The room was dark but for the light of two torches burning on the wall to his right. Their glow shone upon the twisted, sick image of Eiman, the multiarmed, multilegged god without a face. Nick hung from four short chains attached to the wall, and he suspected there would be no escaping these like he had at the baron’s estate.

  No, death would be his only way out, and he feared it would be a long time coming. His only solace was that, so far as he knew, Frost and Violette had not been captured along with him.

  “Here I am, a prisoner once again, Cataloger,” he said, his voice a hoarse whisper. He’d been beaten fairly regularly by the guards stationed outside. Never enough to do more than bruise, of course. “Still sure you can’t rescue me from here?”

  I cannot directly affect the material world

  “Not asking for that. Just…a nice little escape back home. I want to wake up in my bed, with my brother nearby. Not here. Anywhere but here.”

  Yensere’s rules must be followed

  “Sure.” He closed his eyes. “What do you think is about to happen to me, Cataloger?”

  It was as long while before she responded.

  Based on prior events within this space—nothing you will find pleasurable

  “And you still think it’s best I stay?”

  It is not about what I think is best—I am bound by rules that cannot be broken

  Footsteps outside the door. Someone was coming.

  Nick—I am sorry

  The door opened, and in stepped a man Nick had not yet met. His clothes were finely made, silky reds and deep blacks sewn into his trousers and tunic. He was tall and strong, seemingly in defiance of his advancing age.

  Frey: Level 20 Human

  Archetype: Lord

  Special Classification: Deity Blessed (Eiman)

  Nick was shocked at the level flashing above the man’s head. Higher than Sir Gareth’s, somehow. Nick shivered in his chains. What powers did the older man hide behind that faint smile? Frey stood before him, holding a familiar object slowly twirling between his fingers.

  “The demon of Meadowtint,” the finely dressed lord said, holding the broken Sinifel mirror Gareth had taken from Nick. “I’ve heard much about you. How you do not fear death. How it cannot claim you.”

  “You hear this from Gareth?” Nick asked, trying to harden his voice and not sound so pathetic. “Did he also tell you about how I kicked his ass?”

  The noble man smiled.

  “I know of his defeats, yes. I know much about you, Nick, but you do not know me. Let us correct that. I am Lord Frey Astarda. I rule over all lands west of Castle Astarda and the Frostbound Mountains. Vestor’s people are mine to command, to protect, and you have made quite a mess of things. Dead villagers. A slaughtered baron. Chaos at our largest city of Greenborough. We’ve long heard rumors of your kind, but you are the first demon I have ever met.”

  “Lucky you.”

  Frey lifted the mirror. “You didn’t know what this was, did you? When you took it?”

  Nick glared at him but did not answer.

  “I thought not,” Frey continued. “It is a thief, Nick. What it steals from you is your greatest fears. It’s meant to help, of course. To pull away that which you dread and resent.” He paused to grin. “I spoke with Lucien. I know what he is to you, and I find it fascinating.”

  Nick clenched his fists and wished, more than anything, that he could depart this world then and there, the rules of Yensere be damned.

  Visits can only be ended at appointed safe locations—death is not the preferred exit, only a last resort to maintain world stability and—

  Enough, Cataloger, Nick thought. He was too tired and frightened for arguments. Just. Enough.

  Frey returned to the door and opened it wide. Light flickered into the room from unseen sconces burning just beyond. Lit by their glow, Nick’s father stepped down into the dank, morbid room.

  Not your father, Nick thought, even as his senses insisted otherwise upon viewing the perfect re-creation. Lucien. Separate. Different. Fake.

  “Hello again, my son,” Lucien said.

  Frey put a hand atop Lucien’s shoulder. His grin extended from ear to ear.

  “I never thought demons would have fathers and sons like us. Most scholars guessed you were wretched beings spat out from the black sun or conjured from our own nightmares. But, well, this thief here seems to say otherwise.”

  “I’ll kill you,” Nick seethed, refusing to look at his father. At Lucien.

  “You may desire it, but you will accomplish nothing in those chains.” Frey gestured to Lucien. “Your master has a simple command, thief. Prepare his mind for my return. Harm him if you must, but do not kill him. Never kill him. I like him exactly where he is.”

  Frey climbed the stairs, and when the door shut behind him, Nick and Lucien were alone in the dim light of those two burning torches. The statue of Eiman loomed behind Lucien, and Nick swore it laughed though it lacked a mouth to do so.

