"Captain or Major?" the voice said.

Ben ignored it as he was very busy floating in the absolute darkness.

"Well, I'm only asking because you kept mumbling it out. The little spies tell me you don't even know what your title even is these days. Are you ever going to wake up? You have been sleeping for quite a while. Draggin you is not easy, you know."

Ben groaned and tried to open his eyes. A sharp pain took over when he tried. The light was blinding, and it hurt a lot to just exist. He tried to will himself back into unconsciousness.

A softer voice interrupted him. "All your memory shenanigans have left your mind not so structurally sound."

The other voice was scratchier, sounded almost the creaking of an old ship.

"You sure this is the guy? He does not look all that impressive."

"Which one of us does, during our lowest moments? We shall see if he can come back from all of this."

The light receded a bit, and Ben opened his eyes a fraction. A giant tree-like creature had a hand wrapped around Ben's ankle and was dragging him through what felt like sand.

"Oh, I think he's waking up." the tree said.

"Hmm?" the other figure turned and Ben saw that it was a young woman wearing a huge floppy hat.

"Am I dreaming?" Ben asked.

"No, not yet. You will though when I send you through the sinkhole back to your world. The process is not very easy without training. I'm afraid you will see terrible things." The lady smiled at him. "If you survive, well, we'll all make our introductions, share a drink, and be good friends."

Ben was lifted out of the sands and held aloft by his legs. Below him, the sands were rushing and making waves, slowly crunching themselves back to dust.

"This does not look like the exact gate, Ma'am. Might not be the exact same world. Some slight differences will apply." the tree said.

"Hmm, you might be right, Ashe, but at this juncture, as Ben here will say, it's just semantics, isn't it? No need to worry unless he survives."

"I suppose not."

And Ben fell, landing with an oomph. The lady with the floppy hat told him not to fall into despair and that it would end eventually.

He did not hear much of it, as the sands began to drag him into the depths. He fell and fell until the world lost all color. People and locations from his life rushed at him in a wave and covered him completely.

---

After they talked Ben helped her pack and walked her to the carriage station where he bought her a ticket. She kissed him on the cheek and told him nice things but he couldn't understand any of them. His ears were ringing louder and louder, overtaking everything. Ben smiled sadly at her as she went, told her he would write her as soon as he could.

Later on, Ben went home, loaded his pistol, and shot himself two inches above his left ear, but unfortunately, it did not take. He would, in the years to come wish that he had fallen on his sword like the soldiers of old, but it was out of fashion by his time.

A friend ascended the steps that morning and began knocking at the door. Ben rose from his drawing-room, feeling woozy and misremembering past events and half-hallucinations from his short trip into the Never. He felt fear because soon he had to attend an exam and had not studied. He felt fear because something was undoubtedly wrong with him inside and out.

"I dreamed of scarecrows dripping black bile."

"Gods, Ben." said the friend. "You look at me now, don't you close your eyes, you hear me son? Stay right here. I'm going to get--"

But the image splintered and broke into tiny little pieces of color.

"I'll do anything for you. But I lied. Because I was unhappy with her and happier without her, but what does happy matter if without her I want to die?"

"Fucking hells below. What did you do to yourself?"

"Shot. Shot myself. Wanted to sleep. I just wanted to rest and don't hear the noise anymore. I just don't want anybody to hurt me anymore."

"And you figure the best way is to blow your brains out? How is being dead going to fix anything, you thrice-damned fool."

"Put him on the table here. I'll need---"

"Go on the Warbley Avenue, there's another clinic there. Tell them we need blood. He'll need a transfusion if he's to live."

"But I heard her sing. The lady. She was old but she wasn't." Ben said. "It looked different. Not like any sand I have ever seen. She sang a very strange song. Instruments I've never heard. You know any song like that?"

"He's delirious. Just--- Hold him, damn it. I'm only holding his brain in his skull, no need to be gentle. Yes, I'm being sarcastic. Dose him. Dose him now!"

The song the witch sang blared as loud as anything. Ben tried to sing along and turned his head to the little box by his bed that sang the song. A little silver rod poked from a corner of the little rectangle.

"Am I dead?" Ben asked.

"NO," said the witch, but she wasn't a witch, for she was young and her nose wasn't that big and her eyes weren't that large. "THOSE ARE NOT REQUISITES FOR THIS JOB."

"Then what?"

"THE WILL TO SACRIFICE."

"I don't know if I like that answer."

"NOT AN ANSWER. THE ANSWER. IT IS THE ONLY THING."

"I killed myself."

"NO."

"I wanted to. I tried to. The rest is semantics."

"WHAT DO YOU WANT OF YOURSELF?" she asked and her voice would loud and strong, but she didn't look scary. Just a regular woman. Maybe she had seen too much and her eyes were sunken into her skull a bit too much, her lips too thin, giving her an appearance of being displeased even while she was at rest, drinking tea or enjoying a good book. Ben did not know what to make of her.

"I don't know. I never knew. I keep losing. I loved her and she abandoned me. I never felt so alone as when I was with her. Never so alone as when I was among friends."

"YOU HAVE BEEN THROUGH TOO MUCH TO KNOW YOURSELF SO LITTLE."

"I do know myself. I know and I hate what I see inside."

"WHO DO YOU WANT TO BE?"

"I can't be who I want. I try to fight and be how I should but I can never outrun my flaws. I can't be who I want so I want to stop."

