Leo was subtle about it, but pulse monitor was indeed where Dobrin had told him it would be. The haphazard pile of rocks that leaned up against the wall did look somewhat out of place, and it hadn't taken much guesswork to realize the metal spike would be embedded in the stone. He glanced about to the area around him, but nobody seemed to be paying him any heed. With no other bodies within a hundred feet of him, be spoke quietly, knowing fully well he would be heard.

“Found it," he muttered under his breath. “I assume you can hear me?"

“Yes," Dobrin's voice came back from under the rock, just loud enough for him to make it out. “Look up you fool."

“Leo!"

He jumped at the sound of Gowris' voice, and quietly cursed. Of course the dragonborn had been circling overhead. Moments later he landed heavily on the ground with an annoyed look on his face, but didn't otherwise seem upset.

“Make sure to watch for the redtree," he said, his voice trying to be a little more helpful than his expression let on.

Gowris pointed, drawing Leo's attention to the redtree which was about fifty feet away, somewhat still considering how fast the tentacles that hung from it could move when necessary. Leo glanced at it, briefly gauged the tentacles length versus how far he was from it, then glanced back to Gowris.

“Nothing to worry about," he said, leaning against the stones that hid the impulse scanner, watching the dragonborn grow visibly uncomfortable.

Strange. Is he really the only one who knows?

“It's probably for the best to stay away from it," Gowris said darkly. “I've seen too many new spawns accidently wander past it without thinking and die. Sure you'll come back, but it's not a pleasant time while your body regenerates."

Leo nodded slowly. “Fair enough. I was really just looking at this pile of rocks anyways, seemed kind of out of place." He glanced to the dragonborn, whose expression somehow, had grown even darker. “What," he smirked. “Are they hiding a secret tunnel under this or something?"

“Just keep away from the tree," Gowris growled, turning to go. He really seemed to be in a fowl mood.

“He knows Gowris."

Leo's ears twitched in surprise at Dobrin's voice. The Umbral Scourge's voice.

Gowris, who had been stalking away and spreading his wings to take off again, froze.

Leo watched him with sharp eyes, waiting to see what he would do. Dobrin had given him a rundown of what life in Stillrock was like and directed him to it, but a situation like this had never come up before. Gowris stood frozen for a moment, his hands shaking slightly at his side.

Fear.

He slowly turned to face Leo, the borderline hostile expression dropped, replaced with one of pure shock and fright.

“Get near the spike," Leo said quietly, his voice void of any expression or emotion, gesturing for Gowris to come closer, “so he doesn't need to make so much noise."

Gowris obliged immediately. “How?" he whispered.

“I fell through the portal," Leo said quietly. “And Dobrin gave me the rundown of the area. You run the best show here, so I made my way to your cave."

Leo reveled in the shock in Gowris' eyes, realizing he'd known so little the entire time.

“But he did die," the voice from beneath the rocks said. “Cooked alive by the heat of this place. He is one of you. Unfortunately."

“W-what do you want?" Gowris' voice was shaky, and if he would have had the physical capacity to go pale, he would have been white as a sheet.

“Well I need Leo," the Umbral Scourge said. “But not in his current state. Not vulnerable to that mental enslavement those fucking demons have."

“But…I-"

“I know you can't do anything about that," Dobrin's voice snapped, making Gowris visibly flinch. “But that gorgon, she's a warlock. A live one."

Gowris' eyes grew wide. “What?!"

That phrase should have meant nothing to Leo, if it weren't for the rundown Dobrin had given him a couple days earlier.  

“Yes," Dobrin continued. “Find yourself a hypnosis naga, I don't care if its sentient or not, and kill it. Get her to transfer its power web to Leo."

Gowris' mouth opened and closed, but no sound came out.

“And then kill her."

That hit Leo with a start. “Kill her?" If he was being honest, he thought the gorgon was kind of pretty, if a little foul tempered. Still, he liked her.

“Gowris, do you remember Tycoon? Or Marion? I don't think I need to remind you that those were warlocks. Once they get a sense of what they can do, you might find they're a bit problematic to deal with."

After a moments silence, Dobrin continued. “Leo, once you have that resistance, tell me and I'll try to meet up with you. Then we can start dealing with the real issue."

Gowris made a sharp pointing motion at Leo with fierce eyes, then thumbed over his shoulder, gesturing they should get away from the pile of rock. As he did that, a sighed echoed from underneath it.

“Just speak Gowris, I hope you realize I can see you."

A smile tugged and Leo's mouth, bearing fangs he still wasn't used to having. This strange new body was still awkward for him. Of course Gowris didn't know the pulse monitor saw through the stone like glass. It would have built a virtual three-dimensional representation of everything within a couple square kilometers.

“It would help if I knew what to say," the dragonborn finally said in a low voice.

