I woke up in a battlefield littered with corpses. Humans made up the majority of the dead though occasionally rings of them surrounded a fallen demon. The sky was pure white, the sun a black hole. There was an unnatural clarity to the landscape, every line and crease visible to me no matter the distance. I remembered losing to the Narahven and the opium she jabbed into my vein.

Desolada.

Paimon appeared beside me. Again he wore the appearance of an older brother, or perhaps it was supposed to be me a decade in the future. He wore a soldier’s uniform, pristine white, with four golden epaulettes on the shoulder.

What battlefield was this? Did it matter? Mankind had warred with the Goetia for over a thousand years. Paimon must have witnessed so many of these that they merged into a single battlefield stretched across time.

I was forced to speak first. “Greetings, master.”

“Come.”

I followed, avoiding stepping on the dead.

We stopped before the corpse of a praying-mantis demon. It resembled a woman whose arms ended in organic scythes. Black chitin covered most of her body, shining and unmarked. Blood pooled around her exposed joints and her skull was caved in. I recognized her, though here she looked slightly different: the demon Jokul killed in the Amphitheater. Lyra’s murderer.

Paimon knelt next to her. “This was Tasura. A great artist who identified much with the feminine aspect of mankind. She was not one of the Goetia but she was much beloved by us. She possessed an understanding of aesthetics no human has ever imagined. Her art in the Mental Realm rivaled anything I have witnessed in the physical universe. Creation, destruction. Like the stars that burn themselves to birth light. And some mortal brutes executed her in public.”

“She..." I trailed off, loathe to offend Paimon.

"I already know your thoughts," said the demon lord. "Speak them aloud."

"Was she not the demon who killed Lyra?"

Paimon stepped away from the corpse. Her wounds healed in seconds and an invisible hand lifted her to her feet. She had a striking face---not quite beautiful, but memorable.

“You are young, so I will forgive such foolishness,” said the demon lord. “Tasura would never harm an innocent, particularly one she favored. She was unique among our kind. She viewed mortality as precious, deserving of our protection. If violence never struck her down Tasura would have lived forever, safe within Desolada. Instead she chose to mingle among your kind in a suicidal attempt to assist you against the coming storm. Demons view humans as a weak species, but she alone considered mortals sacred. How can one truly value life if it cannot be taken from them?"

I swallowed. "I am sorry to have accused her."

Paimon waved and Tasura collapsed, lifeless. "Do not mistake me. This is no chastisement. Your victory over Barrow paid great honor to her memory. Not that a memory is much. She is less than a ghost, now. None of the others favored her enough to remember her spirit. As eternity progresses I too will forget her, and no trace of her will remain."

I remained silent as we continued along the battlefield.

“This war has ended many,” he said. “You bested two great enemies yet succumbed to Zephyr, the weakest of the Four Winds.”

I looked at the ground. “A valuable lesson. It makes me hopeful that justice does exist. If that’s true then perhaps no one is free from judgment.”

Corpses began to return to life as we walked past, groups of soldiers locked in eternal combat against their resurrected foes. Closest was a demon in the shape of a whitesteel fox. A cluster of metal ribbons formed its tail, waving languidly in the air. Three men faced it with spears held leady. The demon pounced, a blur of movement. Tails flashed and the soldiers fell apart in chunks of gore.

“Nothing can survive eternity,” he said. “Over a long enough period of time everything must happen. Reality shall end, irreality shall become. We all have infinite destinies. You cannot avoid failure any more than you could avoid triumph.”

The past few days had turned me into little more than an animal, reacting on instinct and fear. I closed my eyes, reflecting on everything that had happened. The tesseract,, killing Barrow, the fight with Zephyr, and now being forced to discuss philosophy with an ancient demon lord in the Mental Realm. I was in no state to figure out what he meant.

“You have given me much to think about,” I said.

“You will learn,” said Paimon, drawing my attention back to him. “Mortal philosophers corrupted your mind with their paradoxes and parables. Time is the universe acting upon itself. It is change. It cannot exist as a single frozen moment. A great power compels the universe to breathe. Some call it the Increate, others call it the anima. Because of it, nothing lasts forever.”

His words resonated with me. Exploring my mental library had been a humbling experience. Much of what I believed contradicted itself or made no sense. What I did know about most subjects could barely fill a couple pages. All my philosophical texts and personal musings about time amounted to no more than a couple sentences.

“I’ve been limiting myself,” I mused aloud. “Time is not just the past. It’s the moment I live in. The future in front of me. I can’t continue to see my power as nothing more than a way to correct mistakes.”

