Much to my surprise, I made it to the server farm’s entrance gate in one piece. Della hadn’t found me yet and her furious screams sounded from farther than before. The Pheilett must have held her up with something; I really couldn’t imagine any other explanation for my lack of disembowelment. The massacred security guards outside the server farm were a grim reminder of what awaited me if the demon ever caught up to me.

As I walked closer to the Pheilett corpses, I stumbled. Something was wrong. Well, being chased by a demon was already all kinds of wrong, but this new wrongness was with my body. I looked down at my new legs and frowned. Black veins throbbed beneath the pale white skin of my demonic limbs, spreading from my soles up to, well—I loosened Soul Eater around my waist, peeking under my impromptu skirt.

“You got to be kidding me,” I muttered.

The black veins were crawling up my body. Already, my feet felt cold and sluggish – the reason why I had stumbled – and the sensation was spreading with every heartbeat. I still had the glowing orange veins too, of course, but those were spreading from my heart. The two kinds of veins were about to clash over my abdomen.

“This is a joke,” I mumbled, rubbing my stomach. “I’m veiny like a bodybuilder on steroids. But more colorful.”

It didn’t look very healthy. My blood pressure had to be through the roof, really. Della must have done something to the legs she had given me; now that I betrayed her, my legs were trying to betray me in turn. Where was all this black blood coming from, anyway? Were there tiny hearts hidden in my heels, pumping the black blood upward? How was it even circulating? Demonic magic made no sense. Then again, Soul Eater was able to gain mass out of nothing and I had long ago accepted that as perfectly normal. Demons didn’t seem to care about the laws of the universe.

The sound of an explosion made me jump. Right, Della was still out there and I had to move. I dragged my numb feet to the bloody remains of the guards, then held my breath as I bent down and picked up a fallen gun. It looked like a toy rifle, seamless and light and made of plastic. Much like the prototype I had used earlier, this one didn’t have a physical trigger either. I held the grip tightly, tense in anticipation, but no needle was stabbed into my palm to suck my blood. I thought about firing the gun, giving it a mental command. Nothing happened.

“Uh, Suit?” I asked. “A little help?”

I waited a few seconds, taking quick glances between the gate behind me and the gun in my hand. No reply came. I gulped. Something was wrong. Admittedly, a demon trying to kill me while black and orange liquids sloshed around the insides of my body was already terribly wrong, but there was something wrong with my mind too. I closed my eyes, trying to reach out to my shades. I got the sense that they were struggling, sort of, though perhaps it was just my imagination. The connection between us had never been symmetrical; they could reach me, but I couldn’t reach them. I reopened my eyes.

I was alone.

Somehow, this sudden realization frightened me more than anything beforehand. I had laughed in the face of danger, laughed at our hopeless situation, laughed at our ruined body—but that was before I knew that I would need to make my last stand alone. My chances looked quite different if I was no longer a martial artist, if I didn’t have centuries of combat experience, if I didn’t possess intimate knowledge of the Pheilett. I was going to screw things up without the shades. I had gotten too reliant on them, I knew, but … they were able to get me out of any trouble. They made defying the odds easy. They were confident where I wasn’t. They were purposeful and competent. I wasn’t.

I heard another explosion, this one closer to me, and I slowly turned toward the gate. I would have to face the demon alone. I didn’t get why the shades went silent, but it was all up to me now. The gun in my hand shook. Trembled.

“I can’t do this.”

The useless gun fell from my hand. I wasn’t a fighter. Running was the smart choice. That was what I had always done, back before I had Soul Eater. It usually worked. Yes, I wanted to run away. Sure, sooner or later there would be nowhere left to run, but until then—no. There was one thing I wanted more than running away. I held my hand close to my chest, brushing my fingertips against Devi’s horn.

“I want to have no regrets.”

I would inevitably fail. Hadn’t I already made my peace with that? I wasn’t long for this world. Never had been, from that moment the Inspector bound Soul Eater to me. And so I had always wondered: what kept me from falling apart? What kept me going, in spite of it all? The answer was so simple in hindsight. No regrets. When my end finally came, I wanted to claim that I had done my best.

Oh, I was ready to run. But I was ready to run smartly.

“You see me, don’t you?” I called out to the room of corpses, spreading my arms wide. “You hear me, don’t you?”

