“Oh? Already? Yeah. I know who that is,” I said.

She set her pen down and smiled down at me. “You can pick it up when you arrive, since that’s where you’re headed today. It looks like the fees have already been paid on that. Thank you for traveling with us today, Mr. Koutz!”

I said my thanks and continued inside. The second time around the Porter’s was already feeling routine. I handed off my ticket, got it turned from shiny copper to burnished green, then walked into the main lobby with the jungle vista painted on the ceiling in excruciating detail. I showed my ticket to the Porter at the Haemir gate and walked through the eerily quiet wooden tunnel. As soon as I came out the other side, I felt a chill on my skin. This time I was pretty sure it wasn’t a metaphysical omen, but just the actual temperature change. One night in Oxenraith and I’d already grown accustomed to the heat. I laughed to myself about how silly I’d been in Oxenraith. Just because I was in a good mood did not mean disaster was about to strike. Sometimes good things just—

The artificial lighting in the Guildhouse cut out. For just a second, I heard the early murmurs of confusion in the loose crowd of travelers around me. Then I heard the chattering of metal as steel gates began closing over all the Doorways. Even, it seemed, the windows up near the ceiling. The stadium-sized chamber was plunged into darkness. Somewhere distant, outside the building, the sound of church bells clanged through the air.

That’s when I heard the screams start. “Shambler!” someone shouted near me, “It’s the Shambler!”

“DO NOT BE ALARMED!” the resonant voice of an authority figure called through the chaos. A single light turned on in the direction of what I was reasonably certain should have been the exit to the chamber. “PROCEED IN AN ORDERLY FASHION TO THE EXIT. THIS IS JUST A STANDARD SECURITY PROCEDURE. IT IS STILL DAYLIGHT OUTSIDE. THE GUILDHOUSE IN HAEMIR IS NOT UNDER ATTACK. DO NOT BE ALARMED…” He started repeating his message. I stopped listening.

That did something for the crowd, anyway. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I saw the outlines of a bunch of extremely tall people begin to slowly pick their way across the room. I’m not sure why, but I decided to stay. I just didn’t like the idea of fumbling through the darkness like an idiot. I found an out-of-the-way spot near the center of the chamber and sat down. I’d get up when the lights came back on.

Chk! Ka-chk!

Somewhere off in the darkness I heard the clatter of metal-on-metal, then a small orange light appeared. It was coming from the opposite direction of the light at the exit. The brief panic that had borrowed the will of the crowd a few moments ago reasserted itself over those that had languished behind. “Run!” I heard people shout. “Monster! We’re under attack!”

In their haste, people started tripping over each other. I didn’t feel like joining all that. All I felt was an intense curiosity about the source of the orange light. It came from behind one of the closed metal gates, I realized. A gap opened. It grew wider. More light spilled in.

Then I saw the source. A monster. A hideous monster of a man. He held a ball of burning flame in his hand, which didn’t appear to burn him. Before coming to Earris, that might have impressed me, but I’d seen that trick already. The more interesting thing about this man was that one of his eyes looked burned off all the way down to the bone. Blood dripped from him as he emerged from the gate holding a black sword. Just looking at his sword sent waves of dread and fear running through me. Nobody had to explain to me that the weapon he was carried was a thing of pure evil. The man’s body looked like he’d passed through the turbine of a jet engine. Chunks of flesh hung off his shoulder, his arms, his legs. With every step he took closer to me, dark ichor dripped off him. He really looked like he had no business being alive, let alone walking.

I couldn’t take my eyes off the man as he drew closer. I wasn’t sure if he was coming to kill me or not, but it stuck me as odd that he would single me out among the screaming crowd fleeing to get away from him. Maybe it was that we were of a similar height, which seemed awfully short for a rissian. The scattered bits of his flesh that has miraculously gone undamaged appeared to be too pale for a rissian. If not for the exposed bone I could almost see him looking kind of human.

This was that other shoe. I knew it now. I’d let myself enjoy a few happy moments and now I was paying the price for it. I didn’t know what to say as he came to a stop in front of me. If he was going to kill me, I thought I should at least throw out a witty one-liner before I died.

“You’re… bleeding,” I said. Great. Nineteen years of life and it was about to end with a banal observation. If I’d died instead in a hospital bed—as I’d been meant to—would I have squandered my last breath, commenting on the way the fluorescent lighting flickered?

“I know,” he said. His voice sounded remarkably similar to mine, though pitched up slightly higher. “Listen, I don’t have a lot of time. Paladins will be here soon.”

It didn’t seem like he wanted to kill me after all, so I tried talking instead. “Are you—were you human once?” I asked. “Like me? I haven’t seen another human since I got here.”

He shook his head, causing some melted skin to slough off his cheek. “Sorry to say it, Vince, but I am you. From the future.”

It sounded impossible, but we were the same height, though he’d packed on noticeably more muscle to his frame than I had. I looked at his one unburned eye. In the light of his flame, it appeared blue. Just like mine. “Wha—bu—HOW?!”

“How doesn’t matter,” he said. “Why does. I just want the same thing you do—to stop us from dying, to go home. Trust me, if there was any other way for one of us to get out of here, I would have taken it.”

That… seemed like the sort of thing I might have said if I’d really come from the future. “You know how to go home?” I asked. I’d just talked to Brookie about it, and he’d made it seem like I was going to have to go on some big, long quest.

“No,” the creepy version of me said. “I failed. But there’s still a chance… for one of us.”

I meant to ask what he meant by that, but I didn’t get a chance. He extinguished the fire in his hand, and my vision went black. I took a step back, wary of possibly tripping on something in the dark. Something smacked against my forehead. It had the texture of flesh, but was cold. A hand maybe?

Lightning lanced through my skull, starting at my forehead and blooming out from there like a bomb had just gone off. My vision when from total darkness to hot white flashes of unnatural light. It should have been impossible. I hadn’t felt the slightest inkling of pain since the Pain Taker. Now it was like the debt had come due. Thunder roared in my mind, pounding into my head more pain than I’d ever experienced in my life.

I collapsed to my knees, my consciousness fading.