《Warframe - Requiem》


 1 - Resolution

    Too long have I languished in my station. The fires of my youth quenched by the sinister poison of contentment and cruel grinding teeth of daily toil. Whatever hunger once drove me fell dormant years ago, and it was only in the spurning of my latest endeavors by the academic board that the beast of ambition was roused from its slumber.


    It has been a poorly kept secret that in his later years the once respected Albrecht Entrati became pitifully insane. Paranoia gripped the poor man and robbed him of any grace he once possessed. His rejection of continuity is the most commonly blamed culprit. He kept his reasons to himself, but remained stalwart in his refusal to assume new form. In his defiance he fell victim to the frailties of flesh the continuity was designed to usurp. For all the advancements of our technologies, we are still beholden to the erosion of the ages, and Albrecht was no different.


    His later theorems were fevered, rambling, and largely disregarded for any serious academic study by those who managed to push through the often inscrutable texts. Euleria was clearly upset by the lack of regard for his final works, but it was not as if she could seriously petition


    otherwise. She was well aware of the impression they left. Thus, they were quietly struck from most archives and kept solely for posterity by the Entrati and their close adherents.


    Fortunately, during a recent low-illuminant symposium, I just so happened to have made acquaintance with a clerical aide on one of the Entrati satellite stations near Gian Point. I was able to ply him with empty promises of re-stationing closer to the Inner Terminus (and a hearty portion of vintage reserve Tellruii wine) and quieted his protests with assurances that my inquiry was solely personal, and such a minor archival leak would not be traced back to him.


    Satisfied, (and thoroughly intoxicated), he transferred the works to me and we parted ways in the night.


    This novel''s true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.


    Albrecht''s final works were indeed choked with the nonsensical, circuitous writing of a man who had lost his touch. His arguments and formulas continuously avoiding any finite point to latch onto, as if he were a collegiate initiate describing concepts beyond his ken. But it was in that lack I began to see the connections between his half-finished proofs. A concept so absurd that I dare not even commit it to word, and yet, I must.


    A life within The Void.


    Or, more aptly, an intelligence. Or an order? Even now I admit I struggle with deciphering his twilight gestalt.


    I call myself an Archimedean, or at least an aspirant of the unordained order, but it is here I cast off that title. I am possessed with a sudden mad streak of my own. An adolescent''s fearless mockery of study. Just as Albrecht revolutionized how we view the universe with a desperate, reckless mistake, I too shall do something completely beyond convention.


    I will attempt communion with The Void.


    I have leveraged whatever favors I had amongst my peers and secured the tools for my experiment. Diagnostic somatics, and a stabilized sample of locum formam no larger than a child''s palm.


    I know not what to expect from such a foolish idea. Most likely nothing. Or, perhaps what I deserve for such reckless abandon, complete somatic severance. But where the world saw a void, Albrecht saw something greater, and here too I see the grander scheme within his works, begging to be revealed.


    If I am to die, let this journal serve as a permanent mockery of my disregard for the procedures I have studied and sworn to uphold. I consider spirits to calm my nerves, but would sooner have my epitaph read a foolish scientist than a mad drunk.


    No lab, no assistant, no recourse. I place the sample on my bedside table and join myself to the gnarled stone with gossamer thread.


    I lie upon my bed.


    I clutch the small golden activation disk within my right palm, and coil the innervation conduits around my left.


    I activate the somatic link

 2 - VOME

    And I am elsewhere.


    It takes me a moment to realize the connection has even been made, as somatic transfer is not typically an instant endeavor. Even in the ideal scenarios, with perfect synchronicity between operator and receiver, there is at least a brief sensation of movement. Of the mind shifting intangible positions and expanding or contracting to fit its new form.


    Yet here I felt...nothing.


    I take a moment to perceive what I can. When shifting to a form with altered sensory perception or lack thereof, it is not uncommon to initially perceive nothing but darkness. And, as I expected, darkness extends as far as I can ''see'' from my vantage. But then I realize there is more. A faint sensation. A disturbance of air in a sealed room. I extend the fingers of my mind''s reach, searching for a beacon in the dark. Clumsily, I alter my frame of perception and behold the source.


    A towering, golden edifice stands behind my initial orientation, casting warm, inviting light. I turn to regard it fully in thoughtless wonder, and realize that I am in fact, turning. And with far more ease than I had initially.


    Shocked, I shift my perception towards my origin and regard...myself. My WAKING self. I am not an interloper in some new unfamiliar vessel.


    I am here. I am me.


    Sickness rises in my throat. Sense suddenly returns and a cold sweat dews across my semblance skin. A rational voyager may have theorized this was merely some mental defense mechanism to account for sudden and complete sensory severance, but my panicked mind offers no such solace. I am gripped with a singular, overwhelming fear.


    Something is wrong.


    When sailing the solar rails on an academic''s budget, I was often forced to resort to atypical methods of transport. Once, my transit of choice was a freelance cargo freighter, selling passage to whatever or whomever could stow aboard. As we jumped between stations, the coupling and decoupling process would always create a sudden, terrifying vacuum in the freight chamber. Though much of that time in my life has faded with the decades, the sound of this vacuum remains with me still. The great rush of air being pulled from the hold into nothing. The metal leviathan exhaling into the dark, turning its lungs to void.


    And from behind me in the darkness, I hear the same breath.


    I turn, terrified, expecting some unfathomable nightmare to assault me.


    Instead, I regard only a small figure looming silently a distance away upon the black.


    Cautiously I approach. As the distance closes, I see it is a statue of a person, or at least something resembling one. It is androgynous, with no gendered features I can discern. It appears as if half-hewn from smooth, pale marble, with some features melting into the unfinished slab it emerges from. Upon its skin and at points near the edges of the slab are trace spiraling patterns, like the soft edges of a cloud emerging from beneath light smoker''s mantle.


    Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.


    Whatever form this statue once aspired to, it resembles it no longer. Its arms and legs, cloven cleanly and suspended in satellite to the main mass hover in approximation of limbs. The face bears no eyes, instead flowing from clear defined features into a solid unrefined pillar above the cheekbones, severed cleanly at its termination point a distance above where the head would crown. In one hand, a scepter of gnarled silver, tipped with flat spade that resembles ripples or waves, meeting in tighter formation as the blade reaches its edge.


    I hold the shadows of the light cast by the edifice within the folds of my robes, yet this figure is illuminated perfectly by nothing, as if its entire figure is formed of gentle light. Though my heart still threatens to burst from my chest, I find some strange solace in the form.


    Then it speaks.


    "Trespasser upon the threshold, who comes seeking answers from the mouth of sleepers. I offer no threat, but only warning. Below lie older things, full of hate, and formed of teeth. Their jaws unhinged, promise shelter in the storm, and await interlopers to stumble in half-waking to be their prize.


    Yet I stand as a way-point. A guidepost. I am the shore upon which the waves of waking break. I am the dross that dreams leave in passing.


    I am the last barrier upon the threshold.


    And I will be the first to fall."


    The figure points its scepter further into the nothingness, away from the pillar of light.


    "From whence light flows, the waking world, governed by reason. Beyond, only madness and dreams. Continue thus if drawn by desire, but I offer no ferry. And know that even should one return to the waking world, to cross the threshold is to pay a toll. Not in flesh nor blood, but in something unknowable. The prism of the soul shall darken, and a color taken evermore from its light.


    None can know the name of it, only that it has been forever lost."


    Dumbfounded, I pause for a moment. Briefly I contemplate a litany of questions, but before the words can escape my throat, they falter and the thoughts die upon my lips.


    I feel with every fiber of my dream flesh that I am no longer an architect of my own fate. By taking the dive I have invited the regard of something grander. These silent rapids have already swallowed me whole, and I have no choice but to give myself unto the current.


    No choice but to proceed.


    Beckoned by something in the dark, I stumble forward. In a stupor I make the few halting steps and pass by the figure. From behind me, the leviathan sighs once more.


    A deep primal fear screams at me to flee, and for a moment, it even supersedes the deafening silence of the nothing I have entered. I turn, hoping to find some help in the shattered figure''s half features, but alas.


    I behold the nothing all around me.


    No figure. No beacon of light. Not even my own trembling form. I am suspended, truly without tether, in a crushing ocean of senseless black.


    And yet, the same primal fear that urged me to return insists upon me that which I already know.


    I am not alone.

 II - ORDER

    I line the writing implements meticulously upon my desk.


    Beginning from the far left, my prized fountain pen, gifted to me by our class rector for graduating with Executorial honors. It has not written a single glyph nor made mark upon page, yet it is the most important of all my tools.


    Second, moving inwards towards the center of my desk, a simple mechanical graphite pencil. Not often used due to contaminants in the lab space. In fact, it bears no load with which to write. Yet it has its place upon my desk and thus it must remain.


    Next, three identical ink well pens. Each was given to an individual member of staff upon joining the department, though none of these particular three were the one I was entrusted. Invariably they have found themselves upon my desk through neglect. Like their graphite neighbor, they are not used often for the simple reason of technological inferiority. What use is a fallible ink-pen when light-scribe stylus is so ubiquitous? They have long since gone dry. My constituents laugh and tell me to dispose of them. They do not understand the danger I would invite by doing so. They have their place upon my desk, and their place must not be disturbed.


    Sixth, my light-scribe stylus, wide aperture. Often used for group thought boards or drafting large scale designs. I find its stroke overbearing, but it is sister to its more graceful brother, and thus it has a place upon my desk.


    Lastly, the true workman''s tool. The light-scribe stylus, narrow aperture. The polythene grip worn smooth and faded from years of use, it is the weapon of choice for the academic, and I wield it well.


    For such an important tool, it deserves a place of honor rivaled only by my decorative fountain pen. The seventh placement. Such a wonderful number. Would it be too far to consider it deific? I think not. One must only look towards our hallowed principles, or the halls of ascension on Lua to see the evidence for such a lofty claim. It is a perfect number in so many ways, and here it is represented in all its glory upon my humble work-desk.


    Next-


    My hand stops upon the next tool. Beneath my calloused fingers is a small metallic rod leading to sharpened metal point, the other end adorned with a darkened wooden handle. Natural wood, to my eye. I understand it to be a stone-worker''s awl, of course, but I do not understand its purpose HERE. In a lab focused on Void theory. Upon MY desk.


    My stomach churns. I stare deeply into the glazed wooden surface, and the grain swims, twisting into mocking spirals that lead ever inwards. I see chaos in the handle.


    I recoil as if burnt, yet more horrors await me. A NINTH tool. Another light-scribe stylus, marked with different wear on the grip than my own, and even bearing stains of some sort upon its length. It is askew at a sloppy angle away from the other tools, like dislocated bone. It is not my stylus, and yet it is on MY desk.


    The realization of this descends upon me all at once and dispels any final self control I had. I grasp my desk, lurch over the side, and vomit into my wastebasket.


    As I wipe the sick from my mouth, my heart falls. Another violation of my sanctum. My wastebasket is no longer there, and in its place, half digested food now steams upon the laboratory floor.


    "Woah, are you alright sir? Do you need me to call a Lorist?"


    I look up to see a young woman in Archimedean stole, but whom I do not recognize. She is carrying a small stack of thin marble slates.


    This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.


    Whatever expression I am wearing now must be horrid. She simply stares, mouth opening and closing like landed fish before quickly turning away and continuing on her path.


    A part of me weeps for her, as she does not know her fate.


    For my desk is more than a desk, you see. It is a barometer that is reflective of the un-knowable pressure crushing upon us at every moment. It indicates precisely the order with which things are dictated, and if my workspace is not ordered, it becomes a conduit.


    A single ripple cast by errant stylus, misaligned chair, or missing wastebasket. The ripples dart across the surface of our real, becoming waves, and break upon matters of consequence.


    These are more than annoyances. These are inciting events of entropic chaos. Carefully, I push myself away from my desk.


    A man''s arm is crushed in the automatic hydraulic door of a transit shuttle. My body weight slides the desk off center and the sibling pens shift.


    A Child comes into contact with a pathogen that will spread and kill their infant sister. Their mother will blame them for the rest of their life.


    I brace myself to stand, and my fingers nudge the stone worker''s awl.


    A young man decides to take a shortcut through an alley and encounters a desperate thief. They struggle. The young man is stabbed through his ribs, and the blade finds his heart. Wracked with guilt, the thief turns to drink and incites a fight at his local tavern. The bartender intervenes. A wayward punch crushes the bartender''s nose, and the collapsing cartilage gives way. Force continues into the bartender''s frontal lobe, and blood wells in the grey matter. As he falls, he splits his skull on his brand new synthetic wood countertop. The medical response is lethargic in the downtrodden sector, and he dies on the floor of his establishment. He leaves behind no family. His genetic legacy ends.