They always did. Della had shielded me for a while, but now that I was separated from her, the Inspectors were watching me without a doubt. So were my Spectators, unless the Pheilett stopped broadcasting this tragedy because of how bloody it had become. I doubted that, though. Even with a demon rampaging through their precious facility, they made a show of me pressing the big red button to incinerate Della. They were watching me alright.

“I have an offer for you,” I continued, turning around and around. “I’ve noticed that you have a slight problem with the containment of a runaway demon. So here’s my deal: if you spare my life, I’ll lure the demon where you want her to go.”

As if on cue, I felt Della’s pull grow stronger. She was drawing nearer. Close. Way too close. I bit my lip, resisting the urge to look at the gate. The Inspectors didn’t answer. Had I misjudged them? Were they too prideful, hateful, or vengeful to accept my deal?

A sleek white robot hobbled into the room. One of its arms was missing, but its remaining hand was holding a device I recognized. A portal gun. Relieved and excited, I got my numb demonic legs moving; my bare feet slapped against the floor hard and I reached the robot fast like the wind. Its featureless head swiveled to me almost as if in surprise. It held out the gun, which I greedily took and looked for a way to activate it—but I was too late. A cloud of red hair emerged from the server farm, a slender figure with swirling flames behind her.

“Randel, Randel, Randel,” drawled Della. Her brilliant red hair billowed behind her in a mesmerizing manner. “Where do you think you’re running, you traitorous little shade?”

Shade? I licked my lips and tasted blood. I shook myself out of my stupor. There was a portal gun in my hand, and I pointed it at the demon.

“Honestly,” I said, “I have no idea. But why don’t we find out?”

I didn’t fire the gun; I didn’t know how to. But the Pheilett could, and they did, and so a wide tear opened right between me and the demon that blocked her line of sight. I sprinted toward the portal right away, with no regard for what lay on the other side. A sandy savannah, desert heat, and a few patches of crimson trees defying the dry climate. I plunged through the tear and landed on the scorching ground, though my feet barely felt the heat through the numbness. I stumbled anyway, because when I tried to take a breath I realized that I couldn’t get enough air. It was too thin. Gasping, eyes watering, I pointed the portal gun once more and the Inspectors were merciful enough to fire it. The next few steps were as agonizing as they could get and I all but fell through the new portal that opened—arriving at a green forest. A quiet forest. A disconcertingly eerie forest. I couldn’t quite tell why, but those were my first impressions. Instinct told me to get away from here now. I considered jumping right back into the scorching savannah.

Behind me, the demon crossed the first portal and locked her eyes on me immediately. My portal gun fired again and created yet another tear, but when I tried to run I ended up falling to my knees. I could no longer feel my legs. The black veins had spread further up on my abdomen since the last time I saw them; they had reached the bottom of the cross-shaped scar over my heart, the scar that Soul Eater and Soul Seeker had left when they got bound them to me. But frightening as the veins were, the demon behind me was even more terrifying. I transformed Soul Eater, changing it from a skirt into skin-tight pants, and with its help I rose to my feet and forced my legs to move. My headache grew—there were too many things to focus on! I made it through the new portal anyway, putting another world between me and Della.

My feet sank into dirty, ankle-deep water and I sucked in a big lungful of stinking air. Gross, but breathable. I was in a huge sewer canal. My portal gun fired again – opening a gate to a snowy landscape – but it was a few steps ahead of me and I knew that I wasn’t going to reach it in time. I turned around and found the demon right behind me, still on the other side of the portal but within her arm’s reach. She just stood there, watching me, never once blinking, never once taking her eyes off me. She pinned me down with her gaze alone. It was no demonic magic, just the visceral instinct of the prey as it looked the predator in the eye. There was no escape from the demon. She knew it, I knew it.

“W-Wait!” I said, backing off a step. “Della, wait a moment! This is a trap!”

The demon stood on the other side of the portal, expressionless. Well, that wasn’t entirely true; she seemed intent to kill me still, her posture coiled and ready to grab me by the neck, red hair undulating furiously behind her … but at the same time, she was doing what I asked her to do. Waiting.

“Go on, Randel. I’m listening.”

“I’m terribly sorry,” I said, taking another step back, “but the Pheilett are using me. They can control my body with this collar around my neck! They knew you would follow me and lured you out here on purpose. If you follow me further, you won’t be able to find your way back to them!”

“Tears in space cannot be completely smoothed over,” said the demon. “I can find them and reopen them whenever I wish.”