“Let me confront the gorgon," Leo said simply. “She'll probably trust me more than anybody else right now. Pretend you don't know anything."

“Gowris, do you remember that portal?" Dobrin's voice came from underneath the rocks.

“Are you still guarding it?" Gowris asked weakly. “All this time?"

“After all this time," the Umbral Scourge confirmed. “Every single demon that tries to leave has to go through me. And every hellion."

The same portal that Leo had fallen through.

“I need Leo to watch it during the calm times while I go deal with some of the more…problematic…upper hellions. They've learnt that they can keep me busy with a horde."

Silence hung in the air for a moment.

“That's needs to change."

***

Several days earlier, Leo's life had been thrown into utter chaos.

He was aboard the Starscreamer, a research vessel built specifically for harvesting massive amounts of energy. The solution has been a Bussard Ramjet, a propulsion device that cast a monstrous electromagnetic net that funneled interstellar particles into the engine. When already traveling near the speed of light, their velocity alone was enough to ram the particles so quickly and with so much force, it triggered a fusion reaction within the engine, both propelling the ship forwards and using the excess energy to power the experiments they were running. The ship flew through space just under the speed of light, ever approaching it and slowing time for them even further.

Leo was on security detail that day, the anticipation that would have filled him long since replaced by boredom as they prepared the test for the seventh time that day. The eggheads said they were close, and they were just tuning the machine based on the errors they were getting that cause it to fail. He had his back to the door of the portal room and was standing there, bored more than anything. This had been ongoing for the past several weeks, and had long since become routine.

They were trying to access another dimension, one that wasn't natural. One had that been created by something ancient and powerful. Early speculation was that it was the remnants of an ancient civilization, but until they actually breached it, anyone's guess was as good as any. As for what inhabited it now, that was a different story. When they had breached onto the planet five years prior, it had opened up a whole new world into the known laws of physics. It was a shame that one of their planets continents was now a nuclear wasteland.

In several minutes, they would turn on the ring, attempt to tunnel into the other place, fail, and the engineers would revise their calculations again, trying to make the tunnel push further the next time. They were making progress.

Supposedly.

Leo watched the glass with bemused interest as the ring started to form a red ball of light in its center and the countdown rang over the intercom. Even the engineer sounded bored. While they probably weren't going to succeed, at least they got to enjoy a lightshow. He glanced to Dobrin who was wearing the Ironshell suit. Another experiment that may or may not work.

The metal it was made out of was supposedly quantumly locked with itself, as were the seals and everything else. Like the ship, the material it was made out of would only break down if it fell into a star.

The chest piece on the Ironshell flared red as it started to absorb energy emanated from that half-opened portal, powering its many subsystems. Leo couldn't help but think how cool that armor looked. He'd kill for a chance wear it.

But he wasn't willing to step through the portal if it opened—which is what it was built for. It was a scout suit, and should the portal open, Dobrin would be the first to go through and plant the impulse scanners.

He glanced back at the ring as the sphere of red light filled it and started to tunnel inward—or at least it looked like it was the opening of a tunnel, but it looked that way from both sides. It was a distortion of space that didn't make any sense in the conventional three dimensions. It bore further and further in, eventually curving out of sight like it usually did, the walls spiraling red and black, giving Leo the impression it was a portal to hell. At this point it was a running joke on the ship that the engineers were secretly Satanists.

It fails any second now, Leo thought, giving off a faint sigh. He'd seen this so many times that he had an intrinsic sense when it was about to fail—when it grew unstable.

The glass surrounding the portal shattered, and oven hot air blasted the room, blistering Leo's hands and face.

He roared in pain and ducked through the doorway, shielding his eyes and trying to keep his bearings. He felt like he'd just been face to face with an erupting volcano. Only when he was outside the doorway he realized the front of his shirt was on fire, and swatted the flames out.

What the hell, what is-

His thoughts were cut off by the screaming of the people inside and of…something else. It wasn't human, that was for certain. Clenching his jaw, Leo slapped the device on his right shoulder, putting up an energy shield that had about twenty seconds of life. With a bubble of light springing up around it, he rounded the corner and lifted his weapon.

The scene before him was utter chaos, and at first he wasn't even capable of processing what he was seeing. The strange creatures of the other place were pouring from the portal, spewing out like they were being jetted from a hose. Twisted demon like beings rolled on the ground to their feet, dog like humanoids darted left and right, multiple women who were among the most attractive Leo had ever seen fell through will less grace than he expected, and revealed their horns and tails.

He could barely process it all.

And in the middle, Dobrin had out the plasma sword, and was cutting through them as they grabbed and bit at his armor.

“Shut it off!" his voice boomed from the helmet's speakers as he pushed towards the portal. “Now!"

And just like that, he was gone. Swallowed up by the portal and transported to the other place.

