You open your -

- You open a pair of eyes. If they weren't already open. In any case, now you're seeing through them. Hearing through immobile, small, surprisingly inefficient ears. Even if that's all you can do.

"—and they had to cut the meeting short, because of Thibault's kid," a voice you haven't heard in weeks is saying. "But I think I'm going to do it."

You can't tilt your head. You can't do anything but see, hear, smell. But what you smell are roses, more than antiseptic; get-well bouquets. What you see is a face that's all curly red hair and big eyes over a broad nose and worries; Ralph is sitting next to the bed in a much too crowded hospital room. And what you hear is:

"I'm going to do my best to save you, Jake."

There's something about Ralph's voice that seems off. It takes you a second to realize that he sounds like he's been crying.

"I wish I'd realized..." But he doesn't finish his sentence. He just stares down at that earthly body you're seeing though, pensive.

Finally he says, “Your mom has been asking after you. Your stepdad too. And basically everyone we tabletopped with—well, those of them that aren’t stuck in there with you. People miss you, Jake. I don’t know if you’d believe me if I told you, but they do. I miss you. So much.”

Deedee, you whisper—but it’s ridiculous to be asked to be called by your joke of a character name when you’re not in that body. You haven’t been thinking much of ‘when I get home’—why would you, when you hate your Earthly body, when you didn’t even know if you could go back—but at this moment you really wish you’d figured out the whole ‘girl name back home’ thing already.

(Could you ask your mother what they were going to name you if they’d known you were a girl? Did your mom and dad ever think about that? It's not like your stepdad would have...)

Not Jake, you amend and then you say, surprised how true it feels, I miss you too, Ralph. Or try.

Your body, of course, doesn't respond.

He reaches over and gives your hand in the bed a squeeze. “I’ll be there soon.”

You close your eyes, wanting out, wanting to be anywhere but imprisoned in that body and immobile, and when you open them again you find yourself on one side of a vast canyon ridge, and on the other side of that ridge is a tower extending to the sky and a howling wind.

A single figure nearly too fast for the eye to see leaps at the Auroran Divine Beast, the Lion of Aurora, the Cherubim Ariel. And the Cherubim Ariel, that great winged leonine daikaiju, is wounded - red blood seeping into white and gold fur. Losing the fight against the lone figure.

Ariel steps back, and the figure that did such violence to it pauses to catch a breath and shoulder a massive greataxe. And you realize with a start that this is Ace.

Or was the Ace you knew.

The armor she's wearing is made of black, green-tinged iridescent-scaled dragonhide; a skirt of the stuff, and a chestplate and tall boots with greaves, fur-lined. This is over a mesh of chain so fine it may as well be hose. She wears green-tinged gauntlets of the same material with wicked talons, with silver filigree and emeralds used to hold an enchantment; her belt, likewise, has a ramshead device for a belt buckle, a strength-boosting relic. Her heavy black fur-hem cape is made of a silk that repels sorcery, spells rolling off it like water from a raincoat; Her axe gleams dark with steel forged from blue meteoric iron, and then with gold runes damascened into it.

Endgame equipment. You recognize it all.

What you do not recognize is the collar with the heart-shaped locket in a gem with fire you can't look directly at, or the crown of orichalcum in twisting snake iconography projecting a crown of green fire.

She, too, is wounded and snarling. Unfortunately, you recognize the look in her eyes. It's the same look you saw in her when she was pushed to the brink by Scylla.

"You won't stop me," she snarls, raising a bloodied gauntlet to the Divine Beast. "You who abandoned me after you trapped me here can't stop me. You who thought you trapped me here with you, ahahahahah -" her laughter takes on the tinge of a sob. "- you're just as trapped with us. Maybe you should have thought of that before you punished us all for one player's mistake!"

You try to scream and reach out to Ace but the wind and the great gulf of the canyon mean that she cannot hear that you're here with her, for her. While you hear every word she says.

The Divine Beast Ariel roars at Ace, who stands unflinching.

Then Ace roars back, and Ariel flinches.

Ace takes that moment to blur, and you swear you see her afterimages float in the air after each gory swing of her axe, at once heavy and whipcrack fast - then you see the four afterimages pivot, lead by the real Ace, to make a final blow in five directions, describing a pentacle in her motion.

A Tension Break. A powerful endgame one. Ace screams its name: "Godslayer."

The Divine Beast tries to turn, and rise, then slumps over dead.

Ace turns to it, to you, and does not see you or hear you call out to her; she can only see her grim handiwork, and raises a red fist clutching an axe to heaven.

"Your pets couldn't stop me, assholes! See you at the top of the tower, you fucking kidnappers! Last chance to send me home before every last one of you spambots with delusions of godhood are getting thrown into what's left of the Gyges!"

But they can't send her home, or they would have - and your screaming the truth can't reach her, now. Whenever this nightmare is, it's far too little and too late.

Nightmare. It must be a nightmare. It must be a warning, the worst that can happen.

And once you realize that -