Walking away from the smoke, I had room to breathe. Literally and figuratively. I still felt the tendril around my chest, the hound biting my arm, and the magic invading my mind. I survived. My body shivered from the after-effects.

"Breathe in, count to four, and then breathe out," Siris said. "That's how they breathe in the army to calm down! Okay, many people in the army still get PTSD, but it's worth a try."

Closing my eyes, I followed Siris' advice. My mouth was dry as paper, but at least I could still inhale normally.

"And now you strike a pose and drop a badass one-liner," Siris added.

"Em, what?"

"That's what they do in the movies to calm down. Plus, it always breaks the bad guys' concentra-!"

Siris dissipated before he could finish. Stupid, stupid venom. But I can push on. It's nothing. Right now, Isa had it worse than me. The excess aether in her soul turned her comatose. Now, she was lying in the mud, sleeping next to the brambles like Aurora. Her skin looked as sallow as that of a hospital patient and her eyes like they had been deprived of sleep for ten days.

I rubbed her face, cleaning it from the mire that covered it like a mud mask. Why did she have to come here in the first place?

I shook her body.

No reaction.

To my surprise, Simon had regained his composure. He stood straight like a pencil amidst the crushing darkness around him. He didn't walk like a zombie anymore and light had returned to his eyes. He still looked weary, sure, with dirt on his clothes, and tired bags around his eyes, but nothing a good night of sleep couldn't fix. Overall, he seemed more relaxed than me.

Even normal humans occasionally performed very basic magic tricks. They couldn't channel their life energy so well, sure, but having the right tools helped. With the horseshoe, he could ward off creatures averse to iron. And while mind magic was powerful, it was easy to disrupt.

Still, how did he even know to bring such an item? Perhaps I didn't know him long enough. He seemed sweet enough in a "boy next door" manner, not the threatening or creepy type who takes advantage of anyone. Like Isa, I first saw him about two years ago on the Paranormal Pals Discord server. Unlike Isa, who attributed 99% of phenomena to aliens, demons, or witches, Simon appeared like the scientifically minded type. Not the type who believed in anything as silly as monsters.

Unless he was a practitioner himself. Which was a possibility. Given that the Veil existed, he couldn't have told me about it unless he knew I was one, too. And, thinking logically, he can't have been stronger than an apprentice. So, there was no reason to be afraid, even if my irrational brain believed otherwise. I'd have loved to ask him, once we were safe.

This black mire expanded – which Siris said came from the Otherworld - while I was still fighting and swallowed the entire room. A vertical wall of mud had formed which blocked our exit.

My cellphone still didn't work! Could I call someone with Isa's?

"I'm afraid that calling the mundane authorities is something I can't allow," Siris said. "Even if I knew the number of the magic cops, they couldn't help you. You are trapped in another world at the moment."

"You mean, like, the Otherworld?" I asked.

"No," Siris said. "Worse than that. We might be in a Domain."

"A what?" I asked.

"Let me ask you a rhetorical question. Assume you are a monster and you want to kill humans. But the Veil is there and you must do it in secret. Eyewitnesses or corpses are out. What do you do?"

"Um, I lure humans into traps?"

"Exactly. You wrap space and time to create pocket dimensions between your realm and the human world called Domains."

My perception of Siris shifted from "cute kitten" to "slimy weasel". "You manipulated me. You knew this, yet you lured me here!"

"Relax, relax!" Siris said. "What do you think these fairy tales where people went to a magical land and returned are based on if there wasn't a way back? Monsters can be idiots. Sometimes, the designer makes mistakes and doesn't destroy the backdoors."

The designer. Someone set all this up. Siris mentioned fairy tales and while the Barghest was associated with fairies in English mythology. I had a rough idea of what category of supernatural we were dealing with and it wasn't dwarves.

It was at this point that Simon became self-aware enough to talk again.

"Guess I have to thank you for saving my life," Simon said.

"You should," I said. "As should I."

A suffocating silence hung between us. It was easy to downplay the importance of online relationships, even if they were no less significant than pen pals.

Even before I came here, I had a pretty good read on Simon. Even though he seemed non-threatening enough not totake advantage of secrets, I couldn't take risks. Not with my arm hurting like hell.

He noticed. "Your arm looks pretty bad.

"Paper cuts," I answered.

He reached out his hand as if he wanted to inspect my wound himself, but I pulled my arm away.

Not knowing what to say, I stuck to not saying anything that could make my situation worse.

"Okay. It seems like you aren't very talkative today, so I've gotta break the ice myself. Are you a practitioner or something?"

My voice caught in my throat before I got the words out. "A-are you?"

"Eh, I'd rather keep that for yourself. See, I'm under a Geas by the magical Men in Black, and if I break it." He drew his index finger from left to right over his throat like a knife.

I twisted my face.

My Dad had to sign such a Geas after he learned about my Mom's true nature. He didn't know about my abilities yet and I preferred to keep it that way.