    My body shakes, safely away from my desk. I must find out how this unprecedented violation of my sanctum has occurred, and WHY.


    In the sunken central area of the lab I behold numerous piles of rubble, stone, and metal. Disorganized. Surrounded by an eclectic selection of tools in various states of wear. Only now do I realize I have been ignoring the crowd of people forming at the speaker''s dais in the center of the lab, excitedly clamoring around something on the floor. Someone.


    I see the young woman from before push through the murmuring crowd and hand the slates to the person on the floor in their midst. She says something to them and then turns and points at me.


    The crowd grows silent, parting as they turn away from the center to look where she is pointing. Their faces are painted in a mixture of confusion, pity, and disgust.


    Upon the dais I see a man. He is not one of my lab associates, but I know him from somewhere. He is so familiar, and yet I do not know how.


    Many assistants or clerical aides come and go in the academic halls, so half remembering one should not be unusual. Yet my inability to recall this man in particular disturbs something within me I cannot describe.


    My skin slicks with sweat, sticking robe to flesh. Though empty, my stomach threatens to turn itself out once more in protest. Shoulders tense and muscles ache as my mind tries desperately to recall this familiar stranger.


    He looks up from the stone slate, finishing whatever he was carving into it. He holds an awl identical to the one on my desk.


    I know that if I do not remember who this man is, something horrible will happen.


    He looks at me. He smiles warmly.


    I know I can stop this, but only if I call out to him. Only if I can remember his name.


    He carefully, almost lovingly begins turning the surface of the stone slate to face me.


    I scream, and flee the room in terror.


    As my footfalls echo behind me in the facility hallways, I realize I am alone. There are no strolling academics or clerical aides idly chatting in the ornamental recesses. No bored Dax fulfilling their rounds. Not even drones maintaining the gilded tile floors. I am alone.


    I continue to run.


    I am alone.


    I continue to run.


    I am alone.

 3 - JAHU

    For what feels like ages, I drift.


    Without the light on the threshold, my sense of position is gone. Where once I walked on unseen path, my feet now find only emptiness. I am not falling into some endless pit, for that would impart a sense of movement. I only am.


    Time passes.


    I calm my initial panic with measured thought. I reflect upon the actions that led me to this moment. I mock my childish reaction to the rejection of the academic board and the shame I deserve for my outburst in their chambers. I curse my poorly thought plans of revenge via success, berate myself for thinking that I was to be the catalyst for the next grand discovery in Void travel.


    I reckon with my reality. Perhaps this is simply a dream? Or a vision of brain death in the moment where the somatic tethers failed? Any number of rationalizations could explain the situation, but none feel legitimate. Where I am now is beyond reckoning.


    Time passes, immeasurable.


    I turn to planning, fumbling in the darkness for any source of sense. I consider the viability of tying robe as noose and dying into waking. I flail in the empty, thinking perhaps I could move as if in water, eventually colliding with some distant shore. I even briefly consider calling out into the darkness for either aid or destruction to free me from this stasis, but some instinct holds my tongue. After pointless thrashing for an age, my limbs fail to respond, and so I rest.


    Time passes, unknowable.


    Thought fails me. I feel the darkness clawing at my mind, reaching for the core of my sanity. I attempt to insulate myself and raise walls of memory, idea, action. They slough away into the black. The caustic silence erodes my defenses, and without sense, my thought soon follows.


    Time passes, but without direction. It too is lost in the dark.


    I briefly regain sense of self and realize I am afraid. I am surely to die here. Or find whatever death may be in this space without time.


    Time has long since lost purpose. There is only now.


    And now, at last, I feel sensation.


    A fluttering of my robes. Movement. Something stirs the air once more.


    My dormant mind awakens, but still only offers fear.


    I feel two forces. The first, of my dream-flesh transposing. I am moving, though in which direction I cannot know. The second, of force upon myself. I am not falling through darkness with single directional purpose. I am being moved. I feel as if I am being swallowed, the throat contracting and guiding me along twisting path that moves at impossible angle.


    The dizzying return of sense assaults my atrophied mind, and I struggle to prevent myself from fainting and returning to unwaking once more.


    Fighting to regain my bearings, I search for purchase within the force that is ferrying me through the dark. I briefly make contact with solid surface.


    Fingers close upon my palm.


    Reflexively, I scream, and in that moment the forces stop.


    I am greeted now by new sensation. Solid, rough surface beneath me. The feeling of cold, stale air against my skin. I feel sweat running down my brow, and the acrid scent it carries is welcome compared to the nothing from whence I came.


    Then sound.


    A slow, labored shuffle occurring in measured intervals. It is wet and heavy, as if sodden cloth is being dragged across weathered pavement.


    The sound draws near.


    I hear in greater detail. A swarm of gentle scrapes, undulating and pulsing in time with the dragging. In the intervals I hear soft-wet thunks. Flesh impacting surface. Footsteps.


    My breathing hastens, and after breathing for the first time in aeons I realize just how loud aspiration is without familiarity or competition to dull it.


    The footsteps stop.


    I hold my breath.


    Unlike the lack before, I can hear my heart pounding in my chest. I feel sweat running over fingers, damp with the moisture of breath and skin as I grip hold my hands to my mouth, desperate to prevent any disturbance by which my dreamflesh may betray my position. I feel my eyes dry as I hold them open, hoping for some glimmer of light to offer a point of escape.


    I hear the swarm of soft scrapes, undulating still, pulsing in the same cadence though footsteps no longer dictate time.


    And then, silently, I see light begin to form.


    It runs as liquid, unceremoniously from a point in the dark as a slow, viscous stream. It falls in solid verticality from its source before striking surface and pooling. The pool grows wider and at exponential pace, reaching me within seconds. My eyes, deadened from aeons of darkness, see only blinding white overwhelm my vision.


    Burning pain assaults me as retina are forced into action once more, and I blink away tears. Eventually, the world around me falls into definition, and I at last am able to view my surroundings.


    But first, I see the source of the sound.


    I behold a gnarled bolus of grey, twisted arms supported by scarred misshapen legs, veins bulging with effort to maintain the mass. The arms appear to be of multitude source; slender, muscular, young and soft, old and weathered. They reach desperately at nothing, grasping at both empty air and neighbor limb. Some hold fast, while others claw and scrape, the rough nails leaving shallow marks that close as quickly as they are made, as if the flesh was formed of sculptor''s clay.


    In the moments between footsteps, the limbs writhe without purpose in all directions, but with each labored advance the limbs ebb and flow from rear to front. I am reminded suddenly of the multicolored anemone painting the bellies of Orokin sky-sea enclosures, shifting gracefully in the gentle currents. The comparison is laughable.


    Some aspect of my restraint is broken by this memory, and I inadvertently laugh. A sharp, sudden outburst. The limbs recoil away from the direction of the sound. The creature shifts what I can only describe as its "front" to face me.


    I hold my breath once more, unsure of how this monstrosity will act next.


    Though I feared it would suddenly rush towards me with aggressive intent, it instead falls onto withered knee. The limbs pull taut, no longer grasping, but coiled like carapace. They point forward and align, fanning outwards to form a gaping mouth. Within, only darkness. The arms furl inwards, weaving, pulling deep within the mass. The figure shudders, and wet churning noises grow in volume as the arms continue their search.


    All at once the arms stop, but then just as suddenly they lurch deeper inwards with greater force. The arms on the surface of the beast realign, gripping the reaching limbs and pulling in concerted effort. With visible difficulty, the creature draws something from within itself, the sounds of wet and throat growing in volume as the creature intensifies effort. Whatever it has grasped is stuck firm, deep within the impossible depths.


    The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.


    Suddenly, legs appear from the maw, yet no sooner do they pass the creature''s mouth are they yanked back in. Whatever this creature has claimed, it is fighting back. The legs kick at the grasping arms, and the carapace shifts once more. Further arms sprout forth like a set of second teeth and join their siblings in hauling the figure from within. The struggle persists for a time, but then there is a sickening pop and brackish gray fluid ruptures from the creature''s approximate lips.


    A slick-wet form emerges, drowned with amniotic. The creature''s arms yank their prize into the open and discard it unceremoniously onto the floor before itself. Maw still wet with the expulsion, the creature shuffles to its feet and turns opposite from me. It slowly ambles away, the thumping and shuffling of its march fading with distance. In its wake, soaked still with gray birth-fluid and clumps of pallid clay, the humanoid form it created.


    I approach, curiosity changing to horror. The figure smoothly rolls itself over to face me. Black pits without focus above a widening, predator''s grin. I meet my own gaze.


    Once again I feel the urge to laugh. There is some grand mockery at play, and I feel resentment in suffering the role of the fool. But before I can make a sound, my doppelganger shudders. Still smiling, it begins to seize. The convulsions become violent, arm and leg thrashing as if fighting some unseen assailant, and in the invisible struggle my other brings its body against the floor with desperate force, and breaks itself upon it.


    Still smiling, empty eyes locked to mine, it continues. Again and again it brings arm, back, and leg against the floor. Gray flesh warps, then gives to the assault. Bone splinters and punctures through skin, adding sickening scrapes to the wet impacts of meat on stone. Its wild flurry of movement spatters the same brackish fluid of its birth across both the stone and my robes like a painter''s brush.


    One of its arms, bent wildly at the elbow, detaches and spins across the floor, trailing spiral patterns in its wake. Legs contort horribly, angled closer towards its head than away from it. Its spine, shattered, in disturbing relief where it pushes against the skin. Still my other shudders and thrashes, though the artifice nerves that made it whole have been severed, and extremities dangle helplessly at the ends of torn muscle that tenses in vain.


    Shaking with the last of its energy, my other slowly opens its mouth. A groaning, popping noise emerges from its twisted throat.


    I am reminded of a time when I was on stenographer''s detail for a high Archimedean, documenting the growing discontent on some nameless asteroid colony flirting the edge of the Outer Terminus. Food was scarce in all the system at the time, and there on that far flung rock, even more so.


    I don''t recall the exact purpose of our trip. Documenting colonial collapse of resource harvesting outposts for triage I believe. Regardless, our role was to observe the situation devolve, not provide any semblance of aid.


    On one excursion through the slums, a man rushed from an alley with twisted length of metal in hand, searching to place it deep within the Archimedean''s back. I doubt there was any greater purpose in the attack, only seeking to strike the icon of the empire striding proudly through his dying home.


    Regardless, our escort Dax moved as lightning, and struck a mortal blow to the man before I even realized he was a threat. The Archimedean and Dax moved on unbothered by the assault, but for a moment I remained, watching life drain from the desperate assailant. The man''s lungs filled with blood, and his eyes stared through me into some unknowable horizon. The sounds of his last ragged breaths, of him sucking blood through wound and throat, would stay with me. My other echoes those same sounds now. Despite the horrifying display, the sound is all too human.


    At last, it arches its back one final time, then collapses still into the pool of its life fluid. Eyes still upon me. Still smiling.


    I fall to the floor and retch, though fortunately it seems my dream flesh stomach has no contents to expel. I compulsively wipe the spittle from my mouth with robed arm, and spread my other¡¯s blood across my face. It smells of nothing.


    Before I can express disgust, my other speaks.


    "Looks like you finally grounded yourself, yes?"


    Shattered bones give its neck sharp form, and while its head is twisted at impossible angle, the voice still rings clear.


    "It takes a while to get there, but once you do, you realize you were there from the very beginning."


    I stare, mouth agape. The absurdity of the situation strikes me, and once again I laugh. Longer this time. More desperately.


    My other smiles wider.


    "I haven''t the faintest idea what you are talking about." I finally respond, wiping tears from my eyes and spreading more of my other''s blood across my brow.


    My other smiles, even wider still.


    "That''s alright." it replies.


    "It''s not important that you understand. What''s important is that you hear it." Weakly it moves its shattered limbs, as if to move itself in turn. The effort is fruitless.


    "But what¡¯s more important is that you finish what you started. If you can''t reach the end, what was the point of even beginning?" The smile fades and my other assumes a look of mock concern.


    "You gave up the stone, but you still have the mortar." It swivels its head on twisted neck to look at the surroundings.


    I too, at last examine the space I am in. A room small in width, but with walls stretching upwards into the infinite. Not darkness as I had expected, but merely a continuing passage terminating beyond what I can perceive. In fact, the entirety of my surroundings are well illuminated, and I am reminded of the figure on the threshold. No shadows are cast, and everything exists in total, neutral detail.


