A skeptic since birth, Blake Myers was not one to believe in the divine; he preferred the realm of the rational, where facts ruled over faith. However, as he lay in the back of a cart, encased up to his head in a slab of solid stone, he began to consider switching his loyalties to the side of religion just so he’d at least have somebody to blame. An unplanned intergalactic vacation was bad enough; being attacked by a pack of half-starved zealots and forced into becoming an accidental killer was worse. These last five hours, however, had been the icing on the cake.

Blake had woken up with a massive headache to find himself unable to move anything below his chin. Cool, hard, unbending rock encased his entire body, and, try as he might, he found himself unable to budge. Not even his newly discovered super strength could manage much of anything, partly because his body was so pressed together—body straight with arms locked to his sides, like a particularly tight coffin—that he couldn’t generate any good leverage.

He’d woken to the light of the morning sun shining in his eyes, his head wobbling like a bobblehead as the wagon carrying his boulder hit bump after bump. Now, that same blazing ball of fire glared at him from its peak. The entire day so far, he’d been able to do nothing but breathe, twist his neck a little to look around, and try to speak to the wagon’s driver, who’d just ignored him the whole time.

Breathing wasn’t easy, and his neck was getting sore. To make matters worse, two biological time bombs were ticking down inside him, and their countdowns were both getting distressingly close to zero. All in all, this had been one of the three worst mornings of Blake’s life.

At least the ride gave him plenty of time to think about everything, like what had happened with the Voice. Looking back with the emotion of the moment removed, he could see clearly that he’d had no other option at the time; she would have killed him if he hadn’t acted. Self-defense was a perfectly justifiable action. That didn’t mean he felt nothing about having blood on his hands—he’d remember every detail of her corpse for years to come—but with his new perspective, the guilt that had set him running that evening no longer haunted him.

Blake had little choice but to keep that perspective in mind; his current circumstances made it abundantly clear that last night would not be an anomaly here. He was, effectively, a prisoner. What would become of him now?

“Hey,” Blake croaked in another effort to communicate with the non-responsive wagon driver. “Driver man, hey.”

As always, the man did not react, at least not in any direct way. A hiss escaped Blake’s lips as the wheels of the wagon closest to his head hit a large bump, the sudden jostling smacking his skull against the nearby wooden railing. Blake suspected at this point that this was no accident; every time he tried to speak, he’d get a bump on the head moments later.

Though Blake had yet to see the man’s face today, he knew his tormentor’s identity already. This wagon and its red-haired driver matched the one he’d passed just as he’d tripped on that stone the night before. The fiery-maned man was surely Apostle Yarec, the soldier called to the village the night before. He was also surely the one who’d ended Blake’s night with a blow to the head. If the village’s Voice was capable of conjuring balls of flame larger than Blake’s head, he shuddered to think of what somebody higher up the food chain might be capable of. Blake’s prison provided a dark glimpse into the level of the man’s power.

The wagon began to shake and Blake realized they’d driven off the path and into a small, flat meadow. The cart stopped and the Apostle hopped off, walking over to the wagon by Blake’s feet. Blake heard some rummaging, but couldn’t see what was going on until the man came into view holding several small logs of firewood and a small pot. With the practice of a man with years of experience, he had a crackling fire lit beneath the pot in under five minutes.

Blake watched as he tossed in several vegetables he didn’t recognize and then leaned forward in concentration. After a few moments, a trickle of water materialized in front of him and fell into the pot. He kept the trickle going for maybe thirty seconds, then leaned back and exhaled as if he’d just lifted something quite heavy. Blake didn’t understand why making such a small stream of water seemed to tire a mighty Apostle when a lowly farmer had been able to make much more without breaking a sweat, but that was just one more entry in a long list of unanswered questions.

Blake used this seemingly unguarded moment to study his captor. The Apostle had fiery red hair that fell to his around ears in a disordered mess, where it connected with his well-maintained beard. His intelligent hazel eyes stood out as the star attraction of his fairly handsome, rugged face. They darted about constantly, observing the surroundings for threats, belying his intentionally relaxed body language. Blake could feel the confidence pouring from him; this man was dangerous.

His clothes appeared neat and orderly, or at least, neat and orderly for somebody who seemed to have been driving a wagon for a day. An armored breastplate adorned his chest, the outside engraved with ornate, looping designs that Blake could not identify. He assumed they were either religious symbols or related to the man’s house or clan—if clans even existed here.

“Hey, dude, you ready to talk yet?” Blake called out.

The man ignored him, poking at the logs with a stick.

“I know you can hear me, fucker!” Blake snapped. “Can’t run over any bumps now, can you? So why don’t you-ow! Fuck!”

Blake’s tirade cut off before it could even get started as the man flicked a stone about an inch in diameter into Blake’s forehead. Where he’d gotten the pebble, Blake couldn’t say. He hadn’t seen the man pick one up. At least the Apostle had needed to look at Blake for the first time in order to hit him, a small victory.

“What the fuck, dude! What in the world is wrong with all you people?! Do any of you have any fucking decency in your bodies or are you all just fucking psychopaths?! Huh? Jesus H Christ, it’s like... no, don’t you da-OW! FUCKING KNOCK IT OFF!”

This time Blake had watched as the stone formed in between the man’s fingers, growing from nothing into a rock the size of a large marble before the Apostle sent it hurtling towards Blake’s dome.

“The villagers claimed that you killed her by throwing her against a pillar, but I see now that you talked her to death,” the man snorted.

“Oh, you have a voice after all? Who would have thought? You ready to talk like a fucking man or are you going to keep being a little bitch?”

“Every Apostle knows to never speak with an Elseling, lest they be corrupted by its lies,” the man said as he fished out the veggies from the pot with a knife and began to chow down.

“Well, you already talked, so what’s the harm in talking a little more. Look dude, I’m going to level with you here—I need you to let me out of here so I can pee and take a dump. I have, like, half an hour left in me before it’s just all coming out regardless. Nobody wants that, man.”

“Sounds terrible,” Yarec agreed.

“So you’ll-?!”

“No.”

“Oh, come on!”

The Apostle stood up and used the water in the pot to put out the flames. Without even looking Blake’s way, he walked back to the front of the wagon, taking a moment to pet and feed the massive beasts hitched to the huge cart while ignoring Blake’s many protests. A minute later, they were on the road again. About twenty-nine minutes after that, Blake’s day became immeasurably worse.

In the sum total of Blake’s life, nothing had ever come close to the physical and mental torture he’d felt crossing over into this world. The level of agony had been off the charts, and he knew that nothing would ever even come close to that level of physical pain and mental pain. When it came to psychological torture, however, Blake had found a new all-time low: marinating in his own excrement non-stop for about four days.

Blake had never felt more filthy. Not even that time in college when he’d become so engrossed in an online role-playing game that he’d forgotten to shower for three weeks could stand against how he felt right now. It was like his very being was unclean, and no amount of soap and water would be able to wash it all away.

