Seth wasn't sure how long he'd been staring at the door for. His throat was dry, and his hands felt cold and clammy. The hostess' words came back to him about the need to enter immediately. Did his hesitation already doom him? Should he believe...?

  He smacked himself in the face and took a deep breath. All the second-guessing would not get him anywhere. It was funny. He chewed Aaron out for cowardice. If Aaron could see him now...

  Seth clenched his fists and put a knuckle to the door. It slid open without a sound. Behind it, an inky black portal. It seemed darker that usual. Mouth dry, he swallowed air and stepped forward.

  His foot landed in a seven foot high, purple brick corridor. A blank wall was behind him. He felt his heart race. *No clues at all?* The bricks themselves seemed to give off their own light, bathing the tunnel in a purple glow.

  *Seriously, what is up with these people? All this power, and they can't conjure a second fucking color!*

  He examined the walls for anything that could give him a hint as to what was going on. Five minutes later, he was just as lost as when he started. Confident that there were no more markings, he took a step. As his foot landed, the brick gave way for about a centimeter before settling with an audible click.

  Seth threw himself backward and activated his shield just in time to deflect the ten metal arrows slamming into it. He stayed crouched on the floor as he activated his qi sight. Nothing was there that would indicate the presence of a trap. That wasn't to say that there was no qi; just nothing that showed Seth that there would be a trap of any kind.

  He pulled out his flying sword. Touching the floor seemed stupidly risky. It was awkward to maneuver in the corridor, but after a minute he got into a position where he was lying flat on the sword, and it flew forward through the tunnel.

  Every dozen feet, he'd stop and activate qi sight. Not seeing anything, he'd proceed forward a bit before repeating. Every repeat went a little further. He proceeded like this for fifteen to twenty minutes. Sweat made his robes stick to his body.

  Despite his vigilance, the blade slashing down from the ceiling caught him by surprise. He activated his shield and spun to the side, remaining mounted. He got his left leg out of the way. The blade cut right through his shield as if it were a soap bubble and slammed into his sword, sending it careening out of control.

  He tumbled through the air, watching his sword violently slam around the hall. *It better not be broken. I'd gone through hell and back to get the damn thing.* He reached to scratch the growing itch on his right foot. Which wasn't important because the ground was coming up fast. The floor slammed into him, and Seth bounced twice. Something stabbed him in the arms and legs multiple times. With his eyes closed, he couldn't see what. After skidding to a stop, he opened his eyes.

  That was a lot of blood. As if on autopilot, he started healing. Just enough to stop the bleeding. His foot still burned, but that was a mild annoyance. He rolled over and put weight on his left foot. He had to hurry and get out. As he put weight on his right foot, pain raced up his leg, and he slipped back. *Forgot to heal something. How careless.* Finally looking down to heal, his stomach lurched at the sight of his foot. Or, more accurately, the sight of the stump that used to be his foot.

  He forced himself to take deep, calming breaths. Waves of pain raced up his leg. Thankfully, he could heal the pain away. For now. He wasn't bleeding out, so it served no purpose. He looked down. Arrows jutted out of his arms and legs. One by one, he pulled them out and stopped the bleeding again. His qi was almost empty, and he had...one, two, three bound spirits left. *Need to save those for when it really matters*

  He took a deep breath, then rolled onto his hands and knees. If he couldn't walk, he'd just have to crawl. It was only twenty feet away. A short crawl, and he'd fly the rest of the way.

  It was less than two feet before he had to throw himself out of the way of a jet of fire. Seth had abandoned trying to shield against the traps. They treated his shields as if they didn't exist. He navigated spike, arrow, fire, and poison traps on the way to his sword. A spike dug into his forearm. He screamed. It wasn't bleeding too badly, so he ignored it. A couple of feet later, a spike flew out of the wall and dug into his side. That one, he needed to stop and heal.

  After more crawling and dodging, he made it to his sword. It appeared undamaged, and it hovered when he put qi into it. He crawled on top to rest for a moment. A moment of rest turned into ten minutes. The sound of stone slamming against stone, and the subsequent shockwave, broke Seth from his dozing. Seconds later, another loud boom and shockwave came from closer. The third time, Seth could see what it was. The walls of the hallway were slamming together as fast as he could blink, sending an explosive shockwave of air down the hall.

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  He tried creeping forward, checking for traps. Another boom. He needed to go faster. While gently accelerating, he did his best to dodge traps as he flew down the hall. Seth did his best, but traps shredded and burned him as he passed, too many to dodge. After a while, his world blurred into waves of fire, steel, and pain.

  He was on the verge of giving up when he saw a golden light coming from the end of the hall. Maybe this hell would have an end. Seth slipped past another wave of arrows and sped around waves of spikes and fire that tried to catch him. The light was closer and approaching fast.

