Colors bled into focus once more, stained glass in their complexions. The world returned disjointed and raw. Darkness once more began to tinge the edges of my vision as my soul resettled into my body, and I started processing the images I was receiving.

  The wind was roaring in my ears, flinging bits of iced shrapnel and pieces of frozen rubble from around the village through the air in fleets of knives. A piece of brittle metal—one of the last remnants of the crumbled half of my shield—had impaled my upper arm. It was sagging there, useless, barely able to carry my weight.

  Another piece of rubble, a long shard of frost-blackened rock, had buried itself into the calf of my bad leg. Ice crystals were spreading from the impact and slowly crawling up my leg. No blood came out. It had been instantly clotted and frozen only moments later. The wound let off a strange sort of steam, like the fog that comes from your mouth when it got cold enough. Except that shouldn’t have been possible, as everything even neighboring a liquid form should have frozen in the blink of an eye. The blood had, but nothing else.

  Magic is weird.

  The air smelled kinda like menthol and cool-mint, to be honest. You know, the stuff in certain cough drops that makes your mouth feel cold and your nose do odd things when breathing in. It also smelled like snow, which was entirely to be expected given the situation.

  Trees snapped and splintered loudly off in the distance as the rapid decrease in temperature caused their sap to freeze. The remnants of the wall crumbled to ruins. Small critters slowed, froze, and died in the absolute cold.

  Then I felt something—a small tinge of that ever-dying, ever-failing Domain. The sensation sent shivers crawling down my spine. I turned my gaze to face what waited for me.

  It was staring at me, that Shadow of Madness, infinite eyes filled with memories I did not want. And I knew deep down what I needed to do. The thought of what it would mean for the future was bone-chilling, but it needed to be done. By me. The plan would be carried out despite my long absence.

  I reached out through the intervening distance with the pieces of my mind and found the patch of Shadow. It was there, more real than the hardest stone, more imaginary than the fleetest dream. And it reached back at me. I grasped the wisps of Madness and pulled. And in pulling, I broke the enchaining void in which dwelt my mind and soul.

  The Shadow burst apart into a black mist, swirling and dancing in mind-numbing patterns that only got more complex the longer I looked at them. I didn’t seem to be as fragile now as I was earlier, though, so I didn’t loose myself when looking. The mist flooded the distance between us and slammed into me, knocking me backward even though I didn’t feel anything. Then the sensation started.

  It was like a thousand tetanus vaccines being injected into me at once. What started as a dull ache slowly blossomed into a billowing inferno of absolute agony. The mist dove into my skin and through my body, finally coming to rest somewhere in the middle of my chest, right beside my heart. It formed something hard there—hard and cold and hot and… all sorts of contradictory things, too many for me to fully parse through.

  When it had finished entering my body, I clutched at my chest. Whatever it had become there next to my heart, it was not comfortable in the slightest. It felt like I had swallowed something sharp and it had lodged itself right smack dab in the center of my ribcage.

  None of this took into account the injuries I already had, which were painful in their own right, though less serious than this. They could be affected by chemicals, while soul-ache could not. That was an ordeal that could not be numbed by anything natural. Certain potions could do it, but they were rather rare. My soul-ache was only slight, and it was gone by the time I was able to double over instead of just being paralyzed. The physical ache was not.

  I looked over at Dalia through a haze of pain, still mostly dulled by shock and adrenaline, thankfully. She was still casting that heal spell over and over again, desperately trying to keep herself alive as the full half-shield embedded in her chest and protruding from her back kept destroying what she brought back. She was out of temporal ritual marks. And even if she still had them, they wouldn’t work. They only restored her the state of her body; they didn’t push out anything stuck inside her.

  As I watched, her spells began to grow paler. The healing effects lessened, the light from the spells waned, and she began to grow more panicked with each cast. She was running out of mana.

  I had done it. I had successfully interrupted the channel between her and whichever moon god or goddess was interfering in mortal affairs.

  Slowly, ever so slowly, her body began to sag. It weakened and hung like a half-filled sack. Bones showed from beneath the skin and her legs collapsed from under her. Eyes rolled back in her head. Hair rippled from a bright white back to an old gray. Radiance dimmed. Presence vanished.

  Dalia died.

  I had been expecting some kind of fanfare—the brazen call of trumpets, perhaps the flashing of enraged thunder, maybe even a world-shaking scream of hatred from the heavens. But there was nothing. Nothing but the notifications of her demise.

  I ignored them all.

  All that was left was the limp body of a woman gone mad. She lay there, propped up awkwardly by half of a broken shield driven clean through her body. It was a cruel sight—all her years brought to an end by the rot of a god and by her own shattered pride. A pitiful end.

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  And yet the winds still howled, the ice still bit, and the darkening trees closed in around me. I had made it in time to stop the curses she had placed on me from becoming permanent, and apparently killing her had cured them for me as well, but I didn’t know if that was the case for the other creatures she had cursed as well. The treant was dead. I could see that now. So I had no frame of reference for this sort of thing.

  I was a little surprised, to be honest. I hadn’t really expected the others to kill that monster. Its strength should have been beyond them, though only by a little bit. They had been capable of holding it off, I was sure of that, but I hadn’t been entirely confident of their teamwork and collective skill level. It was a welcome surprise. What I was going to tell the village folk, I had no idea. That was, if I even had to talk to them at all.

