The rainbow maelstrom swirls, the black glass tower stabs the sky, and I am going to become a god. This day could not get any better.

“That doesn’t mean you can become one, before you get any bright ideas. There’s no world where you ascend to godhood, Malice.” Bashekehi smirks at me and I glare back at him.

I mutter, “Just punch me in the throat next time, I might like it more.” I wave a hand dismissively. “Your utter lack of faith in me aside, I want the gory details: how do I become a god? The deal was for detail, so spill!”

The incubus rolls his eyes at me but continues, “A god is born when a human becomes a living myth. A mortal becomes the champion of an eidolon and does great deeds in their name, and after a certain critical mass is reached the exalted champion ascends into godhood, becoming Royalty of Spirit.” Bashe pauses, then adds, “Archdemons, for the record, are the Royalty of Shadow, and they were all once human as well, though I would not suggest emulating any of them.”

I rub my hands together, glee rising despite Bashe’s earlier dismissal. I can become a god. I can become a god. I can become a god. A giggle escapes me involuntarily.

Bashe sighs. “Malice, you’re not going to become a god. It just doesn’t happen for any but the most exceptional of the exceptional. There are maybe a few dozen exalted in a generation, sometimes fewer, and none of them have a better-than-poor chance of ascending. Humanity has walked Heimshafse for nearly a thousand years and in that time we have seen only nineteen true gods.”

Wow that is a lot of information I want to dig into but godhood eeeeeee! “Don’t care, becoming a god!”

Bashe rubs his forehead and closes his eyes. “Malice, I’m going to regret asking this, but why do you want to be a god?”

I stare at him in disbelief. “Why the fuck don’t you? How could anyone not want godhood? It’s godhood. Apotheosis. Unless your gods are vastly, radically, unthinkably different than the gods I’ve read stories about, godhood means immortality, power, and worship. An eternity to revel in the love and respect of countless millions, maybe billions. An eternity of power, of being the apex predator in a universe-wide food web. It means everything. Being everything. Having everything. It’s the ultimate goal. It’s the only goal. How could you settle for anything less?”

He shakes his head, still not looking at me. “Some people don’t need everything.”

I scoff. “I’m sorry, didn’t you call yourself an imp of excess? Pretty out of character to start preaching restraint, isn’t it? That seems more like Contrition’s domain.”

He whirls on me and for the first time I see real anger in his eyes, pure and white-hot, nothing like the petty frustration of before. “Never. Never, ever, ever say that to me again. You don’t know the first thing about what you’re talking about.”

Abort. Switch masks. Appease. Defuse. I throw my hands up (careful with the knife) and try to make my expression as apologetic as I can. “Sorry, sorry, that was too far. I had no intention of offending you but I clearly did and for that I deeply apologize. I promise I won’t do it again, but I recognize that may ring hollow without action to back it up so I won’t blame you if you don’t accept my apology, and I’m totally cool with dropping the conversation here.” We’ll interrogate exactly why that made him blow up later, but for now the name of the game is damage control.

Bashe stares at me, some of the fire in his eyes going out. He clenches his fists, releases, deep breath in, deep breath out. “You… you make things difficult, Malice. And I could deal with that–I really could–if I wasn’t starving.” He turns from me and starts walking. “Come on. Let’s just keep moving.”

I follow him in silence, contemplating. Definitely struck a nerve. Contrition’s what did it, most likely. Is that just because of the imprisonment, or is there more to the story?

I pushed too hard. He was already getting frustrated with me and I pushed too hard and now he hates me. Good job, me.

So how do we make him like us? He won’t accept sex, he’s not charmed by confidence, not endeared by weirdness. Should we get him to talk about himself? He hasn’t had social interaction for literal years, he should be more attention-starved than he’s acting.

Maybe that’s why he’s putting up with us at all; for all his frustrations, he hasn’t really tried to get rid of us. Could be a sense of debt, or it could be a craving for human interaction.

What can we offer him? What can we use to win him over?

Bashekehi doesn’t lead me to the opposite mirror, instead taking a side path I hadn’t seen. I look around and see dozens, hundreds of other mirrors scattered throughout the space around the ever-looming Nightmare’s Heart. I know I probably shouldn’t keep pushing Bashe, but I’m just too curious.

“So, how does this place work? What’s the deal with all these mirrors?”

Bashe sighs. He doesn’t answer for a few moments, long enough that I start to think he might not answer at all, but then he says, “We’re in the Corridor of Reflections. Every mirror in the Labyrinth connects to the Corridor, and the paths in the Corridor connect to other mirrors. Distance is conceptual here, not physical, so you could cross the entire length of the Labyrinth in just a few steps if you found the right pair of mirrors. And they all connect to the Heart.”