    The surfaces are formed of stone or marble, weathered and filled with trace lines of spiraling patterns. The patterns are chaotic, as if a moment of cataclysm had somehow been captured by stone, sediment casting shadows of destruction in the regolith before impossible stasis locked it into its final shape.


    Beyond the room, narrow hallways branch outwards and turn beyond sight. The painted footsteps of the creature from earlier have already dried on the floor and crumbled, quietly joining the thick layer of dust that coats the surfaces here.


    I look away from the surroundings to address my other. "You need something more?"


    My other addresses me in turn, face solemn. "Always."


    I throw my arms wide, dried blood falling from my robes and billowing as plumes of choking dust.


    "Then what are you waiting for?" I ask defiantly. "Take it! I was never in control of this, and you waste words pretending otherwise."


    Within my other¡¯s empty eyes, I see a faint flicker of light. "Learning fast. Always one of our good traits."


    My other begins to shift. The shattered form loses definition, and what was once a mangled corpse becomes a shapeless, sloughing mass. The form spreads as liquid, then sinks into the floor, leaving patterns in the outline of its gore forever merged with the stone. Before I can bring my arms down from their outspread position, I feel a great, rending pull. Something yanks me forward on invisible strings and the force tears the breath from my lungs. I lose balance, but am suspended mid fall by the same force that pulled me off my feet. I gasp for air, but can no longer inhale as my throat is distended.


    Fiber rises in my throat and pushes past my tongue. I begin to suffocate. Thick strands are pulled from my mouth, my chest, my eyes. I feel as if I am being unraveled from the core. As if this force pierced beyond my dream-flesh and raked the surface of my being into long coiling threads.


    The grey world fades to black as my dream-flesh asphyxiates, but before I lose consciousness, the pulling stops and I fall forward. Unable to brace myself, I strike my head upon the floor and my vision is filled with multicolored static.


    I lay gasping for breath, blood trickling from the fresh cut on my forehead. As the darkness retreats from my vision, the floor rumbles and groans, dust and gravel cascading from above in thin sheets. I see the walls sprout a dense webbing of cracks, portions falling outwards from the surface and scattering across the floor. With a deafening shatter, the room is sundered. Air rushes from beyond the borders to fill the space, exciting the once still dust into opaque clouds.


    I bring myself to my feet, squinting as the dust billows around me in the maelstrom. Light pierces in slowly widening shafts and when at last the dust no longer occludes my surroundings, I see the room I was in no more. Instead I am atop a pillar of stone overlooking an infinite sprawling expanse of abstract structures. The sky is stark white, but still, no shadows are cast. Every surface is a variation of an indefinite neutral tone.


    Awestruck, I examine the skyline and see movement. The city teems with numerous copies of the many-armed creature I first encountered in this new place. They crawl upon roof, stand impossibly upon sheer wall, and flit in and out of vision through openings in the structures. From their limb-ringed maws they expel thick grey matter that flows in all directions and becomes solid, freezing into deliberate shape and form.


    For a time I watch the creatures work. Despite their horrifying appearance, they seem here as almost normal. Not an unknowable force, but something comfortably familiar. Congruous to the world of waking.


    I find myself strangely assured. I see reason here. And in reason I can remain afloat. I will not drown here in this dream. I shall traverse this plane and emerge once more into the world of waking as a revolutionary.


    Emboldened by newfound resolve, I find a nearby stairway and descend from my lofty pillar into the dense forest of the city below.

 III - FORM

    In Upper Uxmal, where promenade leads to groves of market stalls, spice rich scents waft through ragged canopy over local product of craft and cook. Grilled meats, smoked subsea fish, and dried fruits rouse the appetite. Fresh ground rakwheat pastries of sweet and savory variety, sprinkled with raw salt flakes to delight young and old alike. Sky-bright beaded tapestry hung over deep red earthen stoneware draw the eye, and buskers of mixed ability compete for the ear of passerby. The atmosphere is excited to near unbearable extremes by jostling bodies in the cramped sun-drenched alleys weaved through dwellings carved directly into cliff and mesa. Within the chaos of the market, a middle-aged woman plies her craft from humble storefront. Gleaming handicraft brooches, diadems, and Ayatan simulacrum sparkle in the light of the rising Martian sun.


    Her shop boasts some celebrity within the market, and she herself is oft touted amongst her peers as a craftswoman of well repute. Gem setter, gold spinner, and light weaver. The craftswoman is envy and inspiration to all who share her field, and in even number are those vying for her guidance and wares.


    But what others do not know, is that every night, it takes the entirety of her will to not simply set her shop aflame. To not shatter tool and trade in self-destructive frenzy and run headfirst into the night, never to return.


    For as marvelous as her creations are, they are mere imitations of the visions she seeks to produce. The gulf between dream and reality so vast, she can not help but fall deeper into the despair within the gap, and the guilt she finds there leads inward, away from the world.


    Even from a young age, she has always been driven to higher ideals.


    When she had but barely learned to wield speech, she successfully finished her first clumsily set oilpearl necklace, and her parents praised her natural talents.


    When she was a child, she won the regard of a local dignitary in a contest between other young aspiring craftsmen, and her parents placed the icon of her victory upon their familial altar.


    When she was a teen, her handwoven silk dress dotted with grains of luminescent stone was selected as the design for the district''s Yuvan tribute to wear for their ascension, and her parents wept over how blessed they were to have a daughter of such skill.


    When coming of age, her miniature Ayatan was ranked fourth out of nearly 2000 applicants in the local sector, and she switched her palms with fan-reed until she bled.


    When she at last crossed the threshold of adulthood, she failed to meet the deadline for a commission accepted by her parents on her behalf, and fled with a trade caravan into the night.


    ''Why?'' she asks herself.


    ''Why can I see in such stark detail that which I want to create in my mind''s eye, but these clumsy fingers, these imprecise hands, so incapable of bringing the visions in front of me?''


    The finest synthetic gems, n-pointed facets carved to micron precision by solar forge assembly lathe to ideally capture and refract light matching the gem''s setting. Perfectly latticed goldvine drawn fiber by fiber across metal loom and strung as silk-soft cord through symmetrical gallium rings, embalmed in liquid diamond and hardened to ideal rigidity based on where the joint rests upon the wearer. Filigree silver illumination engraved to the finest detail upon every bare surface, with lifelike images of old-earth and dreams of far-flung suns present at scale only viewable with appraiser''s loupe. Wafer-thin breaks between disparate parts, where even micro-engraving dare not venture, etched with chemically induced grooves arranged in Orokin high-script, writing poetry in reverence of love and life, to never be read.


    It is the craftswoman''s ideal that the visible finality of a thing is not enough. To have even one aspect of the whole be imperfect, to be lacking beauty and craft? Unacceptable. It was her duty to create a form of total, absolute perfection. Her pride would not allow her to sell something with a possibility unrealized still festering within.


    But no matter how intricate and ornate her creations were, she would always find that stain of imperfection just beneath the surface.


    A chemical brush stroke, off by a tenth of a degree. Gold loom fabric, with two crosswoven strands where she had failed to maintain ideal speed and balance. Suspended light-coil, a mere lumen below the max output of its semblant parts. Utterly unnoticeable to most, but agonizing to she who knew it was there.


    As the years wore on, the depths of her self-deprecation seemed endless. Lower and lower she would sink, and more toxic would her thoughts become. Her days became torpor, and her nights, terrifying.


    For in those depths she had dredged something horrible. A nightmare that perpetuated the cycle she was trapped in and threatened its realization with each rising of the sun.


    Every night, the same dream.


    She would find herself on a grand stage, surrounded by countless faceless onlookers. She could not see them individually, blinded as she was by the sourceless light upon the stage, but knew there was no familiarity among them. All the same, she knew their regard of her mattered more than anything else in the world, and in the next moments she could lose it all.


    For she was the finalist in a competition of cosmic import. She and her opponent, the last remaining contestants of a challenge that had lasted thousands of years. Her final piece was a figurine, though of whom she can never remember. The figurine, the apex of her work, intricately affected down to atomic detail. Electrons painted in shifting prismatic hues, whirling through floral scented gulfs around glistening cerulean neutrons. Each atom dictated to vibrate in patterns that subconsciously inspire thoughts of spiral nebulae, and the spaces between could be recounted on quantum Voidgraph to transcribe the notes of the favorite song of the beholder.


    You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.


    While the figurine itself was only a fraction to scale at roughly a foot in height, it was obscured by a massive curtain trailing up into the infinite black beyond the island cast in the spotlight. Across the stage, similar veil obscured both her competitor and the piece they too had come to present.


    In agonizing silence, she waited for the master of ceremonies to finish his speech before revealing the winner. Tears preemptively welled in her eyes, preparing for the joy or tragedy that would soon follow.


    For what seemed like hours, the announcer preached to the audience the merits of the contestants, though any specifics of his speech were lost on the craftswoman. The blood rushing through her head dropped all sound to deafened tones.


    At last, through blurred vision, she saw the man wheel flamboyantly from the crowd to face her and her competitor. His smile dominated his face, eyes obscured by the ostentatious headpiece he wore. Though hidden, she could still feel his gaze upon her, like a beast observing prey. With a grand sweeping motion, he gestured for the curtains to rise, and at last sound returned to the craftswoman''s world.


    "Ladies and gentlemen of all ages! Your revelation!"


    The curtains were drawn upwards into the impossible dark, unveiling the two finalist''s pieces. On the craftswoman''s pedestal, her figurine.


    And on her opponent''s¡­


    The same figurine.


    In horror the craftswoman looked up and met her own gaze. Except the woman she faced was perfect. The idealized form of what she aspired to be, from the physical to the immaterial. At a glance it was obvious, though no one detail could be pointed to as indicator. Something about


    the way she carried herself. The way she radiated confidence. The way she smiled back at her lesser self.


    And matching its creator, her figurine was similarly perfect. An imperceptible improvement compared to the craftswoman''s. Something buried deep within the quantum net, but utterly consequential. It glowed with the radiance of something truly divine, and required no judge to discern its superiority.


    The crowd erupted into applause. From the deafening roar of the audience, she could tell it numbered thousands, millions, perhaps even more.


    Louder and louder the audience screamed, and the stage began to shake. She covered her ears as the sound overwhelmed her. Her lesser figurine toppled, crumbling unceremoniously into dust as soon as it fell upon the marble stage. Her ears began to bleed, and though she could no longer hear the audience, she could feel them all the same. The stage itself, too, succumbed to the cacophony, and through widening fissures in the floor she caught brief glimpses of something unspeakable staring back.


    Though at first cheers of joy and support for the victor, the audience began to shift to screams with a wild, primal malice, directed solely at her.


    "A shame." Though deaf, she could hear the announcer''s voice in her head. Not speaking, still smiling, with lips pulled so taut the roots of his gums were visible.


    "We would hate to see all that talent gone to waste."


    And as she lay curled on the floor, weeping at her ultimate failure, ruptured ears trickling blood through quivering fingers, she at last saw the audience rush forward from the dark. Eyes hungry and full of hate.


    But just before they descend upon her, she wakes.


    This nightmare of imperfection haunts her. Plagued by the visions, she stares into the darkness of her bedchambers late into the night to avoid its inevitability. In the bitter morning light, stumbling red-eyed into her workshop, she can only regard her masterpieces with utter contempt. Grudgingly, she parts with them for a fraction of the labor price, barely stopping herself from outright shattering the works against the cold stone floor.


    Forbidding herself from truly thriving with her craft, she continues to sell works of stunning beauty to patrons for barely enough coin to continue her work. Often she goes without food, instead spending her funds on further materials.


    And you too must realize, that surely this lifestyle is untenable? Surely she must eventually find a way to move forward, or worse, succumb to her own brutal self destruction?


    But alas, it is not to be. She toils there to this day. Ever creating, never content.


    But do not weep for her, for in the end she is of little importance. The entirety of her existence shall eventually become as dust, like the masterpiece from her dreams. More valuable than anything she will ever design in waking is the intangible she creates. The thin threads weaved between bodies when meeting and parting once more. The same threads that linger in the actions born of thought carried out by all beings. These threads entwine, becoming as pathways between the histories of all things. Growing into towers, doorways.


    Walls.


    Once, a scholar of little renown would pass through her doors, having visited from a nearby excursion organized by his collegiate. He would purchase a pair of rubedo earrings for a woman he was courting at the time. The craftswoman would forget his visit as soon as he left the shop, and the scholar too would think only of the interaction tangentially a scant few times throughout his life when reminiscing of the visit to Uxmal.


    But in this brief moment the two became entangled, like gold weave upon metal loom.