Slowly, vile sticky wetness had spread over his body through the first day, a feeling that, three days later, he still found himself unable to ignore. Perhaps it was because of the smell reminding him that something was horribly, terribly wrong. The stone around Blake’s neck pressed up against his flesh in such a way that it created a seal that prevented airflow. All it took was for him to move his neck slightly, however, and an odor like the pits of Hades themselves would waft out, flowing right into his waiting nostrils. The ceaseless struggle to keep a stiff, unmoving head as they bounced along the poorly maintained “roads” of Otharia had only made his already terrible days worse.

Now, however, it seemed like his ordeal was nearing its end. He’d noticed a massive increase in traffic in the last few hours, with more and more people and carts passing by Yarec’s slow-moving vehicle. That meant they were close to a large town or city, where—he desperately told himself—he’d finally be free of this god-forsaken rock.

Blake spent as much time as he could looking around, trying to distract himself from his predicament by studying whatever he could see. For example, he studied the large, hairy creatures pulling the carts that passed by. Until now, he’d only been able to see the backsides of the huge beasts, but now, he knew that they were basically the wooly mammoth variant of a rhinoceros, minus the horns. Given that they were massive slabs of walking muscle easily seven or more feet tall, Blake figured it was good that they seemed so docile and placid. Were several of them to start running, they’d be nearly impossible to stop.

The thought brought the Voice’s words about the “beast wave” back into his mind. “It was the wild garophs that did the most damage”, she’d said, the use of the word “wild” implying that there were domesticated garophs. If these things were garophs, then he could see how just a few of them stampeding through could have wrought such devastation upon the village farms.

The people and wagons pulled by the great animals didn’t strike Blake as anything special. The carts were just as primitive as everything else he’d seen so far, with rudimentary wooden wheels and bodies made out of rough wooden planks. In fact, Yarec’s vehicle seemed far superior to all the others Blake had seen so far. None of those rickety things were large enough or strong enough to hold a slab of stone this size. The realization became yet more evidence that Yarec held a position far above the others here.

The others walking and riding along the widening path shared the same general characteristics as the others: anime hair colors and a common thinness that pointed towards population-wide malnutrition. Some seemed better off than others, and he found it no surprise that they were also the people with the better-looking wagons and clothes.

A smaller wagon—a covered one this time—trundled by, slowly passing by them about four feet away from Blake’s head. The man holding the reins kept his head and gaze pointed straight forward, his hunched form filled with tension. He didn’t strike Blake as concentrating on the road ahead as much as willing himself to avoid looking towards Yarec and Blake at all costs.

“Mommy, look!” a young boy said, sticking his head out from behind the fabric covering the carriage and pointing at Blake with the sort of baldfaced curiosity that only a little kid could possess. “Look!”

A woman, clearly “Mommy”, leaned out to see what the child found so noteworthy. Blake watched as she met his eyes and the color drained from her face. In one swift motion, she ducked back out of sight, practically yanking the child off the ground as she pulled him with her.

That was how all the Otharians seemed to react to him when they saw him. He’d gotten used to it in the last few hours, once his initial hope of external assistance had quickly faded into nothingness. It was as if, when they looked at him, they saw some sort of hideous ghoul poised to suck the marrow from their bones or something. He didn’t understand it. Was there writing on the stone where he couldn’t see that said “ELSELING! BEWARE!” or something?

Not long after, Blake finally spotted something new to look at: a large stone wall standing high over the land. Like the rest of the stone workings in this world, it seemed to be created entirely from a single piece of rock, except this creation seemed to be over forty feet tall. The wall extended out both to the left and right, going beyond his range of vision. This would be Eflok, he guessed as he recalled the Voice’s words.

About a dozen carts were lined up in front of an opening in the wall where several guards stood. Yarec ignored the line and went right around them. The guards, instead of getting upset, saluted him and got out of his way.

The first thing that Blake noticed, once they crossed through, was the smell. The strong odor of excrement informed him immediately of the lack of a modern sanitation system. Funnily enough, he found himself almost grateful for the competing haze of smoke rising from every home, as it gave him something else to focus on.

Blake determined urban planning had not been invented yet as he watched buildings enter and leave his sight in a confused mishmash of wood and clay. It looked like people just built whatever they wanted wherever they felt like doing so, creating a navigational nightmare of tiny streets and alleyways that went everywhere and nowhere at the same time. The rare exceptions were the occasional stone buildings that, like in the village, stood tall within the clutter like small islands of order surrounded by a sea of chaos. That, and the road itself; luckily for Blake’s skull, the roads in Eflok—or at least the ones they traveled upon—were paved with long, smooth slabs of rock instead of something terrible like cobblestone.

The crowds sharing the street gave Yarec and Blake a wide berth, but that didn’t stop Blake from catching bits and pieces of soft conversation as everybody took a moment to stop and stare while he passed by. They talked in hushed whispers just out of earshot, which annoyed Blake for some reason, even though he knew whatever they were saying about him would be some sort of unflattering bullshit that would only make him even more annoyed. There was a humiliating indignity to this entire ordeal that left him dehumanized and embittered, liable to lash out at anybody just to feel like he had a crumb of agency again.

Mercifully, the crowd thinned some as the surroundings opened up as the wagon approached what Blake assumed to be their destination. Towering over the surrounding city, with tall, circular walls, was what could only be a stadium. Blake knew what it was the moment he saw it. No matter what world you were in, there were only so many ways to contain large crowds in a single building and only so many ways those buildings could be shaped. This one appeared far more “Roman Colosseum” than “Wembley Stadium” or “Madison Square Garden”, but Blake found it impressive nonetheless. The most remarkable parts were the sculptures built into the walls themselves, showing depictions of grand battles and other important events. Blake spotted one particular figure in seemingly every scene. A large, muscular male, he stood out due to the light beams and symbols the sculptors had carved out around him wherever he appeared, as well as how he was shown holding a large flame in each hand every time.

Blake couldn’t help but marvel at the intricate detail visible in the sculptures. Clearly, these people had some sort of magical command over stone to the point that they could build seemingly anything they wanted out of it, which begged the question of why they didn’t build everything out of rock in the first place. Also, what about other materials? Was it only rock that they could shape to their will, or was it just that rock was the best material they could use?

Blake’s assumption proved correct when Yarec steered the wagon partially around the stadium and into a nondescript entrance that was soon revealed to be a dock for loading and unloading—it even had a raised area of the floor that rose to about wagon height. Dismounting from his seat, the Otharian moseyed out of Blake’s sight and left him languishing all alone in the now-empty room.

