Even before I became fully aware again, my foggy mind assumed the worst.

The dark god escaped. It left you to bleed out while it kills everyone in Emer’Thalis.

Or no, it wasn’t that.

Ephesis was lying. His goddess was evil all along, and she’s about to enslave you all in shackles of light.

Or perhaps…

You’re still alive because you’re about to be used in a new ritual. Everyone you know is going to be sacrificed.

The details didn’t truly matter. Even only half conscious, my brain knew the score: I was fucked. So was everyone else. And there was nothing that I could do about it.

With dozens of different doomsday dreams running on loop in my head, the actual thing that fully woke me up came as something of a surprise.

I didn’t awake to any external sensation. I didn’t hear anything; I didn’t smell anything. There was no bright light and no one shaking me awake. Likewise, to the best of my knowledge, no one was bleeding me dry or, I don’t know, stabbing me with spikes of evil darkness.

Instead, what I felt was completely internal. And much stranger.

From some far corner of my mind, I recalled that the brain itself had no nerves. You could poke it, or you could punch it, and you wouldn’t feel a thing.

Despite that, what I felt in that moment was something crawling through my head.

It wasn’t quite a physical sensation, per se, but it was much more than just a stray thought. It felt invasive. Uncomfortable.

Dimly, and while not having fully woken up yet, I nonetheless realized what it was.

Mental magic.

If whatever Ephesis had done to me was surface level and so subtle as for me not to ever feel it, however, this was a deep dive. If my mind were a diary, perhaps Ephesis had read a few pages and written a word or two as well. Whoever I was dealing with now was reading every page, deconstructing each molecule that made up the paper, and running a full analysis on every smudge of ink.

I felt raw. Naked.

It didn’t help that as I fully came to, I realized the list of people that might be performing such magic was very low. I shuddered.

It struck me then that I might be thinking some of the last thoughts I ever thought. Having my mind searched through by an evil dark god didn’t rank high on the list of survivable encounters.

I flinched as the “voice” appeared in my head unbidden, feminine, high, and chirpy in an excitable sort of way. At least, I mentally flinched. Belatedly, I realized that I couldn’t feel my body.

She’s in my head? Why?

A horrible thought struck me. Maybe this is just the start. What if she’s going to mind control me? With how long people could live in this world, who knew how long I might spend as some trapped thrall, locked in my own head. Would I be aware for it? Centuries, trapped in my own body, watching myself do things I didn’t want to do.

Was there any hope? I’d seen some sort of light before passing out, hadn’t I? Did Ephesis’s god manage to escape? Maybe, just maybe she could help me somehow?

A sudden mental pressure built up, a new force worming its way into my head. If the first presence was intense, but smooth in a sense, this one came in like a bulldozer. I mentally flinched once more.

While still feminine, the voice was considerably deeper, and each word felt like someone had sent an icepick through my head.

Somehow, I could feel the mental equivalent of a humph, followed by a much quieter, but still shouted . The second presence departed, leaving me with only the first.

What… what the hell was happening to me? Was that the light god and the dark god? Were they speaking to one another?

That line of thought, however, was eclipsed by another: So it — she? — can read my thoughts? Of course she can. I tried to keep my mind as blank as possible, but it was no use. Dozens of thoughts were hectically bouncing around in my head, begging to be mulled over.

Is she doing this to all the others too? Are we all going to be puppets? Our minds invaded?

And if this whole “Aarris” character is still alive, is that what the dark god did to her? Mind control her and take her over?

That was sobering. What if I was dealing with one evil god plus another under her control?

Although, can you even mind control a god like that? And is there something I should be doing?

I can’t… fight off a god, can I?

My mind jumped from question to question, rapid fire, but despite having many things I wanted to know, I could think up no good answers.

All at once, I could feel my body again. While I was uncomfortably lying on cold dirt, surprisingly, I wasn’t otherwise in pain.

Right. Mind reading. Well, that answered that, at least. It was disconcerting how chipper the god sounded. Especially with how I’d been healed, I could only assume she was taking some perverse joy in trying to get me to relax before the other shoe dropped.

Before pulling myself from the ground, I opened my eyes, not sure what to expect.

What I saw boggled the mind.