I gulped. “Oh? Then, they must have another reason for bringing you here. Listen, I’m doing my best to resist their control. I’m able to talk freely for now, but it may not be for much longer. Please, Della, I don’t want you to fall into their trap. I’m warning you—this is a trap.”

Another stretched silence. Neither of us talked, neither of us moved, neither of us so much as blinked.

“You aren’t really a shade,” said the demon.

“W-What?”

“You’re bluffing. You’re improvising. You’re no ordinary shade, I see it now. What are you, then?”

And that was it. Game over. I did my best, but she saw through me. The only thing that remained was sating her curiosity. What was I? Too bad that I had been asking the same question for a while now. Too bad I had no true answers, just even more questions. Well, just some questions and a vivid imagination.

“I’m someone like you,” I said.

The demon blinked.

“Like me?”

“Like you,” I nodded, pointing at the cross-shaped scar on my veiny chest. “My heart may not have a gaping hole in it, but you see, it’s far from intact. I’m neither human nor shade. I’m a creature that stands at the crossroad of two planes—like you, Della! A being that is both from the Waking World and the Astral Plane. I have a mortal body and an immortal soul. My blood runs threefold with the red of mortals, the blackness of hell, and the light of the heavens. My minds are numerous, and yet they are one. I act in unity, and yet I sow chaos. I am the liberator of demons and the slayer of small gods. I am Randel.”

We stared at each other, me and the demon. Dirty water dribbled on my side, green leaves rustled on her side. It looked quite dramatic, given that the forest had been so unnervingly still up till now. It felt as if my speech could have moved even the mountains. Too bad it was stinking so much on my side.

“Mmm,” purred the demon. “Well, Randel, this was nice to know. Very nice. I’m still going to make you suffer, of course, but—”

An enormous ghostly jaw snapped shut around Della’s torso and yanked her away. I flinched in surprise and saw a flash of iridescent scales and a long sinuous neck before the creature was gone, dragging the demon deep into the forest. I could feel the unnerving wrongness even from my side of the portal. The demon’s screeched but it sounded muffled and distant. The entire forest shook. The trees began to tremble.

“Holy hell,” I muttered. Then I shook my head and glanced at the portal behind me, at the snowy mountains on the other side. It was the world that the Inspectors intended for me to visit next. Now that the demon was distracted, I had a chance to reach it … but if I did, then what? I was still very much naked and the next destination looked awfully cold. I wasn’t very enthusiastic about playing the obedient little puppet for the Inspectors either. There was always a chance that they would leave me stranded in one of these worlds.

“Would it be worth it?”

Quickly, I glanced at the moss-covered stone walls of the sewer canal. Sure, this place stank, but it showed obvious signs of civilization. I could hide in this world. Live the rest of my life here. Except … I wrinkled my nose. A thought nagged me. The Inspectors had chosen this world because – like the haunted forest – something in here was capable of hurting the demon. Did I really want to live in such a place? Could I even assume that this world’s residents would welcome me with open arms? It would be a dice roll.

“Dang,” I said, my heart sinking. I looked at the tear to the haunted forest and the portals beyond that, all in a straight line. “Well, here we go again.”

I tossed the portal gun away and forced my legs to move, plunging into the otherworldly forest. Something in the distance let out a bone-rattling roar and the trees on my right folded upon themselves, revealing a star-filled infinite space beyond. The urge to cover and hide was overwhelming, and yet somehow I pushed on, shivering, scampering through the tear to the savannah. My feet couldn’t feel the scorching sand any longer, but I had forgotten to take a deep breath and so I choked, and fell to my knees, and got up and I pushed on, clawing at the final portal’s edge to throw myself over the threshold. I sucked in a deep breath, relieved. I was back in the facility. The one-armed robot stood where I had left it, and it reached down with its single hand—to grab me right around the neck.

I gasped, weakly batting at the robot’s arm as it pulled me up until my feet left the ground, and then my collar paralyzed me from the neck down and made my arms fall limp. Ironically, the only reason the robot didn’t crush my windpipe was that it happened to grab me over the indestructible collar around my neck. Indestructible, like Soul Eater. Right. My lungs burned, my head swam, but I was able to transform Soul Eater and have it shoot up from my waist, tendrils of the black material latching onto the robot’s arm and flowing into its joints. The rest was a blur, almost as if the demonic weapon acted on its own, severing the arm—which caused me to drop back to the ground. I fell to my back and the robot’s fingers broke around my neck, its grip loosening. The rest of the robot swayed on its feet as I had Soul Eater crawl all over it, squeeze it, crush it, destroy it.