After what felt like ten minutes later, Blake heard a ruckus of movement growing louder every second. What must have been twenty people rushed into the room and pointed a variety of sharp-looking objects in his general direction. Though none of them appeared fully nourished, he couldn’t help but notice that they were all still much healthier-looking than the villagers and the city folk he’d passed earlier. Blake saw Yarec and another man wearing a gaudy set of long robes dyed with stripes of white, blue, yellow, orange, and red as they followed the others in.

“You needed twenty people for this, Apostle?” the gaudy man asked, his tone dripping with doubt. “It doesn’t appear that dangerous.”

“You’ll see soon enough,” Yarec replied. He stepped into the crowd and approached the stone containing Blake.

“Fucking finally,” Blake complained. “Hurry this up and get me the fuck out of this!”

“Wonderful, it talks,” the gaudy man observed, his sarcasm clear even through the translation.

“Yeah, I do, Mister Colorblind,” Blake snapped back. “I know you wouldn’t have spent days carting me all the way here just to stab me while I’m stuck in a rock, so let me out of this-OW!”

Something hard smacked into the back of Blake’s skull.

“I swear, I’m going to get every single one of you back for all the brain damage you’re-” Another smack, harder this time. “QUIT IT! Yarec, the fuck are you taking so long fo—wait, are you making the stone bigger?! What th-I said QUIT IT!”

The Apostle was, in fact, enlarging the rock that encased Blake’s body, rounding the boxy slab into something more like a barrel. The process was slow going, with the stone seeming to slowly swell instead of the sort of more dynamic and liquid surge that Blake had expected after dealing with the other mages earlier.

“It’s done,” Yarec finally stated in his usual brusque manner.

“Very well, bring him to the holding cell,” the robed man instructed.

“Are you going to let me out, or not?!” Blake demanded as several members of the group hopped onto the wagon’s front and began to push the rock. “Wait, wait, what are you doing?!”

Slowly the rock turned, picking up speed as it rolled off the wagon and onto the floor. Blake fought the queasiness growing in his gut as he spun his way out of the dock and into a connecting hallway.

“This is degrading, even for you,” he told the Apostle, who, judging by the sneer on his face, found the sight quite amusing.

Several near-bouts with motion sickness later, Blake found himself rolling through a large metal door frame and into an equally large but empty room with a floor covered in straw.

“Now will you let me out, please?” Blake grunted, his head still woozy.

“Yes,” Yarec replied.

“Fucking finally,” Blake muttered. He didn’t see the large stone in the Apostle’s hand until just before it crashed into his temple.

Blake Myers woke up with a splitting headache. His hands and feet were chained to the solid stone wall behind him. The rank odor of his filthy body permeated the air, and every inch of him felt sticky and disgusting. His clothes were no better—filthy, stained, and clinging to his skin.

It said a lot about his last few days that he considered this all a massive improvement.

The cell in which he currently resided was massive, about twenty feet wide and over sixty feet long. Every wall, ceiling, and floor was made from pure, solid stone, with the only source of light being a few thin openings maybe six inches wide and two feet long found where the ceiling met the wall behind him. Thanks to the slivers of sunlight shining through, Blake could see large and thick stone loops protruding from the walls every ten feet or so, though no chains dangled from any of them. A layer of straw covered the entire chamber; Blake could see a number of large, vaguely circular depressions in the straw. After a moment of inspection, he determined that they were footprints—or perhaps hoofprints—left by some very large beasts.

The bastards hadn’t even given him the respect of locking him into a human cell. They’d stuck him in an animal pen. It explained the large, wide doors to both his left and his right, both big enough that they could just back their version of a cargo truck up to the door and herd the animals into the pen. The more normal-sized door built into the metal bars across from him would be where the workers entered.

At least he was essentially alone, he told himself. He could hear some low chatter coming from somewhere down the single hallway on the opposite side of the room from him. Surely, there had to be some guards down that hallway; there was no way they would leave him entirely unaccounted for. Still, so far, none of them had entered the chamber itself or even come into view. It probably had something to do with what Yarec had said on that first day—they didn’t want him to be able to use his twisted Elseling words to corrupt the guards’ feeble minds, or whatever. That, or they couldn’t stand the smell.

With nothing else to look at, Blake’s eyes wandered for the fourth time down to his restraints, or at least the parts within his vision. He sat on the ground with his legs together and pointed forward, all thanks to a set of massive metal sleeves encasing his legs from the mid-thigh to his ankles and fastened together with massive bolts to form one large restraint. Each sleeve was composed of more than five solid inches of some dull, light gray metal which reminded Blake of lead but with a lighter color. Unfortunately, it seemed this metal resembled lead in luster only, as Blake’s impressive brute strength proved unable to bend the restraints even a little.

Judging by the cold, hard, and smooth material wrapped around his arms, a similar device encased them as well. He could only guess, as his arms were held together behind his back where he could not see them. One thing he did know was that they were chained to the wall behind him, the chain so short and fastened so low to the wall that he couldn’t rise more than half a foot off his rear before he ran out of slack.

Sitting in the same position was wearing on him; it made his butt hurt and his back ache. To make matters worse, the restraints were steadily cutting off the circulation to his hands and feet. He could already feel them starting to tingle.

And yet, with all that said, he still felt far better than he should have, and it scared him a bit. Waking up like this meant he’d gone another day without food or water, but for some reason the prolonged lack of sustenance wasn’t affecting him like it should. Were he normal, going on a week without either food or water should have broken him. If he remembered right, the human body couldn’t last even half a week without water, but he’d gone easily twice that and he felt... well, not fine, exactly—especially given all the other bullshit his body had been through recently—but nowhere near as bad as he knew he should have. Was he even human anymore?

A small commotion down the hallway caught his attention and four scared-looking people—two men and two women, two young and two old—turned the hallway corner and came into his sight. They eyed him with tense gazes as if he were a cornered tiger that might pounce on them at any moment. He didn’t feel like he could pounce at any moment; anyone with half a brain would be able to tell on sight that he could barely even move. That didn’t seem to reassure the group.

The four of them spread out, standing side by side up against the other side of the pen’s bars.

“Uh... yo?” Blake called out to them. “What’s up?”

They didn’t respond. Instead, the four of them, almost as one, reached through the bars with their hands and pointed their palms his way.

“Uh, hey, let’s all be cool here,” Blake protested. Too late, he noticed that the one farthest to the right had some sort of fabric stuffed in her ear canal. Likely they all did, so his twisted words couldn’t reach them or some shit.

Suddenly, four streams of lukewarm water shot towards him striking him about the chest and face. He turned his head away from them as he huffed the liquid from his nostrils, before thinking better of it and turning back with his mouth open to catch as much of the water as he could. The streams began to move about his body, splashing against his shoulders, torso, and even his crotch.

“What is this, some sort of sad excuse for a shower?” Blake groaned, shifting his body as best he could to expose more areas to the streams. “I’ve played with squirt guns stronger than you losers!”