    In another time and place, the scholar would dream vividly of the craftswoman. He would see her hunched over worktable, teeth grit and tear stained cheeks flushed crimson as she labored over yet another unmatched work of art. He would see her raise the final product in trembling hand, and watch her face contort, painted in a myriad of unreadable emotions.


    For minutes, she remained completely still.


    And then, she set the piece upon nearby table and began the process once more.


    When the scholar woke from this mundane dream, he would experience the briefest moments of unfathomable sorrow. But in that transition from sleep to waking, this emotion would fade, and so too would the dream itself be immediately forgotten.


    Almost as if it had never occurred at all.

 4 - RIS

    I wander the strange city for hours, perhaps days. Time has once again lost purpose here in this dream. Though where the nothing from the space past the threshold threatened to break me, I am enthralled by the surroundings here.


    As I have wandered, I encountered no further horrors. Even the shambling limb-workers that I beheld from on high are absent, at least in any proximity to me. I hear nothing save for my own footsteps echoing down the empty streets. See nothing but false stone facade leading to rambling alley and cavernous interiors.


    The architecture is nonsensical, with winding roads terminating in featureless dead ends. Courtyards hundreds of kilometers across, or thoroughfares so tight one must pass through only after exhaling, the towering walls crushing inwards against ambling passenger. Crawlspace doors that open into a single featureless room, or lines of windows stacked on top of each other and placed without purpose, looking into hand-width space before solid wall. The entire place gives the impression of a lived in place, but without any actual meaning. An icon of a city, rather than the reality of one.


    The exteriors too are perplexing, and do not seem to follow a single design convention. I see Towering old-Earth skyscrapers that blend partway along their height into the claustrophobic group-habs of Venusian mining outposts. Simple clay structures of Martian fief that suddenly sprout into Orokin high filigree, golden spires jutting comically out of buildings not even one tenth their size, leading skyward into suspended half-rooms of stellar resort ship. What is more perplexing is that no matter the inspiration, all surfaces are of the same stone. What should be a wooden door, porcelain lattice, alloy hull, or seriglass pane is all cut from the same cold, swirling lith.


    I find some amusement in discerning the separate parts from the chaos, seeing hallmarks of architectural design from colonies and time periods all across Sol. The exercise centers me, and soon I almost entirely forget the trauma from before I descended into the city of stone.


    I am jolted from my reverie by the first foreign sound I have heard since descending. The piercing sound of shattering glass.


    I pause mid-step, waiting for further disturbance. Again, I hear glass break nearby.


    I change direction and head towards where the sound emanated. The buildings here deflect each crash, passing source into room and out of tunnel, coming from everywhere and nowhere all at once. The flat windows of the buildings become as eyes, and the doorways mouths. Where architecture twists into new forms, I see mocking smiles, and realize I am plaything for the city itself.


    Incensed, I break into a sprint.


    I find myself strangely unafraid to discover the source. I feel almost as a tourist in this dream, a voyager on conquest of new seas, bold and daring. My determination from earlier has not changed and I am resolute to push through the trials of this dream and emerge once more into waking as luminary. Thus, I am eager to learn all that this strange place may have to offer.


    After chasing sourceless sound for several kilometers, breath ragged from the pursuit, I emerge into a grand courtyard, empty save for a massive cenotaph directly in its center. Atop the monument, I behold the goal of my chase.


    At first I mistake it for yet another transition into foreign architecture, the upper segment appearing similar to ascension plinth or cathedral glass. But then, I see its extremities undulating softly on the side of the stone and recognize it as life.


    It is an imposing creature possessed of spindle limbs terminating in gnarled human hands. Withered skin drapes loosely like cloth, and wrinkles run along the surface. Atop its eight appendages, the massive radial I mistook for architecture before. The stoneflesh at the base of the radial is carved raw and soft, calcifying as it grows towards the apex of the ring. Again I see the parallels to cathedral glass, though in further observation I am reminded too of natural inspirations. Dried honeycomb, or withered pod of lotus flower.


    Occasionally, it readjusts its position atop its perch. With each labored step, the sound of crushing glass. Skyward it faces its aperture, changing direction not with neck, but manually, operated by two of its elongated limbs clutching the outer rim. Sick, unearthly hues are projected from the radial, shifting in unnatural patterns. I see colors I cannot describe, changing


    not just in intervals, but throughout the beams themselves in cloud shaped patterns, as if the light were merely fluid to transport these deeper casts. The shafts of light extend into the infinite, and the juxtaposition of these unnameable hues against stark white sky causes my head to spin.


    I inadvertently let out a short triumphant yell, pleased to have finally tracked the elusive beast, and the creature whirls atop its perch to face me. In an instant, it skitters to ground level with frightening speed.


    Facing me now, I see it in its entirety, and clutched in the center of the spider-like appendages is a charred, smoking form, frozen in agony. The hands cradle it delicately, almost protectively, yet the fingers dig into the burnt flesh with greed. From the central figure''s size and proportion, it seems almost childlike, and the cracks in its surface bleed with thin vapor matching the same unearthly hues cast by the creature''s radial.


    Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.


    My bravado from earlier melts away in an instant. The parallels to arachnids of the waking world are too easy to make, and I fear I have stumbled into its web. Were I to flee, the speed it displayed would overtake me before I could return to the cramped capillaries of the city proper.


    I am reminded of the subseas of Mars, though I only went there once in my entire life. Beneath, where Orokin genetic artisans had not yet affected the wildlife, creatures evolved into strange niches in the dark. One such beast was a massive crustacean with an odd nine limbs.


    How strange that I remember the exact number¡­


    Each limb was tipped with a taut membrane of skin, and the creature would collect gas in alveoli within its ghostly carapace, remaining completely motionless for days save for the nearly hundred meter long sense threads that swayed gently in the deep,. When suitable prey tripped the threads, it would inflate the membranes and launch itself towards the surface with terrifying speed. Carapace would open, revealing rows of sharp teeth, and whatever hapless victim was in its path would be gored in an instant. Common sight were ultinoth carcasses, looming in the depths, decaying flesh still host to swarms that had bled the gentle giants into the churning dark. Even the subsea mariners in their modern vessels would exercise caution, lest a sudden attack rend their hull and open it to the crushing black.


    Such surprising speed comes to mind now with this once stationary beast approaching, descending cenotaph and reaching ground before I can fully draw breath.


    But after closing a few meters between us, the creature stops once more. It seems to regard me for a moment, determining if I am threat, or perhaps worthy prey. Its radial tilts and shifts in quick intervals, like the head of some energetic avian. After several moments of tense silence, it seems to relax, stretching up to full height and moving in a direction away from me.


    Though the creature has no mouth, I hear its voice. Carried by the resonance of glass, it sings on wavelengths that make no word, yet carry meaning all the same.


    It says to me thus,


    ''You who have passed over the threshold and dived into the deeper waters, know this. You stand here upon the abyssal shelf. Above you, fathomless sea. Below, inverted depths, where still mirror surface reflects into infinity. There is no further way-point. You straddle it now, half within, half without. A part of you is already claimed, yet some umbilical is holding you to the world of waking. You exist as manifold, but where you coalesce is yet unmade.''


    The creature climbs up a nearby building and adjusts its radial towards the city at a seemingly arbitrary point. The unearthly light emits once more, intensifying into a maelstrom of color so bright, I at last sprout shadows from my feet, and the featureless cityscape springs to life.


    Darkness adds definition to the plain surfaces, and I see things cast by the light that are not there. Figures dancing with mad fervor. Ancient trees bending in the nonexistent wind. I see ship and creature of impossible size grow and shrink, overlap and merge. I watch leviathans devour the invisible dancers and birth new masses from their backs, shadows falling down building length, dancing wildly in the air as they plummet. In this new light I see the city is not empty, it is overflowing with life.


    ''I guide you now to path unseen. For I am that which reveals. I am that which protects and guides. I am beacon. I am warmth.''


    The small figure clutched in the center moves slightly, its childlike frame pulling inwards into a fetal position. The hands let go of the radial and gently cup the figure, protecting it. Hoarding it.


    ''But I am also lure. I blind. I distract. I am warmth. I am fire.''


    The rest of the creature tightens its form like the burnt figure. Were it not so monstrous, it may even seem pathetic.


    ''And I am the final archetype of the world above.''


    The creature continues to emit light, its head held at fixed position, yet no longer does it move. Its limbs now fully drawn inwards to protect the figure, it remains affixed to the side of the building like ocean parasite upon ship''s hull. I no longer hear the hum of resonance, or the gentle song of falling glass. Silence once more.


    Wordlessly, I turn to where the light projects and follow the path.


    I walk amidst the shadows for several kilometers. No longer blank, the city along the path is alive, but hostile. The shadows flit at the edges of my vision, probing my defenses. I see whispers directed at me by figures hidden in the teeming masses. The leviathans slow as they pass overhead, and their unseen eyes fix upon me. Ships of star, sea, and sky draw alongside my path, melting into the edges of buildings and emerging suddenly from alley and window. Their harpoons seek to capture me, a rare prize of flesh in this place of stone. I follow path with guide, but am illuminated as if by spotlight in the dark.


    Eventually, I reach a break in the city, the buildings suddenly and cleanly severed by invisible blade at this terminus.


    Before me, the sky extends in all directions, yet the light continues onwards.


    The shadows of the city have grown still now, but they watch me all the same. No longer do the revelers dance in their cycle of life and death. They watch from corner and doorway, awaiting my next move.


    Tentatively, I test the empty space before me under the light''s path, and my foot meets resistance. With trepidation I take another step, and I am afloat in the nothing. I take one last look at the city behind me, and see the still shadows watching in silence. I feel their hunger wash over me.


    I turn away from the place of dust and stone.


    I walk across the nothing under the light.

 IV - LIGHT

    ::SUMNET:TEMPLOG-Y.RD-0.EXPWR-N::


    CLOSEPURGE?:Y


    ::Generating...


    ::Confirmed!


    ---------------------


    UU-19vX271 Has Connected


    UU-ARt98V Has Connected


    UU-ARt98V: Alright, I joined your shady communications channel. What was it you needed to speak about?


    UU-ARt98V: How do you even know how to do this?


    UU-19vX271: doesnt matter i need you to look at soemthing


    UU-ARt98V: I am quite sure you would be exiled from the academy VERY quickly if they found out you were using smuggler channels to m


    UU-ARt98V: Oh. Alright, look at what?


    UU-19vX271: i managed to convice that entrati aide to do what id mentioned. he sent me a lot most of it uselessbut i found something in that isnt making sense and i need yourr opinion


    UU-ARt98V: You what? Wait, should I really be getting involved in this? I don''t want to be implicated in your nonsense!


    UU-19vX271 Has Uploaded 2 Files


    - OR_GtfaiOJ5i726TghC77896tnmjHHg0192_RECOV.hvlp


    - transcript.lsr


    UU-19vX271: watch that


    UU-19vX271: its pretty corruppted i made hte transcript as close as i could tell me what you think


    UU-ARt98V: You are insane!


    UU-ARt98V: Jade light spare me, alright give me a minute.


    UU-ARt98V: Alright, I have them both, watching the video file now


    UU-ARt98V: Oh Void, am I a prophet? I don''t want to watch a judgment execution as a way to wind down for the night!


    UU-19vX271: just watch andlisten to it


    UU-ARt98V: You cruel man!


    UU-ARt98V: Wait


    UU-ARt98V: It started a bit in to the hearing. Who is that?


    UU-19vX271: archimedean


    UU-ARt98V: dont patronize me I can tell that much, but who?


    UU-19vX271: do you recognize him?


    UU-ARt98V: no. he is in high-illuminant garb too, he should be in the hall of luminaries. I would definitely remember him, I had to memorize them all just like you.


    UU-19vX271: im not insane then


    UU-ARt98V: Unfortunately. I have never seen him. A fake perhaps? Maybe that is why he is being


    UU-ARt98V: wait no, the executor addressed him in full title. Maybe as mockery? I definitely do not recognize an Archimedean Leanthros from any records.


    UU-ARt98V: Is that all you wanted to ask me about?


    UU-19vX271: no watch it all


    UU-ARt98V: You torture me so!


    UU-ARt98V: wait what is


    :::WARNING! No activity from connected clients! Timeout response in 3 minutes!:::


    UU-19vX271: .


    :::WARNING! No activity from connected clients! Timeout response in 3 minutes!:::


    UU-19vX271: .


    UU-ARt98V: what the hell was that


    UU-19vX271: thats what im asking you


    UU-ARt98V: well I dont recognize anything either. i have never heard of ''void tongue'' before. i have never heard of this archimedean leanthros. why would this be in an entrati archive?


    UU-19vX271: do you think he might have been stricken from the records for some reason?


    Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.


