Interlude and Chapter 65 (Patreon)

Here is the bonus chapter I promised for Well Traveled along with the normal update. Hope you all enjoy!

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Continued from: Aethertow 

Planar Chaos: Second Sunrise

In my chest, the barest ember flickered and died.

My spark, my source…

My life.

I would not be long after, I knew, even as reality began to close around me, a plane springing into being. I rested on a beach, a shadowed cove at night, with long hanging branches forming a roof and soft waves lapping at the shore.

Tony would’ve loved a vacation home here. Or at least a little bungalow or something. He’d dig the lab into the ground and pour some concrete foundations. Import a bar with Mai Tais and Tequila.

And strippers.

I, of course, only had Hel.

To my side, the ex-goddess (and wasn’t that just the best revenge) groaned as she levered herself up onto her feet. Her skin had healed, but only barely. Could still pick out some 3rd degree burns, here and there. And no unlimited font of power to draw on anymore to bandage them up.

What a crying shame.

“You…” she gasped, staggering towards me. I didn’t move. Not much of a point. “What did you do to me?”

I laughed. It came out a bit raspy, but you really do have to laugh in the face of your problems. Otherwise you’d cry.

And I promised myself I was done crying at my father’s funeral.

“We had a good run, didn’t we,” I say instead of answering. “Me as a world traveling hero, that died stopping you, a conqueror of worlds released from her cage for one last hurrah.”

She staggered, ashes flaking from her form as I felt my heart start to sputter in my chest. I was already using my power on overdrive just to squeeze out a few more seconds. Maybe it was petty, but I wanted to see her end.

“My…my powers.”

“Gone with the wind,” I said. “And now you are every bit as mortal as I.”

The decay of her form rapidly accelerated, the expression on her face cycling through shock, to anger, to denial, and back again as reality slowly closed its jaws about her.

I only smiled. “And mortals,” I added, conversationally, “don’t live for thousands of years.”

“You—”

But then a gust of wind was kicked up off the sea, and it shattered Hel before she could so much as realize that she was already dead. Then the waves came up, mixing the ash and sand until one would never be able to tell that there had been a goddess here at all.

With a sigh, I turned my gaze to the sky. Through a canopy of gnarled, leafless, branches, I could see the starts twinkling in the dark.

I coughed and gave a grim smirk as s trickle of blood ran down my cheek.

“It really was a good run,” I murmured. Far better than I thought I’d get, really. Here and now, I could almost…be happy.

…Actually, that was a load of shit. I barred my teeth in something approaching a grin. I didn’t want to die, here, alone, without ever getting knowing love, without ever getting back at Emma, without ever really impressing Tony, or doing him proud.

But most of all, I didn’t want to die before I got a chance to rub it in Thor’s sexy, sexy face that I’d been the one to send his sister packing.

So I held on, straining my power to its utmost to keep my body breathing, blood pumping to my brain, even as, inexplicably, every single system began to fail as if there was a sieve in the bottom draining all of my life before I could so much as grasp it.

And that sieve was the tattered, shattered, remains of my…my spark.

It’s funny that I’d seen it, that I’d realized it only at the end, like a vision of the truth. Maybe if I’d known it sooner, I could have won without also losing.

But, like Tony said, ‘what if’s’ are for chumps.

Instead, I just closed my eyes, casting my senses back to the multiverse around me. I watched it spin, so much faster than this little plane, barely more than a strip of sand and dark. I watched the worlds spin by so much faster, even as I struggled to get just one more second.

Just one more second.

Just one…last—

[HOST: LOCATED]

My eyes shot open, just in time for something to grab me. Something impossibly vast, and impossibly far, but yet somehow right here all the same.

It grabbed me and whisked me away from the darkened beach. Across worlds, across eternities, even as I felt myself coming apart at the seams.

And then I slammed face first into the ground. 

I gasped, my first breath in 320 seconds. Oxygen rushed into functional lungs, a functional bloodstream. My body seemed to shudder as I came back to myself.

No, I realized instantly, this wasn’t my body. It was similar, but the improvements were different, more slanted towards an absurd optimization of the physical that I’d never managed to figure out. But for some reason my brain only stored my own memories, my own improvements, like some god had come in and copy pasted me into this shell.

That alone would have been enough evidence that something really fucky was going on, to say nothing of the fact that this body, this my body but not, was missing an arm.

“Destiny!” A voice called. I didn’t recognize it. “Destiny what’s wrong?”

