First Demonic Dragon

Disorientation.

That was the first thing that came to Percival's mind-or minds- when his skin was peeled away.

This experience wasn't like having a hive mind, where each body has some degree of control or equilibrium to follow.

But this was entirely different. His brain wasn't designed for this hell.

It was like trying to peer through a glass bottle and observe a full scene when it was cracked to hell and back.

Figuring out what he was looking at was hard enough, but getting a natural positioning of himself was even more difficult.

Sometimes while trying to get his bearings, he bumped into himself, and then that version of himself bumped into two more versions of himself, and then all of him ended up taking an unnecessary tumble.

If that weren't aggravating enough, these demonic animations were still dancing all over the fucking place!

"It's time... for fireworks!"

"Fireworks!"

"Fireworks!"

"Fireworks!"

The boundless white space suddenly turned completely dark.

Some of Percival saw a rising streak of slight running towards the sky and followed it with his eyes.

The mass of light exploded into a grand, bright blue fireworks display that oddly looked like someone's middle finger.

As the shimmers rained down, Percival began to get a horrendous feeling.

The fires landed en-masse amongst his duplicate selves.

Since they were all connected, he could vividly experience the moment that the flames touched their skin, and it flooded every one of their synapses.

It was horrible.

Worse than Apophis' magical sunfire. Even worse than Abaddon's minor little love-tap.

His skin bubbled and popped as the heat cooked him inside his tough outer shell as if he were some kind of overgrown cockroach.

Even the copies of him that weren't afflicted, were rolling on the ground as if they were already on fire.

And upon falling victim to inaction, the duplicate body would sometimes be wide open for another shimmering firework to all right on top of it.

At which point the duplicate would learn that no matter how bad he thought this would turn out to be, it was almost nothing compared to the real thing.

This feeling was compounded and multiplied over and over and over again, with more and more of the hive mind being drowned out by agony.

And since the law of time hadn't been applied here, there was no telling just how long he could've been suffering for.

A day?

A month?

A million years?

There was no distinction.

Among the over five million duplicates, some began trying to make a run for it out of a determination to not become barbecued.

With their synapses screaming with overwhelming pain, the one singular thought that they could harbor was simple. Survive.

As he ran to safety, the animated ham returned overhead.

It's smile was still riddled with jagged teeth and bone- and it now sported a precious little name tag that said 'Ham-Bone'.

"Want to run? Oh no, no, no, nothing comes that easily in the void!"

"Fuck you, beast!"

"How wude!" The ham pouted as it imitated a famous child actor. "You should be sweeter to me! Let me help you be sweet!"

As around 1/5 of Percival was running, they suddenly tripped all at once and crashed face-first into the floor.

Their torturous hell was briefly halted as a sweet, thick taste filled their mouth. Molasses.

Confusion ran rampant across their minds.

That is, until they tried to get out of it.

The molasses covering the floor was so sticky that the creatures couldn't stand up again.

Pulling his arms and legs out of the dark syrup was next to impossible because it clung to him with a staggering desperation.

"Uh-oh! Looks like you're in a real sticky situation here!" Ham-Bone spun around in glee. "I'll try to help! Let's turn the oven on!"

The 'oven' was just letting the flames that had already started to burn millions of his duplicates rush over here at a slow crawl.

However, it was the heat that was the problem.

Percival was knee deep in molasses.

While it wasn't a flammable substance, molasses does contain a very high sugar content.

When sugar is exposed to sufficient heat, it burns and eventually crystallizes once again.

And that was exactly what was happening here.

As the sugar was heated, it hardened. Dark, pointed spires of what appeared to be crystal sprouted up from the ground.

One of Percival's duplicates was too far behind, so he was the first to meet a sugary-sweet demise.

A spire of crystal rose up from the ground and impaled him from ass to mouth in despicably slow fashion.

His screams filled the ears of his duplicates before he died, and they winced in horror as they literally felt his pain.