Strangely enough, the moment he went through, the onslaught of creatures slowed to almost nothing. Only one or two came through a second. Without thinking, Leo raised his rifle and fired. The gun rang in his ears, deafening him with its roar, drowning out the chaos within the room.

The following couple seconds seemed to last minutes. Over on the far side of the room, he could make out one of the engineers, darting for the kill switch. The man who had been standing beside it was clutching his face, glass embedded all throughout the front of his body as his clothing smoked and ignited. The man making the run for it wasn't in much better shape, but at least he had a shield up like Leo. He still had to make it up the stairs and across the catwalk to the ring. At least fifteen seconds.

On the other side of the ring, one of those fowl dog-like creatures had disemboweled an engineer, it's claws seemingly supernaturally sharp and cutting through him with hardly any resistance. Leo pivoted and shot the creature, then he shot four more, working his way towards the portal for no reason in particular. One of the dogs charged him from his left and he shot it by reflex, but it drew his weapon almost completely away from the portal—far enough that he couldn't react when the next creature was launched out of it.

Out of the corner of his eye, Leo recognized something like a panther come flying towards him. He twisted, trying to get his gun up in time, but it just vanished like it had never been there. Disoriented, Leo spun, and went to fire at another of the demon-things, but the panther suddenly rematerialized, now flying in the opposite direction.

Straight at Leo.

His shield saved him from the claws, but it still impacted and knocked him towards the portal, the freaky demon-panther trying to claw the bubble of light that was his energy shield. As he stumbled against the lip of the portal and fell through it, he got his first good look at the creature. With that snarl on its face, it looked absolutely monstrous, and its extra limbs did that appearance no favors. It was reared up on its hind legs, with all four front legs clawing at his shield and two tentacle like appendages that sprouted from its shoulder blades were trying to get around the bubble.

Leo felt himself falling through the portal but raised his gun anyways. The shield was about to go down and if this creature didn't kill him, the heat certainly would. In the frantic struggle, he really didn't have time to think about it. He just reacted.

The gun fired on full auto, energy projectiles flashing up the beast's body, starting at its lower right stomach and ending in its two upper left legs. It roared in pain as one of the bolts pierced its heart, condemning it to death.

Unfortunately, it was right at the moment that his shield failed.

It was harder to tell which was more painful as his body went into shock—the heat from the portal or the way the giant cat bit into his neck. His skin blistered and his clothing ignited as the two of them—man and monster—fell back through the portal into that strange fiery realm, both dying.

His memories fuzzed in the next few moments but a strange memory of instinctively gripping something in a nonphysical way jumped through his mind.  He couldn't explain how he did it, or what it was, but it was that exact moment that his journey back to consciousness started. He was falling—was he? Or was he floating? The air around him seemed to be composed of acrid black and red clouds filled with orange lightning-

Leo slowly came too, not really remembering what had happened moments earlier. He must have blacked out after all—that monster had bit his neck and-

Wait, am I dead?

The thought struck him suddenly as he realized the pain was gone from his neck, as was the searing heat that emanated from the portal. He scrambled to his feet and tried to take in his surroundings. The scene before him was shocking.

Leo had thought the portal room above the Starscreamer had been bad, but now he felt like he stood at the center of a genocide. The corpses were literally piled five feet high, bodies of those strange demons, infernal dogs, and many other forms that he couldn't even process at the moment. He turned slowly, to see Dobrin standing in the Ironshell suit pointing a shotgun directly at him.

Leo jumped and held his hands up, hoping he didn't look like a threat, and that's when he realized just how wrong everything was. It wasn't two hands that went up, but four, and they were all covered in black fur. He dropped them as fast as they'd went up, looking at his arms in shock, then lifting his elbows up and staring at the second pair of arms below his first he realized what had happened.

Oh god, I've become one of them.

Seeing the way Dobrin was pointing his weapon at him, Leo's hands went straight back up as fast as they'd dropped, and he stood up straight in a matter he hoped was human as possible. As he did that, Leo became aware of the tentacles sprouting from his back, and the tail behind his legs.

All that new feeling, and the strange hellscape he found himself in, was almost completely overwhelming. Fortunately, Dobrin's posture visibly relaxed and he lowered his weapon, striding purposely towards Leo.

“About bloody time," he growled, looking Leo up and down. “I assume your mind is still in there, eh?"

Leo stared at him dumbly, then looked back down at his four hands. “Yea…"

Dobrin's heavily gauntleted hand clapped in on the shoulder. “Time dilation's a bitch," he sighed. “I went in that portal—what—twenty, thirty seconds before you did?"

Leo managed to recover enough of his wits to look at Dobrin, who had depolarized his helmet's mask. “If that?"

Dobrin had a grimace on his face. “Look."

He held up a hand and the tiny holo-projector in his forearm recreated a scene from the portal room, frozen in time.