Conceptual distance, fucking rad. Definitely exploitable. “Good to know. On a related note: why aren’t we taking that mirror back there?”

He sighs again, deeper this time, but answers, "Because, Malice, that mirror leads to the stronghold of the Contrite. If any of them are still alive, they'll have all the advantages. And while I'd love to make them pay for what they did to me, I don't have nearly the mana for prolonged conflict."

Before I can respond to that, we reach another mirror. This one is plain, a little smaller, and most notably: it doesn't have a reflection. The mirror is just an unassuming pane of silvery glass.

Bashe swears, "Fuck. I knew it was too much to hope for. Screwed over by our own sense of caution, what a joke."

I tilt my head. "This is fun to watch, but I'm not sure of the point."

Bashe shoots a glare at me. "You really can't shut up for five minutes, can you?"

I shake my head. "It would be bad for my health. What's with the mirror? Not working?"

He turns his glare on the mirror. "It's a doorway to my old home in the city. We kept a mirror handy for easy access to the paths, but covered it when not in use so no uninvited guests could get in. Covering a mirror makes it a wall instead of a door."

Who is “we?” Mm, file it for later. Now, should I press for answers, or offer solutions?

Bashe hits his thigh and clenches his fists. “Fuck. Weaver damn this whole fucking world!”

Solutions, definitely solutions. I clear my throat. “You said the problem was about mana, right? You mentioned one way to get more mana, but are there other methods? Methods more palatable to your sensibilities?”

The incubus stills, then flexes his fingers. When he turns back to me there is an inscrutable expression on his face. “Perhaps. I don’t have the means to feed right now; I’m not going to fuck you, we’re lacking anything to gamble with, and I don’t think getting into a no-holds-barred fistfight would help either of us.” He pauses, then adds, “But there is one other method.”

“Tell me.”

“Memory. If you gave up a few of your memories, I could reduce them to mana and use that to restore myself. There would need to be equivalent exchange, of course, and depending on how much you give I might even be able to grant you magic in return.” His tone is light, but his eyes glitter with confidence and hunger. He knows exactly how tantalizing that offer is. “Not a strong spell, given I would need to burn mana to bestow it, but it would be magic, and it would be yours.”

My hunger blooms. Magic. More magic. More spells! Immediately I seize on a thread. “How many times can we do that?”

Bashe furrows his brow. “What do you mean ‘how many times?’”

“Memories for magic.” I’m grinning again. “You give me a spell, I give you memories, you burn the memories for mana, now you have enough mana to give me another spell. That’s possible, right?” First exploit, first exploit, please let this be our first exploit! Infinite loop of magic here we come!

Well, infinite until we run out of memories.

Bah! We have plenty of memories. I could do without a few years of them.

Bashe stares at me like I’ve gone crazy again, but then he bursts out laughing. “No self-preservation whatsoever. Genuinely. I think you’d set yourself on fire if you thought it would get you fire magic.”

“Would it!?” I lean in, eyes sparkling.

“No, you absolute fucking creature! Why would that teach you fire magic?”

I stick my tongue out at him. “Boo! And also, you still haven’t answered my question!”

Bashe rolls his eyes, but he does answer me. “Yes! Yes, Malice. If I get enough mana to cast another spell, I can bestow that spell for more memories. But,” he stresses, raising a finger, “there’s a limit. Your limit, or rather your soul’s limit. The soul has a limited… well, we call it a pleroma, but I guess you could think of it as the outer body of the soul. Royalty and scions both have the capacity to grow their pleroma, but everyone else is stuck at a fixed value. As an unaligned mortal, your soul can only hold three invocations.”

I grimace. Fucking limitations. Why must absolute power take so much effort? “Is there really no other way to raise that cap?”

He grimaces back. “For a diabolist? There’s one way, but I’ve already hard vetoed it: a Pact of Mastery. When you bind your soul to an imp you become an aligned invoker and get to draw on more of their spells.” He pauses, then follows up with, “You said something about a deal with a fae, earlier. What did you trade for? I’ve heard not all fae magic takes the shape of an invocation, thought that might just be hearsay.”

I hold up my hand with the scorch mark and summon, “[Find the Path]. The spell that led me to you. Good for two more uses.” I let him get a good look at the burning wheel before dismissing the spell.

