The cracks in the foundation of the tower that had spread when the portable room had been forcibly placed over the same space as the basement were beginning to spread. Or, rather, they had been slowly widening since the two spaces had been forced to overlap. But now, now that things were exactly where Flip wanted them, the cracks were wide enough that even a moderate amount of magical force could send the spacial anomaly into total chaos.

And that just so happened to be the goal.

Flip held out his right hand, little finger pointed out and thumb pressed down on the curled first knuckle of his index finger. The position was held in place in a form of elastic magical potential as arcane force built up in his hand. He held it only for a few moments, before curling his little finger back in and releasing a basic force blast spell. The motion caused a small chain reaction as his index finger unfurled and sent the force out and upward as he pointed to the ceiling. The impact was short and sudden; only the equivalent of a strong punch or the swing of a small sledgehammer. But it was enough.

The seams of the overlapping space began to split further and further apart. Helbrin lurched forward, most likely in an attempt to stop Flip, but it was too late. The demon writhed in the air, just barely touching the ceiling—the floor of the portable space—just as the spaces collapsed. A flash of bright light, a crack of thunder from the stone foundation shattering all at once, wind rushing to fill what had become a void… it was a manufactured tempest.

The intent, or at least the optimistic intent, of collapsing a lesser plane had been to capture either the demon or Helbrin. Trapping them together would have been a problem, they could have figured out some way to escape together. But the entire plan was rushed. Flip didn’t even know if the two spaces would be stable after. The odds of things going much worse were high. Higher than Flip wanted to admit. And even as the explosion of the collapse sent him flying, he didn’t want to admit that he had made a mistake.

By all accounts, Flip had made one of the greatest mistakes of any arcane practitioner in a century. Short of the tragedy of the Thaerwythian exclusionary zone, perhaps the biggest mistake in several centuries. Compacting space is an incredibly complicated form of magic, and decompressing space is as dangerous as compressing it it complicated. Barring that, it still might not have done as much damage as it did if Flip hadn’t collapsed a compressed space in Builend; a town well known for its planar fissures into the Obscure, through which demons occasionally crept through. It was, in part, the damage that his own family had caused some fifty years prior that took Flip’s careless abuse of magic into a calamitous mistake that threatened the lives of every creature in the immediate area.

The wizard did not get to witness the fruits of his magic. He was thrown from the basement of his tower in a blast greater than he could ever have conjured on his own and had gone limp before he even hit the ground. Similarly, neither the demon nor Helbrin was fully conscious of what had transpired; though the demon had its guesses.

It was Cheska that truly saw the terror that had been unleashed. A full planar rift opened forcefully into a world she could not bear to look into. It was a blinding and immaterial realm that made no sense when witnessed from the material world. Looking into the tear was akin to staring into the sun.

“I cannot discern whether or not this is a good outcome.” Archimus hummed from under Cheska’s arm.

Flip’s body hitting the ground mere feet from where the orc priestess stood seemed to confirm that it was, in fact, not a good outcome.

“I don’t even… What was down there?” Cheska growled to herself as she readied her hammer in her right hand and held Archimus up with her left.

The helmet saw over the rubble and through the arcane obscurities of the interloping plane, but could see neither head nor tail of Helbrin or the demon. And because he saw nothing, Archimus wasn’t sure what he should have been looking for. He suspected his old prisoner had returned somehow, but he couldn’t be sure.

“You should heal Faengil, if you can. We need to know what happened.” Archimus commanded.

Cheska was already rummaging for her symbol of Haemer to conduct a healing ritual. She was just frantic enough to ignore the outright command she had been given by the helmet and not take offense to it. With shaking hands, she dropped her hammer and the animated helmet to the ground beside her as she placed the flat of a heavy iron nail to Flip’s head and called upon her Goddesses healing touch. The magic was there, but it was diminished—fragmented in much the same way that the tower was. The priestess was surrounded by pieces of a home, and so she could gather only pieces of a miracle.

Cheska took a deep breath as she finished her healing, fully aware it wouldn’t be enough to force his recovery fully. “He might be out for a bit yet, we need to lock this area down. Do you see any…”

A silent attacker had caught Cheska off guard. Not even Archimus had detected their approach, his visor was too close to the ground to see anything other that what was directly in front of him. Blood dripped down the orc’s back as claws were pulled away from a deep raking cut. The damage was nearly instant, as were the effects. Cheska could feel the air struggle to stay in her body as a small puncture in her lung began to widen. And though she pressed the holy nail of her goddess close to her chest, it could only produce a fleeting touch of healing magic.

