I looked at my father and brother walking towards me, and I ran in the opposite direction. Pushing past the crowd of people coming off their flights, pushing open the doors, but I found nothing beyond them, just a white void.

  When I looked behind my shoulder, I found myself back where I started, my family in front of me.

  “Uh,” my father said with a nervous smile, “Nice to see you, Jacob.”

  I looked towards my brother, feeling the words that I said to him bubble up, “Boe, what’s this…”

  “I know you said you didn’t want to meet hi-”

  “Then why is he here?

  “Because-”

  “That was rhetorical,” I cut him off, “You already promised not to do this, you promised.”

  Boe bristled, “Well, maybe if you shut up and gave me a chance t-”

  I felt something molten stirring in my stomach as he talked, then the next thing I knew, I had punched him in the face. Not hard, but he staggered back, and some of the airport's security took interest.

  They walked over and escorted me out of the airport. I didn’t struggle. I tried to look over my shoulder towards my brother, but since I hadn’t done that in real life, all I saw were their mannequins stuck in the positions I last saw them in.

  Then I was on the sidewalk of the airport, taking an Uber back home, the car interior transitioning into my apartment. And I was lying on my bed, eyes closed, a pint of Tillamook caramel pretzel ice cream empty next to my bed.

  “Fine, you got what you wanted,” I spat out towards whatever forced me to relive that memory.

  But there was only silence till I heard Fifth of the Mist say, "Unpleasant memory?”

  I opened my eyes to see that the other half of my room had melded with Fifths, who had light green tear streaks on their cheeks.

  “Seems like I'm not the only one,” I replied.

  There was a moment of silence.

  That I broke when it got too uncomfortable, “So, why the hell aren’t we out of here? Didn’t we find our cores? And why did those memories play?”

  Fifth took a moment to reply, hesitantly saying, “I think… I think those memories are so close to us that we can’t just skip them, they’re the gate to our cores, not a separate path.”

  “Dude… fuck your magic, just fuck it.”

  “I don’t think I can have sex with magic.”

  I snort, “Not with that attitude."

  “Oh, you were using that word as profanity.”

  “Uh, yeah?” I said, confused, then I smacked my forehead, “Oh, right, different world, different language, of course you wouldn’t know my culture's curses.”

  They nodded in confirmation.

  Then I heard a phone ring. I looked around, confused, finding the sound had come from my desk. Me and Fifth stood up, cautiously walking towards the noise, finding one of those old rotary phones in front of our cores. An unnatural feeling to pick it up, washing over me, Fifth stopping my hand that had stretched out towards it without me even realising.

  “Thanks,” I said, “What is that thing?”

  “I think it’s the last thing in the way of us getting to our cores, feel how close we are now?”

  I nodded, corroborating the feeling, “So, what are we waiting for? Let's pick it up.”

  But Fifth of the Mist hesitated.

  “Fifth, what is it?”

  “Well… if this takes us together and we find our cores in the same space, it will be quite dangerous.”

  “How so?”

  “We would have access to each other's very fundamental self with zero protection from the other person harming it, even accidentally. And even if we did nothing to the other person, having that deep of an understanding of another being is… dangerous. Imagine having another person able to predict everything you do without a second thought.”

  “Oh,” I said, pulling my hand away from the phone, “But that’s only a possibility, there’s no guarantee that’ll happen, right?”

  “Correct, but I felt it would be prudent to warn you.”

  “Well,” I reached out towards the phone, grabbing it, “Like you said, it’s only a chance. Plus, even if it did happen, it’s better than death,” I grinned wryly towards Fifth.

  “I suppose it is,” they sighed and grabbed the phone with me, a blinding light enveloping us.

  The world changed shape around us, taking the shape of a two bed hotel room. Fifth of the Mist looked around, seeming to recognise it from the brief time we spent in here.

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  “So, what is this memory to you? If you’re up to it, I mean.”

  I sat on one of the beds, feeling the low thread count sheets rub uncomfortably against my hands, “It’s the last time I saw my father. After me and my brother had an argument in the airport, I contacted Boe since he was supposed to be sleeping on my couch for the trip. And I didn’t want him out on the streets, you know, and he asked for me to come and talk to him in person. So I did…”

  Fifth of the Mist looked around the room again, “I don’t see him here, though?”

  “Yeah, he wasn’t here. He had arranged it so that me and my Dad would see each other and talk and stuff alone. I think,” I laid back on the bed, “I was in the room waiting for Boe when my dad came through the door. We saw each other, he held the door open for me, and I left. Two weeks later, he died of the common cold, more accurately, the chemo for the cancer I never learned about wiped out his immune system to the point his lungs were filled up with so much pneumonia caused by the cold that he drowned on land.”

  Fifth didn’t say anything, letting the silence simmer.

  Till I broke it for him, “I think you’re supposed to be my dad in this scenario, like all the other times, so, like, go open the door or something.”