I waved off the hand, staggering upright in an unfamiliar cloak. “That’s my name,” I managed. “Don’t wear it out.”

“That,” another voice said. “Is not our Destiny.”

I held back a wince, substituting it for my best charming smile instead. The girl who leveled the accusation was a spell caster by the looks of it. She had dusky skin, like a drow in those games Hawkeye said he didn’t play, and sharp eyes peering out from beneath a blue cowl.

“What makes you believe such,” an African American boy said.

“No,” this from a girl with honest to god green skin, though thankfully she was the last weird looking one of the bunch. “Her thoughts feel completely different. And her mental defenses are nonexistent.”

“And who gave you permission to root around in my head?”

The girl blushed, darker green, incidentally. But unfortunately, that wasn’t enough to put them off of me.

“We don’t have time for this,” one said, glaring at me through his black and white domino mask. “Throw her in the lockup and we’ll deal with her after the aliens.”

I blinked. “Aliens?”

“This isn’t the first time Destiny’s messed with her own head,” the boy continued. “She’ll come out of it before we’re finished, or she won’t”

Cowled girl frowned. “Can we really afford to deploy without our heaviest hitter?”

“I’ll tell you what we can’t afford,” he said. “A double agent stabbing us in the back at exactly the wrong moment.”

“Wait a sec,” I said, raising my hands. Everyone flinched away, and I quickly lowered them again. “Uh, okay, no hands up for this crowd.”

“She acts nothing like her,” one of them said. “How’d they expect us to be fooled.”

“I’m not trying to fool anyone,” I snapped. “Because I am Destiny. Just…not your Destiny.”

“And how does that make sense.”

“I suppose you’ve never heard of multiverse theory, then? Good to know.”

“That sounded like her,” the green archer commented dryly.

“Well, we probably were the same person, you know, at one point. I certainly didn’t end up here in my travels.” I paused for a beat. “You all are heroes, right? Because it would be a real shame if my alternate self ended up a villain somehow.”

“We are, in fact, heroes” the black guy said. “None the less, I believe Robin is right, we do not have the time to sort out this misunderstanding, and the we must deploy now.” He looked around the room. “Every second we delay is of crucial importance. Even now the rest of the League is facing off against landing parties at dozens of locations.”

To the side, a map of the world appeared, red dots flashing to show entry vectors. I quickly committed it to memory.

“I’m sorry, my friend,” the boy continued. “But I must ask you to remain in the secure cells for the time being.”

“I’m not really comfortable getting stuck in a jail when there are literal aliens invading the Earth,” I muttered.

“Should the mountain’s defenses be breached, you will be released immediately,” he said.

“Right into their waiting arms? Geez, you shouldn’t have.”

“We don’t have time for this,” one of the boys snapped.

I bit my lip. For a second, I debated walking, if I could get back to Tony, even if this wasn’t quite my original body…

But the moment I started to lean towards the void, I felt a cold fear grip my chest.

The last time I’d stepped into the unknown, after all, it had almost killed me. Who knew if I’d really recovered, or if the Blind Eternities would just rip me to shreds the moment I crossed the boundary.

Between submitting and blasting my way out later and taking on a room full of hostiles on their territory, I chose the option that would leave less bodies on the floor.

“Fine,” I said, with a sigh. “Take me away officer.” For a moment, I debated holding up my arms to be cuffed, but given how touchy they were of any hand movements, I decided standing still was the better part of valor.

This other me must have been a hell of a sorceress.

“Robin, Super boy, take her to lockup, the rest of us will head to the bioship. We are needed on the field.”

The motely group of heroes fell out with surprising coordination, two of them were on me.

It was tempting to resist, but given that so far, they seemed to be on the level, well, if I was wrong, I’d feel bad if I roughed them up.

And I’d probably have an easier time escaping the cell anyway. They didn’t even try to take away my prosthesis. If I needed anything else to drive home that this Taylor and I were very different people, this would have been more than enough. You do not leave Tony Stark’s apprentice alone with enough tech to build a small AI and a repulsor gauntlet.

The brig was close, they boys were silent and they moved me along quickly, but they didn’t do anything to make me suspect their story. As the big one, Superboy, pushed me gently through the open cell door, I turned.

“Good luck,” I said, flashing them a small smile.

I could see a bit of tension leech out of them at that. “Luck is for chumps,” the smaller one said.

Then the door hissed shut.