Helbrin stood, once again mangled, once again barely a humanoid figure in the ruins of the tower behind Cheska. Hands soaked with blood. And he screamed. In agony, in despair, in victory, and in fear. He was overcome with every emotion that there was left for him to feel. The sound of his outburst echoed off of every piece of rubble, through the trees of the ganderwood beyond the tower ruins, and off every door of every home in Builend. As it went on, Helbrin called upon his stolen flesh to mend, and it began to slowly reform. He could feel his body mending in the wake of his sins. And, as he leaned back to project his scream into the heavens he felt three soft impacts on his side.

Three arrows, released almost simultaneously had found their mark in the monster’s flank. And though they were barely felt, they cut Helbrin’s scream short. The arrowheads had lodged deep into his form, scraped bone and torn flesh. But they were inconsequential compared to the fourth impact that rocked Helbrin’s whole body and caused him to lurch forward.

A spear tip had been thrust through the beast’s back and brought to protrude from its stomach. The force caused Helbrin to tumble forward over Cheska’s silent and flailing form, tearing the spear free as he was topped to his knees.

And standing there, behind where the monster had let loose his bloodcurdling call, was a man. A man with one good arm, one good leg, a deep cut across his jaw, and a tired look on his face. Jimothy Tim, a man of unquestionable moral character, had staggered behind the wizard he idolized ad the priestess that had helped him recover from his darkest moment. And between fading sight and stumbling legs, he had spotted the changeling beast as it clawed Cheska across the back.

Jimothy lunged forward, spear held above his head, and attempted to pin his foe to the earth. But Helbrin was agile, even in his agony. He scrambled away, backing towards the planar tear and barely evading three more arrows fired from the treeline. More members of the town guard had begun to surround the tower as they finally rallied after the initial blast, their helmets catching golden rays of sunlight and creating the illusion of a force far more prepared to deal with the beast than they were.

There was no sneaking away for Helbrin. No skulking into a dark ravine and waiting for the world to forget about him while he schemed. Not again. He had been seen. He had been surrounded. And if he did not escape, he would be captured again. There were none that could kill him, not in the material world, and there was a good chance he would be able to escape through bloodshed… but he was crazed. The blood that had long been absent from his body was coursing through his stolen flesh and he was beginning to see red. He began to laugh, and blood slipped uselessly from his wounds.

“Boy! Down here!” Archimus called out to Jimothy. “You are in great danger! Don me and you may yet survive!”

Jimothy didn’t hesitate. He dropped his spear and, with his only good hand, scooped up the helmet to place on his own head.

“Wow.” He breathed the word and felt the sound reverberate around the helmet as he reached out to retrieve his spear.

The vibrations of Jimothy’s words resonated and shifted into Archimus’ own voice. “The creature before you is comprised of the undead remains of Helbrin Velsaffe. It is indestructible here and by our hands. You must heal…”

Archimus ceased talking as Helbrin’s deranged laughter formed into words. Words in a tongue he did not recognize. And though Jimothy did not understand them, he had heard them before. They were the last thing he remembered hearing before he had been flung from the tower stoop by an immense amount of magical force. And so he planted his spear in the earth, grabbed Flip’s limp body by the collar and beckoned for Cheska to follow him as he took cover behind a large chunk of broken tower. The motions felt smoother with the helmet on, lighter. It was as if donning the helmet had alleviated his pains and weariness.

The priestess, still struggling to breath, managed to grab her hammer and Jimoth’s spear as she crawled along the ground to the same covered space. As she entered the space of the larger part of rubble she felt a slight return of her goddesses presence and the tear in her lung cease to widen. She heard a quiet conversation between Jimothy and Archimus before he placed his hand over her back and a new healing magic began to to bolster her own.

Her first words, as soon as she could feel air staying in her lungs were, “You can use magic?”

“Negative. I can use magic.” Archimus replied. “Only basic spells and only through a conduit, but I can use magic.”

“Then heal Flip, you blasted piece of scrap!”

Jimothy lowered his hand to the wizards body, and he began to stir, but it was a much more delayed reaction. The wizard would not be conscious until after the worst had happened. And the worst was about to happen.