Truth be told, the streams of water were rather pathetic. All four of the Otharians looked to be wrapped up in intense concentration, but it seemed that all they could create was a rather underwhelming volume of water per second, maybe double that of a standard shower head. While the liquid appeared faster than it had for the farmer in the village, fire hoses these were not. Faced up against the days of soaked-in grime coating his body, they were making little progress.

It wasn’t long before the man on the far left, the oldest looking of the four, let out a gasp and slumped forward as his stream dissipated into nothingness. He stepped away from the bars looking exhausted and wearily walked down the hallway and out of sight. The same happened with the woman on the right, the youngest of the four, just a minute or two later. After less than what felt like half an hour from when they’d arrived, all four of them had seemingly given up and left, leaving Blake perhaps a third of the way to cleanliness at best. Water alone could only accomplish so much, after all, and only the parts of him that faced the bars and weren’t encased in metal had received any treatment.

Was that it? After seeing the size and feeling the heat of the Voice’s large flaming orbs, he’d been struck with visions of people in this world engaging in massive spell battles, hurling fireballs and waves of water and boulders around all willy-nilly. But these people could barely exceed a garden hose, much less a tsunami. Had his imagination overshot again?

Time passed once more—though it was hard for Blake to tell how much given he had nothing to work with but his internal clock and the slow movement of the light coming through the openings above him—and another small commotion caught his ears. This time, it was loud enough that he could make out the voices.

“Your Holiness, I must protest!” a gruff, guttural male voice said.

“Are you saying that Othar’s grace cannot protect me from a mere Elseling?” a gravelly woman replied.

“I-I-I would n-never say-!” the man began, a noticeable undercurrent of tension in his tone.

“Of course you wouldn’t. You wouldn’t want anybody to question your faith, now would you?”

“...as you say.”

A moment later, an old woman with faded brown-gray hair and a self-satisfied smile entered Blake’s view. She looked to be in her late sixties to early seventies but healthy, walking towards him with the self-assured gait of somebody in charge. Her nose wrinkled as she approached.

“I guess it was too much to hope to completely remove the stench,” she sniffed.

“Yeah, well, after what you people did to me, I’d need a metric ton of soap and a waterfall before I felt clean, not that piddly drizzle you sent over,” Blake replied. Had he met this woman earlier, perhaps as recently as two days ago, he might have tried a different tack. He might have tried flattery or humor, or begging and pleading if necessary, but not anymore. None of that had helped his situation one bit. After days of abuse at their hands, he had little left within him but bitterness and sarcasm.

“You should feel honored that we did anything at all,” she scoffed. “Then again, we need our Elseling to appear at least marginally presentable for the execution tomorrow.”

“Execution. Lovely.” In truth, after all that he’d heard the last few days, this did not surprise him. That didn’t stop a cold spike of dread from lancing through his spine. Still, he didn’t despair just yet. He could think of a clear path to his survival: his knowledge. His last hope now was to make clear how indispensable he could be, the bitterness and scorn he felt for these people be damned. He wasn’t ready to die just yet. “So, you’re in charge here, then?”

“I am Sunat, Head Adjudicator for Eflok and its surrounding territories.”

“So... yes?”

She shook her head. “How silly of me to think an Elseling would know the true ways. As Adjudicator, I kneel only to the Grand Apostle himself. One could say my word here is law.”

“Then you’re just the person I was hoping to see. Listen, I don’t know what an Elseling is, exactly, but I’m not your enemy. I’m just a lost and confused guy who can help you and your people. I know how to do things, things that could save thousands of your people and improve the quality of life for everybody. For example, I-”

“You slaughtered one of my people, and you dare to claim you are not my enemy?”

The cold dread inside him froze over from the woman’s cold harsh tone. “It was an accident!” he hurriedly protested. “I didn’t mean to! And it was in self-defense! She was trying to kill me!”

“Silence! Your excuses earn you nothing. Even were you not a vile Elseling, we would justly execute you for murdering a member of the annointed.”

“You’re nuts! Better harvests! Wagons that can take you from one side of Otharia to the other in under a day! Wagons that can fly through the air under their own power! You’d throw that all away for no reason?!”

“Your preposterous lies only highlight your desperation.”

“They’re not lies!”

“It makes no difference either way. Otharia does not want or need the help of an Elseling, no matter what they might be able to do. Othar’s benevolence is all Otharia requires. To go against his will by sparing an Elseling would be to sully ourselves for nothing.”

“For nothing?!” Blake snapped. “I’m not talking about ‘nothing’! I’m offering you progress! Do you fucking understand what that means?! I’m offering to help you skip a thousand years of slow, dirty, painful improvement so you can pull yourselves out of the fucking Dark Ages and turn this country into something that isn’t a pathetic, filthy, backwards shithole! But no, you’re going to throw that chance away. For what?! For this fucking Othar shit?!”

“Enough!” Sunat growled, but Blake was well past caring about the Adjudicator’s desires at this point.

“What’s all the Othar worship gotten you so far, huh?! Nothing but mud and failure, from what I can tell! You people are little more than skin and bones, it seems you just invented the wheel a year ago, and-”

“Enough!” the elderly woman snarled, the air itself seeming to chill against Blake’s skin.

Glancing down, he realized that it wasn’t his imagination. Ice was growing over the floor and the restraints around his legs. A coating over an inch thick formed around the metal, with random spikes several inches long sprouting from various spots. Still, Blake’s fury overrode his fear.

“Or what? You’ll kill me?” he shot back with a scathing glare and a defiant smirk towards the woman seethed on the other side of the bars.

Sunat trembled with impotent rage for a moment but quickly recovered her composure. “Enough talking. The sound of your brutish speak grates upon my ears. You were a curiosity, but now you are merely a disappointment.” She flashed him a predatory, vindictive smile before turning her back to him and heading back down the hall. “Enjoy your final night, Elseling. I know I’ll enjoy the following morning.”

Blake reveled in the satisfaction of victory, but the feeling was short-lived. He’d won the last battle but lost the war—his execution remained on the schedule. He hadn’t expected her to be entirely beyond reason, but perhaps he should have. Everybody that he’d talked to since arriving here seemed entirely unreachable.

Night fell quickly and nobody else visited him as the light in the cell waned until only the dim lights of the moons peeking through the thin holes kept the chamber from turning to total blackness. It was only in this blackness that something new revealed itself: the metal all around him was glowing.

This was, in some respects, nothing new; he’d seen the “grorange” glow before, back in the bunker when he’d been in Hyper Mode. Not only had he been able to sense a large mass of what was likely metal beneath the bunker, but the machines themselves had glowed. At the time, he’d been under the assault of so many mysteries and discoveries that he’d barely had the mental capacity to really think about it—there had just been so many more important things to ruminate upon.