"SEEN SO MUCH BUT KNOW SO LITTLE. THE WORLD ISN'T ONE PERSON. THE PAIN WILL FADE. "

And although Ben felt as if he remembered her, he could not distinguish between the good and the bad memories. Then the world changed again, bringing him to a different place with a different person.

Emily and Ben sat at a table, in the old coffeehouse on Rudbury Lane. They took a place near the window so Ben could see the people shuffling down the street. It made him happy to see the world at work. A sign of progress, or maybe just the facade of it. The voices mingled together just as the people did, and their overlapping words became the language of the city, the birth of a single entity. Ben loved the million lights that huddled together and shone all the brighter for it in the dark, the tapping of feet on cobblestone streets and the loud voices, the laugher, and even the anger. It symbolized that humanity was still a beating heart, and that life went on no matter the horror on your doorstep. That meant if the worst things happened to you, then they did not happen to somebody else, and so hope existed out there.

They sat and waited. They sipped at their coffees and ate some pastries. Ben was looking out the window, pointedly trying not to look at Emily, while she furiously stared at him.

"Always so angry," Ben said. "And I never know why."

Emily rolled a cigarette slowly, methodically, and looked at him, only to glare. "That's because you never think of anybody but yourself."

"That does not sound very fair or very true."

"It is true, isn't it." She continued. "Men with your temperament don't live very long, or at least that's what I found. "

"You did not find that," Ben replied.

"Oh?"

"I told you that. I was drunk."

"You also said you wanted a pet dragon from the Southern Archipelago."

"Let's call it very drunk then."

"No, I get it. I don't hold it against you. You get those moods and it's hard to get out of your own head. It makes you self-obsessed. You look everywhere, turn over every thought and stretch it out, look for the inkling of fault in it. Try and try to fix yourself." Emily said.

"Is that so?" Ben replied.

"Yes. It makes you myopic to who you truly are."

"Why don't you tell me?" Ben asked. "Tell me who I really am. Maybe that will be the solution and I'll finally be happy."

"Ha. That'll be some cold day in the underworld." Emily said. "I've known you a long time now, Benjamin, and I've watched the light behind your eyes go out and only come back at the thought of power and glory. I love you, and you are my family, but for all your talking and convincing me, yourself, whatever fool you've tricked into being your friend, the only thing that got you looking ahead was gaining power. Because hey, that makes you important. That makes you present and noticed. That's how I know your future and all that's to come."

Ben looked back for a second and then turned his head towards the counter, where the tall, burly baker was happily preparing something for a client.

It always made Ben happy to see others happy.

He looked down at his hands and rubbed them against each other. The gold roll of parchment that covered his skin was hardly noticeable now unless he focused his power. Life was not different before, or if it was, he did not feel much different.

Struggle through normalcy during the day so you can sit and stare at the ceiling during the night. That was all the same. Ben felt very tired and very old. He wondered if he was sick, and then wished he was dying.

He imagined the news that his life was ending and felt joy, that the small amount of time would gain meaning and happiness because of it. Following the line of thought to its conclusion, terror gripped him, and Ben found he was very afraid of pain and death.

"Why do I feel so alone?" He asked.

"Why does it matter? Will the answer change anything? That's not the question you have to answer here. What are you going to do?"

"I don't have any ideas and the whole thing reeks of melancholy. I think I've veered off course and it's not something anybody wants to hear, but this is all I can think of. Too much repetition of words and I feel like we're both unlikeable. After all who likes a pathetic sadsack daydreamer and an angry, always on the warpath, always insults everybody lady. How did we get here? Will this work?"

"You'll never know if you don't at least try."

"This whole thing has turned into a pseudo-journal. I thought it was supposed to be fantasy, adventure. Grandfather told me to go be a soldier, go on an adventure. What's so adventurous about depression and death."

"You never cared about adventure," Emily said, but she was losing her shape fast as she ate the pastry. Blobs of her skin stretched and fell limp on the table. "You just wanted to pay. Wanted to find someone to punish you. Anyway, it doesn't matter."

"Why not?"

"Never mind that. Let's think of an ending for you." said the shape.

"Are you still Emily?"

"Not sure I ever was. This is, after all, just a memory."

"Nothing new can be made in a memory. It would have to be words I already heard." Ben said.

"Well," the shade said. "This time you've made quite a mess of the spell. You've used it as a way of running and hiding from the painful thing. But then again, you've been doing this for a while."

"That's not what happened. I was in the desert, and they dropped me down a sinkhole. Then this. I am very confused."

"Well then, I imagine this next bit won't do much for you."

The world started melting, the colors running in streams down people's faces as they lost all humanity. Misshapen mannequins, all of them, sitting and chatting with each other as if nothing was wrong.

Ben found he could not breathe. Looking down at his hands, and they were thin and yellow, made of fast disappearing candle wax. He screamed and it came out garbled nonsense.

One second he smelled wax and the next, it was the cool night air. Heavy steps rumbled outside the door as they came hurriedly up the steps. A giant man burst through the door.

"Are you alright? Shall I get the doctor?"

"Is it over?" Ben asked. "Please, is this real?" He was drenched in sweat and found himself in an unfamiliar bed.

"Yes, son, it's real. You're safe." the man said. He knelt next to the bed. Ben saw the worry that showed in his eyes and did not know what to make of it. When he turned to push the covers off him, he saw that his arms were glowing softly, gold parchment slithering like snakes over his skin.

Ben swallowed his fear, turned to the man, and asked, "Where the hell am I?"