The demonic words ceased to spill from Helbrin’s mouth and the world went still. The wind stopped, the commotion of the guards surrounding the tower went quiet, everything that had been moving froze in place. Just for a second. Just before a thunderous blast of air and sound erupted over the ruin. The air seemed to suck back in towards Helbrin stood, just before the planar tear. And the final strike of magic, the devastation, bloomed in a pillar of blinding white light dropped suddenly from the heavens. It was a sight that only one person conscious enough to witness had seen before.

Selian, from where she had been watching just within the treeline of the nearby ganderwood, saw all too clearly the marks of the most devastating magic she had ever witnessed. This was the second time. The first being when Flip had used it to attempt to kill a functionally immortal vampire. It wasn’t the kind of magic that she had ever seen or heard of before. And she doubted she would ever see it again.

It wasn’t the exact same spell though. And Selian could hardly see that. She was far off and it was so bright she couldn’t look directly at it. She couldn’t see that the radius of the spell was much wider than the first time she’d witnessed it. And she certainly couldn’t see, not from without the radius of the spell, that it was only a descending ring and not a solid pillar of destruction.

The delivery of the spell was not exactly as Jimothy had anticipated. He knew it was a bad sign to hear the words. But he hadn’t seen it actually happen before. And for a moment, when he saw the light beyond where he was hunkered down, he was relieved. But when the light vanished, which happened almost as quickly as it had arrived, the young guard saw no trace of his follows left beyond the scope of the ruins. If there were any remains, they were not a sight that Jimothy could stomach, and he buried that thought deep down inside his mind.

“That was my spell…” were the first words spoken after the blast. Flip had woken just enough to see the blinding light and hear the blast of the pillar of destruction. “He stole my spell.”

“Now is not the time to worry about plagiarism,” Archimus groaned in sorrow at the loss of life. “We must strike now.”

“With what?” Flip hissed. “If he can stand after casting that spell, he’s a stronger mage than me. And my best attempt to banish him only brought him closer to his master.”

Jimothy peered around the rubble they had sheltered behind only to see Helbrin standing exactly where he had been before. No motive visible on his twisted face.

“What master are you talking about? What happened in that basement?” Cheska glared at Flip as she asked for answers that she knew he didn’t want to give.

“Fifty years ago, my family summoned a demon. A very specific demon they felt they were uniquely qualified to capture and eventually destroy.” Flip clenched his teeth as he spoke, but he knew there was no more avoiding the matter. “My uncle managed to seal it below the tower after it ran amok. But then the town lynched him and no one was left that knew how to deal with it. So I’ve been… studying it.”

“Where is it then?” Jimothy seemed the least shocked by the revelation, quite possibly because he had heard the rumors his whole life, that the Finnigans had been demon worshipers. But his mother had always told him that those were lies. He knew that Cheska had heard much the same rumors, but her only exposure to the Finnigan clan had been Flip.

“It was on the wrong side of the rift when my magic collapsed the basement.” Flip grumbled. “I hoped that it was send Helbrin to some far corner of the planes, but it may well have done that to the demon. It could just as easily be on the other side of that tear. We might never find out. It is a more cunning shapeshifter than Ghovu himself.”

“It’s a shapeshifter?” Cheska thought out loud. “Like a changeling?”

“Not exactly. It doesn’t choose its appearance, not exactly. It takes the form of the thing that you desire most. Or so I read from my family grimoire.” Flip frowned and peered around the rubble himself to see Helbrin still standing. Waiting for something. “That was why it managed to break free of its containment when it was summoned. A member of the Finnigan clan was fooled when it transformed into a deceased loved one, and they broke the seal. I have not been able to experiment with its ability to shapeshift. It won’t do it for me, for some reason. But I suspect it naturally collects the desires of those around it and takes the form that matches the strongest desire.”

“What did it looked like when Hebrin was in the basement with you?” Archimus asked, suspicion in his voice.

“As it always does.” Flip answered plainly. “I don’t know why.”

“I think…”

Archimus was interrupted again. This time from a force beyond the instigation of Helbrin or the demon, or any creature they were aware of. The tear itself, the hole in reality, was beginning to rip in an audible transformation like the tearing of canvas. It’s bright opening seemed to open again to something much darker and cavernous. A faint amethyst glow could be seen emanating from far beyond the tear, and the rest was was as black and wet as pitch.