Back then, Blake had thought the sensation to be another aspect of what he’d termed “Hyper Mode”, the mentally-accelerated state he entered when in contact with one of the quartz-like crystals—that, or it was a byproduct of the circuit-like systems and flow in the bunker devices. But now, he had proof that he’d been wrong. He wasn’t in Hyper Mode now, nor were there any eddies of tiny lights flowing through the restraints or the bars. Despite that, he could see the aura of both quite clearly now that the light wasn’t around to hide it.

“See” was probably the wrong word, he determined. It was more like a second inflow of perception overlaid upon his sight, one that contained information about the metal that he couldn’t glean through his vision alone. Like before, solid objects did not seem to hamper this perception, as he could sense things about the various pieces of metal nearby on sides he could not see, like scratches and indents upon the other side of the bars.

Closing his eyes, Blake found that he could still perceive the metal like he was before. He found it hard to put into words, the best he could come up with being a sort of second sight mixed with a penetrating radar or three-dimensional scanner that let him see not just the shape of the metal and its surface but the inside as well. Not only did it give him incredible detail, but it also worked in all directions. Concentrating on the shackles around his arms, he found he could perceive the previously unseen restraints. Not surprisingly, they resembled the ones around his legs, with large chains half a foot in diameter and nearly two inches thick connecting them to the wall near the floor.

Blake’s ire at the restraints grew as he inspected them. As he’d thought, they were basically just giant lumps of metal with a hole in the middle for an appendage to be shoved through. Those holes were just that: holes running from one end to the other without any changes in diameter on the inside to account for the fact that human limbs were not tube-shaped at all. No wonder they’d cut off the circulation so much!

Concentrating on the metal around his right leg, for example, Blake found himself wondering how they’d even managed to squeeze his leg inside in the first place. He could see in his mind’s eye how the metal pressed into his thigh and feel how it squeezed his calf terribly, all while not properly conforming to the shape of his knee and ankle and leaving a pocket of air behind the knee. It wasn’t hard for him to see how it could be improved. In his mind, he imagined the top of the hole widening as the metal shifted and flowed, filling in the pockets around the knee and constricting somewhat around the ankle while widening to properly outline his muscular thigh and calf. Yes, the image in his mind would have been much, much nicer than the rudimentary hunks they’d forced around his appendages.

Blake’s eyes fluttered open in confusion as he felt his right leg tingle, blood flowing properly down to his foot for the first time since he’d woken up. The harsh pressure squeezing on his calf and thigh had somehow vanished. Looking down, he found, with utter consternation, that the restraint had changed its shape to resemble what he’d imagined! The metal—the hard, unmoving, utterly solid material surrounding his leg—had somehow reformed to his desires.

Magic. He’d just performed magic.

His head spinning, Blake shifted his attention to his left leg. This time with his eyes open, he used his new sense to grasp the full shape of the restraint and imposed his own version upon it, holding the new shape in his head as best he could. He watched as, to his amazement, the metal began to move. It flowed slowly, reminding Blake of molasses or videos he’d seen of lava flows slowly creeping over roads. Still, slow as the movement was, he could not deny that it was moving. Several minutes later, Blake felt a triumphant tingle in his left foot as proper circulation returned.

Blake couldn’t fight off the giddiness that filled him at the realization that he could do magic like the others. Not only that, but he could control the very material that these Otharian bastards relied upon to keep him contained. Quickly, he went to work on his arms, reforming both restraints at the same time. This proved harder than before, as he had to hold two slightly different images in his head at the same time, but his technique improved as he went.

Once he no longer felt like his limbs were going to fall off, Blake leaned back against the stone wall behind him and began to think. He had a way to escape now if he wanted to risk it. All he would have to do was melt the metal off him, create a hole through the bars, and make a run for it. He could even fashion a weapon out of some of the metal binding him if he wanted to.

The problem was how unbearably slow the process was and how much of his concentration it took. All it would take to screw him over would be for somebody to walk in on him as he was halfway through freeing himself—as if to reinforce his worry, one of the guards around the corner coughed, reminding him of their constant but unseen presence.

Perhaps Hyper Mode would let him move the metal faster? Wait, did he even still have his crystal in his pocket? After counting to one hundred and not hearing any signs of more guard activity, Blake willed the sleeve holding his left arm to loosed enough for him to wriggle his arm and hand free. Fretfully, he checked his pockets and, to his relief, found the small shard was indeed still in his pocket.

His relief soon turned to disappointment as he entered Hyper Mode and tested his metal manipulation. To his dismay, he found that the slowed time did not help him move the metal faster, at least not in any way that he could tell. It would probably help with detail, at least, but that wasn’t relevant to his problems right now.

Just in cast the Otharians decided to conduct a late search of his person, Blake decided to hide the crystal somewhere they would never find it: inside the shackle of his free left hand. Encasing the small shard within the metal with just a thin layer separating if from his left arm, he was able to keep it out of sight while also giving him immediate access to Hyper Mode, should the need for that arise in the near future.

Still, that didn’t solve his problem: if he wanted to escape, he needed to improve his ability. He could remember well the glint of the guards’ sharp metal spears. Until he was good enough and fast enough to disable a blade like that before somebody could stab him with it, any fight would be a huge risk, one he was not yet willing to take. He still had some hours before he would have no choice but to make a run for it. He planned to use them well.

Blake spent the night practicing, figuring out as much as he could, and honing his ability as quickly as possible. The process was not easy, as he had little he could do except blindly try everything he could think of and see what happened. Controlling the metal felt very awkward at first, almost like he’s grown a new limb and was now trying to learn how to control it. Still, while progress came slower than he would have liked, it came nonetheless.

The biggest breakthrough came just before sunrise when Blake discovered he could do more than just alter metal’s shape—he could control the physical state to some degree as well, causing the metal to become liquid like mercury! He couldn’t exactly explain how the change happened; he basically just desired the metal to become liquid and it did, then when he wanted it to solidify again it did as well. He could also alter it to be a middle ground between the two where the metal deformed against his fingers like dough. It was like he was forcing the individual molecules of the metal to interact with each other differently or something. He had no other way to explain it except to fall back on the concept of “magic”.

With practice, Blake found he could shape and manipulate liquefied metal with astounding speed, though the metal lacked any ability to hold its shape when subjected to even the slightest outside force. Unfortunately, this meant no Terminator-villain-style stabby shenanigans for him, but he could always just harden the material once it formed his desired shape and go from there.

Several hours later, Blake watched with satisfaction as the restraints around his legs bubbled and swirled, a variety of cubes and spheres of various sizes emerging from the silver goop and then receding back into it almost randomly. He was getting better and better at splitting his attention towards multiple areas at once. His control was not where he wanted it to be just yet, with pyramids, cubes, and spheres comprising the limit of his shaping ability at the moment, but that was the least important aspect at the moment. What mattered most was that he could liquefy a portion of metal in less than three seconds—fast enough, he thought, to disarm the vast majority of the Otharian guards before they could harm him. He had to keep his concentration on the metal or it would revert to solidity, but once the spear tips and swords sloughed off their handles, he didn’t care if they hardened again. They’d be little more than hard puddles at that point, anyway.

