“Can’t you learn to keep your mouth shut?” The green-eyed man said as he stood in between the two.

“Hello, supposed vessel of the betrayer. It’s your fault we’re in this mess.” Mike stated.

“And I have no regrets. Like hell I’d abandon my own flesh and blood like that. That damn curse was low.” The figure added.

“What did you have to do to get turned into an eye as a curse?”

“Piss off quite a few entities pining for you to succeed in your unavoidable role,” Mike added.

“Oh. I see. Man, I wish I had a sandwich here.” Kyrion wiped his hands on his chest and sighed.

“You and me both. It’s been centuries since I’ve had a good sandwich.” The green-eyed creature stated.

“What’s going on?” Kyrion raised his eyebrows and looked at the creature.

“A complicated string of coincidences that were never meant to come to pass. Or so I was told, before I dived in.” Mike sighed.

“So. I take it you won’t let me rescue the priestess?” Kyrion looked at the two suspiciously.

“I literally don’t care what you do, so long as you get out of this place. In fact I’m highly curious about what you’ll do without guidance.” Said the creature in the eye.

Mike scowled. “I should have left you sealed.”

“Duh. At least until we got to a sandwich shop. Man, I feel like I could eat a dragon.”

“Ummmm… Who is this guy?”

“It doesn’t matter much. Hey can I possess your body while you’re here?” The creature stated as it reentered Kyrion’s eye.

“He’s no one important anymore.” Mike waved his hand to the side.

“Right then. I need you to give me your armor and weapon. Then you need to get in my bag.”

“This armor is a part of my soul.”

Kyrion stared for a long moment.

“It doesn’t come off!”

“Fine then. Just get in the bag.” Kyrion placed a hand on the man’s shoulder.

“That wasn’t a question.” Mike looked at the hand.

“I don’t need anyone slowing me down at the moment. TTYL.” Kyrion maintained eye contact as he swept Mike’s legs, shoved him into his bag, and strapped it up.

Kyrion noticed a chain of maddened laughter in his head that hadn’t belonged to him. As he really didn’t have any patience for all this stuff. Kyrion was already having trouble focusing on his target, and without a journal to keep track of things, he’d have to remember all of his goals on his own. Unlike in his body, Kyrion could not will memories to the surface by prodding that part of his brain.

“Rescue priestess from the tower. Don’t get distracted.” As he said that, a vine snapped, and a strange vial of sparkling purple liquid rolled before him. He then picked up the vial, sniffed it, and placed it at his hip.

Kyrion continued forward, having already forgotten which floor the priestess was on. And assuming that she would be on the top floor, of course. That’s where they always are in stories. For some odd reason, Kyrion continued to hear the maddened cackling. It was distracting.

“Priestess top of tower.” Kyrion ran through the swamp in a zig-zag fashion. I moved from tree to tree and passed over quite a few vagabonds. Had they known, they would have attacked. Had they attacked, he would have defeated them.

So, as Kyrion exited the swamp, he saw a strange moving swamp that seemingly led to some sort of paradise that seemed too good to be true. A large swarm of Lost were headed down that road. In the opposite direction was a wooden gate with fewer marketable people headed there.

Kyrion shook his head and took a few steps back, looking at the side of said paradise, and scowled. He was looking into the side of some giant monster beyond his comprehension. Then he realized that the road they were running on was a tongue that stretched all the way towards the wooden gate.

“This isn’t right. That tongue is quite wide. I’ll need to be quick.”

Kyrion ran towards the road and hopped onto a ghostly head.

“Huh?” A confused humanoid Lost said as it looked around and saw a set of eyes belonging to the indescribable monster.

The question led to panicked screams.

Kyrion got off that creature’s head and stepped onto another, which led to a similar realization. “This isn’t good.”

Kyrion continued to hop from head to head as his balance stayed perfect as he had been trained. He moved through the highway of souls unhindered until he made it halfway.

The tip of the long tongue began to rise as souls started to fall into the monster’s gullet.

“Nope!” Kyrion pushed his foot down and began to take much larger leaps as he rushed to escape at all costs.

The tongue rose high, and the number of creatures falling increased.

Near the exit, a hand shot upwards and grabbed his ankle, which brought him down.

Kyrion placed his hands on the creature’s tongue and kicked the grasper so hard that they tore through the other Lost.

The tongue then rose all the way up. From there, he held onto dear life and succeeded as most of the remaining souls were consumed.

Letting out a breath of relief, Kyrion moved forward like he was going from branch to branch. Only these branches were fleshy and pink.

Within minutes, he arrived close to the exit when he noticed that the tongue was just curling, and the curl was almost to him.

So Kyrion let go of the tongue, jumped off what appeared to be a tastebud, and flew off the tongue. Only to begin the process of falling to his death.

Only as he hit the ground, he felt perfectly fine. There was no crash. His body softly bounced off the ground a few times.

