The fighting only grew more intense after I removed two of the King’s arms during that first round. None of us were holding back now, dragged into the malaise of reckless battle. I could only hope that the buildings around us were as empty as they appeared, and this wasn’t all some kind of horrible illusion intended to make us take the lives of thousands of innocent bystanders.

  We were the only three living creatures in this place. Perception became reality, and now I was trapped inside of a bubble of its making. Here it could cut loose and unleash every trick it had in store without concerning itself with the collateral damage. There was no risk of killing its contractor or damaging the crystal.

  Another building collapsed from the inside out as the supports inside withered away into nothing. As the top floors tumbled down towards the street, they grew larger in size while getting closer to my position. I summoned a protective magic field around my body and waited for the chaos to end. Dust and debris filled the stale air and blocked me from sight.

  The demon skulked around, looking for me and Sam. I dug my way through the rubble, keeping an umbrella over my head so that the falling bricks and planks of wood didn’t strike me out of nowhere. I emerged on the other side and launched a retaliatory attack, the magic blade carving through the paving stones like a knife through butter.

  In a blink I was elsewhere; the space between us torn into nothing and my physical body propelled at speed through the unknown. I came at it again like a bolt of thunder from the blue, extending the sharpened edge of my blade and cutting horizontally. The demon ducked, and the tip sliced through another building, slicing it clean it two and causing the entire structure to collapse.

  Careful considerations of saving energy for later was the last thing on my mind. The Bloodcrowned King turned its odious gaze unto me and tried to create distance between us. The road and block we were fighting around stretched and stretched and stretched, becoming longer and more difficult to navigate. I knew that walking that path would only lead to an intersection that was too small for my body to squeeze through, as the exit was now far enough away to appear as much.

  I flew up into the air. My ears popped from the sudden change in altitude. I felt horribly sick, right to the pit of my stomach, as my body was pushed through an unreality that it was never built to endure. The King was perched atop one of the residential buildings.

  “You need to hold it in place somehow!” I yelled.

  Samantha was waiting in the wings for the demon to pass by. It flew across the rooftop and over her position, and it was in that window of opportunity that she struck using her magic. The demon’s chest suddenly inflated outwards, bursting through the jagged bones and causing guts and entrails to tumble outwards from the breach.

  It took evasive action, diving below the roof-level of the buildings and onto the street beneath us. Samantha leaned over the edge and tried to keep a bead on its location. The entire structure shook as it crashed through the front and headed out the other side. It flew back up into the air and tried to take out Samantha for her impertinence. I put a stop to that by slashing at it with my blade and distracting it again.

  What happened next was difficult to understand.

  It flew backwards and reached out with one of its remaining two arms. As the palm turned to face me, it slowly grew in size and scale. It got larger and larger, until it was big enough to block my view of the surroundings. It was making me smaller by getting further away, and that meant it could make its arms much larger. Its point of reference was the only one that mattered, and it had realized that it would have to do something drastic to beat us.

  I was too slow to react. The bony fingers wrapped around my body and clenched. I gritted my teeth and yelped in pain. An immense and painful amount of pressure was being used to crush my body from all sides. My knife was forced from my hands. Samantha tried to intervene, but she was also too slow to catch it before it retracted the warped limb and took off into the air.

  The force of the wind was so powerful that it stung my eyes. We flew across the city in the blink of an eye, and Samantha was caught in the shifting tides as the entire world suddenly compressed down into a smaller size. The building she was standing on shrunk beneath her feet and caused her to fall, crashing through an entire city block and wrecking it all.

  This new, smaller world meant the demon could drag me wherever it chose. We crossed a great distance in a matter of seconds. I caught a brief glimpse of Samantha climbing back to her feet to give chase, knowing that she would get left behind if everything grew back to normal scale once more.

  “You will end here, and I will continue!”

  Supposedly we were hundreds of feet in the air. I took a deep breath and held on with all of my strength. That iron grip remained firm and tried to squeeze the life out of me. I couldn’t use my magic. I couldn’t focus. Lances of pain shot through my head and dragged me out of my focused state every time I tried to move.

  The earth was rocketing towards us faster than terminal velocity. As we fell, the sight of the round theatre building below expanded. The world was getting larger, the space between becoming stretched again. I used every bit of grit in my body to focus. If I didn’t focus – this would be my grave.