  The abomination pretending to be his father approached. Nick tensed on instinct.

  “You’re afraid of me,” Lucien said.

  “The last time I saw you, you assaulted me and clapped me in irons,” Nick said. “Shouldn’t I be?”

  Lucien shook his head.

  “For a son to fear the hand of his father. A shameful situation, I must admit. Perhaps I should have trusted you more, but tell me, son, would you have come with me if I asked? Would a kind word have been enough to bring you to Castle Astarda?”

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  “You’re not real,” Nick said, ignoring the question. “And I’m not your son. Stop calling me that.”

  Lucien put his hand on the wall above Nick and leaned closer.

  “Why do you lie?” he asked. “To yourself? To me?”

  “It’s not a lie.”

  “But it is.” Lucien used his free hand to gently move sweat-stained hair away from Nick’s forehead. “You know it is. That’s why you’re afraid.”

  “Bullshit. Cataloger, tell me what he is, what he really is.”

  “Cataloger?” Lucien asked, tilting his head to one side. Nick hated the way it awoke a dozen memories of time spent with his father, the way he’d always seemed so curious about Nick’s every discovery, even if it had been something he already knew.

  Lucien: Level—

  “I don’t want his statistics,” Nick said, not caring that he’d appear crazy to the false Lucien. “I want to know what he is. How he is. Because he cannot be my father. My father is dead; I saw it; I watched the station explode.”

  Clarify

  Lucien leaned closer, and Nick studied him against his will. There was no flaw in the re-creation. Every twitch, every look, was perfect.

  “Tell me, my son, what is a self?”

  “I’m not arguing with you, whatever you are.”

  Lucien chuckled, just barely flashing a hint of his perfectly straight white teeth. He’d told Nick once to always take good care of his teeth if he wished to be a leader. People care about those little things, he’d told him. They look for flaws to justify their dislikes, and so you must give them none.

  Nick banished the memory, hating how easily it came to him.

  “You’ve always been emotional,” Lucien said. “But I’m disappointed you’ve become more closed-minded as you’ve grown. Less adventurous. We’re in a world unlike anything you’ve ever experienced, and yet you cling to the most rudimentary understandings of life and existence.”

  Nick’s curiosity was piqued despite himself. “You know of the Artifact?”

  Lucien shrugged and avoided the question.

  “I ask you again, what is a self?” he asked. “When you label yourself ‘Nick,’ what is it you are labeling?”

  “It’s…it’s me,” Nick said, unsure and confused. His father had never been a philosopher. That’d been their mother’s area of expertise. “My mind. My body. Everything that I am.”

  The imposter paced back and forth, and he seemed excited by Nick’s answer.

  “But your body is forever changing, its cells cycling through. Can you claim identity to flesh when your every organ and tissue is replaced over the course of seven years?”

  “I still have my memories, my emotions, my personality.”

  Lucien wagged a finger at him.

  “Chemical reactions amid a brain soup. Electrons firing signals across protein fibers. You cling to them, but they are processes, rigid and predictable. But I agree, Nick! Which is why the ‘you’ in front of me within Yensere is still real. It’s valid. Those same processes happen, albeit in a different manner. Your emotions, though…they remain. As does your personality. And most importantly of all, your memories.”

  His father loomed closer, and Nick trembled.

  “I am everything I always was. Built of the same signals and processes that currently re-create you. And I have those same memories, too. If I am not real, then why are you?”

  In answer, Nick twisted his fingers to point at Lucien and let loose his lightning. It streaked into Lucien’s face and then swirled into his chest. Nick poured his mana into it, refusing to let the lightning end so it burned twice. He gasped when the spell ended, his head throbbing.

  “You’re a fake,” Nick shouted at the burnt, smoking abomination trembling before him.

  Lucien slowly stood. The smoke about him faded. His OPC uniform healed away its burns. If he was angry at the attack, he did not show it. Instead he gently placed his hand on the side of Nick’s face. Nick hated just how much love and tenderness he sensed in the move. The other hand closed about the fingers of Nick’s left hand and steadily, one by one, broke them.

  “When you were five, you ran face-first into a picnic table at a park on Taneth’s surface,” he said, twisting the knuckle. “It cost you one of your baby teeth.” The next finger. “When you were nine, you split your leg open at a farm you were distinctly ordered to stay away from during our vacation.” The next. “When you were thirteen, your advances on a girl you liked, Francine, were soundly rejected. I bought you ice cream and sat with you while you cried in a park. Every time, I cared for you, watched over you, and cherished you amid both your mistakes and your achievements.”