I counted to 120 in my head before quickly disabling the only camera in the cell. Another three minutes later and no one came, I swept the cell again only to find nothing else.

Either they were gone, or the miniaturization in this world was miles ahead of my own.

Nothing for it.

I quickly popped off the prosthesis, pinning it to the ground with my knee as I pulled on the few motes of mana I’d recovered during the whole quasi interrogation sequence. A screwdriver and a razor thin wedge were all I needed to pop the outer casing off.

Inside was a goldmine. 

I grinned. Whoever built this thing wasn’t as good as Tony, of course, but they sure were state of the arc. Hah, arc. The servos were interesting enough in and of themselves. Unfortunately, it was the processors I needed.

Anything with the ability to read and interpret nerve signals with enough fidelity to flip people off had to have some serious computing power. If I was lucky, I could cobble together enough parallel processors to load a copy of snark, or at least a miniaturized instance of him.

Whatever tech these people had, I doubted it would be enough to stand against a full fledged AI.

I gently disconnected the motherboard from it’s housing, difficult to do one handed, and started to ease it out of its casing.

Which was when someone slammed into me from the side, and we both went sprawling across the room.

The white haired woman was on her feet first, I blame it on having two arms, and also maybe I was a little upset that she’d cracked the motherboard in half when she landed on me.

“Ugh, pft,” she said. “Would it have killed you to give me a better landing…” I slowly pushed myself upright, doing my best not to startle her.

The door, noticeably, was still closed and locked. 

Then her eyes locked onto mine. She blinked. “Um, Tay?” she said. I opened my mouth, but it looked like she wasn’t talking to me. Weird. Also last I checked no one had permission to call me Tay. “If you’re out there, why the heck are you also in here?”

There was a beat of silence before a flicker of annoyance crossed the girl’s face. “She hung up on me.” In one smooth motion, she drew the thin rapier from her waist. “Which means you’re not Taylor.”

“Well, technically, I am?”

The sword flashed out, I scrambled back, but I only managed to pin myself against the cell wall as the point of the blade came to rest against my throat. The woman snorted.

“Definitely not Taylor,” she said. “Now, tell me who you are before I start having to get creative.”

I looked down at the sword currently poking me in the throat, and then to the shattered mess of electronics in my hand. My only hand. With that I sighed, leaning my head back against the cool metal.

“I can explain,” I said.

“That’s what they always say.”

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Chapter 65: Bedevil

I came to with a gasp, head ringing, soot caked against my cheek.

My body fizzled, stretching and popping like a fire as I pushed myself upright. Ash and dust flaked away, sparking into embers that vanished into the air.

And all round me was darkness.

I was glowing, I noted, the literal light of my soul illuminating a thin sphere of ash and rock around me. One would think there’d be little difference between my soul and my body at this point, but my body, it seemed, remembered what it meant to be flesh and blood.

My soul, on the other hand, did not.

Even as I slowly turned, taking in the craggy rocks and cavernous darkness, my soul struggle to expand, to differentiate, to shed the form of my mortal body and take on something more true. I felt like a balloon ready to pop.

I held back a grimace. I could see now where I’d began to change, becoming something different than human, not just in my physical form, but in my mind as well. Being apart from my body…on one hand, it meant that I no longer had anything to insulate me from the inundation of Order and Chaos.

But on the other hand, my body had been a weak filter by the time I’d absorb Klarion and Nabu. It had been too used to change, to welcoming for it.

Now, at least, I could more clearly see the flows of energy through me and take precautions.

But that would only be a stopgap measure. It was like building a dam out of ice, and expecting it to hold longer than a day in the middle of the summer.

With a frown, I finished rising to my feet. It was trivial to levitate, now. I felt as though I had no mass, no weight. Ordinarily, that thought might have been enough to make me chuckle, but for some reason, being stuck in hell robbed me of that levity.

Just to be sure, I tried to planeswalk, only to find myself trapped in place. There was still a marker on me, something holding me here to be Faust’s sacrifice.

But there was nothing else here, only stone and dust and darkness.

And a weight, almost imperceptible, pressing against me from all sides.

With a shake of my head, I started forward. There was simply nowhere else to go.

The weight felt like a damp cloth against my senses, muffling any sense of what might lie beyond my little circle of light. 

My feet brushed against the soot like a breeze. It was a struggle to even keep them on the ground, as I made my way through a featureless expanse.