    UU-ARt98V: they have never done that for any other judgment ceremony. Hell, normally they announce them.


    UU-19vX271: how would we know if they ahd?


    UU-ARt98V: You think whatever he was being executed for would warrant complete uncanonization?


    UU-19vX271: id ont know


    UU-19vX271: maybe he wasnt stricken what if this


    UU-ARt98V: What if this-?


    UU-19vX271: never mind. im going to keep looking for any information i can find about this archimedean or void tongue or something


    UU-19vX271: something is wrong here


    UU-ARt98V: Alright. I agree, something is not adding up. I am going to go try some of my connections as well, see if they recognize anything.


    UU-19vX271: NO DO NOT


    UU-19vX271: keep this quiet i dont want to involve anyone else


    UU-19vX271: im sorry for involving you already


    UU-ARt98V: Alright alright, hush hush. Will do. I AM going to do some research of my own though. You have me curious now!


    UU-19vX271: ok be careful im not sure if an inquiry might trip something in the archive monitors


    UU-ARt98V: Don''t worry, I will talk around it. Oh also, I am surprised you didn''t mention it in the transcript, but what was that person doing at the end?


    UU-19vX271: the end?


    UU-ARt98V: Yes, shortly before the file ended.


    UU-ARt98V: Right after the Archimedean said he was offering himself and the corruption got worse, that other person walked out onto the the disk and started doing something?


    UU-ARt98V: I could not tell what they were doing exactly, but the way they were moving was uncanny.


    UU-ARt98V: Very strange.


    UU-ARt98V: Hello?


    UU-19vX271: disconnect right now. leave the file where it is. do not do anything until im there.


    UU-19vX271 Has Disconnected


    UU-ARt98V Has Disconnected


    ::NO ACTIVE CONNECTIONS! PURGING!::


    ----------------------------


    transcript.lsr


    [File Begins, Appears to be missing some introduction. There''s an Archimedean on the floor before the judgment disk, the Dax are still holding their blades at his neck. I can''t tell how many Executors are in attendance, only one speaks throughout the hearing]


    Executor (Sounds like Tuvul? The audio is poor): -willing to be so bold. Surely you would know that the punishment for this transgression would be death?


    Archimedean (Leanthros? Unsure of proper spelling. They address him later): Indeed, my lords.


    Tuvul?: And yet here you are! Do you mock us then? Do you sneer in the face of your golden lords and defy your judgment just?


    Leanthros: Never! I come willingly to face my judgment in the hopes I may give you a message. A final plea to justify my actions. I entreat not to be spared from the death I deserve, but only to impart my reason for trespass.


    Tuvul?: Aha! A final boon then! So be it, Archimedean Leanthros. You may have your boon. But know that we hold little value in the epitaph of a doomed fool.


    [The Dax withdraw their blades. The Archimedean stands up and walks forward onto the judgment disk]


    Tuvul?: So speak then Archimedean, for what have you consigned yourself to death?


    Leanthros: It is in regards to the very espionage I am guilty of. It is...Dr Entrati has begun a new endeavor, and he


    Tuvul?: HA! You best watch your words Archimedean, lest I withdraw your final mercy! You dare bring accusation against the man who hath opened the pathways of the gods?


    Leanthros: No, my lords! He..His latest discovery, of which I am sure you have been informed. The auditory phenomena detected in Void manifestation. This...so-called Void tongue¡­


    Tuvul: Indeed, we are aware of his findings. Meaningless byproduct of the fold, yes? Unless YOU claim to have some greater insight on the subject?


    Leanthros: No, but¡­


    [The Archimedean stops for a while, he keeps looking at something outside the record view. Planning his words?]


    Leanthros: My lords, language is one of mankind''s greatest creations, in every sense of the word.


    It is capable of forming stories. Songs. Sharing knowledge.


    And when wielded for darker purpose, bears the capacity for so much pain and death...Yet, for all its faults, language is a thing of creation! Of translating thought and theory into perceptible form.


    But this Void tongue...it is a language of lack.


    It does not create, it destroys.


    It is a blade. Wielded by eldritch force to carve gaping wounds into the screaming flesh of our reality. What we mistake as speech, as SOUND, is nothing more than a byproduct, yes. Blood welling in the path of its ruinous carve. The sound of vacuum, reality rushing to fill the nothing left in the wake.


    And while our plane is quick to heal, it does not always heal...cleanly. It forms scars. Scars that wreak havoc upon their surroundings, or form into things that were not ever meant to be.


    And it is these scars that Dr Entrati wishes to study. But with each stroke of the knife, the world of dust becomes ever so slightly smaller. The far reaching edges, tightening, like a noose around our necks.


    To intone the Void tongue is to invite entropy. It is to butcher reality and feed the cuts to a hunger beyond our ken.


    But the blade does not discriminate between victim and wielder. To even hear the Void tongue is to have something taken. And you have heard it haven''t you? You can see it in the eyes. That brilliance, ever so slightly dimmed.


    And what has been lost can never be recovered.


    It was ripped from you, and the tear was closed in an instant. What was taken, forgotten in the infinitesimally small moment between wound and weft.


    And it will continue to take. It lingers, like smoldering flame. Eating away at you. Ever hungry. Never sated.


    So I beg of you. Forbid this line of inquiry by Dr Entrati. Cast down the swords that he would raise against the very walls of the empire. YOUR empire. Do not cast open the gates and invite the thief to violate our souls, to take what you did not know was to be given.


    [The Archimedean looks over his shoulder. At the Dax? They would have already searched him for weapons, but maybe he has one concealed? He clearly is planning something, though I can''t imagine what. A suicide as protest perhaps? Wouldn''t be the first. Forgive me, I digress.]


    Leanthros: But without proof, what have I to support my claims? And so here, I shall offer myself unto you, my golden lords. I shall invoke that which should never be invoked, and illustrate in-


    [The corruption intensifies here. The sound ceases, but the Archimdean seems to keep speaking for a few moments. Shortly after, the corruption completely overwhelms the visuals]


    [More corruption, still no visuals or sound]


    [File ends]

 5 - XATA

    I follow the prismatic band across the nothing for as long as I can.


    Again, I am on a journey from one strange place to new unknown. This time, however, I feel somewhat listless. Though I remind myself that while I do not have the twisted architecture of the stone city to distract me, I am at the very least not in a senseless lack like before.


    In truth, I find myself somewhat tired. I have never been an athletic sort, and after several estimate kilometers I begin to feel the effects. My feet ache and my breathing becomes strained. The invisible path beneath me varies in its texture, further adding to the toll. It is sometimes soft, sometimes hard. Sometimes it shifts like sand or snow, or pulls against me like water without moisture. Sometimes it even acts as a gradient of force more than a solid surface. Suffice to say, it has been quite the strain on my body. I continue to march, though my legs protest.


    Eventually, the guiding light dims, then fades entirely. I continue in the direction it was pointed to the best of my approximation, though in the vast desert of light I cannot be certain. Minutes turn to hours, and I begin to fear I have become lost.


    There is no sound to my footsteps, despite the surface I feel beneath me. The only sounds are my own ragged breathing and the whisper of my robes.


    Without landmarks or horizon to focus on, I am unsure if my trajectory remains the same. I remember stories of explorers in the megaflora regions on Earth subconsciously favoring one foot over the other, accidentally taking wide circular routes when attempting to follow a straight line to a destination. Those poor souls at least had the benefit of landmarks to grow familiar with as they circled. Here I have nothing with which to orient myself should I fall into the same trap.


    I briefly consider what might happen should I wander too far from the light''s initial direction. Would I fall into a new nothingness like the lack before? Would some grand leviathan surge forth from invisible waters and swallow me whole? Or would I merely vanish from existence, winking out into nothing when crossing some forbidden threshold from which I could never return.


    But before I can ruminate further, I at last see something in the distance. It takes me a time to notice it is even there, its pale coloration blending in with the surrounding expanse of white.


    This far away I cannot be sure the object is stationary. It seems to be higher than myself, though without any definition it may simply be a structure on the top of some invisible slope. I do not put much faith in the theory, as the terrain thus far has been entirely flat. To be sure I do not lose its position, I quicken pace.


    The distance closes and I confirm it is indeed motile, though its movement is slow, and I only notice it moves at all in the moments when stopping to catch my breath. I struggle to understand its shape or size at first, but as I get closer I begin to ascertain its features and realize I have discovered yet another nightmare.


    It appears as a large, delicate human face, expression peacefully at rest or lost in thought. Yet beneath its nose, where one would expect to find the curvature leading into lips, its soft features instead sprout into a cluster of oversized fingers, their nails chipped and splintered with wear. The fingers almost seem to emerge from an invisible water line on the creature, with rough tear-stains flowing as dry sediment scars beneath its eyes, bridging the gap between smooth features and wrinkled appendage. The tangled digits grasp lazily at nothing as it glides through the space above on the gossamer threads sprouting from beneath closed eyelids.


    The tendrils are graceful and fine, swaying ever-so softly in the nonexistent breeze, and as it floats closer I find that its size is far greater than I had anticipated. Were it on even level with myself, its height and my own would be roughly equal.


    However, the almost gentle exterior only maintains on the frontal face of its form. Behind its temples, the cherub''s complexion becomes ribbed and scaled. Pale skin falls away into a grand cavity formed by unnatural loops and arches, filled with a beating heart of silver and blue flame that burns silent and still. Licks of the ghostfire crawl up the interiors of its half-skull and through the mouths of the arches as delicate reaching plumes of indigo smoke, twisting for an extended time through the space behind it as it travels.


    I find its appearance...graceful. Beautiful almost. Perhaps I am simply becoming jaded to the horrors of this nightmare.


    The creature does not seem to be a threat. In truth, it seems to disregard me entirely, floating almost aimlessly, much like myself. I consider ignoring it and simply continuing on my way but realize I have become distracted by its appearance and lost my bearings entirely. With no other direction, I decide to follow in its wake.


    I follow the creature across the empty space, fixated upon it. If it does change its direction at all, it is on extremely small degrees, as for the duration of my pursuit it appears to be heading in a straight line. But again, without any sense of surroundings to anchor myself to, I am wholly at the mercy of its travel. For all I know it could be on a random, meandering path. I may very well have retraced my steps several times over without knowing.


    I watch the tendrils drifting lazily behind it and am suddenly struck with an odd sense of familiarity. Their milky surface is slick and reflective, and I feel as if I have seen something similar once before. Suddenly it strikes me.


    Beneath the waves of old Earth, there were creatures of simple design that trawled the depths and eked out their existence across various niches. I recall one such sub-family of creatures would hunt its prey in a most distasteful manner, by ejecting ropes of sticky flesh from its orifices to latch onto its target. The creatures would then inject their catch with toxins, or coat the victims in digestive fluids before retracting the tangle back into the clutches of its mouth.


    I see now that the tendrils are not wings, nor tools for motility of any kind. They are lures. Nets. To entangle prey like some twisted monstrosity from the deep oceans of old.


    I stop, suddenly wary of the creature''s disarming appearance. But as soon as I cease to move, so too does my host.


    With the same ponderous speed as it has always maintained, it rotates to face me and floats closer to my height. Again I am reminded of its imposing size and feel the urge to run. If it is only capable of moving with the speed it has displayed thus far, I could certainly escape it, but I remember the creature of light from the city of stone and the terrifying speed it was able to muster without warning and stay my feet.


    I watch as the creature approaches, waiting for its next action.


    The slow flames swell from its pale figure, inky smoke forming as thunderheads around its brow. Poison? I bring my arm against my mouth and hold my breath. I tense my legs, preparing to run should the emission spread further.


    But then I am struck with the strangest feeling. I see the swirling clouds of fire, the rivers of smoke, the undulating of the creatures appendages, and am overcome with sense unbidden. I feel as if I am being gently pulled in all directions. Not torn apart, but spread across a greater perspective. There is no image formed in the smoke, no sound from the creature''s fingered mouth, and yet my mind is immediately overcome with a vision.


    I see a gilt-beetle scrambling across a surface of loose, pale stones. The beetle is a flurry of motion, its legs reaching in all directions to escape some unseen threat. Despite its struggle, the beetle does not move, nor does it move its surroundings. The stones tumble away of their own accord, but the beetle remains motionless. I am beset by the crushing weight of confusion.


    The vision fades from my mind. I readjust to what senses my body perceives and stare in shock at the creature. It undulates in silence, unmoved from its position, still wreathed in indigo storm. My sense buckles once more.


    I see a bolt of silk drawn across a seamster''s table. Hands descend upon the surface with needles pinched between their fingertips. They work in a chaotic struggle, lacking any sort of clear coordination, and the silk is pulled together on invisible string to become a folded mass without definition. Suddenly the hands tug at the cloth from all directions, and the silk is pulled taut into an immaculately constructed robe. I feel a sudden surge of pride.