I hadn’t moved from the dungeon cavern — that much was clear — but the sight of it all had radically changed nonetheless. Mainly, that was owing to the fact that certain sections of the room were fully illuminated, while others were so deeply, impossibly dark as to invoke some primal fear within me. The light and dark sections met at strange and haphazard angles, making me feel as though I’d woken up in the center of a nauseating kaleidoscope.

Thankfully, everyone was lying in the illuminated patches of the room, and with my Perception, I could easily make out that their chests were rising and falling. Presumably, if “Ari” had healed me, she’d done the same to the others. Why they weren’t up and about, I wasn’t sure, but at least they lived.

At least the other three. Rock’s blackened form still lay motionless.

Something told me that when I was safe enough to fully take that fact in, it would hit me like a truck.

If I was ever safe enough.

Before I could dwell any further on that, however, the sight of everything caught up to me, and I started to feel an urge to yak.

She paused for a moment, and I had the strange sensation that she was rapidly flipping through my mind like a catalog.

The darkened patches of the room began to pull back, slowly and gradually from every direction at once. Despite being pitch black and separated by sections of light, the process looked like nothing so much as a block of ice melting before my eyes. Despite it all still making me a bit queasy, I found myself unable to look away.

When at last the darkness was fully pulled in on itself, the room became much more clear. I hadn’t realized it earlier, but the rift that had hung in the room’s center was now absent. In its place was a blinding sphere of light which had kindly been partially hidden up until now. My eyes watered, and I squinted while focusing on what was now an orb of roiling darkness, about a meter and a half across.

The orb began to shift, pulling inwards as it took on a vaguely humanoid shape. It was, frankly, a horrifying sight, like some eldritch horror a child might expect to find lurking in their closet.

That’s… Yup. That looks pretty evil to me.

Bit by bit, however, the shape resolved into an actual person, hazy outlines becoming solid, distinct features appearing. Somehow, it managed to produce actual clothes, as well.

When it was all said and done, I blinked. Then, I blinked again.

I shouldn’t have bothered to respond. Nothing good could come from it. But the sheer absurdity of the situation somehow overrode everything else. I found my tongue moving before I could stop it.

“Um. Hi Hex. So, this is some sort of fever dream, right? I’m actually bleeding out right now. My brain is slowly asphyxiating from blood loss, and now I’m just seeing shit?”

What other explanation was there?

Despite having taken on a physical form, Hex continued to speak to me in my head.

I opened my mouth to speak and then closed it. You know what? At this point? Fuck it.

I’m tired of being worried that everyone is about to die. And if I’m about to become some mindless thrall, it’s going to happen whether I worry about it or not, right?

Yup. All right. I’m just going to roll with it. Probably not even the weirdest thing that’s happened to me today. And also, if I am about to die, at least it feels kind of funny now?

Standing there before me was not some menacing monstrosity looking as if it were about to consume me.

Instead, right in front of me was, of all things, a 5-foot-tall goth woman.

Her hair — raven black with purple highlights — hung to the sides in two short pigtails and draped over her forehead in bangs. Clothing wise, she sported spiked, knee-high boots, a simple black skirt, and a crop top with the word DARKNESS written across it in glowing purple ink. To top the look off, around her neck she wore a thin, spiked choker.

While all of her clothing — save for her shirt’s lettering — was completely black, it was also somehow lighter than her actual body. Her “skin”, if it could even be called that, was solidified darkness, as if she’d just taken a bath in a vantablack coating. It made the whites of her eyes and her purple irises stand out all the more.

“Um. Yeah. Nice,” I offered.

Noticing me squinting at her due to the all-encompassing light above her, the newly goth deity mentally yelled out.

The overwhelming mental pressure returned a second later.

I could feel her starting to look for something much as Hex had previously, but this time around, it was more akin to someone setting a bomb off in a library and reading whatever charred pages happened to be floating through the air. I could feel my eyes start to roll back in my head.

The sensation stopped as quickly as it started, replaced by a heavy feeling of embarrassed repentance. she yell-whispered. Thankfully, she then pulled out of my head completely.

After a few more seconds of rifling through my head, a decision was reached.

Much as had been true for the darkness, the light began to pull itself back. Thankfully, instead of doing so completely, it merely dimmed itself, leaving the cavern visible.