Bashe scratches his chin. “Yeah, that’s definitely an invocation. So you’ve got space for two more.” When he sees my scowl he adds, “That’s still two whole magic spells you didn’t have before.”

I spread my hands and admit, “Yeah, that’s fair. Still absolutely going to claim more than that. Alright, how many memories do you need from me to run a second bestowal and still be fighting-fit for what comes next?”

The incubus considers the question. “You really are just eager to carve off pieces of yourself. Given your memories are probably fake, I suppose I shouldn’t feel too bad about taking advantage of that. Three memories, then. Three memories, provided they resonate right, should get me to where I won’t be so starved and can possibly grant you a second, more potent spell. But they need to be resonant memories: memories with a resonance for Indulgence.”

“Examples?”

Bashe lists them off, counting on his fingers. “Intense sex, glutting yourself on food, fighting or exercise that really gets your adrenaline pumping, gambling large sums, major drug use, thrill-seeking, anything else that really exudes excess and hedonism. If it made you feel like you were flying, it’ll probably suffice.”

“Yeah, I can manage that.” It’s a shame that means I’ll mostly be getting rid of pleasant memories, but hey, power is power.

Bashe takes a deep breath and lets it out. “Okay. I guess we’re making a deal after all. Just so we have the terms out in the open beforehand: you’ll trade three memories for a spell bestowal. With what little mana I have left and the spells in my repertoire, there’s really only one good option for bestowal: [Adrenaline Burst], a spell that will let you move faster and react faster.”

“Is it limited-use?” I ask, hoping the answer is no.

Bashe shakes his head and internally I cheer. “With what you’re sacrificing, it can easily be a permanent addition to your arsenal. It does have a drawback, because every unaligned invocation comes with a limitation or drawback. In this case, [Adrenaline Burst] is going to be consuming your actual adrenaline while it’s in use. When it’s active you’ll be faster, sharper, deadlier, but when it wears off the crash will hit like a bitch.”

“Burn the fuel faster to make the flame brighter, gotcha. Sounds good.”

The incubus rolls his shoulders. “Then let’s begin. Azathoth, O Dreamweaver! I invoke the right of channeling that all imps are due. Bear witness to this contract and give it meaning. Hear our words and make them binding.”

The maelstrom of color falls away. The black tower vanishes from view. Bashekehi and I stand in the presence of an eldritch horror, and it watches us in silence. As before, Bashe seems to take it as poorly as I do, and it brings me a bit of satisfaction to know that even a veteran of these deals still has to steady himself when Azathoth arrives.

“The contract is thus: a bestowal for memories. I offer my library of spells to pull from, and my mana to serve as a vessel for the Dreamweaver’s grace.” Bashekehi holds out his hand and purple-pink light flows out of his hand and into the air, forming a gently-floating sigil. “I offer the spell [Adrenaline Burst], and have explained its capabilities to the invoker.”

The Dreamweaver settles around my shoulders and commands my voice to speak her words. “I understand the capabilities of the spell and find it satisfactory for my purposes.” I hate this. I hate the way she can so easily control me. But for the sake of magic, I’ll suffer anything.

Bashekehi swallows and continues, “There is a price for all magic. I have offered a spell to be bestowed, the mana to bring it to life, and the grace of the Dreamweaver to bind it to your soul. What will you sacrifice to claim this offering?”

My memory has never been very good. Well, maybe it’s more accurate to say my memory is selectively good. I can rant for hours about obscure lore from my favorite books and games, but if someone asks me what I did the day before I’ll blank. Some things I try not to remember, too.

Still, there are enough fragments of memory floating around that I can find at least three moments of excess. As I focus on each memory and imagine offering it to Bashe, the memory vanishes from my mind. Just like my name, which I can’t even remember the first letter of.

A night of pleasurable bliss, stoned out of my mind in the arms of two pretty ladies, gone. That time I pigged out at three different fast food joints in the hopes of making myself throw up, gone. That game night where I spent hours making my friends suffer in Magic: the Gathering, gone.

Three memories vanish from my mind, and I see three faintly twinkling stars appear around the sigil that Bashe is holding out. They dance around the sigil, but stay floating above his hand when the sigil glides away from him and toward me.

My first spell branded my right hand. This time, the spell sinks into my left hand and settles into the flesh beneath. I shudder at the alien sensation of something nesting in the veins of my hand, but the feeling passes quickly.

“The bargain is struck,” Bashe murmurs. Azathoth’s presence falls away, and the three stars linger above Bashekehi’s hand.