  Something slammed into his left leg, sending him tumbling through the air. As he was flying, he crossed the threshold into the golden light. His sword followed, bouncing and skidding on the ground. While facing up, he realized he couldn't see the actual ceiling. Just a golden staircase spiraling upward into a golden mist. He heard something metallic clatter to the ground a few yards away. Then he slammed into the ground, bouncing four times before he came to a stop. Some ribs definitely cracked, and he felt a familiar burning sensation in his left leg.

  Seth's left leg ended just above where his knee used to be. As he healed himself, he couldn't help but laugh. Not only was he a double amputee, but he couldn't even have the grace to get his legs amputated evenly. He laughed until his throat was hoarse, and then the pain came. He healed it away the best he could, but there was too much, and he could only knock it down to a dull ache before he ran out of qi.

  After the healing was complete, he took inventory of his surroundings. The first thing he noticed was a table a little distance away with bottles with different liquids. Other than that, there were tables with books and other scrolls along the edges of the room. He mounted his sword and tried to fly it up to the top of the stairs. It made it about ten feet up before it just stopped rising. He tried to push against that barrier, but stopped when he noticed the sword fall. With a shrug, he started inspecting the room more thoroughly.

  The table with liquids was, according to the signs, regular healing potions and a couple of potions of regeneration. The documents made it clear that the regeneration would not be enough to heal his injuries. At most, it would regenerate one leg and heal his other injuries.

  The rest of the room contained anatomy references of all kinds, including plenty of references for non-humans. After a quick search, he brought all documents related to his anatomy back to the potion table.

  He grabbed a standard healing potion and took a sip, activating qi sight to see what it did. It looked a lot like the normal healing spell. The tumors also drank it like a normal healing spell. The only difference was that he couldn't direct the healing potion away from the cancer. They drank greedily, wriggling and pulsing.

  Shuddering, he uncorked one of the regeneration ones and took a sip with his qi sight active. The explosion of activity in his body caught him off guard, as well as the raw rush of power from the tiny sip. Bone grew a fragment at a time, and exposed muscle wove along it. The skin followed close behind. When it ran out of power, blood started gushing. It hadn't re-sealed the stump, forcing Seth to scramble. From a qi perspective, it looked similar to the healing spell, but far more specialized. *How the hell did it know how to rebuild my leg?*

  The tumor near his stomach swelled, pressing against muscle and organs. Pain and nausea shattered his focus. Before that, though, he swore he saw other healing energy throughout his body doing... something. He wasn't sure what, but he was sure he'd figure it out with some trial and error.

  ---

  Seth concentrated on his ankle, and the skin and bone stretched out molecule by molecule. The sensation turned his stomach in a way he never thought was possible, and had to fight the urge to vomit. He had been at this for about twelve hours now. A cycle of experimentation and resting, waiting for his qi to renew. He had only started seeing success in the last hour.

  The new tissue crept into place, and he checked it against the anatomical drawing. Then double-checked it. Damn, it was coming in crooked. How? And how was he supposed to fix it? He brainstormed before deciding to try to heal the crookedness. That caused pain to spasm through his body, and the dry heaving to begin anew. And, of course, for the tumors to begin twitching.

  This process was a feast for his tumors. He touched around his left armpit and felt the enormous bulge there. Strangely, touching it didn't hurt, though it left him with the same sense of nausea. And as the things grew, their drain on his qi increased. This was why he didn't want to use any of the potions. Still, this was the most progress he had made.

  He was feeling so nauseous that he didn't notice the first sign of problems. However, the pain erupting around his lungs grew until it could no longer be dismissed. He realized he was panting like he had sprinted. Had he stopped breathing? He breathed in while healing, and the pain gave way to light-headedness. Wait... he did some healing around his lungs, and the pain and light-headedness reduced. Of course, he was diverting resources, not leaving enough for the rest of his body to function. That's why the potion left traces of healing all over the body.

  Eventually, he reached a point where he couldn't be sure how to proceed with the healing. He knew he had to heal himself to make progress, but hadn't paid enough attention to the process when he had tried drinking the potion. That, and he hadn't drunk enough to become familiar with the process.

  Seth steeled himself and took a large swig of the regeneration potion. It was difficult to focus on the healing. The feeling of his insides trying to rip him apart did a good job of being distracting; however. Tumors grew in ropes around the inside of his body, pushing skin up and rearranging organs. He groaned, but kept the rest of the healing in his body in view. The complexity boggled Seth's mind. Almost as much as the thought that he was somehow still alive after all the tumor growth.

  Taking a deep breath, he watched and screamed in pain as his tumors continued to rip through his body as it was being healed.

  The hostess had been right about one thing. He was wondering if she had actually sent him there to die.