“I made it?” Kyrion looked up and watched as the remaining Lost were consumed and he felt guilty. However, there was nothing he’d have done. Most of these people were already dead and would gladly kill him if possible. He couldn’t afford to be distracted from his goal of rescuing the princess from the top of the tower with countless floors.

“Right. Focus Kyr. We have work to do.” Kyrion said as he walked towards the tower.

A final hour of travel passed before Kyrion could see a pillar off in the distance that reached past the visible sky. Red cracks covered the building and marked it as ruined. The entryway into the tower was a gilded archway guarded by two creatures.

The first was a red-furred greyhound-headed creature with an almost human body with somewhat feminine features. A long white dress seemingly hid her form as a long glaive stood to the right side of the entrance.

The second was a bald man with a beak that covered everything under its yellow bird eyes. The man had no eyebrows but carried a sizeable paunch. Across their back was a pair of black feathered wings, and his hands held four taloned fingers.

“Squawk! Pitiful Lost soul. You stand before the tower of Gehenna. Turn back of face torment worse than death.”

“Turrrn orrr be faced with powerrrr you don’t underrrstand.”

“I need to ask this. Are you going to stand in my way or prevent my entry?”

The dog-faced guard drew a line in front of the door. “If you cross this line, we will prevent you from entering my force.”

Kyrion began to pace briefly as he watched the duo with a somewhat predatory gaze.

“Squak! We aren’t going to chase you!”

Kyrion stopped his pacing and eyed the eagle man before looking at the dog-headed woman.

“Lets see about that.”

Kyrion pressed their feet against the ground and pushed off into a sprint that made his body hard to track, with just eyes appearing across the line briefly.

A halberd intercepted Kyrion, and the young man used it as a springboard as he focused the energy flowing into him into his feet and legs, reinforcing them as he leaped onto the side of the tower. From there, he ran up the vertical surface as though it was flat against the ground.

“Hey! Stop! One must not cheat the tower of Gehenna!”

“Like I care about this Tog! Kyrion’s eyes widened as a ball of black fire fell from above.”

Defying gravity, or due to the lack of law governing the concept here. Kyrion slid up the vertical surface, evading the burning ball as it passed by him.

“Blasphemy! Oh god, he’s headed to the top! Why are you headed to the top!” The guards yelled as the fire engulfed them, reducing them to ash.

Oddly enough, Kyrion felt much of their soul force enter his body. Temporarily empowering him as a core formed in his body. One full of white flames and energy.

“You’re mad!” The voice behind Kyrion’s eye laughed maniacally as Kyrion instinctually bent the laws of reality to suit him. The flames fueling his momentum.

“Shut it, I’m focusing.” Kyrion felt the energy slipping and poured more power into it as his footprints burned themselves into the side of the tower.

A second fireball came, but Kyrion punched it hard enough to disperse the force instead of dodging it, allowing it to greedily flow into his body. Antlers grew from his head as he continued to run, and a mantle of white flames grew from his body, clothing him. His red hair began to shine as streaks seemed to turn a silvery blue.

“Is that all you got!” Kyrion smirked as a third came and passed through him, flowing into his body as he reached floor 66. The top of the tower.

In front of him, a feminine creature around 10 feet tall was chained to poles. Black batlike wings shot out of her back as black fog covered the ground around her. Her black hair pooled on the ground like water, and her eyes seemed mostly dead. Her figure was strangely thin, as though she had been starved for a long time.

Behind the feminine creature stood a creature with the head of a praying mantis, a black insect-like body with arms that extended into human-like arms if human arms were as thick as tree trunks and red. Six pairs of legs extended behind the creature, stretching three yards behind it into a sharp and pointed tail. The beast was bigger than the woman and free. Blackfire pooled under the creature as it skittered about.

The creature chittered something intelligible.

“I… did not expect something like that.” Kyrion looked at his hand.

“You must destroy that creature. You should have access to fire and blood magic while I’m here.” The voice stated.

“Fire and blood? Are you sure we’re the good guys?” Kyrion smirked.

“This is no time for jokes boy!”

“How rude. So, how long have you been messing with my memory?” Kyrion backed up to the edge of the tower.

“Since I was unsealed.”

“At least you’re honest. Guess the memory loss is natural then.” Kyrion did a few stretches but would not do well if he didn’t know his limits.

“Yes. Without resting in one of the many ponds here you will lose your memory over time and become a Lost. Death refreshes your soul but you lose a part of yourself wherever you die.”

“And that stuff gets absorbed. Well the creature hasn’t attacked us yet.”

“Look down.” The voice stated.

Kyrion looked over the edge and could only see black clouds. The ground was quite far away if he couldn’t see it from there. So Kyrion looked upward and into the eyes of a serpent the size of a mountain on the horizon. It seemed pretty curious how he had gotten here before growing concerned.

“I am Bealsquilla, lord of the shrimp and you will become my next meal mortal. All that soul force are belong to us.”

Kyrion scowled at the giant shrimp mantis chimera before entering a stance. Although not a normal combat stance. Kyrion’s right foot was forward with his left foot behind as if walking on a tightrope, his left and right arms pressed behind his back.