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He couldn’t have been more wrong.

A lack of a physical form meant there was no way for the agony to end. There was no skin to burn away or heart to cease its beating. There was only the molten heat pressing in on him from every direction.

It burned skin that could not burn and pumped through his lungs in place of air. Drowning in lava should have been theoretically impossible. Any normal body would have given out within moments or, at the very least, gone into shock.

Arwin was not granted such a mercy. His thoughts were stripped away from him in waves. They burned in place of his flesh, and no amount of struggling or screaming could free him.

The pain was like nothing he had ever felt. It went beyond agony and into a realm that was something beyond. He could feel his very soul being ripped apart by the scorching heat, reduced to nothingness.

But even that didn’t have the good grace to come quickly. Demise crept toward him with the delight of a sadistic hunter circling dying prey. There was no escape, but it had no desire to grant him peace.

He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t see. He couldn’t even think. Every thought that tried to take form in Arwin’s head melted away before it could get a chance to take root.

Piece by piece, speck by speck, everything that was Arwin sank deeper into the endless ocean of magma — sank toward oblivion.

***

The lava pressed in. It surrounded the single mote of light that had once been a man, the immense magical pressure and heat imbued within it chewing away at the moat relentlessly. With every passing unit of time, that little mote shrank…

But it did not fade. Like a minute number being halved infinitely, no matter how close to zero it grew, it never ceased to exist.

It persisted.

***

There was something unique about pain. It could be light. It could be bad, or even really bad. It could be an ocean of magma burning away at Arwin’s very soul, but it was still pain.

For a rich man, pain could be losing what the poor man had never had. For a poor man, pain could be losing what the rich man had never wanted for.

There were a great many types of pain. It took more forms than any could count and reared itself in more ways than any could ever name. But there was one thing that always held true about pain.

It was relative.

A motivated man crushed under sufficient sorrow became a hardened one, and then that sorrow was no longer so great as it once had been.

A man who had lost everything had nothing left to lose.

And Arwin’s soul did not receive any reprieve from the agony. It was endless and unrelenting. It did not stop. And when pain never stopped, it there was only so much more it could do.

It started with a flicker of thought. A distant memory passing through the tattered being that had once been Arwin — nothing more than a faint face that had ingrained into the very depths of his soul.

Then there was another thought.

A letter.

A name.

A flood.

Memories slammed back one by one, clawing their way to the surface of the tattered soul. Unrelenting pressure eventually equalized.

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And then, scattered throughout the rippling magma waves, a flickers of energy ignited. They were so small that they may as well have not existed at all, but they burned with an intensity that could not be washed away.

The specks of light drifted through the sea of magma toward the mote at its center. And, one by one, they returned to their master.

With each one, more of the soul’s mind returned. His very soul clawed itself subconsciously back from the brink. There was no more change in the agony. It was a constant scream that sought to drive into his mind.

It attempted to burn away what little of him remained, but there was nothing left to be burnt.

A form drifted together in that orange ocean, fragment by fragment, until a whole had taken form once more. The lava roiled and hissed as it tried to rip the soul apart.

It did nothing.

Even the pain it brought begun to fade.

Determination lit within the glowing eyes of the soul. An ironclad will burned with such intensity that the magma flinched back. The lava had done more than burn and destroy.

It had forged.

What remained was a fragmented soul no longer.

It was Arwin, and he was in control.

He inhaled. Molten lava rushed into his lungs, but this was not the real world. It was a land of will and spirit — and there was nothing left for which to burn.

Arwin’s hands clenched.

He drew breath, and he felt air rush into his lungs even in spite of the lava trying to stifle him out.

Names and faces flashed through his mind. Lillia. Reya. Rodrick. Anna. Olive. Madiv. Even Esmerelda, for some godforsaken reason. Every single person within the Menagerie was waiting for him.

He’d be damned if he let a pool of magical, melted, pissed off rocks be his end.

The ocean of lava surged. It slammed and beat and burned against him. Arwin simply floated there, silent as the immense magical force drove into him over and over again.

With every strike, he felt less. It wasn’t that the lava had gotten weaker. It was as strong as it had ever been. As constant as always. But that was all it was. Spiritual magma could only be as strong as the soul that infused it.

“I will not yield,” Arwin swore. The sea beat against him, but he remained unflinching. He swept a hand through the molten rock, pushing through it like it were thick water. The pain barely even prickled against his skin. “You had your chance. The opportunity has passed. Surrender.”

The sea roared in fury. Enormous waves of crashing molten rock slammed down onto Arwin’s back. They tried to force him to his knees, but his soul had reformed in its entirety. The lava could not destroy him. Not anymore.

He stood, a statue in a raging sea, and waited. He watched. He felt.

And then he raised an open hand.

An enormous wave towered dozens of feet in the air above him, its top breaking and sending molten embers swirling through the void that stretched out across the sky. The wave crashed down for Arwin.

He clenched his fist.

The entire sea slammed to a halt.

All those little pieces of his soul that had been distributed throughout the lava had returned to him, but they had not returned the same as they had left. The magma had irrevocably changed him… or perhaps he had changed it.

He opened his hand.

The sea ripped away from him like a blanket kicked from a hot bed in the depths of the night. It splashed against invisible walls, shoved to the reaches of the void that Arwin stood in. Then it began to drain away, taking the light with it.

Arwin could do nothing but stare at his palm as the void grew darker. It looked the same as it always had, but it couldn’t have been more different. It felt simultaneously right and as if he’d stolen the hand of a stranger.

The seconds felt both longer and shorter than they should have. Arwin tried to determine how long he’d been within the embrace of the lava. How long he’d lost himself — but he couldn’t.

It was like trying to describe color to a blind man who had never seen.

His hands lowered to his sides.

A heartbeat thumped in his ears. He felt the blood pumping in his veins and tasted ash and iron in his mouth.

I don’t care what happens. I don’t care if my soul is ripped apart and put together a thousand times over. I will not abandon my desires, Mesh. I will not give in to anything but death — and should death turn its back on me, then I will cheat it as well.

The void wavered.

Then it evaporated.

Arwin’s eyes snapped back open. He sat on the ground of the Infernal Armory. A wave of super-heated air exploded from his mouth as a breath that he hadn’t realized he’d been holding slipped free.

His fingers trembled at his sides as he pressed a palm to his skin. It was fresh. Unburnt. It felt like an eternity had passed, but if he was still in the Infernal Armory, then it could have been only hours at the most.

Arwin swallowed. He braced a shaking hand against a knee and pushed himself upright. The smithy was empty. There was nobody here but him. The others would have come for him if it had been too long.

Was it even real?

He sent his mind inward — and what he found lurking in wait was infernal heat.

Arwin’s heart skipped a beat.

He extended a hand. Clenched his fingers, then pulled them apart.

Droplets of molten black lava bubbled up from his palm. Immense heat rose up from the lava, but it did nothing more than tickle his skin. It couldn’t affect him, but the heat was real. Undeniably real.

It was hotter than any lava he’d ever worked with before, so intense that waves of distortion twisted the air around his hand.

Arwin clenched his fingers back into a fist. His soul had an infinite amount of time to come to terms and process the pain that it had felt in the void, and even the memory of it had been burned away. There was only one thing that remained.

The determination that had carried him through hell. The corners of his lips twitched upwards in determination and he pulled his fingers apart, letting the black lava spill free.

This power — no. My power.

Show me what you’re capable of.