There was an urge to rush burning deep inside me, part of it was from me, but for the most part it was an urge born from chaos. I quashed it. There was no forward or backward here that I could see. In truth, I was even a little tempted to stay still, and let the monsters in wait come to me.

But I needed to get somewhere.

All too quickly, I found a wall of stone. It stretched out in both directions, craggy and scarred. It looked red, like dried blood, and grew soft against my hand.

I hissed, drawing back.

I could go, in one direction or the other, make a circuit of the cave. There would probably be an opening somewhere.

But, when you got right down to it, if whatever demon Faust had offered me up to wasn’t here when I woke up, well…

There was no reason to play its game then, was there?

My mana was unbound, even thought it felt like I was drawing it from a great distance in comparison. But my spells, bolstered by my days studying at the College of Winterhold, were cheap enough that it would take a serious effort to deplete my reservoir.

With a grin, I drew back my hand, forming a spear of golden light.

And then I immediately winced as I felt it pull on the essence of my soul.

The spell sputtered, forcing me to clench my hand and freeze it before the mana could go to waste. “Fuck,” I hissed.

How had I forgotten? I was made of chaos and order. Normally, drawing on that energy did nothing to me, because there was a torrent there, ready to pour in and replace whatever bit of mana I used.

Now though, my spells took a noticeable amount of energy. Nothing life threatening, but it was my life, quite literally, that I was spending.

Was there a cutoff point, a mark at which I’d lack the strength and cohesion to hold myself together?

Could I afford to behave as if there was not?

Could I even afford to hold back as if there was?

For a moment, I found myself paralyzed with indecision, even as Order and Chaos seeped back into me, filling up the energy that I’d expended over the space of a few minutes.

No, I decided.

There was no space here for indecision, double so given that attrition would be a double edged sword. I would replenish my energy eventually, but anything but the simplest cantrip spent mana faster than I regained it.

The answer, then, was to blast through any foe with a single calculated strike, and rest in the aftermath.

A running battle, or a constant onslaught of enemies would be the end of me eventually, but if I could space out my fights, if I could disengage and return, if I played everything right.

Then I could take on any enemy this hell had to offer.

It was with that thought that I cast my arm forward, shattering the waxy red stone in front of me.

The spear cut through the rocks like a knife through butter, leaving rivulets of boiling…something pooling on the ground.

Through the glowing rock, I could see the tunnel narrowing as my spell had spent it’s energy, eventually becoming so small I’d have to crawl through it.

But then it opened into another space.

I cast one more glance behind me, taking in the silence and the darkness and the weight of this place.

There was a rumble in the distance as I started forward.

It sounded almost like laughter.

The next cave was not empty.

I hissed as I peeked through the whole my spear had made. There was light here, a pervasive glow of sickly green. My spell had exploded against the far wall, leaving a divot. On the ground below, an undulating mass of flesh thronged, screams and bellows filling the air.

It wasn’t a single organism.

There was a horde contained within the cave, a moshpit of violence and horror. Beasts of every shape and size, with weapons of bone and blood and a hundred other things besides, fought each other in this massive hole.

I’d opened up a gap towards the edge, where the distance between the walls narrowed, but as I turned my head, I saw the cacophony of violence stretch on and on, as far as I could see. In the distance, I saw what might be an opening, a splash of night sky against the darkness, where too close planets spun round and round.

“Faster than the last one of your kind.”

I spun as the world shook with a voice, leaping backwards.

But massive claws dug into the stone around me like it was made of paper, cutting off my retreat.

Then the massive demon pulled.

I shot out of the wall like a cork from a bottle. I caught the slightest glimpse of a massive figure, the size of a skyscraper, all blood red skin and massive horns.

I twirled in the air. I barrier snapping into place around me as—

A massive fist crashed through it, shattering the barrier like a pane of glass. The clawed fingers tore through me. I gasped as my soul parted into rivulets of energy, before reforming.

My head spun, even as I launched myself through the air.

Perhaps my erratic movement saved me from the next blow, but even still the wake sent me skidding backwards.

I hit the stone of the cavern.

The blow almost disrupted the spell I was forming.

But not quite.

I roared as I fired off a massive black Ankh. My attuning to Chaos had only strengthened the spell, and I took a moment of glee as the Demons red eyes widened. So much so that it almost looked like it only had two eyes for a moment. 

Then I was already weaving another spell.

The massive thing through itself to the side with the sound of an avalanche, backhanding my spell away. I winced as my ankh only amounted to a flesh wound on the demon’s wrist.