They could only imagine the horror they would be subjected to if they failed to get away from this syrupy hell in time.

Ham-Bone floated down in front of the impaled Percival and licked the lance of sugar cane coming out of his mouth. His cartoonishly large tongue licked his lips in a smile as he made unnerving eye contact.

"Delicious."

Sufficiently terrified, the Percival duplicates put more effort into their escape than ever before.

An agonizing amount in fact.

They pulled with all of their strength to get their limbs and faces free. Even when they felt a dull, ripping sensation in their bones, they did not waver and continued to pull themselves free.

Pain flooded their synapses again as the Pefcival copies literally ripped themselves out of their own skin.

The flesh on their arms and legs had been stripped right down to the bone- but they didn't care.

Somehow, they were able to move through the syrup much better now than they were before.

One Percival stood up and held out his hand to attack Ham-Bone.

A beam of destructive might burst from his maw and headed directly towards the animated ham.

In response, it opened it's mouth as wide as could be and swallowed the impossibly large mass as if it were nothing but a giant marshmallow.

When it was all done, the ham proceeded to burp loudly and grin. "Spicy!"

...

So, it was back to running for Percival.

Around three hundred thousand of Percival's copies were still alive after the initial onslaught. Almost all of them had the flesh of their arms and legs stripped away, revealing their glistening white bones underneath.

This prompted Ham-Bone to have a realization.

"You're all dirty and sticky now! You should have a bath!"

Percival's sinking feeling practically worsened once again.

The very ground he was standing on went out from underneath the army of clones.

Every single one of them went tumbling into a deep, sparkling blue ocean.

Cold water splashed against Percival's face, and the sensation was oddly refreshing. But he wouldn't be deceived.

Given everything to happen so far, he wouldn't have been surprised if he had been stuck inside of a giant toilet bowl or something unsavory like that.

Some of him also checked the sea for monsters, but he couldn't fin any of those either.

"Spin cycle time!" Ham-Bone said cheerfully.

"Wha-"

Suddenly, Percival was wrapped up in a fearsome hurricane of water. Find exclusive stories on My Virtual Library Empire

It spun all of him around and around in every direction, further enhancing the disorientation he felt earlier until he could no longer resist the urge to vacate the contents of his stomach.

However, mere dizziness was not nearly the worst part of this latest method of torture.

The force of the water against Percival's skin was so fierce that he wasn't just being wasshed, he was being pressure washed.

Even more of his skin and flesh peeled off of his bones, with his clothes providing no aid in preventing it.

All of his organs were washed away, including his heart, eyes, lungs, and genitals.

He screamed and wailed as he suffered beyond the point of what a mortal mind could comprehend.

Snapping sounds filled the water as bones finally started breaking apart underneath the enormous pressure.

And once they began to show signs of weakness, entire limbs splintered and were ground up into particles so fine they were as soft as silk.

Percival finally couldn't withstand it anymore. He was on the verge of passing out.

And then, miraculously, the spinning stopped.

Percival was dumped out like dirty water- his surroundings completely different than before.

Traces of the former white scenery were no more.

What now lay before him was a sprawling forest underneath a sunny, bright blue sky.

Rich, luscious greenery was plastered along every bit of foliage for miles.

Though Percival's eyes were no longer around, he could still 'see' everything perfectly. He even smelled the morning dew in the air and the raw scent of woodland creatures.

He waited and waited. Nothing came to bother him while he was here. Not an animal, not another duplicate- and especially not that accursed animated ham.

Percival raised his skeletal arms and began openly mocking the forest around him. "What's wrong..? Done playing already?"

He received no answer.

"It will take more than this to break me I'm afraid! You should have sent for your husband instead. Sending women to do a man's job only ever ends one way.."

Percival turned against the forest and threw out his skeletal arms.

Somber flames burst from his fingers, and he began to torch the beautiful scenery without provocation.