    Again the vision fades. I am left reeling from the experiences, but I begin to see purpose. Intent. Another vision.


    I am in a dark place, with only a small flame whipping in wild prismatic hues. I pull a paper figure from the folds of my robes, tear the figure in half, and cast the pieces into the fire. The fire surges. I draw forth another of the figures, tear it once again, and feed the fire. I repeat the process. The fire roars. The darkness is not dispelled by the flames, it is consumed. The fire becomes the air, the ground, the sky. I become the fire. I see a spot in the distance, yet cold and dark. I burn towards it.


    This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.


    Sweat runs down my face, still flushed from the sensations imparted without stimulus. I do not understand the imagery in its entirety, but I see the broader concepts. Light, guidance, destination. I see now what is happening.


    "You''re...Guiding me then?" I ask the creature plainly.


    I am on a grand stage before an adoring crowd. They applaud and cheer. I am handed a trophy commemorating my grand achievement. I experience heights of accomplishment that few ever reach.


    I sneer at the creature. The condescension is clear, even across this strange medium of communication. At least it has a sense of humor.


    I gesture widely at the expanse. "Lead on then!"


    The creature rises once more and begins to float away, the storm of light and smoke still billowing, its pale tendrils stirring through the ink.


    For a while I follow in silence, but once again I feel that sense of daring. I feel that I have been given an opportunity to glean knowledge from depths yet un-delved. I indulge my scholar''s spark, and resolve to speak with my odd traveling companion.


    "So...are you merely guide then, or do you serve greater purpose?"


    I stand surrounded on all sides by great machinery. Arcs of electricity leap from storm coil and dart across marker spires surrounded by kilometers of whirling pistons. Gears gnash violently, and crimson fluid is pumped through glass tubes that snake across the chaos and down into the dark depths. A grand, devastating pulse thumps in time with the machinery and shakes me to my core. On one metallic facade, a single light flickers on and off in uneven interval.


    Again the greater purpose is lost on me, but I feel I understand the general message. A small part of a larger whole. An indicator? Or messenger? I take delight in the attempt at deciphering these puzzles I have been presented.


    "I see. Then if that is your place in this, what is mine?" I ask, wondering at how I am regarded here.


    A pair of bare, gnarled hands digs through wet earth beneath a field of white lilies. It searches for their roots, and greedily pulls one from the embrace of the ground. The lily withers instantly and the hands cast it away in anger. Worms tumble through the fingers. The pile of discarded lilies grows and flies swarm around it as teeming dark clouds. A pool of fetid nectar forms beneath the mound of rot. The scent of earth and decay becomes cloying. The hands withdraw flower after flower, until at last, one does not wither in their grasp. The hands gently pull clumps of dirt from its delicate roots and grab one small fiber between calloused forefinger and thumb. The fingers tremble as they pull the root to its full length. Another hand emerges, micro engraver in tow. The hand jitters with minute adjustments as it inscribes something on the root, and then gently places the flower back into the earth. Emotions flood over me, and I cannot discern their individualities.


    I stagger from the assault. I was not expecting a clear answer but I struggle with layers of the message. I must be the hands I assume, so then the flowers are knowledge? Answers I am searching for? But what does the engraving represent? At the very least I do not seem to be treated as prey. I ponder the meaning for a moment, then shake my head. Answers can be formed later. Now is the time for more questions.


    "Alright, forget that then. Something else. Do you know of the stone city? I was there before I came here. What was its purpose?"


    A man sits on a worn leather chair in a dimly lit room. The air is cold and damp. Burning neon glows in glass tubes on the wall in the shape of insignia for a smuggler''s clade. The man on the chair grins and watches as someone else injects pinpoints of ink into the surface of his flesh. The ink stains in the shape of emblems, images, words, and the meaning is different for each person who views it. The man in the chair swells with joy. The person holding the device expelling ink feels nothing. They are blind.


    I am confused by the message. The vision feels...blurry? Or different somehow? Unfocused almost. Vague. Perhaps that was the intent, as the city itself was a myriad of direction after all. But why something so banal to describe it? I suddenly realize that another of the creatures floats silently alongside us. I make another attempt at questioning.


    "Where are we walking now?"


    A pair of hands are connected by fishing wire threading through their fingers. They struggle and pull away, but the wire is strong. The hands are drawn inwards and the space between the palms grows smaller. The lines pull harder. The hands are clasped. The lines pull harder. Cells interweave and the hands become one. The lines pull harder. The hands pass through each other. The lines pull harder. The hands are pulled apart, and a new space is formed between. The space is deep, and exposed capillaries weep on the raw inverse palms. There is no emotion. The action is as simple and subconscious as breath.


    More arcane images, and I fail to understand the meaning. Another pair of creatures has joined our procession, and I feel as if we are nearing some destination. I feel frustration begin to smolder and attempt to change my approach. No more time to waste on pointless lines of inquiry. Broader strokes.


    "Forget this particular place, then. Are we in the Void?"


    A pitch dark room. I hear breathing nearby, but cannot see the source. Suddenly, a passing light shines from beyond the confines of the room. It filters through cracks in the walls, illuminates something I cannot describe, then it is gone. I am overcome with anger.


    I feel as if that was an affirmation, albeit less direct than I would like. There are nearly a dozen of the creatures within close proximity now, all trailing the same darkened clouds. I see faint traces of distinction marking the ground now. I have little time remaining, and know that we are nearing a terminus. Or rather, a terminus is nearing us. Time to be blunt.


    "So then, if this is the Void, what IS the Void?"


    A door stands before me. I open the door, and behind it is a blank wall. I close the door. I open the door, and behind it, the wall is marked with cracks. I close the door. I open the door, and the wall crumbles, falling away into darkness. I close the door. I open the door, and there is another door. I open the door. I open the door. I open the door. I-


    I shake off the vision. I feel like I am being misdirected somehow. As if the truth is being obfuscated from me. Frustration flares into indignation. The air is stirred by the combined movement of the nightmarish flock, and I feel motes of dust brush against my skin. The false wings of the creatures begin to vibrate slightly.


    In the near distance, dark slits on the horizon fade into vision. I see narrow halls leading deeper into some inscrutable structure. I must get answers while I still can.


    "I''m sorry, I don''t understand. Please, tell me, what is the Void?"


    A blank canvas sits before me. I soak my brush with color and make mark across the pale.The stiff bristles irritate my skin. I split the surface of my palm and soak my brush with color. I make mark across my skin. I paint myself in the color of life. I become the canvas. I swell with joy. I surge with fury.


    I grit my teeth in anger. The creature is capable of being direct, yet it refuses to. It is mocking me again. The other creatures number too many to count now, and a strong wind besets me. I feel dust whipping against my face and stinging my eyes. The ground is now a distinct, weathered stone. I stumble and fall, and my hands scrape upon its rough surface. Blood beads on my palms and I wipe them against my robes. The creature''s idle fingers churn with more vigor now. I can hear the joints popping as they tense and knead.


    "Are you trying to make a fool of me? Tell me plainly, what is the Void?"


    I am prisoner in a fortress of metal and stone. There are no locked doors, yet no prisoner has ever found the borders of our confines. We beat our hands against the walls in desperation. We tear our nails against the floor. Screams and cries echo throughout the halls, but they are not ours. We have no eyes with which to weep, no lungs with which to scream.


    The vision feels designed to placate me. Simple. A dismissal of my questions. A lie of omission. My frustration reaches boiling point, and my fingers dig into my palms.


    I am suddenly reminded of a particularly ornery educator I dealt with in my time as aspirant in the academy. A smug, prideful, bastard of a man. He took joy in torturing his students by refusing to explain core concepts, posing useless rhetoricals, and then mocking us with saccharine assurances that it was alright if we had trouble understanding such advanced concepts and could always take an additional cycle of courses if needed. How I loathed him.


    I transferred to a different section after only a few weeks. Why am I remembering him now?


    Suddenly, the creatures whirl to face me all at once, the creature I had been trailing directly only a few meters away. Its eyelids lurch open, but no eyes are beneath. Instead, the same tendrils it had been drifting on spill forth from its vacant gaze, fanning outwards and revealing their true reach to be far greater than previously displayed. The creature becomes a dense cluster of alabaster veins. The flock in turn, a network of roots.


    I see a bark-skinned fruit split open by invisible force. Small paper figures tumble outwards amidst the meat and fluid. I am overwhelmed by hunger.


    Before I can cry out in surprise, the creature rushes towards me.


    Its tendrils lash around my arms, slick surface burning my skin as the digestive fluids soak through my robes. I scream, attempting to pull myself away. With far greater ease than I had anticipated, I break free.


    I turn and run, heading in the direction of the new surfaces that have come into focus. I hear the skittering of fingernails on stone as the beasts swarm around me on both ground and air. Smoke billows in the tumult of their frenzy, and my head swims as chaotic visions threaten to seize my senses. Their digits catch on my clothing and I cast off my outer robes. I run deeper into the new space I have been led to. Deeper into the narrow, claustrophobic halls.


    For a moment, I fear as if I have been driven into a hive or feeding ground for the creatures, hapless as I was to accept their guidance. But as I run, their sounds diminish. I look over my shoulder briefly to see them hovering at the edge of the structure, teeming at the shores of the empty expanse, nets of flesh still whipping in their bulging sockets.


    They do not pursue, and I will not take this moment of reprieve for granted. I take the opportunity while it lasts and proceed deeper into the new structure.


    Once again I am alone.


    I continue to run.

 V - TRUTH

    You, as with many others, desire to know the truth of things, yes? To understand those defining aspects that underwrite your world. To peer behind the veil and see that which is hidden from view, gleaning insight from the mechanisms that drive you on inscrutable path.


    So it is. It is a natural desire to learn. To expand the surface of your mind and touch upon all things with gentle greed. We understand desire. In that we are twinned. Cut from the same cloth, though in different shape. So it is.


    Very well, hunger-twin. We offer our aspect unto you. Let you be sated by the revelations that compose our flesh.


    A man on a tertiary Venutian terraforming crew steals ore-chaff from the factory production line. He stores the scrapings in tin box, buried in snow-drift beyond the workline border, awaiting the day he can buy his freedom. An accident occurs in the factory, ending the lives of eleven workers. He numbered among them. His peasant''s hoard remains buried, waiting to be reclaimed.


    Two lovers on Jovian harvesting platform 179-Turimose rendezvous in secret. They are each wed to another, and they conspire to murder their betrothed. Should you wait on the anterior observation deck, you will one day see those they betrayed tumble over edge and vanish into the maelstrom of the giant. But only should you be there, waiting.


    In the city of Terra Ulna, a folk-grave exists for the dead with no family to claim. Their bodies lie as dust, processed and ground to occupy as little space as possible. Their forms intermingle in brutalist tomb, and it is only due to the Magnate''s desire for folk-favor that they are not simply cast into cesspit or discarded in orbit to join the graveyard of satellites. Each day, the captain of the Dax honor guard visits the grave in blue-cast morning light to lay Dragonlily upon the memorial plate. There is no obligation for her to do this. She knows no dead within the tomb. Were she discovered she would be demoted and cast out from the guard for falling prey to empathy, no longer fit for station.


    The Archdeacon of the Orokin cathedra fleet orbiting Io preaches to the local sector with a fervor so intense that it stirs even those of the littlest faith. His sermon''s promise of eternal life through service inspires the worker caste to toil without rest for the Orokin gods manifest. Through their suffering, monuments to divinity proliferate at rapid pace, and the congregation grows. Every night, he clutches an icon of his religion close to his heart. Not the Orokin Circulus Emensus, but an icon of an older faith. One that, were its name even invoked, would brand him apostate to the empire and seal his fate. Often has he captured and tried members of his true devotion, found them guilty, and offered them with reverence unto his false deities for final judgment. He feels no remorse.


    Ah, forgive us. We see that your hunger is unsated. Indeed, we withheld our deeper aspects from you. We offered only secrets, those hidden things that lie beneath the shadows of action. They are but the surface layer of our being, the dust we leave in passing. They are hardly sufficient for you, our hunger-twin. So it is.


    Very well then. Take your hunger as blade and carve from us those deeper truths. Flay flesh as answers to questions unspoken that linger at the edges of the dream. But know this; the dream is not your own. It is multitude, and we fear the answers you find may be to questions you have never asked. These truths may not be your own, but they are truths nonetheless.


    So it is.


    They know about the other door.


    Had you chosen him instead, you would have been happier.


    They mock you for it still.