From how they explained it, it was a curse that forced people to follow defined rules or suffer a defined punishment. Did the Veil's rules only apply to supernaturals and humans with sufficient aether affinity? Mom once told me that her marriage to a mundane made her an outcast. Was this why? And was Simon's situation similar? Didn't matter, I had to focus on survival right now.

"How did you end up here?" I asked.

He picked up his necklace from the mud. "It's a bit embarrassing, but here we go. I've got relatives who are into witchy stuff. They kept me out of the loop since I was small and I thought they were weird people. I mean, Bigfoot and aliens are already implausible, but magic? That straight-up breaks physics."

"That's what people said to Einstein's theories as well," I said. "What changed your mind?"

"Well, I heard rumors about this basement being haunted. My friends and people on the server thought I didn't have the balls to break the rules and sneak in. Of course, I wasn't a pansy. So, I looked at some books owned by relatives and prepared. I sneaked into the basement yesterday and I saw nothing. The next day, I suddenly became sick and I couldn't come to school. But I still wanted to come back to that basement, no matter what. Dunno what happened next."

After recounting those events, Simon noticed Isa lying in the dirt. Her unconscious body startled him as if a hurricane had slapped him in the face.

"Ugh," Simon said. "How did she get here?"

"She saw that I went into the basement. She-"

"Doesn't know what I do, no," he confirmed. "We need to get out. Can't you use any of the mana here to teleport? Where are we even?"

I looked around. All the hedges and vines had dissolved, yet the boiling machines were nowhere in sight. We stood amidst a black void room with no boundaries and only the burning, smoking, lumbering demon corpse for company. Low and dense crimson fog clouded the horizon. Whiffs of foam churned and swirled like storm waves in the endless sea of smog around us while spectral lights pierced the smoke walls like lightning.

"It's a Domain," I explained. "Some monsters can warp the spacetime around them to create those. They're normally between our world and the Otherworld and it's easy for humans to get trapped here."

"Is this like an RPG Dungeon where we don't get out until we destroy some magic core or beat the final boss?"

I sighed. "Not always. Do you know those fairy tales where people went in the woods, danced with fairies, and came back twenty years later? Those were guys also trapped in Domains."

"So, we can't get out?"

My headache returned. "Let's scout for portals. Maybe the designer couldn't close all."

Simon nodded. "Sounds like the best we can do."

Simon packed Isa, seeing how I hardly had the strength to walk. We walked where the water pots used to be, expecting unclosed connections between our world and the Otherworld to be found there. Or rather, Simon walked and I trotted behind. Not that I could stop him. Without hellhound venom slowing him down, he thought more clearly and paid better attention to traps.

Wished had a cane. I tried channeling aether into my body to replace lost life energy, but it only worsened my headache.

We walked on ground as hard as molten black lava against a landscape the color of rotten apricot. The air smelled foul while low mist obscured my fogged vision.

It felt so unreal. Like dreaming. Like being pulled into wonderland.

My head throbbed from venom and threatened to burst with every step I took. Had to stay conscious.

As I forced my eyes open, I saw a gigantic, swirling ripple in space-time.

No-one guarded this exit,other than three canine shapes. These guys were dogs in the same way a typhoon was wind. The same way in which a tiger was a housecat, the same way in which a Harley was a bicycle. They had shoulders broader than a bison's with fur so thin that it exposed the underlying flesh at points and their total size rivaled that of a minivan. Once my eyes had fully opened, I realized the full absurdity of what I was gazing at.

Dogs. The. Size. Of. Vans!

"Hey, those are Black Schucks, right?" Simon asked. "I recently played a fantasy MMORPG where they were killable enemies and-"

"SIMON, THIS ISN'T A VIDEO GAME!"

Simon straightened until he stood like a tree.

I felt bad for snapping at him. Was this the venom tearing me down or was I getting easily irritable in general?

I shook like a leaf while my pulse raced as the portal-guard dogs' red eyes watched me. I didn't have the energy left for a ward and I wasn't willing to play fetch with them either. If push came to shove, we'd be torn apart without a fight.

The dogs barked and yet I felt no fear. Only anger. At Isa, for having distracted me with her video. At Siris, for having lured me here, and at Simon because none of this would have happened without him. I wanted to punch him in the face. Hard. Judging from how he glared at me as the dogs did, the contempt we felt in our final moments was mutual.

Before I could slap him, the front-most hound howled. It bared its teeth like a tiger and bit the face of one of its peers. The other two dogs bellowed. They attacked their alpha with vicious snarls to the point that they looked more like a group of toddlers fighting over toys than a coordinated pack of deadly predators.

Someone used mind magic to make them angry. To make me and Simon angry. And, unlike with the helltree, I didn't even notice it happening!

The demons ran away.

Why?

Before I could look around, I heard a muffled, male voice. "And now to you two."