The fire smelled of madness.

  “Don’t look at it directly,” Wol hissed, “It’ll blind your Eye.”

  “At what?”

  “Both,” he said.

  The darkness receded from the edges of the warehouse, revealing purple-green fire spreading, perpetuating the entire place with miasmatic smoke. In my peripheral vision I saw the daemon’s hulking shadow form, running on threes while dragging its other hand on the walls. Its claws left deep grooves filled with filth which began to ignite with the same colored fire.

  Then it retreated back into the shadows, clicking from its throat.

  “Block your ears,” Wol muttered, but there was uncertainty there.

  The daemon continued before I could. “My name is Maw. Maw, maw, maw–” more clicks and hissing, “Maw is my nameeeee–”

  I’d been right. It had been driven mad.

  And it was using some form of eldritch sorcery to light the warehouse on fire, with me in it.

  The daemon was working on the floors now, running around and lighting anything it could reach with the purple-green fire. I spied him from the corner of my eye, stopping by a mound of his own waste and set it aflame. The darkness, it was from the pyramid-shaped wastes that we’d seen outside. We’d been walking through shit gas.

  “It’s claiming more territory,” Wol said, “The same as the Fae with the Illusion. The ghost with the burning building.”

  It was empowering itself with everything around us. The darkness from its fecal matter, and now the flames burning all around us. I hated how everything I’d been up against lately had all been able to utilize fire.

  “Finish the circle and the chant, we can deal with the fire after,” Wol snapped.

  I leaned down and went about drawing the third circle.

  The daemon had been waiting for it.

  Centipede limbs ending in hands reached out of the darkness and I reflexively turned my head.

  My right arm exploded in pain as eldritch flames exploded over it.

  Oh, I screamed. I’d never screamed like that. Mindless, pain-filled primal scream that came from deep inside my chest, that someone would hear –anyone– and just end it all, that someone could help.

  Worse, I fell out of the circle.

  Maw had dragged me out.

  He was fast. He grabbed my legs before I could do anything.

  Then he began to pull me.

  While screaming, I stretched out my hand and tried to grab my bag, the paint brush, anything but just ended up scrabbling over the floor. My fingers set against the rough surface and they began to be scraped raw as Maw kept laughing, dragging me into the darkness. Streaks of my own blood from my fingertips trailed behind me, the nails on my index and middle finger snapping off and being filed down.

  Wol leaped out of the circle, yowling but I was being dragged off faster than he could reach me. He ran faster than in the race with Exanguin, but still too slow. He kept getting further and further away.

  Hwari wriggled her body, submerging into the shadows but I saw that she had a hard time moving around Maw’s darkness. It was inherently different than the shadows she transversed in, a miasma with actual density that was more akin to mulch than nothingness.

  Maw twisted my ankle, and something snapped.

  I screamed and grabbed my gravity knife, slicing up whatever was holding me. There was no thought, no strategy. Just wanting to get whatever the fuck Maw was doing to stop, and get him away from me. But I felt no resistance from the knife because I hadn’t actually cut anything. No leverage, not the right angle. Too much of a reflex response, which the daemon had seen coming. The pressure around my leg was gone.

  He was used to this. Hunting. Dragging people to the dark and watching them scream, anticipating their reactions with practiced patience.

  Helpless little whimpers escaped between my lips as I curled up my broken ankle to the chest. Tears fell from my eyes, unwillingly but signaling that my rationale was on the verge of breaking.

  I reset my grip on the knife my mom gave me, holding it out like it could do something.

  My voice trembled, “By the Hallow name–”

  The smooth part of a nail traced a path down my cheek, and I could only shudder.

  The circle had given me confidence. Protection. Room, and territory.

  Without it… I was naked. Exposed. Weak. Feeble.

  Vulnerable.

  Prey.

  The thing had changed shape again. Its limbs had become tentacles. I could hear it slithering along the ground, circling me, and cooing. Clicking with its damned tusk-mandibles.

  Oh god, it was toying with me.

  I lowered my knife with my left arm and began to drag it along the ground. Scraping, trying to drown out the fucking clicks. Trying to do something to turn into a blathering, weeping idiot. My mind was still, but that was only the rational part. The irrational part had tears streaming down my cheeks, and I was hiccupping.

  I couldn’t see. So I relied on feel. It helped that I couldn’t see because it meant I could close my eyes. That meant more focus on my other senses. Like touch.

  The clicking had stopped.