  Rolling over onto my back, I stared up at the golden clouds far beyond the trees. It was like looking up through a telescope. Beautiful colors streaked across the sky—bright crimson, deep blue, pale yellow. They hearkened the hour of dusk.

  This would be a good place to sleep the night away, I could just feel it. That feeling of warmth seeping in from the tips of my five remaining fingers and converging on my core was just heavenly. Not even the cold penetrated that feeling anymore. It was all but gone now. All but gone. All but gone.

  So tired…

  Something edged into the darkness on the edges of my vision. A hand of black bone, curled, grasping. It reached down toward me.

  And then it, too, was gone, banished on the breeze.

  I came to an abrupt realization. I was freezing. The cold wasn’t gone because the world was warming slowly, but because it was somehow getting even colder. The ritual wasn’t slowing to a stop, it was speeding up. I had to get out of there!

  My body was sluggish, numb, unresponsive. But it still moved. I rolled onto my front and pushed off the ground, barely able to get my arm underneath me because of the crumbling metal fragment embedded in it. Getting my legs to move was even harder. My right leg was officially crippled now. It was warped and bent beyond recognition, and the piece of wood had sealed its fate. My left leg was the only properly working limb I had.

  I stumbled to my feet, accidentally placing my weight on my bad leg and losing my balance. I barely recovered. The bleeding had started again, I noticed. Apparently, the ice growing out of my skin from the wood and metal as well as the multiple stripes of pure white criss-crossing my body—probably the onset of frostbite if I didn’t have enough already—weren’t quite enough to staunch the catastrophic damage that had been done to my body.

  Looking around, I found the town gate. It had been knocked down and twisted by a force many times that which I could have withstood. The thought made me shiver. Dalia and the treant had been powerful—far more powerful than should have been possible on this floor.

  Now wasn’t the time for that, though, and I limped in the direction I had originally come from. It was time to find the portal off this floor. After that, I needed a healer. Badly.

  Three very long hours later, I stood before the portal. It was different from the one off the first floor. The portal to the third floor was jagged and bright red with black sparks flying off of it. An ominous sign, if I had ever seen one. Still, the floor couldn’t be any worse than this one had been.

  I took a step forward, but was stopped by a voice coming from behind me.

  “Your friends have already gone through.” It said. “They found wisdom in not remaining while the ritual was active.”

  I turned around to find a shadowed figure step from the base of a tree. “You’re getting better at hiding. I almost didn’t see you there. I take it you’re the one that helped them defeat that creature?”

  “Observant as always. And yes, it was me. I lost one of my better knives to do it. They took the knife with them. I take it the absorption was a success?”

  “Yeah. Hurt like hell. I’ll get your knife back as well. It might take a little doing to not raise suspicions.”

  The ghost shook his head. “That is fine. It was my second knife, anyway. I won’t need it for at least a week. Speaking of which, our brother has already progressed beyond this floor. He has successfully garnered himself a worthy class. I am at level nine. You?”

  “Level seven.” I said.

  “Slow. Still, you have perhaps the best foundation out of all of us. You could likely even defeat our brother should you try. When you are healed, of course. Your current condition would lead to a swift victory on his part.”

  I looked down at my missing left arm. “I figured as much. Have you crossed over already?”

  “I have. It will be a good floor for all of us. Experience will be plentiful. Are you dead set on continuing with that party? They are weak, especially the girl and that boy, Harald. The man named Mark shows some promise, but not enough to bother with.” The ghost shook his head thoughtfully. “I might even invite him to join the Aesir should he survive and grow strong enough. Wouldn’t that be something—the newest Aesir in thirty years. Still, not a topic for the moment. What will you do if the party breaks?”

  I looked back at the portal. “I would leave. They hold no real significance to me, apart from the girl. And while she may be the granddaughter of the Nation Feller, she does not measure up to his legacy in the way her brother did. Should she fail the test, I will abandon her. Even if she does, I will leave for a time. We must be strong on our own to be strong as a group. You’re right, though. A new Aesir would be interesting. Not as much as a new Myrmidon, but he doesn’t have the potential to reach that high anyway. Neither does the girl, really, but here’s hoping.”

  The ghost sighed. “She wasn't supposed to have been in this mess to begin with.”

  “I know. Neither was the other one. But she is now, and we just have to deal with it.”

  “That seems to be a constant theme in our lives, doesn’t it?”

  “Yeah.”

  The silence stretched. It was a comfortable silence, warm despite the howling wind and the icicles slowly forming on the branches even this far from the epicenter of the spell. It ebbed and flowed with the rustling of the grasses and the shaking of the brush as little creatures ran past us, like a river filled with life, yet still peaceful despite all the chaos.

  Finally, the ghost spoke, “May Fortune shadow your path, brother of brothers.” Then he stepped into the portal.

  I looked after him for a minute, then followed.

  The moon rose on a devastated landscape, dotted with dead trees and withered bushes. Nothing grew anymore, nothing moved, nothing lived. Everything was covered in a thin sheet of ice so dark it seemed to absorb the light.

  A scream echoed through the floor, shaking the ground and shattering the ice and frost into a billion pieces. It vibrated the bones of the unfortunate souls who remained. It tore into their minds, pressure building and building until they could do nothing but obey, worship, and kill. Those made of stronger stuff, who were not taken by the first scream, were taken by the second. And those that survived the second, the third. Only those who managed to outlast all three remained free, and they found themselves rapidly overwhelmed by those that weren’t. Thus the floor gained its infamous name.

  Lunar Obeisance