My fist slammed into the Grinch's face like a meteor, shattering whatever passed for its skull in a single blow. The additional metaphysical weight, the pseudo-density granted by extra mana, meant that my enemies were fragile by comparison; I couldn't manipulate it like someone with the Substance gift in order to float or become super dense, and each impact did drain some of my mana, but it was still a massive advantage. I was an unstoppable force, carving my way through a sea of green fur.

I had a plan, but it had already fallen apart in favor of mindless violence. I was aware that my other mind was still working on the plan, but I couldn't imagine it would matter - surely in just a matter of seconds I would be done exterminating these monsters. I'd thought that I could get a look at where they were before engaging, scout things out and maybe lure them out one at a time. But since that hadn't panned out, and since it was working so well to just beat the living hell out of them, I felt like I could safely ignore my original strategy.

Basically, I'm an idiot.

Betokat had even said I shouldn't get surrounded, and what did I do? I waded right in, carving a path deeper into their territory and leaving a trail of bodies behind me. Bodies that, it turned out, weren't all dead. Also, I'd gotten a little spoiled by having eyes in the back of my head; I'd been fighting while observing via divination, and that didn't work here so I was completely surprised when one bit down on my ankle and another leapt on me from behind.

They were less substantial than I was, sure, but the difference wasn't so vast that they couldn't touch me. With each bite or scratch a ripple passed through me, not of pain but of a strange wrongness. I could feel my mana dipping slightly every time, and the holes weren't closing instantly. It was hard to say what I needed to do to actually kill them - two had deflated into inert green puddles and appeared to be truly dead, but there were others who I'd done massive damage to that were still up and fighting. Did they have a weak spot? Did I need to knock them down a certain number of times? If it was that second one I'd never be sure, since they all looked the same and the fight was too chaotic to keep track of who was who.

I threw myself backwards into the metal roll-up door of a storage unit, crushing a Grinch with my back, and then launched forward to smash another against the opposite wall. Elbows flying, I made a little room for myself and turned to sprint back the way I'd come, hoping to regroup. I was strangely tattered, wisps of myself hanging off, and I focused on the mental image of being whole and healthy in an attempt to seal myself back up. I reached the end of the hallway and there was no exit anymore - I suspected I could just smash my way through the wall, but I didn't actually want to run away too far, just get some breathing room.

I could feel my other mind above me, working on implementing the original plan, and it looked like it would have time - the remaining monsters were taking a second to regroup. I could see five of them still standing, and the ones on the floor had all but vanished - just a thin smear of green. I was pretty sure I'd already taken out more than five of them, and while I was damaged I felt good about my odds even if I had to just wade in swinging again. They advanced slowly, grinning, and I had to admit it was pretty fucking scary. The absurdity of them being actual Grinches from Dr. Seuss didn't counteract the matted green fur, the jagged yellow teeth, the glare of those glowing eyes as they stalked towards me.

They were enjoying the fact that I was cornered, and I was enjoying the fact that they were giving me time to spring a trap. My other mind was right above them now, and was trying to call up the most damaging thing I could envision - but I'd run into an interesting problem, in that things I'd never seen except on television just didn't feel substantial enough. Lava had been my first thought, and it just... lacked something, like I was just a kid playing make-believe. Boiling water should be an option, as was just dropping heavy shit on them, but I felt like I needed a weapon that every bit of my mind was afraid of, that I knew could kill me.

I'd almost died from falling while trying to do parkour, drinking too much when I was twelve, almost getting hit by a car, being drowned by Sarah Harkin after I made her hair fall out, the time my mom threatened to slit my throat with great-grandma's scissors. None of those felt right. What else? The air pressure difference when arriving in this world, and then allergies - for sure not those. After that it was all people trying to kill me, and I didn't trust that I could summon functional creatures; even if I pulled in some oydirme, they'd lose in a fight with these ones.

Then something started banging on the roll-up door next to me, fists hammering on the steel. "Let me out!" she yelled, coughing. She was stuck in there - no, in the janitorial closet at a high school. She was stuck, and Zoey wouldn't let her out, and she was going to die. I was going to die. The memory was incomplete, but I could feel my throat burning as toxic fumes swirled around me. I was going to die because of a spitball and a thrown textbook. Trapped in a closet, eyes and lungs on fire, no chance to figure out if magic was really real or if I was just crazy - if I'd somehow imagined what had happened with that brooch.