“This is in real time," Dobrin said quietly, glancing to Leo.

Leo's eyes darted to him, then to the hologram, then to his own body again, trying to make sense of the situation. When it was clear Leo was at a loss for words, Dobrin spoke again.

“I'm not even going to tell you how long I've been down here, that would just scare you, but I'm going to try and explain what I think happened to you."

Dobrin tilted his head a bit, dismissed the hologram and tapped him on the shoulder. “You okay? All your mind still there?"

The seriousness of that question hit Leo like a truck when he realized he looked like many of the bodies that were piled up on the ground. All looking to have been killed by an energy weapon. He snapped to alertness and nodded franticly.

“Yes! I'm in here! Just…" he shook his head. “Shaken."

Dobrin gave him a curt nod. “Good, sit down maybe. Try not to think about what happened to you, though I'm not really sure where to start."

Leo obliged, sitting down on the warm stone beneath him, and looked to the man in the Ironshell suit who was crouched down beside him. “How about with where we are?"

A sigh was Dobrin's first reply. “From what I can guess, the leftovers of hell," he finally said. “As far as I can gather, some cosmic being created this place while playing god. I don't know if its in a planet or something, but it doesn't play by normal rules." He glanced to Leo, then poked one of his lower arms with an ironclad finger.

“There's something down here that stopped me from aging, or from everyone aging for that matter. An energy in the air I guess, I won't pretend to know. Whatever it is, it fuels that body too."

“How did I end up like…this?" Leo asked incredulously, the fact that he was in a literal Hell not really registering quite yet.

Dobrin shrugged again. “I can only tell you what I saw," though he seemed reluctant to say anything further.

Leo looked up at him annoyed. “Well?!"

The ironclad man grimaced. “Well…I saw you shoot the displacer beast quite a bit before it bit you. As it died, red smoke seemed to bleed out of its body—I've since determined that was its essence. Somehow, you pulled it in. You died shortly after, but that smoke formed the body you have now."

As he said that, he pointed to something lying on the ground a short distance away from him. Leo looked at it and it took a moment for him to realize what it was.

A human skeleton.

“That's your body," Dobrin said softly. “It burned to ash almost in under a minute, but I guess since you died on the other side of the veil, your memories are intact."

Leo stared down at the skeleton numbly. He understood the meaning of what Dobrin had just said, but something was connecting in his mind. It wasn't real. It felt too abstract. He was alive, how could that be his skeleton? He felt like he should be shaken or panicking, but instead his mind was just a haze. Things were happening that didn't make sense, and it didn't seem to trigger fight or flight within him, just confusion.

Looking down at himself again, Leo pursed his lips, an odd sensation with his half muzzle. “I absorbed…whatever makes it…it."

“I've seen a couple other people do that," Dobrin said quietly, earning a puzzled look from Leo.

Leo eyed him expectantly, weighing what he'd said for a moment. “I suppose. This is normal? How?"

“Well they are humans from another world…" Dobrin said slowly. “The locals—the smart ones—call them warlocks. Dangerous creatures because they can do just what you did, steal essence, or power, or whatever." Then he shook his head. “I don't know man, I don't get any of this either. I only know what I've overheard through the pulse scanners, and that's few and far between. I barely get a couple hours before another horde of these things come."

Dobrin's expression was a cross of pained and exhausted. “You really have no idea how long its been."

“Can't you just go back through the portal?" Leo asked, then realized immediately why he couldn't.

Still, Dobrin barked a laugh. “Yeah, and-"

“Yeah I know," Leo cut him off impatiently. “Barely any make it through now."

Dobrin's expression darkened. “Barely any," he said quietly. He looked at Leo with an expression Leo didn't really understand, and Leo raised an eyebrow in question.

“You realized I watched that displacer beast kill you over the course of about twenty years, right?" Dobrin said darkly, and Leo gaped at him. “Every single demon that makes it through that portal," he said, voice going stronger as he gestured to the glowing red circle, “every single one is a failure that haunts me. I get to watch the picture slowly evolve. I get to watch in horror…" he trailed off for a brief moment, trying to regain his composure.

“I get to watch in horror as that one demon I let through kills one of the few men brave enough to reenter that room and try keep that situation under control, despite the fact that there's glass embedded in his chest and his vest is on fire."

Leo had never heard such agony in Dobrin's voice before. This was a man people had known for his cold attitude, and he sounded like he was about to break down. But then is finally sunk into Leo that this moment was the culmination of over twenty years of watching someone die a slow death. A death Dobrin could do nothing about. A representation of his failure.

Exhaling softly, Leo looked around in awe at the carnage. “How have you not given up?" he whispered. “Become jaded? Just accepted that its hopeless?"

“This is my hell," Dobrin said darkly, the dangerous edge back in his voice. “And the only thing that keeps me going is knowing I can turn it into their hell too."