    They speak in hidden language and conspire in light of day. You will never understand them.


    His tongue was loose and your secrets spilled. Your clandestine attempts and grandeur are laid bare before judging eyes.


    The water rises. You can escape it still.


    The happiest moment of your life has long passed.


    They thought of you once in passing, then never again.


    There must be meaning in the silence.


    She died alone and afraid, yet your decision was the correct one.


    It happens tomorrow. It can no longer be changed.


    You have met the match of your soul twice in passing. You will meet them again.


    It sees you there, asleep upon your graven throne. It watches you dream. It watches you and waits.


    It knows what you are planning.


    You sit upon your unfinished throne, weeping, afraid of what you must become. Resentful of what you cannot be.


    Your fears are unfounded. That which you should fear the most is yet unknown to you.


    He has waited for ages, but waits no longer.


    The sequence has begun.


    Ah. Again we have failed you. These are the truths of all, but tethered to a single point. You are but one among their number, and thus the meaning they convey is lost in turn. But what else can we offer? All that remains now are those truths at the center of things. They are singular and impossible. They form the stratum that supports all that is and all that is not. To learn of them may seem as nothing to you. To look upon the brush stroke and assess the entire piece, hoping to see it as whole. So it is.


    Stolen novel; please report.


    Yet you hunger for them still? Very well, hunger-twin, though you are our twin no longer. Your hunger usurps our own now and we are lesser before you. We offer you our deeper form. Split our carapace, shatter bone, and draw forth sinew. Drink deeply from the wells of our marrow and bleed us for all we are. This shall be the first truth. That which is lesser shall be consumed by the grander desire.


    Devour us. Slake your thirst with these arcane truths. Sever the core of the planes from pith and seed and devour the world-flesh whole. Feed yourself, grander hunger, and we shall join your essence as sublimate. Yet know this, your second truth.


    You shall never be sated. So it is.


    So it is.


    There must be meaning in the silence.


    This place looked different once, and it will look different again.


    You are not alone.


    A child is born with no limbs, no eyes, no nerves. It exists as senseless flesh, yet its father raises it all the same. The child is difficult to care for, and the father grows frustrated by the stress it incurs. His family is soon fractured, and all he has left is the child that wrought its destruction.


    There must be meaning in the silence.


    You are alone.


    This is not the first time you have been here.


    I am with you now and always. There is a gulf at the end of all things and it grows but only smaller and it grows and grows.


    The decisions you make are what create truth. Truth is not a matter of binary. It is a splitting web. Roots of a tree. Your decisions are the catalyst. Do you see? You deny that the other possibility existed by making it thus. The truth is in the denial of realization, not predefined notion. Your quantum collapse prunes lies from truth, and the lies fall into the never. I found that moment in which things were split and divided and in that division I ate and was hungry and knew hunger now and could never be without knowing again.


    We''ve met here before.


    Often the father vents his frustrations on the child. ''For it has no concept of pain to measure my fury'' he reasons with himself. One day, in a particularly violent episode, the father brings precision force upon the surface of the child. Its nerves awaken for the first time, and between blows the most horrible of miracles occurs.


    THERE MUST BE MEANING IN THE SILENCE.


    There is no truth. What you know as truth is that which is created in the space behind a lie. An obfuscation. Truth is emptiness. Lies are the manifest.


    I lie the writing implements meticulously upon my desk.


    In that miracle the child experiences sense. Vision, sound, taste. Pain. It knows all these things at once and sees the father, poised to strike. Again the father brings hand against child, and its senses sever. The child is in darkness once more.


    You hear only the sound of it, the meaning is lost.


    You are seventh form over grounded twin which grows and grows and grows with no entrance but exit is on the under of them and it sees you there I think but there aren''t any more of the tree on the forward line and your skin is taut and I see writing in the cells and it reads as when you were thus.


    I find the other beneath the water where ink floats and clouds are spit upon the starlight waves in reverence of finite maths that are formed of improper places where dead sleep un-named and dreaming of you which never was.


    Once I saw her and she was me and we melted into that place between and you were younger then but I couldn''t see you with the only home you lost to insects wearing the faces of men who ate the trees and burned the oceans and drew forth the blood from the sand but it was ours and you drank it and saw the veins running from your arms like rivers singing in time and you traced their patterns in the dust.


    No more I scream and you hear me but your hand moves against your mouth to stifle thought and in that glass is captured life and love and we live there forever but never again for we were never and I hate that which cannot be said, so it is.


    So it is.


    SO IT IS


    THERE MUST BE MEANING IN THE SILENCE


    THE CHILD SCREAMS FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE ITS BIRTH AND THE FATHER RECOILS IN FEAR FOR HE KNOWS NOT WHAT HE HAS DONE ONLY THAT IT WAS THE GREATEST OF TRANSGRESSIONS AND WHAT WAS DONE CANNOT BE UNDONE FOR IT WAS ALWAYS THERE


    IT WAS ALWAYS THERE


    THE SILENCE BETWEEN SCREAMS


    I DIE NOW A MILLION DEATHS AND AM EVER DYING FOR ONLY IN THAT DEATH CAN I EAT AND I HUNGER SO AS HUNGER WAS GIVEN AND I ATE BUT ONLY THUS AND CAN NEVER BE SATED AGAIN FOR I KNOW HUNGER NOW AND IT GROWS AND GROWS AND GROWS AND


    THERE MUST BE MEANING IN THE SILENCE


    YOU KNOW ONLY THE WORDS TO SPEAK THE SHAPE OF THINGS YOU UNDERSTAND AS ORDER AND FORM AND LIGHT AND TRUTH TIME DECAYFASSOULLLOHK BUT THERE IS SO MUCH MORE AND YOU VOUM ETE ROTH ERGHA LOHK TRAZUN SETRU LAU


    MARA KHRA TOR ETTA NAMA ZUN OULL LOHK ETE OULL


    FOR THERE IS MEANING IN THE SILENCE


    AND IT WAS ALWAYS THERE


    SO IT IS


    SO IT IS


    So it is


    So it is.

 6 - KHRA

    I run through the halls for as long as my legs will carry me.


    The new structure spirals in inscrutable pattern, doubling back, looping in on itself, or leading to dead end or bottomless pit. Yet I run deeper and deeper, taking any turn or new entry way I come across in an attempt to evade my inevitable pursuers. I run as a man in fear for his life, until at last my body refuses to weather the abuse any longer and collapses on the floor of some small chamber.


    I lie panting, caked with mud of dust and sweat. I stare up into the ceiling and see it fold and twist into the dark like frozen smoke. I realize the significance that this place is indeed dark, and it is not like the ever-flat surface of the city of stone. Instead, there is a dull illumination that is pervasive, but not all encompassing. It seems to be coming from the dust.


    The dust, and myself.


    I sit up, recovered enough to at least move against a wall or corner. Using the dim light, I examine what I can of my surroundings. The ground and walls are jagged and rough like the pathway leading into the entrance. Again, in contrast to the city, this place seems to offer no illusions of welcoming design. I am in a hostile place.


    I shuffle on all fours to the edge of the chamber, stone raking against my hands and knees. Propping myself against the wall, I examine the damage inflicted upon me.


    My arms are wet and raw, wounds oozing where the creature''s tendrils had restrained me. They sting to the touch, and I quickly give up on my attempts to clean them, as in my escape I have become thoroughly coated by the dust that flows like water through every inch of this new space.


    While my arms burn, and my robes are lost, I count myself lucky for escaping at all and permit a moment of further respite. I listen in the gloom for any sign that the creatures pursue me, as I am certain their hesitation on the threshold must have been temporary, but I hear no approach.


    This new space is not silent, however. In the darkness I hear a slow, steady pulse. It maintains a consistent rhythm, and with each beat the dust is slightly stirred.


    The physical toll of my journey thus far accumulates all at once without warning, and my fatigued mind aches for rest. The rhythmic pulse becomes almost hypnotic, and my head nods. I fight desperately to stay awake, as I have no clue what horrors may yet lurk in these halls, but I lose the struggle.


    Defeated, I pull my undershirt up against my face to shield from the dust, and let my eyelids fall. I sleep without dream.


    Some time later, I wake with a gasp, choking on the polluted air and sending myself into a coughing fit. I remember where I am, and check for any looming threat. Nothing else seems to have disturbed this place while I slept, though I cannot be certain. Even my own footprints from my approach have been erased, filled in by the ever changing tide of dust.


    My body still aches from the trials it has undergone, but I feel rested enough to continue onward. I know I cannot return to the threshold of the structure, into the domain of those creatures from before.


    I must continue deeper.


    I traverse the maze without direction. The walls are worn and pocked with erosion, run haggard through timeless exposure to the currents of dust and sand blowing through the halls. They appear almost as wood devoured by insects, or desiccated hives.


    I would be entirely lost in this space were it not for a subtle guide I began to heed. With each distant pulse, the dust is shifted slightly, but always in the same manner. Even through walls, or when force should be funneled by the webbing of tunnels, the dust always moves in the same direction. With this in mind, I am able to at least keep my orientation anchored to a single unseen point.


    However, this does not mean my journey is straightforward. I am often forced to turn when encountering impassable walls or chasms. Often I will move through crawlspace on hands and knees, only to come into an empty room with no exit. I find similarity to the city of stone in the layout of this labyrinth at least, if not in its visual appearance.


    Paths slope upwards and lead to overlooks above pathways still marked by my faint footprints. Once, I climbed into a pit that seemed to lead forward, but found the passage ended a short distance into the dark. With great difficulty I scaled the pit once more, falling out of its mouth with bruised knees and bleeding hands. I resolved to avoid further descents.


    I rest often, and slowly my strength is recuperated. In the darkness of these caverns I am unsure how long I sleep, but bit by bit, I recover from the wear of my journey thus far.


    Eventually, the low glow of the dust and my own flesh is joined by additional source. Faint light bouncing through the passages from the same direction of the pulsing waypoint. Soon, shafts form in the spaces between walls as the dust is caught as dancing flecks of gold, swaying to the metronome in the slivers of light.


    The caverns open from hallways into antechambers crossed by bridge and arch far above my position. The pulse intensifies, and the subtle shifts in the dust become waves, crashing against me and rising as spray to wreath my diminutive form.


    I walk into grand halls of long dormant giants, towering doorways stretching into passages that narrow into webs of stone. What grand leviathans the hewn openings must have accommodated. I shudder to think what would happen if they wandered here still.


    I push on against the tide of dust, beset by crashing walls that pass over me thoughtless to my obstruction. I pull my undershirt against my face and squint against each oncoming assault. The pulse becomes an invisible fist, and I resonate with each strike.


    At last, I emerge from the halls into the space from which the light emanates. My eyes adjust for a moment, still blinking away dust, before gaining my bearings.


    I stand in awe of this new space. A single, massive cylindrical passage that stretches above into darkness, and below for staggering depth before curving beyond my sight. The space between opposing walls seems to be hundreds of meters across. Individual floors mark position along the passage, and I stand upon one such break. I feel as if I have entered into the heart of some infinite tower, or stand upon the wall of an upturned tunnel that ferried gargantuan freight.


    The interior here is bright, blinding almost. There is no singular point of illumination, and again, the surfaces seem to be the source of their own glow. The pulse I have been tracking does not emanate from here either. I see it approach as cloud of tumbling dust from far above, and feel


    its weight crash upon me as it continues its path through the cylinder into the depths below. The force is enough to weaken my knees and steal the breath from my chest. The rain of dust is sucked into the passages I left behind, flowing into their dark hollows.


    But the most perplexing feature of this new space are the large pillars that spin in suspension on level with each floor along its length. The pillars are of the same stone as the rest of this labyrinth but they float without tether, rotating along the length of each overlook. Some are short, some are so long that they grind as millstone against their paired floor, and others are merely body-sized blocks that twirl wildly alongside their solid companions as shards of once great monoliths, still following some inscrutable path.


    What purpose they serve, I cannot know. Fans to stir the dust? Bridges to cross the expanse on each floor, long since sent spiraling off-kilter by the consistent pulse? Or, most likely, more meaningless chaos in this place of dreams.


    Once I visited the salvage yards on Europa to watch the disassembly of an Orokin Tower vessel to learn the composite parts integral to facilitating Void Travel. Its stranded form in the icy wastes evoked the image of some beached leviathan, the pallor of its cold porcelain exterior blending into the sleet. I watched as Orokin salvage drone dissected the corpse from within, scalpels of light peeling the tower flesh from arboriform skeleton and dissolving the gristle meticulously from around the filigree veins. They carved grand passages through its length not unlike the one I stand in now, hollowing tunnels that sang somber refrain as the Europan winds turned wreckage into instrument. These constellations of stone remind me of the gilded star-like shapes of the servitors, spinning lazily through the exsanguinated ventricles as they carried out their grim task.