Blake felt that he’d done all he could with the time he had. It was time to move. He needed to get out of Dodge before something happened and-

The sound of multiple footsteps coming closer sent him into a panic. Quickly as he could, he reformed the restraints into a copy of their original form minus the blood circulation issues, finishing just before a group of twenty or so guards turned the corner and came into view. Their grim expressions and tight grips on their weapons told him the bad news as clearly as words: it was time. He’d taken too long in his preparations.

Blake didn’t struggle as the group entered the cell and freed him from the chains holding him to the wall while leaving the arm and leg restraints still on. Twenty people was too many for him to try to overcome in an escape, even if he was stronger than all of them combined. They were already too close, and a few of them didn’t hold a noticeable weapon, suggesting they might be mages. Instead of fighting, Blake decided to keep his eyes peeled for a chance soon.

The walk to the stadium center was a long one, helped in no way by his shackle-limited gait. As they proceeded through the labyrinthine hallways, Blake’s ears began to pick up soft murmurs which grew louder with each step towards their destination. By the time they came to a halt outside a huge twenty-foot-tall wooden door, he could almost feel the ground trembling from the combined rumbles of ten thousand voices on the other side of the barrier. Then the door opened and the voices crescendoed into a cacophonous roar.

Blake grunted, squinting as the bright morning rays assaulted his eyes. It seemed the entire city had shown up for what was surely the can’t-miss event of the year, with tens of thousands of people populating the stands. Blasphemous, Voice-killing Elselings probably didn’t grow on trees.

What was very clearly a gallows stood in the center of the stadium, as it seemed that Otharia preferred the classics. Faced with the specter of his impending demise, Blake’s feet came to a halt. Several spear tips prodded him in the back, but his body refused to move, forcing his “retinue”, as it were, to seize him by the arms and drag him towards the aforementioned installation.

The crowd suddenly started to quiet down as they hauled him up the stairs to the gallows platform. Looking around, he saw that most of the assembled people were no longer focused on him, but rather looking towards a single section of the stands ahead of him. It was the only section of the stands that did not have any seats that he could see, with nothing but a flat wall and a large balcony protruding from it about forty feet up.

Blake glanced at the balcony as well while still keeping an eye on his minders. The guards shoved him to a spot beneath the single noose hanging from the center of the crossbar above. The wood beneath his feet shuddered slightly from his weight. A trap door, surely.

Despite his hopes that the guards would back away now that they’d delivered him to his destination, they continued to stay close and keep the tips of their spears closer. Even after one of them warily fitted the noose around his neck, a good ten or so stayed with him while the others returned to the ground and encircled the gallows.

Movement on the balcony caught his eye as a guard strode onto the balcony. Behind him, Blake could now see a man in silver robes slowly leading a figure onto the platform. The figure wore a black cloak that completely covered their form, with a hood so long that it went all the way over the person’s head and completely blocked their face from his view. Given the way that the robed man led the figure, it seemed that the figure inside couldn’t see out any more than Blake could see in.

The pair stopped several feet from the balcony’s railing and the robed man reached over and pulled aside the figure’s hood, revealing a woman in her forties with unkempt red hair and glassy, unfocused eyes. The woman’s head shot up and her entire body stiffened, much in the way that one does when first waking from a nightmare. She gasped and then went silent again. By now, the entire stadium was so quiet that her gasp echoed across the building as the crowd eagerly awaited whatever was to come next.

Slowly an image began to form above the woman’s head. It started with just a few blurry blotches, but gradually it took shape and definition as if some unseen cameraman were adjusting the focus. Floating in midair stood a man in a ridiculous outfit that screamed “religious leader”. It came with all the greatest hits: a large pointy hat, multiple layers of ornamental clothing, and of course, a staff encrusted with jewels and other shiny trinkets. It reminded Blake of an off-brand Pope. The hat was wider and sported three branches, while the outfit glowed a bright blue instead of white, but the ensemble accomplished much of what the Catholic leader’s outfit did, lending the man an aura of authority that the crowd ate up. Blake, however, had always thought that the Pope looked like a dweeb and found this ensemble to be no different.

The crowd cheered at the gray-haired man’s holographic appearance. He raised his hands, bringing the jubilation to a halt.

“My people, may the blessings of Othar be upon you!” he began, his voice projected so that all could hear. He paused for a moment to let the cheers subside before continuing. “People of the great city of Wroetin, of Eflok, of Keqont, of Breah, of Nont, and of every town and village of this great nation! Today we are gathered to witness the end of a great evil! Soon our entire country shall bear witness to the execution of an Elseling! But not just any Elseling, an Elseling that dared to defile the name of Othar the Dragonslayer, Sovereign of Scyria himself!”

The crowd erupted into jeers that rained down upon Blake’s ears and his psyche.

“Let this serve as an eternal reminder for vigilance, for if the Holy Empire of Otharia is to stand strong against those that would undermine it, we must root out enemies that wish to do us harm! They hide in plain sight, just waiting for the chance to poison our crops, or worse, poison our minds! We must never forgive those that lurk in the shadows. With your help, soon all who oppose the Will of Othar shall face the fate that this creature will now face. By the power of Othar, let this evil be purged! Glory to Otharia!!”

“GLORY TO OTHARIA!!” came the shouted reply of every man, woman, and child in the stadium.

The man in the robes snapped his fingers in front of the woman twice, and the leader’s image disappeared. The crowd turned as one towards Blake, eager to see the final act of this play unfold before them. Everybody held their breath as another guard approached a large lever that Blake assumed would open a trapdoor under him and drop him to his end.

Blake glanced around desperately, looking for a moment of space, a single moment when he could free himself and make his escape, but the guards remained distressingly diligent. He could foresee his death clearly now—the pulled lever, the trap door releasing, his body plummeting down until suddenly halting with a deadly jerk. As the vision churned through his mind, a seed of an idea sprouted in its wake. He fought and half-succeeded to keep a smile off his face. He knew now how he could get the moment he needed. He would have to time everything perfectly, but Blake was better equipped to do that than anybody. As the guard placed her hand upon the level, Blake removed the slim barrier separating his left wrist from the crystal in that arm’s restraint, and the world slowed to a crawl.

The lever moved in slow motion, taking ever so long to travel what had to be a mere thirty degrees at most. Blake held still and willed the metal encasing him to assume the viscosity of water while still maintaining its shape for the moment. He was determined to not make his move until the absolute opportune time.

After what felt like a torturous eternity, Blake felt the pressure under his bare feet lessen just the slightest bit. Like the world’s slowest bullet shot out of the world’s weakest gun, he sprang into action at one-six-hundredth speed. His arms burst through the liquefied restraints like they weren’t even there, his legs following suit, as the trap door gave way and gravity did what gravity does. Only a thin band of solid metal around his forearm stayed, keeping the crystal in contact with his body at all times.

