it in the long term. I’m not willing to sacrifice tomorrow for the sake of today. I can, however do something to help.” He turned back into the dark room and yelled at the top of his metaphysical lungs, which was enough to literally shake the very foundations of Felix’s existence, “HEY MIND, QUIT YOUR MOPING AND GET OVER HERE! CONSCIOUSNESS NEEDS YOUR HELP SAVING BODY, SO DO YOUR DAMN JOB!”

  Mind, who up to this point had been curled up in the corner repeating the phrase “monster… we’re a monster” over and over and over again, looked up shakily. His eyes were unfocused, and the seams holding him together were slowly starting to show wear. One of the knots had snapped, as well.

  That wasn’t a good sign.

  When Mind had caught up to the present, he nodded and stood, walking over to Soul and placing his arm through the access hole for the third time in as many days. Soul felt it when he connected with Consciousness. He breathed a sigh of relief and disconnected from direct contact, lightening the load on both of them. He still listened in, though—he didn’t have a choice, as he was the conduit.

  “W-what’s going on?” Mind asked, voice trembling with an odd mix of fear, shame, and… was that anger? What was the anger directed at? Instinct? Himself?

  Consciousness related the problem to Mind once more, then asked—for the second time—for help, “Can you deal with Instinct, please? Just for a second? I need an opening.”

  Mind glanced around them, nervous, raising his free hand to the raw series of gashes on his face made by Instinct’s claws. When Instinct didn’t appear, he turned back to Consciousness and said, in a barely audible whisper, “I can try. I don’t know how much good it’ll do, but I can try.”

  “If you do, I will break every seam in your body and dance on your petrified, fetid corpse for the next hundred years. You don’t want to experience that again, do you? Just think about it: natural madness, not the plastic wrapping we have on now. Madness that gets in your bones and runs through your veins in black drops of silent torment, madness that renders the mind into a thousand thousand pieces.” Instinct laughed, long and harsh and cold. It was a different kind of cold than Dalia, though. That laugh was far more cruel, far more evil, far more intensively dark than the worst villain Soul had ever heard.

  Mind’s eyes went wild, the seams on his chest slowly unraveling as terror overwhelmed him. He was helpless in the face of that terror, like a child in the face of an apex predator.

  Instinct stepped from the shadows once again. The glowing eye where his heart should have been examined Mind and those needle teeth grew into a wide smile. The spines on his back grew molten with anticipation, his eyelids slowly peeled back their own stitchings and revealed a sliver of the coins underneath, and his claws extended ever so slightly. Instinct was in predator mode.

  Mind flinched, causing those eyelids to inch upwards a little more.

  Soul tensed. He was preparing to jump in in case Instinct attacked. Something like interfering personally with the outside world in place of Mind wasn’t worth spending the power. However, if Mind were to fall, the rest of Felix would fall rapidly thereafter—likely including Soul himself, though in a different manner than the others. Interfering would be worth it in that case.

  But Instinct didn’t attack. Not yet. Mind didn’t give him the opportunity, as something in his posture must have set off alarm bells in Instinct that this aspect wasn’t yet weak enough to be taken.

  Instead, he turned to the hole in the lining and spoke to Consciousness. “Little thing, you were permitted to watch, not to interfere. As of yet, you do not know the depths of what you do. There are powers beyond your comprehension in this battle, the vastness of which you could not grasp. Mind here knows of at least some; I know most; Soul, of course, knows them all. But you? Do not try to understand just yet. You would end up as Mind is becoming and once was—a broken little thing with no will of its own and no Life to call home. A creature like me. Lesser.

  “I will allow this small action of yours. It poses no threat to us. Indeed, it will even benefit us in the long term. Know this, however. When Mind fails, come to me. I will provide the opportunity you seek, should you ever wish to gather to yourself that which you most desperately need. Until then, I bid you farewell.”

  Instinct stepped backward into the infinite darkness of the prison walls and disappeared.

  Soul breathed a sigh of relief, then turned back to watch as Consciousness continued to push against the wall that was Instinct. That had been a close one. If not for the near necessity of allowing Consciousness through, the interaction between Mind and Instinct could have gone very differently.

  There was another way—a worse way. But not even Instinct wished to choose that path just yet.

  Felix pounded against the iron bar that was the madness, yet it refused to budge even a little. He pounded and pounded and pounded until his head hurt and his eyes started to bulge, but to no avail.

  And then there was a little give. It wasn’t a lot, but it was enough to slip some small amount of control through, enough to will that instant of true comprehension directly into the being that was the Shadow of Madness. He had one chance with this. Only one. So he could not afford to waste it.

  Eyes connected. Minds competed. Souls entwined. Felix fell into that twinned, infinite, impossible abyss that jarred his consciousness simply by existing.

  And the world went white.