Paimon nodded. “You understand more than I hoped. The Mental Realm is beyond the comprehension of any being, even myself. Attempting to define and limit your mind will only restrict your potential. Though time is only a fragment of the anima, understanding it is a path towards power. To my knowledge you are the first among your kind to display this ability. Some of the Goetia know cantrips but if you can overcome Astaroth’s tesseract the others will pose little threat.”

Even though I had lost an unnecessary fight against another mortal, he spoke as if I had personally bested Astaroth and by extension could hold my own against other demon lords.

“You honor me,” I said.

Paimon looked at me for the first time. The weight of his regard froze me in place. I felt his presence all around me, suffusing the landscape and the sky, The demon lord was far more than just the uniformed figure standing before me. I was like an intruder in another person’s dream, encompassed within this vast and unknowable mind and subject to its uncertain rules.

“Honor yourself,” he said. “I have chosen you as one of my Echoes because I know what you are capable of. You are not perfect. Nothing is. Do not fail me excessively and do not betray me. In light of your recent triumphs, allow me to grant some knowledge you will find most interesting. First, the sword that once powered the tesseract is known as Dasein. It is, and has always been, your blade. Across all times and all realities it is destined to always find you. Meditate upon it and discover the truth.

"Second, I must warn you about your situation in the mortal world. Zephyr wears a crude replica of the seven-league boots, allowing her to travel large distances with a single step. She makes haste towards Odena and you will be arriving soon. I cannot reveal to you what the Goetia plan for that city, but it will challenge you like nothing before. Astaroth has made a great declaration against mankind, and though most of us remain neutral, the coming chaos will change everything."

The scene around us distorted into one much different than the others. Our steps carried us through a black void. No signs remained of the path we had walked to arrive here.

A string of bright lights glittered in the distance. At first I thought they were stars. Then the scene shifted abruptly and I was standing on the source of the luminescence. We rode upon the back of a winged serpent as it undulated through the void; the lights I had seen were its golden scales, shining in defiance of the surrounding emptiness.

Paimon stood next to me on the back of this great beast. I recalled Sensi's tarot card, the Lord of the Void. The one who slayed the last angel.

“How can I escape what's coming?" I said.

"There is no escape. Astaroth has bound you to his destiny." The demon lord settled into a lotus position on the angel's back. Even a single scale dwarfed us both in comparison. Its size was incomprehensible. "You have already been asleep for an hour and thirty-seven minutes before coming to the Mental Realm. Zephyr spent much of this time recovering. Hunting you depleted most of her power. It is only a matter of time until she reaches Odena, and there you will meet your fate. Your body has metabolized Zephyr's sedative, though the paralytic will last a while yet. Soon you will wake of your own accord."

I expected his words to make me feel panicked, trapped. Instead I felt nothing. Here I was only a mind. Divorced from my body, the usual signals of distress no longer distracted me. Despite my stoic acceptance, I was not looking forward to returning to the physical world.

"You may think these are unworthy gifts, given your recent accomplishments," said Paimon. "Once you understand everything, the true worth of my words shall be revealed. Conquer those that would stand before us, Leones."

* * *

Pain brought me back to reality. Not as bad as before but still enough to make me yearn for more time with Paimon and his cryptic warnings. The world blurred past, vague glimpses of snow and the stars above. Each of her steps propelled us forward a thousand feet; the effect was disorienting enough I closed my eyes and tried to fall unconscious once again.

Wind burned my face raw, a small distraction from the spasms wracking my body. Zephyr carried me like a sack of grain, each step driving her bony shoulder into my gut, the side of my head bouncing against her lower back. Ropes bound my wrists. When my hands stopped spasming I unclenched my fingers and experimented. No fine motor control but I could rotate my wrists against the ropes and bend my elbows a touch.

The West Wind must have felt my movements and came to a halt, depositing me on the ground with casual disregard. The snow felt like a thousand needles prickling my wind-chafed face.

I could turn my head enough to mark the position of the moon; a couple hours had passed even though it felt like minutes in the Mental Realm. The spasms were infrequent enough that I could grasp my time magic between bursts of pain. As of now it was useless. Reversing time would only prolong this ordeal.

Zephyr crouched next to me. Sweat glistened at her brow and her chest rose and fell in a deep, steady rhythm. She was a vicious little thing but the combination of our fight and my bulk must have taken its toll on her stamina. “We’ve made great time. Almost back to Odena.”