Hyper Mode did not allow Blake to move his arms faster than they otherwise could, but it did allow him time to maximize his precision, optimizing his movements to accomplish as much as he could in the split second he had. His hands lightly grasped the rope around his neck, lifting and opening it just enough that his head fell through a split second later as the rope ran out of slack.

Blake continued falling through the trap door, most of the pieces of his restraints falling alongside him. Given that Blake still had at least another few minutes of internal time before he landed, he began to form the remains of his leg restraints together into a weapon. At first, he thought to make a sword, but quickly he decided against it. He had no training in swords and was more likely to cut off his own finger with it than anybody else’s. Instead, he settled on a long, heavy, solid pole more than four feet long and two inches thick. It would be the easiest and fastest thing to make—something he could probably manage even while running—and also the one implement with which he was least likely to injure himself.

Blake cut off Hyper Mode as he landed with a thud. A moment later, his still-forming pole landed beside him with a second thud. The world sped up and the sounds of the stadium returned to a normal and parsable form. The ground shook with the frightened screams of the onlookers. For the moment, at least, it sounded like freedom.

The gallows stood a good ten feet above the arena floor, with entirely open sides, meaning Blake landed in the middle of a circle of guards. However, unlike before, these men and women each stood about thirty feet away—more than enough room for Blake to render them harmless. Scooping up his nearly-formed pole, Blake picked a heading at random and broke into a full-on sprint, using as much of his new physical prowess as he could muster.

Three guards stood in his general direction, each trying to overcome the initial shock. Two carried spears while the third pulled out two short swords. They charged to meet the swiftly onrushing Blake, their weapons flashing out towards his chest. They were too late; Blake’s powers manifested before they could strike, softening the metal to the point that their blades felt like putty against his skin as they futilely tried to stop him as he passed.

The screaming intensified as it became clear to the assembled peoples that the Great Evil Elseling was completely loose. In just the ten or so seconds since Blake fell through the trapdoor, the coliseum had descended into bedlam. Thousands of people pushed and shoved, trampling the unfortunate in a panicked attempt to get as far away from him as they possibly could. More guards began to stream out from the entrance of the underground area where Blake had been kept. Pandemonium reigned, and he couldn’t help but smile.

Blake sprinted towards the stands in front of him, figuring that his best chance for escape would be in the chaos of the crowd. The lowest rung of stadium seats stood about fifteen feet above the central pit, with a smooth stone wall in between. Blake made the leap with ease.

At this point, perhaps a third of the nearby crowd had made it into the nearby exit tunnel. The other two-thirds of the people parted before him as if he were some ravenous, rabid tiger that had escaped from the zoo. Shrieks of terror erupted from the throngs of citizens nearby as they scrambled to get as far away from him as they could. Blake wasted little time watching them scurry away, instead rocketing up some nearby stairs and running down the exit tunnel using his newly-formed pole to barrel over anybody who got in his way.

The passage led to another set of stairs, going down this time. He took them three per step and soon enough found himself on what he believed was the ground floor. The chamber appeared many yards wide and long, with large statues placed on pedestals every twenty feet or so to break up the emptiness—an entrance chamber of sorts, similar to the ones in modern stadiums where people presented their tickets before veering off in whatever direction their seats could be found. Confirming his conclusion, Blake spotted the bright light of the sun shining from beyond the arches on the opposite side of the room.

He was almost out! All that stood between him and freedom was perhaps thirty yards and a throng of crazed, frightened natives desperate to get far away from him. A cry went up as somebody noticed his arrival, and soon the mass of terrorized people redoubled their frenzied efforts to escape. Blake laughed as he rushed in behind them, delighted and relieved at his success—so delighted, in fact, that he didn’t notice the stone floor in front of him rise up just enough to catch his foot and send him sprawling to the floor.

Rolling with his momentum as best he could, Blake pushed himself up onto one knee just as Yarec rushed in, a dark black blade gleaming overhead. Holding the pole like a baseball bat, Blake managed to bring it up just in time to intercept the attack as the sword slightly sunk into the tough and durable metal. Adrenaline rushing through his veins, he reached out with his power to turn his attacker’s sword into useless scrap, only to find no significant amount of metal anywhere on the Apostle!

Blake stumbled to his feet as the Otharian pressed the attack with a second swipe that sliced a thin line into the outside of Blake’s pole, then a vicious stab that Blake barely avoided by twisting out of the way. Blake found himself hurriedly backpedaling, trying to figure out what the hell Yarec’s sword was made out of. Its color and sheen—not to mention the absurd sharpness—reminded Blake of obsidian, only obsidian was supposed to be highly brittle! A single strike should have been enough to shatter the volcanic glass... except this wasn’t Earth.

Blake realized he’d made the mistake of applying Earth physics to this world where magic existed. Given Yarec’s proclivity with stone, was it too much of a stretch to imagine that he could influence glass as well? After all, wasn’t obsidian just glass made from volcanic rock? With Yarec’s powers, was it not possible that he might be able to make a blade from the fragile but sharp glass and then use his powers to reinforce its strength?

The thought chilled him. Obsidian was one of the sharpest materials known to man. Even with his enhanced durability, he didn’t like his chances if a blow got through. He jumped back, attempting to create as much distance as he could, but this opponent refused to cooperate, pressing continuously with his blade flashing towards Blake from all sides.

Blake found himself on the back foot, unable to get even a moment’s pause. He was stronger and faster than the Otharian, with better stamina and likely even better reaction speed as well. He even had the reach advantage with his pole, if he could only get far enough away to leverage it. None of that mattered, because only one of them knew what they were doing, and it wasn’t the twenty-nine-year-old who spent his off days playing video games and his workdays sitting in front of a computer screen.

The swordsman’s body flowed like water, his strikes coming quickly and with deadly precision. In a desperate attempt at staying ahead of the flurry of blows, Blake removed the inner barrier on the band still on his arm, letting the crystal embedded there touch his skin and pull him into Hyper Mode again.

At first, it worked as he’d hoped. As the world ground to a crawl, he found himself able to see and react to Yarec’s next move far earlier than he could manage at normal speed, meaning he’d be able to better counter the blow and hopefully claw his way out of the disadvantaged position he found himself in.

However, a different issue immediately presented itself: it was very hard to carry out complicated full-body maneuvers like walking—especially walking backward—at one-six-hundredth of normal speed. Being able to block quicker did him no good if he was just going to trip over himself.

In a hasty attempt at a solution, Blake dropped back into normal time, utilizing his normal coordination to block the swift strike as he backpedaled, then shifting into Hyper Mode again for the barest fraction of a second, just long enough to determine where the next strike would come from, before returning to normal speed to fend it off. The tactic worked better than he could have hoped, and within three blows, Blake was able to halt his backward momentum and establish a more solid defense.