As the Grinch pack came closer, I reached over and felt at my sleeve, and sure enough there it was - a golden brooch, strangely solid even to my substance-enhanced ghost. I'd called it to me, somehow. Again. Remembering - or even half-remembering - seemed to enrage the monsters, and they charged just as the ceiling opened and poured out gallons of bleach. The creatures squealed and howled, fur steaming and flesh blistering as a cloud of chlorine gas swirled around them. This was my domain, and for whatever reason I was certain down to my bones that this chemical attack would melt these motherfuckers.

They scrambled for safety, abandoning any plans for attack, but two of them collapsed and didn't get back up. The other three retreated as huge patches of fur fell away, and I pulled a fire alarm that probably wasn't there a moment ago so that water would spray down and clear away the bleach in front of me. On reflection, I realized that wasn't even how those fire alarms worked - but thankfully by the time I had that thought the way was already clear.

With only three left, and those injured, I felt completely confident that I would succeed. There was nothing they could do to me, not even if they all ambushed me at once. I'd won, I just needed to clean up. As it turned out, they weren't laying an ambush - I caught one around the next corner and threw it to the ground before stomping it to death, and then chased another down a moment later and got into a brief fight that ended with it biting into my shoulder while I crushed its throat.

I was wiped out, much weaker than I had expected to be, but still feeling basically okay. I paced along the hallways, past rows of identical storage units - and then, suddenly, there was one that I knew was different. It was at the end of the hallway, and it felt... more real. Where the rest of this place was being created and destroyed around me, I knew that that one unit was a static point in my domain just like the bedrooms. I approached it slowly, waiting to be attacked, but nothing happened. There was no lock on the door, so I grabbed it and rolled it up.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

Inside, it was... well, a storage unit. There were cardboard boxes, and some old armchair, and an old painting leaning against the wall. My eyes went to a display case on the wall, showing off a collection of spoons - each of them had some little enamel emblem on the handle, and I was sure even though I wasn't close enough to see that they were each for a different one of the fifty U.S. states. This was it, for some reason. This was the center of things, the place the Granch were planted in my mind, the core of what I wasn't supposed to remember.

I stepped inside, and the gate slammed down behind me. I spun, not wanting to be trapped, before I realized that was silly; nothing could trap me here, I could leave at any time. I sighed in relief, and turned back around to explore the storage unit just in time to realize how much trouble I was in. An enormous, extra monstrous Grinch was lowering itself from the ceiling, and at the same time the final bleach-damaged one was cornering my other mind - it had snuck up into the bedrooms without me realizing it.

My mind - as opposed to my ghost - was no more substantial than the Grinch and would probably lose in a fight, so the best plan seemed to be to evacuate it. Unfortunately, the Grinch had grabbed it by the arm before I really processed what was happening, and it felt like it was anchoring me in Ematse - even if I managed to force my way out, it seemed likely I'd bring the Grinch with me. Instead, I headbutted it and we ended up rolling on the floor wrestling.

Meanwhile, down in the storage unit, the big Grinch was actually shrugging off my attacks - somehow it was not just larger and stronger, but actually more solid than the others had been. I was sure I was doing a little damage, but not nearly as much as I should have been. It managed to catch me with a swipe, and nearly took my leg off - it dangled strangely, fading to fog at the edges of the jagged tear. I was suddenly in very real danger of being utterly destroyed, leaving my mindless body behind. I'd so completely offloaded my thoughts and memories from my meat brain, I was sure there'd be nothing left of me if the Grinch devoured me here.

In a panic, I managed to pull my mind back to my body - as I'd feared, the Grinch came with me and continued to gnaw away at my mind. I screamed and flailed, but if anything my mind was weaker when not in Ematse, and my physical body couldn't hit it at all since it was, ironically, too insubstantial for me to interact with. Katrin and Errod were by me in an instant, but there wasn't much they could do either without... hmm.

"Katrin! It's here, destroy it! You can heal me later!"

Magical energy attacks should, theoretically, have a chance of hurting it - I wasn't sure of the details, though. Force walls had stopped my ghost, but beyond that I had no idea what would or wouldn't touch ephemeral spirits. Katrin didn't seem to know either, and was flipping through her spellbook frantically until Errod pushed her aside and raised his sword. He took a calming breath, and then lunged forward and stabbed at the air right where I was flailing - the blade pierced the Grinch through its head and the beast twitched once before going limp. Just like that, it was dead.