  We crashed through the ceiling of the parliament building and down into the main chamber. I only just managed to stop my momentum by teleporting away moments before we hit the ground. Tables and chairs went flying in every direction, with deadly shards of glass raining down through the newly-made hole in the roof. They slashed through the King’s rotting flesh and caused blood to spurt onto the luxurious carpet.

  I might have avoided the worst of the attack – but the sheer amount of pressure exuded by its clawed fingers had almost crushed my ribcage into dust. I rolled over on the floor and groaned in agony. The injury to my leg was screaming out at me, and I was certain that some of my bones had been broken from the impact.

  The King was slumped over in the middle of the debate chamber. Things were still out of place. The tables and chairs around me were smaller than they normally were. The building was around half the size versus what I recalled from our school trip. The ornate ceilings and tiled walls enclosed us.

  Get up. You have to get up.

  I pushed back using my hands and sat on my knees, emulating the pose that the King was performing across from me. We faced one another in the atrium of Walser’s most famous building. It wasn’t real – but the details were mostly correct. This was the collective perception of this place, painted by the minds of millions of citizens.

  “I’m not... dead yet...”

  “You are always dying. Marching step by step towards oblivion, towards non-existence.”

  Every nerve in my body protested at how stupid I was being. I stood on shaking legs and started to circle around the chamber, staring down my foe whilst trying to maintain my protective shield. This was no time to be preserving my strength. What good would that be if I died before getting the chance to use it?

  “I warned you.”

  “I cannot break a contract once it is signed. Save your words for a pair of open ears.”

  It was getting cocky. It thought it had the situation under complete control, but it was already making a big mistake by letting me change my positioning in the theatre hall. There was a slight incline that led to the doors, once used for theatre seating, but now mostly removed to allow rows of desks and chairs to be placed inside for legislators. If Samantha was going to come to my rescue, which I was certain of, she’d come through those doors.

  I would have to protect her in that case.

  The demon didn’t move. It knelt there and glared at me with its swivelling, bloodshot eyes. I could see every fine detail in the form, stitched together from the flesh of others and contorted into shape. It was propelled by a force I couldn’t name – but demonstrated an incredible destructive power.

  This was a stare down. A single wrong move could end with the King losing more limbs, or me being turned into a fine paste against one of the walls. The doors behind me slammed open and Samantha charged into the chamber, stopping by my side and glaring at it.

  “We have to hit it with everything we’ve got,” I declared. We couldn’t outlast it in a straight fight.

  “Okay...”

  “Just target it with your energy and let it fly. Don’t worry about collateral damage or preserving your mana. This is our last chance.”

  “Foolishness!”

  The demon barked out and sprang into action. The round chamber turned and warped like an oil painting. We held firm to our positions at the top of the ramp and held out our hands. We weren’t going to be distracted by these cheap tricks for any longer!

  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  We unified our magical senses and reached out to target the entirety of the room outside of our personal space. My chest burned and the breath was ripped from my lungs. We drew forth every drop of power we could muster and pushed it outwards in a great wave. The blast formed a solid wall of black light, swallowing everything in its way and disintegrating the ground beneath as it travelled across the room and towards the King.

  Where the wave destroyed, Samantha’s magic healed. Everything that was turned into ash reformed right in front of our eyes. The King realized its mistake too late to act. It couldn’t use hemomancy on us with the wall blocking the way, and any projectiles would fail to reach us too. It also couldn’t warp our perception to lead our attack astray.

  The wave swept over its body.

  A confluence of our powers, creation and destruction, flowed into the centre of the chamber and created a maelstrom of black and white energy. The demon roared and attempted to escape, but the rapid decay of its tissue and energy was combined with equally fast regeneration. Flesh and bone flaked away into the ether, only to grow back moments later.

  “You cannot destroy me! I am ageless, deathless!”

  But now its bold words sounded like nothing but pleas for mercy. Its eyes glared at me like daggers, begging for me to cease the indescribable agony of being unmade and remade hundreds of times over. The demon understood that it was being drained through this process. Every second it came closer to becoming nothing but dust in the cosmic winds.

  “Everything has its end, demon. Perhaps some rest for your blackened soul will do you good!”

  With a final terrible wail, the body composed of deadened flesh and scar tissue started to wither away into nothing. The energy holding it together was being expended – and it could no longer keep a hold on our reality. It clawed and begged, trying to stop us before we could finish the job, but without the strength to do so it was a worthless, last gasp effort.

  “I... will not... vanish... here!”

  Game over.