That was about all he could do, though. It was all he could manage to maintain a standstill. Blake could feel, almost instinctively, that he would be cut down before he even took two steps should he try to make a break for it. He had to take Yarec out somehow, but how? Even slowed down, Blake’s untrained eye found no openings in his assailant’s onslaught. He could only pray that the Apostle would make a mistake that Blake could capitalize on. After all, he didn’t know everything Blake was capable of.

Two strikes later, Blake’s prayers were answered when Yarec stumbled just slightly, leaving himself just open enough for Blake to strike back. Seizing what might be his only chance, Blake swung his pole downward like he was smashing a pumpkin on the ground with a baseball bat. Never much of an athlete—and now inhabiting a new body with strength and balance he’d had less than two days to grow accustomed to—he overcompensated and lurched forward, overextending and throwing himself off-balance. Still, this would have been fine had his pipe struck home. It didn’t.

Blake watched in horror as the off-balance Otharian somehow spun out of the way, his body pirouetting around the pole and his shining black blade flashing out in a deadly arc towards the back of Blake’s neck. He could see the mockery in the Apostle’s eyes, the man almost incredulous that Blake had fallen for such an obvious trap like an utter simpleton. In a panic, Blake threw himself into Hyper Mode and held it this time, twisting away from the deadly weapon as best as he could in a last-ditch effort to save his skin. It didn’t take long for him to realize he wouldn’t quite make it.

Blake’s footing was poor and his balance off, limiting how rapidly he could contort himself. He was already twisting as quickly as he could, and he’d even started to drop his body to the floor to increase his movement, but he could tell that it wouldn’t be enough for him to escape unharmed. While Blake’s neck and other vital organs would be out of the path of Yarec’s swift strike by the time it passed, the maneuver had put his left arm in the path instead. Blake had no illusions about what would happen when the two objects met.

Using the extra time afforded to him, he racked his mind for a way to save his limb but came up empty. It was a simple matter of physics. The edge was less than a foot away from his outstretched arm now, and he just couldn’t move fast enough to completely get out of the way.

The reality of losing a limb stuck Blake with a sudden finality, impacting his psyche like a meteor cratering into a city. He wasn’t going to miraculously escape unharmed, the dashing hero outwitting the dastardly evildoers. Even just a moment ago, there’d still been a spark of hope within him that he’d pull through somehow, that he’d pull some daring escape and overcome everything.

That hope was now extinguished, a tiny flame snuffed out by the reality that felt oh so much colder and harsher than it had even a minute prior. Blake was left now with nothing more than bitter anger. He raged against the unfairness of it all. Why had it had to be him that was stolen from his happy, comfortable life? Why were the people of this world so terrible? What had he done to deserve any of this? He’d tried to be nice, tried to be helpful, but all they’d done was spit in his face and try to murder him! Yet, it was as futile as a raindrop splattering against a mountain. The outcome was clear. He was about to be maimed through no fault of his own.

Spiteful fury burst forth within him, bringing him to a decision: the Apostle deserved to die. This piece of human garbage who had dehumanized him, this fuckstick who had belittled him, this shitstain who had subjected him to days of torment inside that fucking rock, this utter waste of oxygen... he deserved to suffer, to cry out in futile agony as his life came to a horrible end—the slower and more painfully, the better. If Blake was going to go down, he would not go quietly.

With everything he had, Blake swung the pole at his foe. With no real footing and a contorted body, he lacked any real source of leverage... but wildly enhanced strength could compensate for a lot. The pole began to move faster and faster as the blade descended, until, just as the edge met Blake’s skin, it matched the sword in speed.

As obsidian bit into his upper arm just above his elbow, Blake was surprised to find that it didn’t hurt anywhere near what he’d expected. Instead of agonizing pain, the blade was so sharp that he only felt a chill and tingling. Physical pain or no, it didn’t take away from the mental anguish that he had to endure watching a vital part of his body be slowly removed against his will.

Blake forced himself to keep swinging as the blade pushed further and further into his arm. He could feel the flesh starting to detach, but he clenched his teeth together and fought through it, willing both his arms to keep pushing as much as they could.

The edge cut through muscle and tendon with ease; Blake kept pushing. It sliced into his bone, barely slowing as it bit into the calcified matter; Blake felt the last of the leverage he had on his left hand fall away, but he continued swinging with everything his right arm could manage even with his dismembered left hand still gripping the handle. Then, almost mercifully, the black blade emerged from the bottom of Blake’s arm, fully severing everything from his elbow down from his body and with it, cutting off his connection to the crystal pressed against his left wrist.

The world exploded into action. Blake’s pole slammed into the side of Yarec’s chest with a resounding “CRACK!” and the Otharian Apostle flew from Blake’s view as if shot from a cannon. Blake let out a howl of pain as he fell to the stone below, his left arm landing just a few feet to the side. Blood squirted from what remained of his limb, puddling on the floor. Desperately, he palmed the end with his right hand and squeezed with his great strength. The immense pressure slowed the bleeding to a slow drip, but it also left him without any free hands. If Yarec were to strike again-

Oh, right, Yarec!

Using his right elbow, Blake pushed himself up to his knees and scanned the area for his foe. It didn’t take long to find him; the man had careened into a nearby statue and pedestal and now lay motionless atop their collapsed forms. Blake couldn’t tell if he was alive or dead without getting a closer look, but now that life was chugging along at normal speed, he found that he saw things very differently than he did in slow motion; the inferno of spite raging in his heart had been quenched by his desire to live even a one-armed existence.

There was too much he had to do without wasting even another second in this place. He needed to find a way to fully staunch the bleeding of his arm stump, then figure out a way to escape the city, and then finally find somewhere he could safely hide. Yarec was small potatoes when stacked up against the rest of his concerns, and he couldn’t afford to waste any more time.

As long as it had felt for Blake, his battle with the Apostle had lasted under a minute. In that time, while Blake had been focused on his attacker and keeping himself alive, the chamber had largely emptied of people as the civilians had fled in all directions. It wouldn’t stay that way for much longer. Blake could already hear the heavy footfalls of more guards approaching.

Releasing his stump for a quick moment, he scooped up his severed arm. It wouldn’t do to leave it here, he decided. After all, he still didn’t know what he was fully capable of and what was possible in this world; it might turn out that he could reattach it or something. That, and he had a feeling that the natives would display it like a trophy if he left it here. Lacking another hand, he reluctantly stuck his arm lengthwise into his mouth so he could hold his wrist in his teeth and free up his right hand again. Then, grabbing his pole, he tucked the cold metal under his right arm and returned his right hand to stop the bleeding at the end of the stump. With one final glance at the motionless Otharian, Blake sprinted through the archways, out of the stadium, and into the city on Eflok.