After undergoing a similar process to the one I’d witnessed before — although this time around, I closed my eyes as the concentrated light grew far, far too bright for me — it was done.

There, hovering in the air, was an angel.

Four massive wings hung at her back, each feather letting off a golden radiance. Her long hair was spun from gold, and her garb seemed to take after a valkyrie’s style in a way, a full suit of armor seemingly wrought from hardened light. Each piece of the armor was highly intricate, looking far more focused on form than function. If the woman being dressed in full battle regalia wasn’t imposing enough, even after she floated down to the ground, she loomed over us, standing a solid 7 feet tall.

In a similar but inverted vein to her companion, Aarris’s skin was light itself. The whites of her eyes almost blended into the rest of her, with only her radiant golden irises fully standing out.

“BE NOT AFRAID!” she shouted. In a much more subdued, but still forceful tone, she continued. “I do not know why you instructed me to say that. I do not believe that I am sufficiently frightening to render such a statement necessary.”

This is… really not how I was expecting this to go, to be honest.

Actually, all in all, I realized that I was handling this far better than I should have been. Not that I was really handling it well, per se, but I wasn’t curled up on the floor hyperventilating while crying, which seemed like a more reasonable response.

Maybe things had crossed some sort of bizarreness threshold, and my brain had just given up. It was also possible that I was being forcibly calmed, much like Ephesis had done to me. If so, I wasn’t even sure that I minded this time. I was tired of feeling worried.

Well, whatever the reason is, if I’m collected enough, might as well get some of this over with.

“I’m just going to say it.” I turned to Hex in particular. “Are you planning on killing me? Or releasing a blast of dark energy that’s going to destroy the entire area and kill everyone? Or turning me into a mindless puppet? Or anything else that’s horribly, wildly, terrifyingly bad? Because that’s kind of what I was expecting here, and my nerves can’t take anymore of this.”

The two stared at me for a moment, as if I were some strange lab experiment.

“Why does the mortal child think that? Is your chosen form particularly frightening? Are these ‘goths’ known for wanton destruction and mind control?” Aarris looked between me and Hex, not quite understanding.

For her part, Hex simply sighed. “It’s Ephy. Put all sorts of weirdness in her head. Look.” With all of us in human bodies, she’d at last switched over to regular speech.

At her words, my spatial pouch suddenly opened up. The vision crystal I’d been given from Ephesis hovered out of it before floating over to Hex’s hand. She casually tossed it over to Aariss who caught it with a frown.

Was pretty sure that bag was supposed to be unusable by anyone but me, but maybe not the most important detail right now.

As Aarris handled the crystal, she seemed somewhat perplexed. “Ah. This is not an accurate recollection of events. It would appear you have been tricked and misled, mortal child.” Aarris stiffly returned the crystal back to Hex who began to eye it more closely.

“Kinda neat, actually. Ephy probably knew it wasn’t entirely believable, so he layered a few subtle trust spells on it. Nothing serious, but gives you a light mental nudge to believe in the vision and feel bad for him. Nicely done, too. Doubt your average inspection spell would have caught it.” Done examining it, she casually crushed the crystal in her hand, reducing it to dust.

That certainly caught my attention. “Wait. You’re telling me he was messing with my head all the way back then?” Hell, that felt like ages ago. I’d even made other people watch that crystal! I’d given it to a king!

Well. The list of things Cal and I are keeping from his is already pretty long… No harm in adding something else to it. Something told me he wouldn’t love the fact that I’d given him a mind-altering crystal, but that was only if he ever found out.

“Eh. Don’t worry about it. It was just a tiny little trust spell. Every Protagonist gets their mind messed with once in a while. Builds character. And mental resistance! Besides, it should be all gone now that he’s dead.” She gestured over to the beheaded corpse of the high priest as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

“Actually,” she continued, “he can probably help us out, can’t he?” A dark tendril snaked off of her hand before making its way to Ephesis’s severed head and latching on.

Before I could ask what she was doing, a second tendril broke off from the first. Much to my horror, this one shot forward towards me.

It connected, and for the second time in far too brief a period, the world started to go black, leaving me with time for only one final thought.

This isn’t how I expected this to go, you know?