"Are you familiar with the Creek?"

  "I hear it is the second worst fate."

  "What is the worst then?"

  "The Zed Spell, no one knows what it does but one rumour is that it traps you in the Creek until you fail."

  "Have you ever been?"

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  "No, like most I wouldn't last a minute. That said the record is two hundred and twenty seconds."

  "Three minutes forty, how did they manage that?"

  "It's claimed they took three minutes of time from elsewhere with them, so they only had to face it from the start of the fourth minute."

  "So how far down the list is death anyway, given we're discussing worse fates?"

  "There's fifteen items to date that have been established as fates worse than death and at least seven count as torture. We've effectively covered nine, the next down the list is Planar Exile where you are barred from the Sphere, then three more relate to being trapped on specific Spheres and the last two are where you come from a missing Sphere."