Dying young wasn’t nearly as dramatic as I’d always imagined it would be, back before I knew what was coming. I’d had no grand final moments, no tear-jerking declarations, no epic last stand. Nothing movie or book-worthy. Only a long, gray trudge into nothingness, my pain eating away at me until all the me that was left wasn’t really me at all. Until I was just a ghost trapped in the corpse of a body that had never suited it, interred in a tiny, overly cheery hospice room.

Worst of all, I was alone…unless you counted the crumpled piece of paper I clutched in my right hand. The talisman I’d held tight to for weeks now. My last hope. My sigil.

I’d discovered chaos magic years ago, and though I hadn’t truly believed in actual magic for a long time, I’d never stopped making sigils. Mostly, I just loved the craft of it. The act of infusing art with intent. But it was more than that, because I did believe in the placebo effect and the power of belief itself. I figured it couldn’t hurt to at least try. If nothing else, to manipulate myself into feeling better about the whole dying-at-twenty thing.

So, I’d drawn up the sigil-to-end-all-sigils in the only notebook I’d brought with me to hospice, back when I could still draw things. And now the moment of truth had come.

My body was shutting down, and soon, I would either wink out of existence or…or the impossible would happen.

Pouring every last bit of strength I possessed into holding onto that sweaty wad of paper, every bit of my concentration I could into its intent…I activated the sigil with my final breath.

Or at least, I imagined I did.

My body went numb. My vision drowned under expanding pools of inky black. Distantly, very distantly, I was aware of the last few desperate beats of my heart…and the void of silence that followed.

Ice-cold darkness swallowed me up. Somehow, it felt like I was falling.

And then, quietly at first but growing steadily louder, the beating began again.

A heartbeat, a strong one…and gaining speed. My numbness evaporated. The pounding of my heart was so hard it almost hurt. Somehow, it was the only thing that did. But it wasn’t the only thing that was pounding.

Is that…a drum beat?

I pried open my eyes and my stomach dropped in shock. I was standing upright, though my legs felt like jelly.

The hospice room with its way-too-bright color scheme was gone. Replaced by something…impossible.

I was standing in a space like a closed amphitheater, perhaps one and half times the size of your average high school gymnasium. Rough, dark stone curved upward to all sides that I could see. Heat radiated upward from the floor, and streams of incense wafted through the air, its scent tart and strangely mineral. What looked like oil lanterns were set into the walls at intervals, casting the space in flickering amber light. Before me was an altar of some sort, all polished stone and pointed gemstones.

And, gathered in a dense circle all around me, were hundreds of strange and beautiful creatures…their glowing, many-colored eyes all fixed on my face. Eight of them—the ones forming a ring immediately surrounding me—were beating at drums. The scales of their hands caught and refracted the lantern light, painting the scene in a shattered rainbow of color.

For a very long time that was probably only about thirty seconds, I just stood there—staring back at them all and doing my best to keep myself standing upright and conscious.

Either my sigil had worked, or this was one hell of a deathbed hallucination.

“Ashri-an?”

A soft voice issued from behind me, edged with concern. I twisted my head to look at the speaker, afraid that if I tried to turn around I’d simply collapse. A gray robed figure stood behind me. Like all of the other creatures present, their body was vaguely humanoid, but their visible features were covered in shining scales and short fur. And while about half of those gathered around us had wings and horns, this one did not. My mind raced for comparisons. Lizards, foxes, wolves, and even dragons rose to the fore, but nothing was exactly right.

“Your Gem?” they pressed. The words were not in English or any other language that I recognized. They were musical, and a little hissy, like a snake trying to speak. And yet I innately understood their meaning.

“Ah, yes,” I replied in the unknown language, somehow, as I turned back to the altar—the closest source of gems at hand. Eight precious stones lined its top, cut into wickedly sharp, faceted points which protruded upward from plinths covered in intricate, spiraling sigils. Or perhaps they were glyphs.

As all the rest of me froze up, something happened with my face. I think…I think I was smiling. Even as my heart raced and my mind simultaneously exploded into chaos and blanked out to nothing.

I clenched my right hand, but of course, the crumpled paper with its sigil was gone. Its work was done. Its design had been based on the idea that there are infinite universes and infinite versions of my self, created with the intent to transfer my consciousnesses into another of those selves. One existing in another kind of world entirely. One that was actually suited to me, one where I had a body that actually suited me. A body that wasn’t dying.

And there I was, in a place full of sigils and fantastical creatures, in the midst of some great ritual. And my body…well, I couldn’t exactly look down at myself just then without it being extremely conspicuous. But now that my heart rate had slowed, I wasn’t in pain. Anywhere. And, from the feel of it, things were certainly different.

I didn’t even care if it was real. If it was a hallucination and I was still going to die, I’d at least go out embracing the experience. However brief it might turn out to be.

Everyone was staring at me, waiting. Experimentally, I took a step toward the altar, extending my hand. It was pale and cool-toned, almost white—the top half dappled in shining scales, what I could see of the underside in fleshy pads, like the bottom of a cat’s foot. I suppressed a gasp as a sudden pull, an almost magnetic force, flared to life between my hand and one of the sharpened gemstones. I took another shaky step forward, and another more confident one. And then the altar was directly before me, and the gem within reach.

I resisted the draw for just long enough to take in the beauty of it. An opal, facets of every imaginable color frozen together into a single glimmering point. Cupping my hand over it, I exhaled in relief as the insistence of the pull eased. But it was not entirely gone, and the creatures still watched me with tense anticipation.

I’d read a lot of books, and I’d seen a lot of movies. Probably too many. And if they’d taught me anything about rituals, it was the importance of blood. So, hoping really, really really hard that I was doing the right thing, I drove my hand down over the opal and pulled, barely flinching at the burst of pain as the point tore through my skin and the flesh of my palm.

My blood welled free—hot and violet—and a sensation I can only describe as an explosion of power just about blasted me off my feet.