I’m giddy at having a second spell, but I want to pursue a particular thread first. “Do you get to see what’s in those, when you crack them for mana?”

The incubus nods, only half-listening, his gaze locked to the dancing lights. Hungry. “When I eat them, I experience them. Speaking of…”

He pops the first star into his mouth and bites down. Immediately his eyes roll back and he lets out a very pleased noise, so I assume that to be…uh…sex? Was that one of the memories I gave up? Or maybe he just reacts that way to any form of feeding, I actually have no foundation upon which to make that guess.

He breathes in, breathes out, closes his eyes, and rolls his shoulders. “[Indulgent Vitality].” A wave of change washes over his body, wiping away all the signs of malnourishment I noticed at our first meeting: skin no longer unnaturally stretched, veins no longer bulging, stomach no longer sunken. The skin around his eyes clears up, and his whole body seems to relax, limber up, settle into itself. When he opens his eyes again there’s a new light to them, those black sclera and lilac irises practically sparkling.

“It has been so, so long since I had a good meal.” His voice is fuller, richer, and more confident. There is something almost catlike about him now, languid and amused. “I must say, for all your flaws, you have excellent taste in lovers. That was delightful, Malice.”

Aha! So it was sex! “Glad you enjoyed. How’s your mana looking?”

He shrugs. “I spent all of that memory’s gains restoring myself. The next two will do more to actually put me in the green.” He pops the second star and lets out a contented sigh that quickly breaks off. A disturbed look passes over his face, and he visibly hesitates.

My pulse quickens. “What did you see?”

“I… it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t prove anything.” His face doesn’t match his words.

“What did you see, Bashe?” I press him.

He grimaces. “Familiar, yet unfamiliar. Fast food brands I’ve never seen before, a language I’ve never seen before, cars and buildings that are similar but different…it was all uncanny. But not impossible for someone to construct. For all I know that could just be another Sphere that still isn’t the Zero Sphere.”

I roll my eyes very dramatically. “Oh, come on. Stop being such a skeptic about this!”

“No.” He pops the last star. There’s a brief grin, a trace of excitement, which then mingles with puzzlement. “Huh.”

“What was it?” I tilt my head curiously.

“A card game. Fairly similar to one I’ve seen back home, actually, but obviously not the same language. From what I understood of the scene, you were playing a strategy that your friends fucking hated, and getting off on that.”

“Yeah, that sounds like me,” I admit. Wait. Language. “Hey, uh, weird question: what language are we speaking right now? Because you seem not to have recognized English, which is what I thought I was speaking, but now I’m second-guessing myself, and I probably should have been questioning that assumption from the start but hey, sue me, I’ve had a lot on my plate.”

Bashekehi smirks at me. “You’re speaking Primordial. You probably shouldn’t stress over the specifics, but it’s a language that roots in the brain of everyone who steps into Pandaemonium. It goes deep enough that it’ll feel as natural to you as your native language, maybe more, and as it evolves in one part of Pandaemonium that evolution spreads to every speaker, so it always remains one universal language.”

Someone’s solution to linguistic drift. Should take the time to practice switching between Primordial and English at some point. Should figure out how to do that, first. Aloud, I ask, “Did Azathoth create Primordial?”

Bashe shrugs. “Probably? Depends on who you believe, but I’d put money on her or Nyarlathotep being responsible.”

Huh. Should really weasel a creation story out of Bashe at some point. Just gotta find the right moment. “Interesting. Shall we proceed to the final bargain?”

“Right. The next spell is…” Bashe hesitates. He smooths his hair back, chews on his lip, and finally looks at me and says, “You know, this normally the part where I might try to downplay the risk involved to nudge the invoker into making the deal, but you seem to thrive on risk, so I’ll just lay it out: the spell I’m offering you is extremely dangerous and could get you killed if you use it poorly. It also might be your best option for survival, and is disproportionately powerful compared to anything else I could offer.”

I grin. “I’m all ears.”

“The spell is called [Abyssal Armament] and it calls the power of the Abyss into a weapon of your choice–a physical weapon that you have to be touching as part of the spell–for a limited time. When a weapon is imbued like that, every strike that hits something with a soul will carve off a piece of that soul and feed it to the Abyss.”

I can practically feels my eyes sparkling. “The Abyss? You have a place called the Abyss, and it eats souls!? That’s so fucking metal!!!” I squeal a little. “You have to tell me more. Are there ways to commune with the Abyss? Other methods to draw power from it?”