"Did I get it?" he asked, and I realized he couldn't see what had just happened.

"Yes. Yeah. Holy shit. Sorry, I'm... I'm still fighting one, hang on."

My ghost slammed into the wall of the storage unit, and again I was shocked as I failed to break through. It was like this whole section, the storage unit and the big Grinch, were more solid than everything else in Ematse. Had it been made this way on purpose, as part of sealing my memories away? Or was this some side effect or coincidence? It wasn't something I could afford to worry about at the moment. I pulled my mind back and had it start trying to create or find a weapon; the fight was a stalemate, with us both injuring each other but not managing to do anything decisive.

The bleach trick wouldn't work with us in the same room, especially since its power was linked to some deep memory of how damaging it was to me. What I really needed was something like holy water for Grinches, an attack that would kill it while leaving me alone. What hurt the Grinch? I could try to make it turn good, but I was short of Christmas miracles. My mind had reached the unit, and the gate was now locked shut. Joining the fight directly had been a bad idea regardless, but I'd hoped I could do something, pass a weapon in or hose it down with acid. Instead I could, what? Just sit outside and shout encouragement at myself?

Oh. Wait.

I ran back out into the Long Haul Hotel, and into a memory. As soon as I confirmed it was the right one, I grabbed the door frame and dragged it over to the storage unit so the memory was as close as possible. I ducked back inside, shoving past the crowd of death metal fans to reach the gigantic speakers - I shoved and wrestled it over to the doorway just as Septik Törture started playing again. I'd snuck into the club and hid under the merch table, feeling very cool, and had almost gone deaf - I hadn't even liked the music, as it turned out.

The screaming voices and pounding music penetrated the storage unit just fine, rattling the walls and sending the Grinch into a panic. It stopped attacking, covering its ears, and I seized the moment to clumsily tackle it and throat-punch it repeatedly. It tried to fight back, but the assault on its ears had weakened it and getting knocked onto its back hadn't helped. It managed to slash me a few more times, but its struggles became feeble as I continued to lay into it. As a final defiant move it managed to bite down on my arm, but before it could tear me apart I used my other hand to stab into its oversized eye, and the hideous thing finally shuddered and was still.

My ghost was in tatters, one arm and one leg nearly destroyed in addition to multiple holes and tears. My mind - also injured - grabbed it and dragged it away into the bedroom from Bill's house. I tucked myself in, and then - reluctantly - stepped back into my body. Katrin and Errod were looking worried, and Betokat was grinning eagerly. "Okay, asshole. It's done. That was fucking awful, there was a huge one that was every bit as solid as my ghost. Did you know that was there?"

Betokat shrugged. "It was a possibility. But you're alive! Congratulations! And now... now I can teach you. Yes. And I will guide you, sponsor you to the others, and then once you take your place among the demigods you will vote with me. Yes. Another vote, finally, to balance out the Queen of Candles."

"I'm going to stop you right there. I don't want to get mixed up in demigod politics. I'm not even sure I'll ever count as a demigod."

He giggled. "You have multiple fatebound spirits, child. This path will lead you to us eventually, once you understand the power it can lend."

"Fine, sure. But that's a problem for another day. Right now I'm busy, so... how much can you teach me about enhancing oydirme or getting extra minds in... I don't know, however long it takes Tindelus to find us?"

"Enough. Enough. How much do you know of Besetie?"

I'd been there, briefly. When? It was the first timeline, as part of a training exercise. They'd wanted me to get stronger quickly, and Hugh had volunteered to babysit me through it. "It's... it's a plane filled to the brim with monsters. Every time it comes into alignment they swarm out into the prime plane and cause absolute chaos, but it only aligns every one hundred and five years thankfully."

"Correct! But those monsters, they exist because there is a primal force inherent to the plane. That is what was infused into the Granch - and I can teach you. I can teach you to take not just the normal memories and ideas that shape oydirme, but the forces of the planes themselves. With your fate connections, you may even be able to take it further than those before have - past a certain point they tend to be pulled away into the plane they resonate with instead of staying on Ematse, but you... you can tether them. Control them. Seize true power and bottle it, shape it into minions of absolute destruction!"

I turned to Errod. "Okay listen, I know he sounds evil, and I know minions are usually bad and you're not big on 'absolute destruction' but this does sound super cool and I think we need to hear him out."

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