Page 25 of The Misfit Mage and His Devilish Desires

The flame exploded in an instant, a fraction of a second, and engulfed the entirety of my being. And I do mean the entirety. Every fiber from physical matter, my magical extension, and the essence coiled deep into the roots of my cells. Everything burned with a blistering sear. I lacked the words to express the hot-white agony that I struck because as quickly as it’d stabbed me from all directions, it ceased. The only comfort came from a slow, steady drumbeat. It echoed and indicated an arrival, a delivery, an ending. Or so I hoped as I endured agony and followed the sound.

Suddenly, the flames bathed me with cool relief, shifting to a campfire warmth, then a day at the beach—usually not a feeling I enjoyed baking under a bright sun, but currently, I embraced it, hugged the sensation. Then, a blink later, the inferno returned, devouring everything down to my intangible thought process.

Pain didn’t begin to describe the horrors. It peeled away my flesh instantaneously, yet when I glimpsed my hand between the infinite layers of light, I saw every cell. Each microscopic cell. Fully intact but divided, held together by thread.

Not thread. Essence. My essence. My devil essence that kept me wrapped up and safe as I crumbled apart and burned the entire trip. The voyage. The long-lasting eternal journey up the never-ending hill.

I screamed. I cried. I begged.

But my voice released nothing. I was motionless and moving. Flashes forever long passed in the tick of a second.

This wasn’t what traveling between dimensions was. I’d read every account of dimensional travel I could get my hands on because, truly, I wanted to escape my life as an Alden. But this trip to Hell. This single step into a world unlike any other felt eternal, never-ending.

Perhaps I’d already died.

Perhaps I’d never lived.

Perhaps I’d only ever experienced this unyielding agony.

And as quickly as the pain had burrowed its way through every fiber of my being, it dissolved away and fell to dust at my feet.

The fire sizzled, and the intense blaze disappeared. It shrank and split apart into tiny blobs of liquid before evaporating into nothingness.

Here I stood in a sandy field. It stretched far from every direction, leading to large walls so far away, they appeared fuzzy. I squinted, which did little to alter the blurry splotches.

“Wow,” I said, taking in the sound of my own voice, a voice that sounded so much crisper after what seemed like a lifetime of silent agony. “That was…”

“One Hell of a trip?” Bez snickered.

I glowered, which only made the smirk across his face grow that much bigger.

“Oh, come now, you’re the one who insisted we make this voyage.” Bez squared my shoulders and looked me over. “And don’t start with the betterment of the world blah, blah, blah biddy, blah.”

I wanted to argue the point, firmly express this wasn’t some frivolous decision, but the phantom ache of a hundred thousand injuries inflicted over lifetimes or fractions of a second still clung fresh in my mind. “Is my skin on fire? Melted?”

Bez continued checking me over, his expression calm for the most part, but he maintained composure a lot better than I did. “No cracks or dents or obvious injuries I can see.”

“It feels like there are needles poking every pore on my body and that there’s spikes under my skin and that there’s—I don’t know—pain lurking.” I trembled as Bez continued his examination. “You might’ve been right; this trip might be too much for my mortal body.”

“No, that all sounds like standard passage.” Bez grabbed my face, turning my gaze to meet his, then used his clawed nails to stretch the skin so he could thoroughly inspect my eyes. “Everything seems in order. Your mind isn’t oozing out anywhere, so I think you’re okay.”

“Wait.” My jaw went slack. “My brain might start oozing?”

“I said your mind.”

“Which is—”

“Not the same thing,” Bez clarified. “Mortals always attach everything to their organs like they’re so special. I don’t even have organs. Well, currently, I have some.” Bez wiggled a bit, poking his torso from either side. “But they don’t do anything. Except for the tummy. I like to use that one.”

“Fine.”

“The point is, if the voyage between dimensions was too much, your memories would’ve started pouring out, forming sentience. Like little ghost films floating around until all that was left of you was an empty husk of drool and living death.”

“You certainly could’ve elaborated on the risks.”

“I said you could die.”

“Yeah, I was thinking quick and heroic, not like an agonizingly slow death that felt like a bajillion years only for my mind to fall out of my head and leave me what? A decaying mess of mortal mush in Hell?”

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