  The cacophony of magical energies continued to swirl out of control, spreading across the city and covering everything in blinding light and all-consuming darkness. Samantha held on tight to my arm as a powerful gust of wind blew and almost forced us off of our feet.

  “Hold on tight!” I warned.

  “To what?”

  “I don’t know, anything!”

  Our bodies were brought along for the ride. Our feet left solid ground, and everything that was collated into a singular point in the middle of the city. Buildings, streets, rivers and trees were sucked into the black hole, and we were being pulled towards it too. Tumbling down, tumbling down – there was no purchase for us to find. I prayed to Durandia that this was what we were supposed to do and closed my eyes.

  How could I ever describe the sensation of flying towards the gravitational pull of a miniature black hole, before everything cutting out at once like a television being turned off at the source? Our bodies were being pulled into long threads. The blood rushed to my brain, and for a brief moment I tasted antimatter under my tongue.

  Solid ground appeared at my feet.

  And just like that, we were back in the ‘real’ world. It was the market square, exactly as we’d left it at the start of our battle. There was no sign of the Bloodcrowned King, but the damage it caused remained.

  “What was that?” Samantha wondered, struggling to get her bearings.

  I tried to settle my stomach. Teleporting so much made me feel terribly ill. With a cough and a hack, a glob of acid and phlegm escaped from my throat and onto the ground. Samantha frowned and stepped back.

  “That’s the most uncouth thing I’ve ever seen you do.”

  “I already told you - it’s all a performance,” I groaned.

  “Is it really a performance when you do it all the time?”

  I shook my head, “No. Not really.”

  I felt sick. Sick as a dog. It was the experience of twelve different hangovers overlapping each other. Samantha was a little green in the face too. She covered her mouth with a hand and burped into it, trying to keep the bile down in her gut. I wondered if the Gods felt sick when they abused their powers in such a manner...

  A few minute’s rest was what we really needed, but we didn’t have time. Landon Sloan was waiting for us in the market hall, somewhere close to the base of the clock tower that jutted outwards from the front-centre of the building. Pushing myself up to my knees and looking towards the balcony, I saw him staring down at us with shock written onto his face.

  He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. He was certain that our fates were sealed when the King dragged us out of our reality and into a pocket dimension. We were the last ones standing; injured, exhausted, nauseous, but still very much alive. A pair of teenage girls had killed the most dangerous Horr ever summoned into the waking world.

  “We have to finish this.”

  Samantha helped me up to my feet.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “There’s no getting away from this. I’ll make sure he lives to give people the whole truth about what happened here.”

  She nodded and pushed me onwards. We made our way to the front doors of the building and went inside. I drew my gun and kept my eyes peeled for any sign of an ambush from Sloan. He was panicking now. He was unpredictable and dangerous – although there was no sign of him attempting to flee. Where could he even go if he wanted to try?

  I rushed up the steps and towards the bell tower with Samantha in pursuit behind me. I could remember where Sloan was hiding before the fight started, and I assumed he was still there waiting for his servant to return and continue the wholesale slaughter of everyone who’d ever crossed him. There was no easy way to accept what happened here. Sloan was always the one who won out in the end, until today.

  We kicked the door down and walked out onto the balcony. Sloan tensed up and turned to face us.

  “It’s impossible! There’s no way that you defeated the Bloodcrowned King! That crystal is so bountiful that it summoned the most powerful demon in the Veil!”

  “The proof is right in front of your eyes, Sloan. It’s going to take more than that to stop us.”

  “You’ve got a lot of bloody nerve!” Samantha growled, “How many innocent people have you butchered for this stupid plan?”

  Sloan’s eyes flitted from left to right – seeking an escape route that was not opening up for him. He was stuck here with us, at the point of my gun, facing the very real prospect of dying so quickly that he wouldn’t be able to comprehend that it happened. He could try his luck leaping over the stone bannister and falling three stories if he felt like breaking his ankles and everything else.

  “Why don’t you understand what I’m doing here? Don’t you have any pride in Walser? This research, this revelation, it’s the biggest discovery since the invention of the machines that power our factories and light our homes! A realization of such immense scale that it will once again usher in a new age, just as magic fell out of favour a few decades ago!”

  “Pride?” I scoffed, “If you had any pride in this country, you wouldn’t be so happy to destroy it and terrorize the people who live here. You don’t care what happens so long as your name gets engraved into the history books. This is all about you. It always has been.”

  “You’re a horrible man! I don’t even want to think about what you did to your son,” Samantha added.