  Fifth obliged my request, walking towards the exit and turning the doorknob knob, throwing it open to reveal a meadow of red grass on the other side. And we walked out onto the field, a foot worn path on the ground where we stood, the air smelling faintly sweet like the fumes that came from a bakery.

  “So,” I said, “What’s this memory about?”

  “Just a simple walk I had in a public park.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “That’s the one calling me a liar, right?”

  I nodded in confirmation.

  “Well, you’re not entirely wrong, but you're less right.”

  “Can you actually tell me what it’s about?”

  “It’d be quicker if you saw,” they pointed ahead in the trail.

  A family of three were coming from the opposite direction and brushing past us without a second thought. But Fifth stopped walking, watching as they left.

  “What’s this about?” I asked.

  “That was my family. It had been some time since we'd seen each other at this point. But they didn’t even recognise me, my wife… ex wife, my children, they didn’t even give me a second glance. Like I was a stranger they had never met before, and I think this is when I realised that I was.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that, so I stayed quiet.

  “And they were smiling,” Fifth continued, “Around this time, I was planning another attempt to get to know my children, but they always acted so… confused whenever I met them. Like they were taking a test the teacher hadn’t properly educated them for. I didn’t want to be a damn grade on how nice they were to a random man. So I decided to drop it… So they could be free. I lost any right to be their father long before this.”

  “...Did you ever think,” I hesitated, feeling shaky as I said, “...that you lost it when you stopped even trying?”

  Fifth of the Mist didn’t say anything for a while, surprising me with a non sequiter, “You know, when I learned all of our abilities during the third phase, I thought there wasn’t any reason for any of them, just randomly picked abilities. But now I think there is some correlation with our personalities, at least with the two of us.”

  Fifth left space for me to ask a question, but I didn’t, and Fifth continued anyway.

  “We’re cowards, that’s all we are. So, The Great Debate chose abilities that allowed us to avoid fighting for ourselves.”

  I opened my mouth to retort, but I felt my core grow closer at Fifths words, so close that if I reached out, I could touch it with the tip of my fingers.

  I knew what I had to say if I wanted this to end, “I don’t think you’re wrong,” I whispered.

  A glowing ball of white static and an empty picture frame appeared in front of us from the ether. We grabbed them, my ball of static feeling like a cloud made of electrified steel wool. Then I looked at Fifth of the Mists' empty picture frame, the impression I got from it indescribable, like I had looked at a painting that encapsulated one concept in its entirety.

  Then I looked up from Fifth of the Mists' core and towards his eyes, Fifth doing the same, then I saw something in his eyes I hadn’t expected. A brief moment of shock, then sadness, all directed towards me. I was confused for a moment before I remembered something I had said in the third phase.

  ‘Sorry, guys, but there’s only one way for me.’

  Then I remembered something Fifth of the Mist had said.

  ‘We would have access to each other's very fundamental self with zero protection from the other person harming it, even accidentally.’

  Would I really give up such a good opportunity? Would I…

  Murdering a person came a lot easier to me than I ever wished it had. I didn’t count killing the Jaguar as murder since I hadn’t known they were a person. Or Krath, since that was self defence…

  Despite me attacking her first.

  That didn’t matter. I pushed those thoughts away as I looked at the paling corpse on the ground in front of me. It didn’t take much, just a simple force of will to direct my domain towards their core. The picture frame splintering and disappearing with a light squeeze. Fifth didn’t even try to defend themselves, having gone full deer in the headlights when they realised what I was going to do.

  As I looked at the corpse, I felt unexpectedly calm and cold, like nothing had happened, like I hadn’t just killed a person, like I wasn't a murderer.

  Then I sat down next to the corpse, looking up at the red purple sky, noticing parts of the world were crumbling away. Revealing the white void beyond, I reached my domain out, surprised when my sight went along with it. And I felt the magic that had been keeping this place together falling away, the grip it had on me loosening as well.

  “You know,” I said towards the corpse, “I hope you know this was necessary, you knew the conditions for winning, for living, just as well as me.”

  Fifth of the Mist didn’t respond.

  “When I get out of here, I’m going to see my brother again, eat all the food I couldn’t this entire time. I wonder what you would’ve wanted to do? That unholy abomination of a game you like. Probably see your kids again at least…”

  A few breaths after those words left, I felt something explode inside of me, a dam breaking and letting the water it held back flood my body.

  Heat consuming my body, breaking the ice that covered my insides, something lodging in my throat as I tried to breathe. But no matter how fast or hard I tried to suck in air, it wasn’t enough. I was shaking, I was crying, I am dying, I am not supposed to be in this damned death game, but the world didn’t seem to care about that.

  I tried to expel all of the chaos in my body, I tried to vomit it out, I tried to cry it out. But I wasn’t even given physiological catharsis as the world around me crumbled, and I was back in the body of a moth. Trapped in the chitinous flesh of an insect not meant to fit my mind and soul.

  Then I was brought out of that when I saw something impossible in the corner of my eyes. The sight like a bucket of ice water in your face. My eyes seeing the physical body of Fifth of the Mist walking towards me, the wasp chittering.