  “Stop it,” Nick whispered, hating Lucien, hating this thing, more than anything in all his life. He couldn’t even concentrate well enough to burst another bolt of lightning from his mutilated hand.

  “You wish to embrace me, don’t you? You wish, deep down in your heart, for me to be all that I say I am. But something holds you back.”

  “I said stop!”

  Lucien grabbed Nick’s face, swallowing it within his grasp. His hazel eyes held Nick prisoner. There was light in them, red and savage, and it was growing.

  “Show it to me,” Lucien said. “Let us live it together.”

  *

  Nick slammed into the chair of the escape pod, and despite the firm padding, the impact left him dazed. He sank into the seat, hands shaking, vision swimming. The alarm. It was so loud. So loud.

  “Rescuers will come for you, I promise,” his father said, standing at entrance of the pod. Red lights flashed off and on behind him, another method of alerting people on the research station that something was terribly amiss. “Just wait and hold faith.”

  “No, don’t,” Nick said, unsure of what exactly he was protesting. He was sixteen years old. This was too much for him. Just moments ago, he’d been in his room, reading one of his favorite saga books. That felt like a different life, one that ended when the alarms blared and a sudden jolt shook the entire station.

  “I have to stay,” his father said as he hit a button on the outside of the pod. “I’m sorry, Nick, but I have to see if I can stop this.”

  Nick finally regained his senses, and he pushed out of the chair. The door of the pod was sealed shut, and though he beat his hands against it, it would not open. Through the thick double pane of glass in the center of the door, he met his father’s gaze.

  Lucien placed one of his large hands on the lower section of the door.

  “Nick,” he said, shouting to be heard. “The—”

  The words. Nick never understood the words. The alarm kept blaring. Nick was screaming. Another explosion rocked the station, adding a screech of metal to the cacophony. One sentence, lost to Nick as the pod was ejected into space. Lost to Nick, as he collapsed into his chair and watched the stars swirl around him.

  Lost forever, when four minutes later, distant Research Station 68 erupted into a brief flash of fire. There had been no noise. No sound.

  Just Nick, sixteen years old, sobbing.

  *

  Sobbing as his father loomed over him, lit by the light of two torches flickering above the grotesque statue. No, not his father. Lucien. He did not deserve that title. Nick had to remember that if he was to keep from breaking completely.

  “Amazing, isn’t it, the gifts Yensere offers?” Lucien said, withdrawing his hand. “If only I could have studied them much earlier in life.”

  “You’re dead,” Nick said, shaking his head in an attempt to banish the lingering memories and force himself into the here and now. He saw his mana bar drop significantly, the sight unnerving. Just what was this abomination doing to him?

  “You can’t be him,” he insisted, pouring his resolve into those four words.

  Lucien leaned closer, his look one Nick had never seen on the face of his father. It was cold and cruel, and in those eyes Nick was a small, pathetic thing.

  “If you believe I am, and I believe I am, does it even matter?”

  Before Nick could answer, his father’s hand was back on his throat, fingertips digging into his jaw. The red light bloomed once more in Lucien’s irises. Nick’s mind raced.

  *

  A research station, breaking apart from a damaged reactor.

  Blaring alarms demanding all inhabitants flee.

  An empty escape pod and a sealed door, his father’s face on the other side of the glass.

  Unheard final words before the cold silence of space.

  *

  “Accept the truth before you,” Lucien said, his grip tightening, plunging Nick again into the unwanted past the instant he came to.

  A research station, breaking.

  Alarms, blaring.

  An escape pod, empty.

  Words unheard, then silence.

  *

  “It is my face you see within the memory.”

  A station.

  Alarms.

  Escape pod.

  Unheard words.

  *

  “It is my face you see outside the memory.”

  Station.

  Alarms.

  Pod.

  Face.

  Words.

  Silence.

  *

  “The same,” Lucien said, his deep voice rumbling amid the blackness swamping Nick’s consciousness. He couldn’t remember where he was, why he was. Chains. He hung from chains. Red shone before him. Eyes. A memory.

  *

  Stationalarmspodfacewordssilence

  *

  His father.

  His father was abandoning him.

  His father was hurting him.

  A nearby door opened as Nick hung, imprisoned and weeping.

  “Lord Frey,” said his father / Lucien. “My son is ready for your knife.”