I heaved, choked, and turned my head aside to spit blood—some of which was orange. My body lay paralyzed even after the remains of the robot crashed to the floor beside me. I stared at my blood on the floor, taking raspy breaths, feeling the hot wind on my face, the air that wafted through the portal above me. And still, I could smell the sewers on me. Blegh. I started to chuckle but stopped quickly as pain lanced through my throat. I opted to just lie there for a while, raggedly breathing.

I wished I had a mirror to see myself one last time. My body had been battered even before the Pheilett had taken me up here, but that paled in comparison to what I endured ever since. At some point, I realized, I had stopped noticing the pain. Oh, but it was there alright; I could feel it in every inch of my body. I groaned, heaved, spat again. Barely red anymore. I chuckled, but it came out as a gurgle. Ah, no way—I wasn’t going to choke on my blood. I had Soul Eater crawl over my chest and grow two long appendages out of my sides, then pushed my limp body up into a sitting position. I hung my head and spat some more blood on my legs, smiling bitterly. My body was a mess, wasn’t it?

My body. Not I. At some point, I realized, I stopped caring what happened to my body. Stupid shades and their stupid invincible attitude rubbing on me. Well, whatever. I would be dead soon anyway. Considering how much pain I was in, it would be a mercy.

With my head hanging like this, my field of view was limited. The tip of Devi’s horn swung back and forth on the end of my necklace. It had some blood on it too and I had no way to wipe it down. Damn. I wasn’t quite sure why the Inspectors hadn’t taken the horn from me along with my clothes. Did they know the reason why I wore it? Did they want me to struggle, to try my best until the very end? If so, it had to be the biggest mistake of their lives. I spat again.

Dying would have been a mercy, but I wasn’t done with those bastards yet.

I transformed Soul Eater, making my supporting appendages thinner and longer. I also grew two more leg-like limbs next to them, expanding the material to its very limits. Soul Eater didn’t have as much juice as Soul Seeker so enveloping my entire body was out of the question, but four long spider legs were more than enough to move me around. Soul Eater became my new vessel. The paralyzed body of flesh and bones was forgotten, limp and dragging behind as my new body rose—and then began to walk. Wobbly at first, the black limbs bending at irregular places, but steadily picking up pace as I found my rhythm. Faster. Angel blood raced through my untiring black flesh. My legs pumped up and down, looking impossibly thin and yet enduring my weight with ease, twisted knees bending. Faster. Once I got the hang of running, I added one more joint to each leg to smoothen my gait. I was a man in an insect’s body. A monster. The world faded as I focused on running. Faster.

I took the corridors at random, without thinking, leaning on instinct. I had only a vague idea where I was headed; away from the portals, away from the demon, skittering toward the edge of this cursed facility. I found rooms with wide windows that displayed all sorts of twisted experiments like me, but I ignored them. I passed by a room filled with caged shades, but I ignored them. I passed by a lab full of robed Pheilett, but I ignored them. Nothing could trick me. Nothing could stop me.

A squad of robots turned around a corner to block my way, several lines of robots behind each other, armed and ready to fight. As they trained their guns on me I spotted an open doorway off to my side. An obvious cover. I ignored the doorway and sped toward the robots, dropping my paralyzed appendage low to the ground just as they fired. The first rounds flew above me, and then I pushed myself off with my hind legs while turning my front legs into flat disks to shield me from the second round. My black limbs bubbled over as they got hit, losing their shape for a moment, but before the robots had the chance to fire a third time I barreled into their mass and went down with them in a tangle of limbs. My black limbs formed and reformed, puncturing and smacking and crashing the robots—they were no brawlers, sleek and slender and light, made for handling shades and firing guns instead of taking me on in a fistfight. My black limbs weren’t even limbs anymore, just a great black mass that flowed free like liquid that turned solid only to deliver blows and leave devastation behind. I was a beast that could not be stopped, and though the robots tried to bog down the useless limp part of my body by throwing themselves at me, I managed to wiggle my way through them.

I broke free at their backs, saw the corner up ahead, and scuttled to it on a hundred little legs like a centipede. I knew that not all of the robots were destroyed, some of them had a gun too, but it didn’t matter because I turned the corner and put it into the line of fire. The corner behind me exploded as the robots attempted to shoot me through the walls, but my flesh appendage was numb and didn’t feel any of the debris hitting me. I ran on, knowing full well that the robots would follow me as soon as they got their bearings—and then I realized my mistake.