“We need to force him through the tear.” Archimus announced, now hastened by the development. “Now.”

Cheska grunted in reluctant agreement, “Right. Can we just push him?”

A sudden wind blowing from without the ruins towards the tear seemed to answer the question. It didn’t speak, as wind is not prone to do so, but it was an unnatural wind. A wind caused by powerful suction. Wherever the tear had finally opened up to, there was no air, and so a dramatic imbalance was being corrected. Even Helbrin had to brace himself to stay where he was and he was a dozen or so yards away from the tear.

A small rock pecked Flip on the back of the head and signaled the beginning of something much worse than mere vacuous wind. Debris was starting to shift and tumble in the force of the wind.

“I’m not getting any closer than this,” Flip growled as he watched the rubble of his home shift.

“You cast spells, cast a spell,” Cheska said with a laugh, or an attempt at one. It was a feeble attempt to deal with the stress and danger she found herself in.

“This is a logical course of action” Archimus muttered, directing Jimothy to shift his head to look once more around the edge of their cover. “But we are already behind. Lady Farwysher is minutes ahead of us.”

“That elf woman?” Jimothy asked out loud, but received no answers. “She has put a lot of arrows in him. Like… twenty… twenty five… twenty eight...”

“Stop watching, start doing.” Cheska recited one of her grandmothers many aphorisms with a sigh; her sledgehammer back in her grip and hefted to a comfortable grip.

Flip had a naturally mixed response to the phrase, gritting his teeth at first but slowly relaxing into a grim smile. “Very well. Arcane force it is.”

As though they had actually planned their attack, the three survivors stepped out from behind the rubble in unison and spread out to surround the tear. Jimothy carried Archimus on his head and his spear in his hand. Cheska gripped her hammer in one hand and her sacred nail in the other. Flip picked up a piece of the stone that was once part of his washing stall and held it at the ready for lack of a better piece of ammunition. They were met with a sight slightly different than what they had last seen. Helbrin stood firm, despite numerous arrows lodged in his torso and legs, and his eyes were locked on the three that emerged.

Cheska made the first move, conjuring darts of holy fire that leapt out at Helbrin but were swept off course by the powerful wind. Flip uttered a short incantation to and sent the piece of rubble flying, though it only made contact with one of Helbrin’s legs with minimal impact before it tumbled into the planar tear. Jimothy made a wider flank, near to where he guessed that most of Selian’s projectiles had come from, and waited.

“Should I throw the spear or do you have a spell?” He muttered into the helmet. “I don’t know what to do.”

“Do both,” Archimus hummed as he channeled arcane energy through Jimothy and sent the spearhead crackling with electricity.

“Alright. Both works,” Jimothy said with an uncertain sigh.

He sent the spear flying well left of where Helbrin stood and let the wind correct the trajectory without losing too much force. It was a shot in the dark, but it made its mark just below the monster’s stomach.

Archimus, impressed with the quick thinking offered a compliment the likes of which Jimothy had seldom heard. “Brilliant hit.”

And the helmet was not the only one impressed. Selian had made a short march from the treeline to get a closer shot and avoid the wind taking the power from her arrows. “Good hit, but you’re going to need something a little stronger. You only knocked him back a few inches.”

And, indeed, Helbrin had been moved by the hit. It was the most direct hit he had taken in some time and with the most force as well. The arcane electricity had caused his joints to tremble and he had surrendered an inch. He could feel his grim on the ground beneath him waning. And in a moment of fear, he called out to his master.

“Master, destroy them!”

It was hardly audible over the wind. The nearest creature was Flip, and he was standing some thirty feet away. But the answer that bellowed out from the planar tear could be heard by everyone in even remote line of sight of the anomaly.

“Rest assured, child. They will die. All will die.”

The voice was part spoken and part transmitted to all that could see into the obscure through the tear. It was calm, too calm to have meant those words idly. And yet they did not seem to reflect any immediate action. A moment passed where the four adventurers slinging stones and magic and arrows at the undead monster before them took a step back in anticipation of some greater intercession, but there was not an immediate one.