  “I never owed Charlie anything! His duty was to carry on our family’s legacy – and he wasn’t strong enough to do it. Not smart, not athletic, not sound of mind or body. How could such a failure have possibly been sired by me? Because of him I resolved to do enough for the next five generations myself! No more paper pushers and glib nobles holding us back. An enlightened Walser, bravely forging ahead by assigning leaders through their merit.”

  I shook my head, “I’m not wasting my breath trying to convince you to stop. Your demon is gone, and I’ve got you at gunpoint. I only have to pull the trigger to be rid of the second of these three problems. Next I’ll be heading back to the museum and destroying that odious machine.”

  “What does it matter? Even though you’ve killed the King, there’s still an innumerable number of demons waiting to come through and finish the job!”

  I closed the distance between us and gripped Sloan by the front of his jacket, pushing him closer to the edge of the railing, threatening to throw him from the roof and let his body splatter against the destroyed courtyard below.

  “You think it’s worth destroying the world just to get petty revenge on a handful of people? You can’t even formulate that rage into a coherent position. The only thing you’re doing is killing, nothing more and nothing less.”

  “I revolutionized the field of demonology! Genta Cambry and his ilk have been gatekeeping that knowledge for hundreds of years, and even they subscribed to nothing but rank superstition about how it works! I’m transforming those tall tales into real science! Once the bloodletting is over, my new soldiers will sweep across the continent and ensure that Walser stands for one million years! They’ll build statues in my honour and worship the ground I walk on!”

  We were too different in so many ways. Even when I was a killer for cash I never acted with such disregard for the safety of the people who weren’t my targets. It was a job. I was a professional. It would have been so easy for me to kick down the door and pull a trigger. Doing all of that without collateral damage, and whilst getting away, was the true test of my skills.

  I took pride in that. Sloan did not. He was going to see his plot through regardless of how many innocent bystanders died as a result. In his eyes the final outcome would be so effective that it was worth besmirching his name and coating his hands in their blood. He betrayed his own aspirations though. Why on earth would they ever worship a man like this?

  “How do we turn it off?”

  Sloan laughed in my face.

  “You can’t. It’s a chain reaction. I designed the machine to proliferate regardless of your interference.”

  “And how were you planning on stopping it when your plan ran its course?”

  “The intricacies are not yours to know,” he scoffed.

  Samantha grumbled, “He has no idea, does he? I can smell the bullshit from here.”

  I tightened my grip and pushed him closer over the precipice, “You’re right. Did you think that your natural brilliance would save the day, and come up with an elegant solution once the chips are down? This is already completely out of control. You can’t fix this even if you try.”

  Sloan scowled furiously at my minimization of his intelligence.

  “Don’t be a fool. It is child’s play to rectify the problem.”

  We were going to have to solve this the hard way. This lunatic wasn’t going to tell us what his full plan was, but I suspected it had to do with the demon we had summarily deleted from reality a short while ago. Only that thing had the power to destroy these rampaging beasts and claim the crystal. Once the contract was closed, the portal would shut with it.

  “I suppose we’ll have to destroy the crystal ourselves, then. Without the King here to get in the way, I should be able to reach it with my magic.”

  Samantha gritted her teeth, “And what about all of the other demons that have come through?”

  “It’s not going to be easy. We’ll have to be alert and ready to use our magic if we run into them. Can I trust you to watch my back?”

  She seemed offended by the question; “Of course you can! I’ll stop them dead if they try to get to us.”

  Sloan tried to wrestle free from my hold. I pulled him away from the edge and walloped him around the side of the head using my pistol. His unconscious body slumped to the floor with a thud. A pair of handcuffs I borrowed from my mother were secured around his wrists and tied to the nearest metal rod to keep him in place. Bringing him with us was a waste of time and effort.

  “He deserves a lot worse than what I can do to him.”

  “I don’t much like the idea of doling out cruel punishment, but with how many people he’s killed... they’re not going to have a choice, are they?”

  “Executing him would be easy. They should throw him in a cell, toss away the key, and let him live long enough to see his reputation in tatters. That’s all that matters to him in the end.”

  I could barely stand up straight. Did we have enough gas in the tank to make it all the way back to the museum whilst fighting a horde of smaller demons? I crossed my fingers and hoped that Durandia hadn’t miscalculated when she put together this long-winded plan of hers.

  Sam tugged on my shoulder, “Let’s go. Daylight’s burning.”