My attempts to mouth words at her must have looked pathetic. She watched with gleeful malice as my lips twitched nonsense threats. When her breathing returned to normal she scooped me back up and resumed her march.

As we continued along I experimented more with the limits of my movement. I counted time in my head as a mantra against the pain. The more time I spent conscious and unable to move, the more I began to panic. Complete helplessness frays away at one’s sanity.

Minutes passed. Breathing no longer felt like sucking air through a reed. I focused all my willpower on bending my pinky finger and, miraculously, it curled on demand. Progress. I adjusted to the pain as well as possible, accepting the rhythm of agony, each pulse coming slightly later until over a minute separated them.

Ten minutes and forty three seconds of torture later we came to a halt.

Voices murmured at the edge of my hearing. Again I collided with the ground, grateful for the blanket of snow. We were outskirts of Odena, within shouting distance of the outlying farms and supply stations.

Thousands of people occupied a haphazard crescent of makeshift tents and shelters skirting an invisible barrier around the city. Smoke curled from hundreds of fires. At first I thought it was a horde of refugees but many wore the rich clothing of the upper class. It was as if a large, random section of Odena’s population had decided to spend the night camping.

“What the fuck is this?” said Zephyr.

She grabbed my legs and dragged me to the nearest people clustered around a fire. Fresh blood blossomed from beneath her bandaged shoulder.

My cheeks flushed with windburn and indignation.

One of the group noticed us, a large, bald man in a furs worth more than a commoner’s yearly wage. He pointed us out to his companions.

“I’m Zephyr,” she said. “I’ve been gone less than a day. What happened?”

The bald man offered her a sickly smile. “Oh, we all came out here.”

She waited for him to continue but he remained silent. “Why did you come out here?”

He frowned and turned to his companions. They all had the refined air of the relatively well-off---diplomats or owners of small industry, perhaps. A crone with a puckered face and an abundance of pearl jewelry coughed up something foul and spit to the side. The others had the decency to look abashed, as if they were witness to Zephyr committing some tactless gaffe.

A cold pit formed in my stomach.

Annoyance and impatience tinged Zephyr’s voice. “It is a simple question, citizen. I am an authorized authority of Odena. Simple questions, simple answers. Why are so many people out here?”

“We came out here,” said the bald man. The others muttered amongst themselves. Some glanced at me with fleeting interest.

Zephyr forced her response out as if it caused her physical pain. “Too simple. What is stopping you from going back?”

Silence.

None too gently Zephyr snatched my legs and dragged me to the next group of people. Common workers from the look of them, most of them passed out around the fire beneath threadbare blankets. Only two of them were still awake, sipping from flagons and staring into the fire as if it contained the mysteries of the universe.

Zephyr’s interrogation fared no better than her last attempt. She screamed in frustration. The men drank from their flagons and ignored her outburst.

“Fine,” she said. She slipped them a couple silver coins and muttered some instructions.

Silent and dull-eyed, they hoisted me up by the arms, trying to balance me on my feet like parents guiding a toddler through its first steps. My boots sagged against the ground; I could still barely bend my knees, let alone support myself.

“For the love of mercy,” said the Narahven. “Pick him up and let’s go.”

I struggled against them, which amounted to little more than me twisting my elbows and rolling my head. One of the workers heaved me onto his shoulder. Back to the grain-sack treatment. A spasm of pain left me docile.

We cut through the camp and towards the city. Large, finely-wrought tents belonging to the gentry stood out amongst the shelters of the commonfolk. Though the social classes did mingle in Odena it was an unexpected sight, as if everyone had set up camp at random.

When we came to the invisible division between the ring of emigrants and the city outskirts the men dropped me to the ground, turned, and began to walk back toward their camp. Zephyr shouted and chased after them.

Shivering in the cold, I looked towards the city and the horror that awaited us there. The distant figures of guardsmen stood at attention outside the city. They remained motionless, as if they were toy figurines arranged against some artificial tableau.

Zephyr returned, alone, and muttered to the sky, “What the fuck is going on?”

She rolled her injured shoulder and grimaced. With a nod she made her decision, grabbing one of my ankles with her left hand. She heaved, digging her boots into the snow for purchase, our progress blissfully slow.

My screams escaped as a low whistle. A pathetic voice in the back of my mind begged me to get up, to run away as fast as possible. I had regained enough control to flail out with my free leg, thumping it against the side of her knee. Her stare promised murder.

Part of me hoped I was wrong. But everything I had discovered pointed towards one truth: we were heading towards another tesseract, this one large enough to encompass all of Odena.