It is very dark and unbearably cold. I am standing upright with my arms stretched forward, grasping vertical, icy cold steel bars. The metal is barely visible as a faint grey sheen. Beyond the bars is absolutely nothing. It is a fog of perfect blackness.

I tilt my head down towards the floor. My feet seem to float in space, even though I feel a solid floor. The floor looks as black as the nothingness beyond... perhaps it is too difficult to see. I tilt my head up to try and spot the ceiling, but it is also much too dark to see.

I feel a strange longing. Even though there is only darkness, I feel as if the darkness holds the potential of a pristine, pastoral wilderness. Anything is better than the confines of these iron bars.

I try to let go of the iron bars, but nothing happens. I feel the strain of my muscles maintaining my grip on the bars, but I can't control them. I try to lift my legs, but they feel as stiff and unbendable as stone. The more I try to move some part of my body other than my neck, its muscles become saturated with restlessness, unable to move and yet extremely uncomfortable because of that. The futile dark nothingness seems ever more tantalizing. Why must I be tormented this way?

"Because..."

It the female voice of the Book... except it is different. Before when I heard this voice, it was the projection of a voice within my thoughts. This time, it is a voice clear and loud. I feel it as sound through my ears, reverberating down my spine and through my hands to the fingertips with every consonant.

"...I am trapped. You are trapped. The iron bars you see in front of you, trapping you in a black empty space, are trapping me as well. Our minds are trapped in a prison, and you know the means by which we can escape. You know our captor... and you have the power to take from him the freedom that is rightfully ours."

Freedom... what a distant concept it seems right now. It simply isn't plausible. Nothing visibly exists except these iron bars. I can't move anything except my head. For all we know, I could remain in this very spot for years... perhaps millennia.

"I have drifted in the void for millennia. The time will come. You must try."

I want to... but I can't. Besides, why would it matter? Is endless darkness really any better than the certainty of confinement?

"We can't afford to think like that. Complacency is poison. It is creating the mental weakness within you that has prevented you from escaping all this time."

I know... you're right. I have to figure out a way to get out of here... somehow...

I fixate on the darkness, desiring to enter its hidden green fields. I imagine the sweet success of tearing the bars apart with a pickaxe and stepping through. Nothing happens. It is just as before: I am unable to move my arms or walk. There is only the iron bars in front of the darkness, with my hands permanently grasping them.

There's nothing that I could possibly do. I'm stuck here.

"No you're not. You are deceiving yourself. There is a reason why you are trapped here, and if you find out why, you can escape. The answer lies in our captor; he is why we are confined by these iron bars, and he is how we will go free."

But I don't know where he is! How am I supposed to find him?

"You already know the answer to that question."

I look into the darkness. It is as monotonous and black as it was before. Where is my captive? Who is he? Is he someone I know? Is he Dunjen? Is he Jonas? Is he me?

A dim figure materializes on the other side of the iron bars, standing at a certain distance and holding the bars in a certain way as to appear to be an exact reflection of me, but instead wearing the regular leather hat and shirt I wore before I met the Book. The moment I look into his solemn eyes, his identity becomes clear. He is my identity, my captor, holding me as a prisoner in these iron bars, preventing me from truly existing. He is the conspirator who all this time has been seeding animosity between me and the Book, preventing our inevitable fate and lasting friendship from being fulfilled.

I must imprison him. He must be on the other side of the bars, feeling what I feel. I will it possible. I look into his ignorant eyes, seeing his pathetic distress as he realizes that I am him, and he is me, that he is the one trapped, and that I am his captor, purifying my own existence by ridding myself of his contaminating thoughts. Pride and a sense of true purpose fills my chest. I smile at him, taunting him as I lift my hands from the bars. I look to my left and my right, and see that the iron bars do not surround be, but instead end at sharp corners bending away from me, forming the rectangular shape of the generously large 2-by-2 meter cage that imprisons my corrupted self. Satisfied with the conditions of his imprisonment, I turn around and walk into the darkness. At the will of my foot, grass forms where I step, spreading forward into the horizon and germinating a sunlit sky that grows taller and surrounds the visible sphere of landscape. I turn around to see the rapidly shrinking blackness, with no sign of the false Fristad in view. He has been made as black and shapeless as nothingness so he may never be seen as human, and blind as to never see again, just as I have willed it.

I take a deep breath, and tilt my head up toward the sky with a triumphant laugh. It is good to be the master of my own dreams.

It is also good, after much time waiting, to truly communicate with the Book. I realize now the terrible things the false Fristad has done to us. Now that he is gone, we can see together what wondrous possibilities lie ahead. It was a long process... brought forth first on the very day I first spawned, when I said, "Book, come to me! I seek to share my existence with you, savor your consciousness within me, and adopt your aspirations to fulfill our life!" I had made the decision the moment my life began, and all my life I had been searching for what I have found just now. I am setting foot on a path to incredible power. Today, I have conquered my dreams. Tomorrow, I will conquer pain, and in the many days that come after tomorrow, who can fathom what I will achieve?