The corridor I had turned onto was a dead end, with a wide round window at the end of it looking down on the planet below. There was also a portal terminal through which the robots must have warped in, but my access to it was probably blocked—the Pheilett had done that once already. A dead end. There was one last thing on the otherwise bare corridor; a small hatch next to the terminal. I recognized it from Suit’s memories as an emergency exit. Suit had thought about it only to mislead the Inspectors, and yet here I was, crawling closer to the hatch of an escape pod. It almost seemed too good to be true, but then, perhaps some luck was due already. The robots were quite serious about stopping me before I got here, so this might just be an actual way out—and even if it was a trap, I had no choice but to fall into it. The robots would shoot me in the back otherwise.

I grew an arm and slammed its end against the single button next to the hatch to open it. I saw a slide inside and jumped into it head-first, retracting my black body, squeezing my useless appendage in behind me. I slid into a narrow cockpit, plopping into some cold liquid, sputtering as I pushed my head out of the waist-high pool. The cabin was halfway filled with water. Water in an escape pod! I would have laughed at how ridiculous that was, except I wasn’t out of danger yet. There was a pilot’s seat under water level and a dashboard barely over it, and my eyes flashed across the controls in a panic. I had absolutely no idea how to operate this thing. The entire front of the cockpit seemed to be one big screen, but it was as blank as my memories.

“Suit?” I croaked. I knew I was alone and yet couldn’t stop hoping that I wasn’t. I had decided to do my best, but operating a spaceship – even if it was just a small escape pod – was more than likely beyond what my best could do. And still, the merciless truth was that I had no chance but to try. Feeling cold and numb, I dragged myself to the dashboard. I coughed and had a sudden wave of dizziness as I tried to focus on the buttons. I coughed again, spitting black blood into the water. Yeah, forget operating the spaceship; I had other concerns as well. It wasn’t even the cold water that made me feel so numb, but the demon blood coursing through my veins. It had reached my heart. The fight was over. If I listened closely, I could hear Della calling for me. My Della. Randel’s Della. She didn’t want him to leave.

I scowled, shaking my head, then pressed a big red button with one of my black tentacles, and when nothing happened I pressed another. Another wet cough escaped my sore throat. Pressed more buttons. Just needed a little more luck. To launch the escape pod. To not fill the interior fully with water. To enter a destination to fly to, and to somehow evade the pursuers they would undoubtedly send after me. And yet here I was, unable to even activate this stupid escape pod. I slammed a black tentacle down on the dashboard, frustrated and helpless. There had to be a way out. I coughed and struggled to keep my head above the water. I had to think of something. If only it wasn’t so, so hard to focus. So hard. I pushed another button.

The big screen flickered and turned on, making me flinch in the harsh light. It was so bright and so white—and I realized why. A plain white mask with three eye-holes looked down on me from the screen. A woman in a white suit, clapping.

“Congratulations, Subject Randel,” my Inspector’s voice sounded from the speakers. “Truly, my most heartfelt congratulations to you! Dare I say it? You’ve absolutely crushed any and all expectations we set for you, and I loved every moment of it!”

“Guh,” I groaned, spitting blood. My head lolled and I had trouble keeping my eyes open. I could barely hold myself upright with Soul Eater. I just—I had to hang on for just a bit longer. Della. Della was coming. She was going to save Randel. The Inspector was talking, gloating, and Randel struggled to focus on her words.

“—sadly, I cannot let you go wherever you please. I set the course of your escape pod back to Nerilia.”

“Hnngh.”

“Now, now, I know this isn’t exactly the outcome you wanted, but you need to understand that there are many among us who want to see you thoroughly punished. Your little adventure resulted in severe casualties and tremendous damages, you know?”

She laughed in a carefree, pleasant manner. Randel could only groan. He closed his eyes, fed up and tired, but he was unable to close his ears.

“—a surprise for you, once you land. I hope you live long enough to see it, Subject Randel. I truly do. Whatever the demon has done to you is sadly beyond our medical expertise, but I know you’re tenacious—”

Randel’s limbs were losing their shape and his head dipped into the water.

“—every waking moment you stay alive is—new data—invaluable—”

Randel felt a vague, bitter impulse to just let go.

“—the Game of Ascension is not over—”

He was too tired to struggle anymore.

“—need to launch the pod now—”

He sank into the water.

“Farewell.”