  Something bit down on the top part of my ear and I froze mid-thought. Then the teeth gnawed on my ear, biting down on it then letting go just before it pierced flesh, then biting down, then letting go, dozens of times, laughing and shrieking in delight.

  Nibbling. Just setting his teeth to it. Licking it. Chewing on it with only its lips. Laughing.

  Then it let go and slunk off, surrounding me with the clicks again.

  I kept scraping. I think I was sobbing too, my shoulder shaking along with every intake of breath.

  I didn’t want to die.

  Why me? Why fucking me? I never had a single good fucking thing happen to me in my life. The best thing that actually happened was Wol and Hwari. God, I’d never even thanked them. They were the closest thing I had to a friend –no, they were friends.

  What would happen if I died? Would they just return to where they came from? Would they remember me? Mourn me? Maybe they’d contract with another practitioner and talk about me sometimes. I wondered what they would say about me.

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  I wondered what would happen after death. If there was an afterlife, which one would be there? Jesus? Buddha? Or just some mindless void where I had zero sentience and everything just blinked out?

  I was afraid.

  God, I was so afraid.

  The whimpers grew louder from my throat and I bit down on my burned wrist. I didn't want to give the damned thing the satisfaction.

  It hurt. It hurt a lot.

  My ankle especially. The daemon had twisted it. Was it broken? Sprained? Everything I knew told me it was broken.

  I knew no demonology signs. No diabolism circles, other than the one on the cover of some of the books back home, if those were even real circles and not for design. There wasn’t much I could do.

  So I did the only thing I could do and kept scraping my knife on the floor.

  I was going to die here.

  I started to laugh and the daemon laughed along with me, its laughs combining with mine, becoming more like mine and hitting a fever pitch. Its laughter faded and only mine occupied the space. I heard whimpering near my feet and something wet licking my other foot. The Daemon, mewling and slurping my ankle, up my leg.

  I laughed louder.

  Hwari’s voice reached me.

  ‘Caller, behind you. I have drawn a circle. While the daemon is occupied.’

  No. That wouldn’t work. That would only buy us time. I would have to draw the three-layered circle all over again, and without the Euclidean symbol –a triangle– it wouldn’t even be as half as effective as what I did with the paint. I wouldn't even get there. Maw wouldn't let me.

  I did the only thing I knew how. Even if it was a long shot.

  ‘Caller, the path forward exists when one can walk,’ She said, ‘I shall distract the Daemon. Save yourself.’

  And then what? I remembered her tail fins, how they’d been all slashed up. She hadn’t been hurt even during the fight with the practitioner. His flames hadn’t really affected her. The only other time when I saw her hurt was when I’d called upon the Cold Darkness.

  Right. The Cold Darkness. I could do that.

  The temptation was there and now that I was aware of it, I wanted to. It was the easy way out. I could just say the name once. And then everything would freeze over. I could limp out. Icing wounds, that’s something they used to make people feel better. I could say the name three times, one to distract Maw, another to freeze over my arm, and another to make my ankle feel better.

  That’d only be four times total I’d have said Azag’s name. Then...

  I'd just be trading Maw for something else. I wondered what havoc a daemon of the Cold Sickness' power could do in New York City. Would it make a dent in the statistic? Mortality rates at senior homes and infant wards? Another flu outbreak? Worse, just a slow death toll until no one noticed?

  And it'd be my fault.

  I don't think I realized the full repercussions of what I was dealing with until now. Death wasn't some far away concept. It was real. As real as my broken ankle. As real as the burns on my wrist.

  I pushed down that thought and went back to scraping, tears still streaming down my cheeks. Not now. Later.

  The sobbing stopped.

  ‘Caller, please. You are in pain,’

  I was always in pain. Since this whole thing started I’ve been in pain.

  ‘Then why?’ Hwari sounded genuinely puzzled.

  Why?

  Because of my mom? I think so. A part of it atleast. I wanted her inheritance.

  Not the money. Not the magic. Not the prestige. Just because it would remind me of her.

  I liked Wol and Hwari because they made me feel like what siblings were supposed to be. Like having a quiet young sister and a bratty but smart younger brother. It made me feel that my mom thought of me. Even if it had been trying to control me… I felt connected to her that way.

  I had no photo of my mom. No videos. I couldn’t remember her voice, couldn’t remember her face. Just that… she loved me. I think.

  This whole thing, from beginning to end, had been about me finding my mom again.