With a flick of my fingers, Adrammelech formed beside me even as the Demon regained its footing. The dragon was dwarfed by the monster in front of me. But that wasn’t the battle I’d intended it for.

“Deal with the chaff,” I ordered. The quarreling monster below had taken notice of our battle. I didn’t have the time or energy to deal with them.

Already I was beginning to feel lightheaded from expending so much energy so quickly. The lack of a physical body was a massive handicap. I bit my lip as the massive demon only laughed as Adrammelech started tearing through its horde.

It’s six eyes narrowed with delight. “Tricks like that won’t save you.” It said. With a wave of its hand, every inhabitant of the cavern froze, turning to face me. “Struggle more.”

I bit back a curse even as every single monster and beast in this massive, city sized cave charged towards me. “Keep them busy!” I shouted.

Even as Adrammelech burned through the first wave with a massive gout of flame, I knew he wouldn’t be enough. I wracked my brain for any kind of answer, before returning to my earlier conclusion. I couldn’t afford a drawn out battle, so the only thing left to do was to go with the most cost effective option for dealing with so many opponents.

With a huff, I rose in the air. This, not a spell, but a consequence of the mana roiling within me, begging to be given shape.

I hadn’t touched this spell for a long time, the other planes I’d been too weren’t malleable enough for this type of magic.

But this realm stretched to my will.

I thrust my arms to the side, and a wave of fire was born. Strengthened by Chaos and Order both, my working washed over the cavern like a tsunami.

“Prominence!”

Fire licked up every surface, touched every limb, devoured every enemy.

I felt the heat of the sun on my upturned face, as all was reduced to ash.

And then it ended.

With a sigh, I sank to the ground, doing my best to keep upright. Adrammelech returned to my side, giving me a scaly shoulder to lean upon. 

Across from us, the Demon only laughed.

It was, at most, singed by my spell. The rest of the cavern, however, wasn’t so lucky.

The red stone walls had grown soft like putty, running in rivulets down to the craggy floor. It’s inhabitants? To a one, reduced to charred bones and sizzling flesh.

But I, on the other hand, was down to about half of my mana, and even as it slowly filled back up, I felt myself frizz and shudder as my form grew less…stable. If I continued to deteriorate at the current pace, another such spell would be the end of me.

Unfortunately, I realized, my repertoire consisted of rather few single target spells powerful enough to challenge the hulking demon across from me. In every fight before now, I’d substituted strength for numbers, overwhelming my opponents with an endless onslaught. The only time I’d thrown around magic of greater size had been my fight with Klarion.

And that was something that I, by definition, couldn’t use right now, without risk of fading into nothingness.

All of this went through my mind in the time it took my feet to settle against the heat cracked stone floor.

I needed time.

“I was expecting something better, when Faust dumped me in hell,” I called, waving my hand. “But is this seriously the best you can offer?”

The demon rumbled out another laugh. “Faust does ever continue to amuse,” it said, folding massive, bus sized arms across its chest. “As do your kind.”

I bit back a wince at that. Out of all the enemies I’d faced in my travels, the most dangerous were the ones that knew who and what I was.

But at least the demon was talking. Giving me time to recharge my energy.

“Of course,” I said. “But you’d think, if this evil wizard decided to take on the name Felix Faust he’d realize that the book was about how making deals with the devil always ended poorly.”

“So it does.” It said. “But idiocy is your birthright.”

With that, the demon started forward once again, it’s massive footsteps shaking the empty cavern. “And sometimes, you have no choice.”

I frowned, sinking into a ready stance. Even if I couldn’t escape, even if that short conversation only amounted to a drop in a bucket of restored power, there was a chance I could stop this evil, at least.

My friends would just have to handle their problems on their own, this time.

With a slow, indrawn breath, I began to gather my power, not even stopping as my limbs began to flicker and become transparent. 

I may not have had a specific spell for dealing with enemies this size, but I was ever the innovator.

The demon stopped in its tracks as it felt my next spell wash over the cavern.

Maybe, I thought as my existence began to narrow down to a single point, it was a bit premature to jump to suicide attacks.

But on the other hand, the demon had shown to be far more resistant to my magic than anything else I’d faced thus far. It would be worse, I decided, if I tried to kill it while preserving myself, only to wind up failing at both.

I was never one for half measures, after all.