“I wish I had a rolled-up newspaper to slap you with,” the incubus rudely confides in me. “The Abyss is bad news, Malice. Not in an edgy way, not in a ‘conventionally taboo but actually harmless’ way, in a very real and dangerous way. Shadow magic is considered an inheritance from the Abyss, the last gift of the Leviathans, but even demons have to be extremely careful whenever it comes to dealing with the Abyss. If you slip up for even a second it will swallow you whole. Case in point: this spell. The price of [Abyssal Armament] is that it demands to be fed whenever you use it. If you don’t slake its thirst with souls, the spell will turn on you and take a bite out of your soul. Fail to feed enough times and you’ll go Hollow.”

That’s not nearly enough of an argument to sway me, but we can leave that conversation for another time. “Right, sure, scary dangerous Abyss is bad news. Now let’s trade some Abyss magic for more of my memories.” I grin at Bashekehi to add emphasis to my contrasting statements.

He sighs, clearly unconvinced. “I’ll note that’s the price of the spell for everyone. Normally there would be an extra cost for an unaligned invoker, but you happen to have the perfect counter. The invocation will erode any non-artifact weapon it is used on, rotting it to nothing after only a single use.”

“And I already have an artifact,” I preen.

“A useful coincidence,” the incubus admits.

Bashekehi holds out his hand once more. He repeats the mantra of summoning and offers up a new spell. The sigil that appears this time is similar to the last, but the light that forms the sigil is darker, streaked through with gray-black. I hunger for it, and I make my offering, shivering as Azathoth’s presence greets me once more.

More sex for sure, since he seems to have liked that. He said he preferred gambling, do we have anything relevant? We haven't done a lot of gambling with real money. Do gacha games count? There was that time I rolled Fischl second try, but that was a freebie roll.

Hmm. I did cheat at poker that one time. The actual gambling was low-stakes but the cheating gave it a real thrill. Okay, so that's memory #2. And for the third?

How about drugs? Drugs are good.

A couple hours of sex, gone. Cheating at poker, gone. Getting very, very, very high, gone. As soon as they leave my mind and alight over Bashe's hand they're completely absent from my memory, so thoroughly stripped I can't even figure out what was taken.

The dark sigil uncoils like a snake and curls around my right wrist, then sinks into it. I'm expecting it to be cold, for whatever reason, but as it meets my skin and bonds to me it carries a very familiar warmth: fever-warm. The spell settles into my wrist comfortably, almost pleasantly, and rests as what looks like a slightly spiky tattoo.

Azathoth's presence falls away and I am left with a burning question. "Bashe," I ask, "what does the Abyss look like? What does it feel like? How would I know if I'd been in its presence?

He holds up a finger and pops each memory in his mouth, one-by-one, before replying. He sighs in contentment and rolls his shoulders. “Ah, food. Glorious food.” Then what I said catches up to him and he furrows his brow with a very concerned expression. “Wait, what? Why would you think…oh, I’m going to regret this, aren’t I?”

“Probably. Now answer the questions, Bashe.”

He sighs, but he seems in a better mood now and there’s less active frustration in the sound. “I’ve never seen the Abyss, mind, but it’s been described as an endless realm of darkness, yet oddly warm, like a shadowed womb.”

I grin. “Great, that sounds exactly like what I saw and felt when I woke up here.”

The incubus stares at me. “Okay, you’re fucking with me, right? This one’s a joke, yeah?”

“Nope!” I chirp.

Bashe sits down on the glass walkway above the swirling maelstrom of rainbow light and puts his head in his hands. “Abyss take me,” he swears. “Alright, you know what? Just tell me the whole story, because clearly there are some important details that I’m missing.”

So I do. I tell him about the empty classrooms that opened into a fever-warm void, the not-a-ghost that tried to kill me, and the pink-blooded doll with its mismatched hairpin and backpack. When I get to my escape from the abandoned school and the Rider’s all-consuming flames, Bashe stops me.

“There is so much wrong with that story. That’s not…that’s not how anything is supposed to work here.”

I tilt my head curiously. “What do you mean?”

He rubs his temples. “Okay, for starters, the fucking Abyss! Yeah, what you described sounds a whole fuck of a lot like the Abyss, and the thought of the Abyss seeping into the Labyrinth is terrifying. The thing that tried to kill you sounds like normal Labyrinth weirdness but the school doesn’t, and again, this world isn’t a video game. Random ‘loot’ isn’t a thing. The doll…” Bashe hesitates before continuing, “...it unnerves me. The symbol on the hairpin, the butterfly, it means a few different things. I assumed it was being used to represent Wonder, but it’s also the alchemical symbol for transmutation–well, the culmination of transmutation–and it’s one of the symbols used to represent Azathoth. That combined with the panacea makes me uneasy.”