  But deeper than that?

  I guess... I didn't want to lose here.

  I always lost. I lost in dodgeball, basketball, I lost in the lottery for life. That's why I studied my ass off while everyone else went golfing. I read books while my classmates went to play handball. When they stayed up all night gaming, I was working on scholarship essays so we could afford rent.

  Me going into Hwari's circle would mean I had a chance to survive a minute longer. But would it let me win?

  No.

  This wasn't about death. It wasn't about living to see tomorrow. It was about something deeper than that. I felt it deep within me that the choices I made now would determine who I would be. I saw it every day; kids saying that they'll get 'serious' once a few years passed and they were 'adults'. People do that every day. 'I'll help out when I'm richer, I'll work on my homework tomorrow.'

  If I started doing that, it'd never end.

  Yeah, I was scared, but damn it all if I was going to let that decide who I am.

  Or maybe that's all bullshit, and I'm just a stubborn son of a bitch. I don't think it mattered anymore. What do I know? I didn't even get accepted to college yet. Maybe the real world hadn't hit me hard enough.

  But I was going to do what I was going to do. That was that.

  Hwari was silent.

  The Daemon had changed tactics; he kept appearing on either side of my head, breathing in them. Making me listen to the clicks, the hissing, smelling the foul odor from his mouth.

  I finished scraping.

  My last gamble. If this didn’t work… There'd be no other gamble.

  I needed a circle. I needed Hwari's help.

  Hwari heard my thoughts, ‘My circle will only last an instant, Caller. The darkness, it stifles it.’

  Then an instant was all I had.

  As soon as I finished that thought, I felt Hwari's circle come into being beneath the symbols I’d been scraping on the ground. I slammed my wounded right hand down into it, feeling the burns turn to mush and seep blood into the working with more power than any other circle I’d drawn.

  Light glared as Wol tipped over the flashlight and spun it in my direction, the light from it forming a perfect triangle on the wall.

  I saw the demon, bent over my leg and sucking greedily from it. No blood, just his saliva. I hadn't even felt him there. When the light shone on the daemon, it shied away, lifting tentacles in protest and roared in Wol’s direction.

  I had but a moment.

  “By the Hallow name, I claim your power!” A declaration.

  It’s eyes widened and rushed towards me, driving me to the ground. Tentacles fought to find purchase over my mouth, but I started struggling, spazzing out as hard as I could.

  “I bind you! I bind you, Maw! By your true name, I bind you!” Three circles. Three chants. The third chant made of three sub-chants.

  The rune for passage I’d scrawled on the ground beamed to life, glowering with bright purple mana as the Euclidic symbols started to light up too.

  Hwari moved in liquid clarity, snaking around the daemon’s feet and drawing a circle beneath us. I felt the circle she drew around my symbols connect with this one. Thaumaturgy, noted a part of my brain that had just given up long ago.

  Still, I couldn’t stop. Not now.

  “By Euclidic Law and the Fundamental truth of this world! I bind you, Eldritch Madness! I banish you, Maw! And I claim both your power!”

  The demon screeched, his voice echoing off the walls and all the eldritch flames around the building blinked out at once. The stench, the foul stench of madness, and waste –they all disappeared.

  Once more, the world was covered in regular darkness. The one from the night, not the daemon.

  I was breathing hard. I searched with my hand, not caring that the burns kept scraping over the floor. I only stopped once I felt Hwari’s cold shadowy body.

  “Hwari?” I asked.

  ‘I am alright, Caller.’

  “Oh thank God.” I crumpled to the floor.

  Wol walked over. He was limping. “Practitioner?”

  “Wol,” I greeted.

  I felt his weight lean on my back. “You are alive.”

  “Yes,” I agreed.

  The three of us stayed that way.

  I felt like we should celebrate. Go out for food. A yip-yip hurray. Something.

  But honestly, I just felt like shit. Tired. Beyond tired. Weary. There were things to do.

  “Alright, let’s get up and–” I stopped, falling backwards in the middle of trying to stand.

  Wol sensed something was wrong immediately. “Jain?”

  I couldn’t speak.

  “Jain?”

  Oh god. No, no, no, no, no–

  “What is it, Jain?” He hissed, worried.

  Hwari floated off the ground too.

  I wanted to start crying. If I already hadn’t I would be.

  “My legs, Wol,” I swallowed, tears blurring my vision regardless. “I can’t feel my legs.”