Then the demon grinned. “Yesss…” it hissed. “That’s what I’m looking for.”

“It will be the last thing you ever see,” I said.

“Perhaps.” The grin grew wider. “But what if I were to offer you a deal, instead.”

I paused, spell ready to erupt in my hands. Ready to wipe us both out or kill me in the attempt.

“And why would I ever except a bargain with you,” I said. “We just talked about this. No, we literally just talked about this.”

A rumbling laugh echoed through the cavern. “Because your spell will do nothing but annoy me, because you don’t want to die, because…your dear friends need you.”

I felt something inside me freeze.

“I can send you back to them,” it offered. “Back in time to save all of their lives.”

“There’s no way I can trust that,” I said, resolve firming. “You just want me to relax, for a single moment, so you can crush me.”

“Then as a show of good faith, I promise I will not attack you or attempt to harm you in any way, so long as you do not leave this cave.”

The oath swept through the air on unseen wind. I felt it resonate against me, the meaning of its words settling into the fabric of reality.

Slowly, I let my spell dissolve,  absorbing the energy back into myself.

It felt like taking a deep breath, after being held underwater until your vision started to black.

As I rose, pet dragon crouched low beside me, there were a dozen questions on the tip of my tongue. ‘How did you know,’ and ‘what do you want’ featured prominently among them.

Instead I crossed my arms. “I’m listening.”

The demon only continued to grin at me. “It would be a joy beyond imagining to devour you,” it said.

“And I’d love nothing more than to render you down to dust and scatter you across the multiverse,” I said. “But if we could get to the point.”

The demon laughed. “There is the fire I want,” it said. “I will send you back, little Planeswalker, because Faust has overstepped himself yet again, and endangered something dear to me.”

“Why do I find that hard to believe.”

“Because you do not know,” it said six red eyes stretching wide with its smile. “I am Trigon, conqueror of worlds. And I am the father of your dear…Raven.”

I blinked, taking a step back in surprise. “What?”

“Is it so hard to believe now?”

I could feel the truth in his words like a physical thing. Demons can’t lie, I remembered reading when it was a child. Was it a real limitation, or just an air Trigon was putting on for me.

Did it even matter, when I could feel the truth of his statement?

“I will send you back, if you promise me one thing,” The demon raised a single massive finger. “You will guard Raven with your life.”

Immediately my eyes narrowed. “Why?” Leaving aside that I would have protected my friends anyway, the idea of this…thing caring about Raven didn’t sit right with me.

“Your kind is fickle,” he said. “I would have…assurance.”

I lowered my eyes, holding back a growl. I was being played, I could feel it. But on the other hand, my only other option was to fight.

Or…was it.

“You didn’t put a time limit on your vow,” I said after a moment.

Trigon only chuckled. “No, but then, I also did not forbid my pets from rending you limb from limb.”

I blinked, looking down to realize that the floor of the cavern was once more filling with monsters. All around the pillar I stood upon, there were beasts and devils of every stripe tearing into each other.

“How many more times can you slay them all, I wonder.”

I glared at it, saying nothing.

Trigon leaned in close to me, so close I could feel his rank breath pushing against my skin. “But you already have the mark of demons on you, girl,” he mused. I blinked once, surprised before…

“Liliana,” I breathed. Hadn’t she even explicitly mentioned contracts with demons as one such way to gain power? Had their touch lingered on her like a miasma, part of it brushed against me.

Or had she done something else.

Trigon folded his arms. “I have heard of that one,” he said. “She taught you well to fear.” I bit back a childish retort. “Still,” he continued. “Would it not be fitting, to give you freely what she has spent her whole life chasing?”

“What?”

“Power,” Trigon said. “Freely given, and safe return to your home, all for a simple oath to protect my spawn from any and all that might harm her.”

He held out his hand, power coalescing in his palm. More than power, knowledge, knowledge that I so desperately needed, now that I was separated from my body. “All of this, I offer you.”

I glared at him. “Why? Why would you give me all of this, for something I would have done anyway?”

The demon only laughed. “Choose,” he said. “Choose. The power to defeat all of your enemies, or…” he waved his other hand towards the cavern below. “A slow and painful death.”

“Choose.”

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A/N: Like I said, here is the bonus chapter for reaching our first sub goal. I'm happy to have come so far with all of you, and I hope we have a lot of fun going forward as well. Look out for the next chapter this Friday! Let's finish out Well Traveled strong.

As always, I hope you enjoyed.