After the projectiles ceased and the four were left to wonder… after some twelve seconds of panic, their fears were realized. An eye, pale white and blank opened within the tear. It was distinguishable as an eye only by the way in which it appeared, as a silver mirror revealed from behind parting putrid lids. As Flip, and Cheska, and Selian, and Jimothy, and Archimus looked upon that pupil-less eye they felt a presence creep into their minds. Something cold and hungry, scraping through their thoughts and salivating for powerful memories of fear and failure and loss. And as each memory was uncovered, their bodies grew more and more weak. It became harder to stand let alone stand their ground against the powerful wind that drew them in.

All felt the effects of this terrible demons power, except Flip. He felt its presence in his mind, felt it dig deeper than it had ever reached before, but he also felt it wither in his mind like a root grasping for water where there was none. As each of his friends began to slide ever closer to Helbrin, and as that retched beast readied his claws and began to chant an incantation, Flip began one of his own. A new incantation.

It was not an incantation in the traditional sense. There were no words. It was not even spoken, though Flip could feel every idea and feeling that comprised it cross his tongue as though it were speaking words. The language that Flip spoke, if it was in fact a real language and he was indeed actually speaking it, was the language of feeling. Each part of his incantation was part of a memory that enshrined a deep seated emotion. The first time Cheska had comforted him as a child and asked him to sit next to her at the dinner table in the hearth temple. The day that Jimothy had been born and he had been called to Kagla’s bedside to offer a blessing as her husband’s adopted brother and confidant, and the pride he saw in her eyes as she held Jimothy. The blur of motion that had been Selian Farwysher, lunging to protect Flip as he was swept up in imminent peril… not once but twice within the depths of the tomb—it was the gesture of a trusted friendship and mutual reliance, a gesture none outside of Flip’s adopted family had truly shown him. Even Archimus, though he had only had the pleasure of knowing the construct for an extremely short time, held a place of gentle and serene respect in Flip’s heart; a place of mutual respect and understanding that the wizard did not think any truly living creature could have with him.

Every memory, every feeling, every spark of light that kept Flip alive became the incantation for a spell that Flip did not fully understand. The spell was ambiguous, unfamiliar, and strange to him; he felt as though he had always been able to cast it, and yet like he never would have thought to do so until just that moment. And as magic welled within him, he saw, for the second time, chains sweeping out from his form and from the bodies of his friends and of the bodies of his enemies. Chains of silver and gold connected him to each friend, while chains of black iron ran among all of them and anchored to Helbrin. And through Helbrin, ever blackened chain swept back up into the planar tear where they were fastened to the eye of the demon.

Everyone that felt the pull of the vacuum of space in the obscure saw the chains, and the sight of them brought them back to alert. More so for Helbrin and his master, who felt a wary fear of this magic that neither of them recognized or understood. And that fear was well founded.

The demon quickly realized that it could not move from where it stood, though where it stood exactly was ambiguous to all that watched from the median plane. And Helbrin, though he tried and tried to claw his way towards his foes felt himself being tugged back into the tear. But it was a slow pull, and Flip could feel the magic beginning to drain him. He had not had much of a reserve left in him, and though this magic felt lighter and brighter than anything else he had ever cast, it was still powerful magic. In hopes of hastening the effect, Flip reached down and pulled on the blackened chain that went from him to Helbrin. To the wizard’s surprise, it detached easily. And when Flip let it go, it flailed in the wind and Helbrin shifted on his feet as he skidded backwards without anchor in that direction.

With a look of silent terror on his face, Helbrin watched as the three remaining living creatures each plucked the chains that connected them to him. Each loosened chain sent him back further and further till he was just at the mouth of the planar tear and hanging on by only one chain. It was a thick and mighty chain, though it behaved as though it were a strange of yarn. It ran from Helbrin’s forehead to Archimus’s visor. And with only a touch from Jimothy, it crumbled.

“I will…” were the last words to escape Helbrine’s mouth before he was sucked into the inky void of the obscure.

His figure plummeted for what looked like a hundred feet until he became a speck against the white eye of the demon. And as soon as Helbrin was gone from view, the eye closed—its presence faded.

The rift persisted, and it grew stronger.

As Flip crumbled to his knees and let the spell fade, his allies rushed to him to keep him from being pulled closer to the void. The wind fought against them as they retreated. And though they managed to leave the vicinity of the tower ruins, they still felt the slight pull of the obscure.

Then, from just before the threshold on unconsciousness, Flip held out his hand to the tear in space. And it stopped.