I lean in. “Starting to come around to the idea that Azathoth intervened after all?”

“No!” he snaps. “The Dreaming Edicts have never been broken. Whoever set that up, it wasn’t Azathoth. Just… I’m willing to accept that it was someone, and not random chance.” He looks almost frightened, and his gaze flits over to the black glass tower.

I roll my eyes. Whatever. He’ll come around eventually. “So, back on topic: new spells!”

“Right, yeah. Feel free to test the adrenaline spell if you like, but don’t use the Abyssal spell until you’re in a position to feed it.”

I decide to accept Bashe’s advice, since I’m not entirely sure what the repercussions of losing my soul would be at this early stage of the campaign. Bashe lifts himself off the ground and takes a few steps back. I mentally reach for that feeling in my left hand, my second magic spell, and invoke it aloud. “[Adrenaline Burst].”

A new spell diagram appears in my mind’s eye. I immediately compare it to my memory of [Find the Path]’s diagram and find this one to be much simpler in construction… and notably, much less configurable. Most of the symbols I see are fixed, unchanging no matter how much I focus on them. I recognize two of the symbols: the one that opens the text box and the one that activates the spell. That latter symbol is already blinking, which I recall indicates the spell being ready to engage. I don’t really have a clear idea of what I would ask the spell to do differently, so I just hit the “on” button and let the spell do its thing.

My world electrifies. Everything snaps into focus–sharper, crisper, cleaner–and the swirling maelstrom of color seems to slow, just a bit. I can feel energy coursing through me, and I start bouncing my legs and tapping all my fingers just to bleed some of it out. I feel like I could run a marathon. I feel like I could catch a bullet. I bounce in place and twirl around, gotta move, gotta keep moving, motion is life. I twirl and twirl until I get dizzy, and then I stop myself and cancel the spell.

The world hits me like a Japanese delivery truck. A wave of exhaustion washes over me and my legs buckle, nearly crumple. My whole body feels sore like I just did some kind of exercise workout bodily exertion. Is this what people who exercise feel like all the time??? How are they so fucking cheerful???

Bashe chuckles at my reaction. “Yeah, the aftershock’s a bitch. You’ll get used to it. Now come on, let’s go pay the Contrite a visit.” He hefts his stolen scourge and starts walking.

I follow behind, still a bit disoriented from the sudden strain infusing my limbs but working it out as I walk. Bashe doesn’t talk as we head back to the first set of mirrors, and for once I’m content with the silence. I want to explore these spells more. I nonverbally activate [Adrenaline Burst] to see how it differs and find the whole diagram locked now, the only option to activate the spell or dismiss it.

Then, nonverbally so that Bashe doesn’t find out I’m kinda-sorta ignoring his advice, I activate [Abyssal Armament].

The diagram for this spell feels radically different from either of my previous spells. All three use a similar set of symbols and shapes, for the most part, or rather they use symbols and shapes that feel like they’re part of the same programming language, but there is a single symbol in [Abyssal Armament]’s diagram that looks different, harsher, hard to wrap my brain around, and it feels warm to the touch despite the fact that I literally can’t touch it. It’s like just looking at the symbol makes me feverish. It’s also a different color from everything else; all the other symbols and shapes are white-on-black, but this symbol is black-on-black and somehow still perceptible, like a color so pitch-dark it makes the night sky look gray.

With [Adrenaline Burst], the fixed parts of the diagram felt like a mechanism locked in place, like gears that had clicked together. With [Abyssal Armament], it feels like a bug caught in amber, something crystallized and frozen. I really need to experiment with these. Hmm. If these are known spells, I wonder if anyone else has written down what all the symbols mean? Something to investigate as soon as we find books here.

I dismiss the spell and shortly thereafter we reach the mirror opposite the one we took to enter the Corridor. I see the reflection of a room with strange walls and a carpet of graying lichen. Bashe stops just in front of the mirror and puts a hand on it. He breathes deep, fists clenched.

Under his breath, he murmurs, “If any of them are still alive, Muzaffer, I promise you, I’ll make them pay.”

Ooo, file that under “secret traumatic backstory!” Is that like, whoever he was contracted to before getting sealed away? Definitely keen to dig more into that relationship. Y’know, carefully and covertly. Wouldn’t want to pick at his wounds in a way that would get us caught.

Bashekehi steps through the mirror, and I step through after him.