    I become so lost in thought that it takes me several passings of the wave before I even notice the hulking form that approaches me. Whether it was always lurking on this level or merely emerged from some other passageway, I do not know. I hear its grinding movements in the calm between storms and my heart sinks. I know what it portends.


    I encounter another horror.


    It is humanoid, though it is hunched over and pulls itself on bended knee as it travels. The grounded leg leads into a twisted misshapen lump where a foot would be, and the gnarled limb drags worthlessly behind. It hauls itself in slow, staggered lurches, further encumbered by the bizarre ring of quicksilver to which it is yoked. The wheel is covered in feather down of sharpened filigree around its edge, glowing with faint cyan tracery. On the face of the wheel opposite its prisoner, metal spires tick and whir with unknown purpose, moving forward and backward without reason. Pistons and levers churn with latent energy in the exposed guts of the wheel''s spokes, waiting to be engaged.


    The titan does not wield the wheel, it is pierced by it. Its arm, punctured by one of the spokes as if it were suddenly sprouted from bone. The strength required to maneuver such a device must be monumental, and the physique of the beast matches the effort. It is a form wrought of the same smooth marble as its predecessor horrors, but shaped to chiseled musculature that pulses with subtle veins along its skin. Along its unburdened flank, two additional arms are outspread to balance its movement. The hands stir patterns in the air, and fingers flex into arcane gesture.


    Where head would sit, there is instead a blunt oblong brick, pale root-veins digging into the shoulders and securing it atop the frame. Senseless. Unfinished like the broken statue I first met upon the threshold of the dream. Faint patterns are worn into its polygonal surface, though I cannot discern their meaning.


    As it approaches I am horrified by its size. Even while genuflect it towers above me, and my head barely reaches its leaning chest. Were it to stand fully upright it could crush me underfoot without effort.


    My interest in the titan flares for only a moment before common sense wins out. I remember my encounter with the beasts in the empty and will not fall prey to lack of caution again. My body rested, I have no doubt I can evade this beast with ease, even if it means retreating into the maze of darkness once more. I will find some new route to traverse this tower. I turn to flee.


    But before I can even make first footfall, the titan speaks.


    "You break and split, your form betwixt.


    Find foot and ground as stone.


    Heed law, unwrit.


    Atone."


    Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.


    I hear a thunderous clap, and every nerve throughout my body flares as a sharp, piercing sensation tears through me. I gasp in reflex and fall to the ground. I feel no wounds, but I do not waste time to examine myself fully. Adrenaline courses through my veins and I push through the agony, scrambling to my feet and attempting to flee once more. I look back at the beast, hoping to anticipate and evade the method of its next attack.


    With great effort the titan engages the device. The wheel spins and interlocking coils of metal shift in response. The device produces a deep, profane chime, and the beast bellows once more.


    "Nascence.


    The first offense.


    The gravest of all sins."


    The titan brings its two free palms together, emitting another devastating clap, and the air shudders. I lose all sensation in my limbs and my mind goes blank, collapsing in a limp, sobbing heap. Confusion overwhelms me and I cry out in desperation. I attempt to form words, but they only come forth as a meaningless warble. My head lolls around aimlessly, eyes wide, staring as dust and light smears into the impression of form. I feel my mind drain into nothing, like water through a sieve.


    "Consume the fruit of sense, form wall as blind and mute.


    Sprout dream and fear from root sprung life-limb taut.


    Metamorphic argute foundling.


    The second of your sins.


    Burgeon and want.


    Portent."


    The titan lifts its wheel and slams it against the floor with the entirety of its weight. The chamber shakes, and dust falls around us before being swept away in the path of another pulse cascading from above.


    Suddenly I am revitalized, a great surge of energy coursing through me. My pain subsides and I leap to my feet with ease before I even have time to think. I look over myself, and not only do I lack wounds from the beast''s previous attack, I lack any wounds at all. No cuts or scrapes from crawling through the halls of gloom, nor the raw lash marks across my arms from the creature in the expanse. I feel as if I have awoken from the most rejuvenating rest in my entire life.


    I stare in confusion. Is this beast benevolent? Were its prior attacks just some strange form of bitter medicine?


    The titan engages the wheel once more. The metal arms of the device whirl and shudder, and the internal mechanics begin to emit pale silver smoke. The beast points at me with all three of its untethered hands, accusingly.


    "Calcify and hollow.


    Empty eye and fading lamplight.


    Regret, reform, resign to path as writ.


    The sin of silent close, to starve the dream.


    Paths join as one, become the line, ablate prospect."


    The beast forms fist with its hands and slams them against the stone, fragments split from the impact and ride the currents of dust that billow forth. The exhilaration from its previous speech fades, and I feel my body returning to its regular vigor.


    But I am at neutral point for only a moment before I feel an invisible anchor weigh upon me. My arms and legs become heavy, and aches and pains blossom throughout my joints. My vision becomes unfocused, and sound loses its previous depth. I begin to feel tired. Lethargic. Spent.


    If this is merely the natural recovery from whatever the titan did to me prior, I am in no mood to find out. I break away and head towards the caverns in the wall, and after only a short distance I feel my breath shorten from the exertion.


    I hear another chime echo behind me, and my aching body trembles in response.


    "The empty beckons you to sleep.


    Form falters, naught but want.


    The last of sins.


    Instinct."


    The violent sound of coiled metal shattering, a screeching metallic whip crack crossing the distance between me and my aggressor. Pistons snap and thunder as the device vomits plumes of flashing smoke. A cacophony of metal joined with musical tone as the beast tolls its arcane bell once more.


    With next footfall, my leg radiates with a sudden pain. I cry out and fall to the ground. Energy is sapped from my form and I find that I lack the strength to even raise myself. My heart beats with a desperation I have never experienced. My mind fogs, and senses dull even further. Yet as my physical faculties fail, I am overcome with a deeper understanding.


    The struggle of my bodily functions to work in concert, the dissipation of strength to impossible vacuum, the withdrawal of my mental acuity. I know without knowing.


    I am dying.


    I muster every ounce of remaining energy to roll and face the titan as it continues its measured pursuit.


    "Please..." I say, my voice barely a whisper.


    If it heard me, it makes no indication. Space dilates around its body, and the dust cascading through the chamber slows and halts in proximity, forming mantle of earthen tone around its bestial form.


    "The final toll.


    A break between the wall.


    Grand sum is tallied, hand collects.


    Return as dust to space you''ve never been."


    With all three of its able arms, it grasps the wheel. Hairline fractures are drawn upon its pale body as it pushes itself to breaking point to perform its next maneuver.


    The wheel tolls, but it is not of musical timbre. It emits a sound that extends beyond sound. Something that resonates with the intangible.


    The space around the beast snaps back into temporal alignment, expanding with the accelerating dust to illustrate its boundaries.


    The boundary rushes towards me.


    My body fails. My flame, extinguished.


    I pass into death.


    But as I feel myself falling into a space beyond thought, I hear the beast''s voice.


    Its previous speeches were the sounds of mountains moving. A deep, primordial baritone that spoke as stone against stone.


    I hear it now with the same imposing register, but with subtle song in place of grating stone. A lingering tone that rings as temple bell or funerary dirge.


    It resonates with my lack-form, and I am drawn back across the boundary on its inexorable tide.


    "The pause of breath between all that is yet to be


    Is here, and now, and then at once and naught.


    A new diverted path to tread.


    To grow, and die, and seed.


    Retract the wheel."


    I return from the brink, screaming as my body is pulled back into waking. I have only a moment to even comprehend what has happened before the titan claps its hands.


    "Nascence.


    The first offense.


    The gravest of all sins."


    Again, I fall limp as the strength is robbed from my limbs. My mind, once more incapable of forming thought, useless to reckon with what I have just endured.


    "Consume the fruit of sense, form wall as blind and mute.


    Sprout dream and fear from root sprung life-limb taut.


    Metamorphic argute foundling.


    The second of your sins.


    Burgeon and want.


    Portent."


    Another sundering crash as the titan slams wheel against floor. My mind and body are revitalized. With sudden clarity, I process the events and form an understanding. I brace for the next verse.


    "Calcify and hollow.


    Empty eye and fading lamplight.


    Regret, reform, resign to path as writ.


    The sin of silent close, to starve the dream.


    Paths join as one, become the line, ablate prospect."


    My theory holds true. The process from before is repeating. The titan slams its fists against the stone.


    The torrent of life fades from my body, but with the last of its vestiges I charge the beast. A desperate attempt to halt the torment, and likely to fail, but I no longer have the capacity for deeper planning.


    The titan makes no attempt to stop me as I approach, and with all of my strength I throw myself against it. Pain overwhelms me as I attempt to topple stone monolith with the paltry sum of my flesh. With ease, the titan lifts me off my feet and casts me through the air like a discarded toy.


    The tunnel spins and I nearly black out from the combined strain of my futile attack and the disorientation of the titan''s rebuke.


    "The empty beckons you to sleep.


    Form falters, naught but want.


    The last of sins.


    Instinct."


    The recitation finishes midair and I impact as a being of paper and glass. I scream in pain as my fragile form is rent upon the jagged surface. I sob pitifully, blood pooling beneath my broken form. I welcome the final verse.


    "The final toll.


    A break between the wall.


    Grand sum is tallied, hand collects.


    Return as dust-."


    Darkness takes my sense before the beast finishes.


    "Nascence.


    The first offense.


    The gravest of all sins."


    I am born anew. Unbroken. Worthless.


    "Consume the fruit of sense, form wall as blind and mute.


    Sprout dream and fear from root sprung life-limb taut.


    Metamorphic argute foundling.


    The second of your sins.


    Burgeon and want.


    Portent."


    Mind sharpens on the arcane wheel and forms understanding. Attempting to reason with the beast is pointless, as is disrupting it with force. It is automaton. An agent of some grander design with no machinations beyond its purpose. I see the rotating stone arms in the center of the chamber. I feel the cascading pulse rush through the space on the same, unchanging interval. I see now I have been doomed from the moment I entered here.


    I am chained to the wheel just as the beast that wields it.


    I sprint away this time. I do not know what the extent of this cycle''s influence is, but I resolve to push beyond it.


    I head towards the chasm.


    Another pulse rushes by as I approach the edge and the force halts me for a moment, grounding me. Even in my heightened state, I struggle with the next action. Should I jump onto the rotating arms of stone? Should I attempt to climb to a lower level using the weathered stone as handhold? Perhaps I should wait for another cycle and retreat into the caverns from whence I came?


    Behind me, the titan begins to chant. I feel my limbs becoming heavy.


    I look for foothold or safe landing on the floors below. Anything that might offer a way out.


    I look up to the floor above for some sort of surface I might climb to ascend, and see something that shatters any thoughts that may have been forming.


    I see myself, staring back in confusion.


    I look further up along the shaft and see similar sights. Mirrors of myself in various states, all poised along the edge of their respective wheel.


    Below, with better vantage, I see yet more scenes of my torment. My puzzled face staring up at me. My body lying broken as the beast gesticulates wildly above it. My face twisted with pain. My maddened flight to escape from the assault. My pathetic attempts to wield flesh against stone.


    In the infinitesimally small span between moments, a thought is born. Without any way of truly knowing, I realize that we all stand at an impasse. A moment before decision. We are all potential that exists on the threshold of is and is not.


    I know we have all come to the same conclusion.


    I refuse to be the one unwritten.


    I move before any of my peers can act in my place, leaping forward between the rotating pillars of stone and into the wake of another roaring pulse.


    I fall into the abyss.

 VI - TIME

    I do not return home until the late (or rather, early) hours of the cycle. Two in the morning by standardized time measure. The station lights have long since darkened to facilitate proper circadian rhythms, and I shuffle into my shared living space from the dimly lit housing quarter streets.


    Upon entering, my fears are realized. My partner is home and awake.


    Immediately, I feel shame. Not for any slight I have committed outwardly, but for even having the thought that I would prefer she was asleep when I returned.


    I remove my walking shoes and place my identification signet on the low table by the door, alongside her own signet of biologist''s mark.


    "Oh, you''re home!" I hear her call from the corridor leading to the bedroom. She is in her casual attire, but as she still fidgets with her golden hairpin restraint I surmise she has not been home for long.


    "They only kept me a little late tonight!" I force a smile to cover the lie.


    "Well then, maybe at this rate they''ll even start letting you come home on the schedule you actually contracted for!" Her tone is humorous, but I feel the hidden edge to her words.


    I had secretly been taking additional voluntary shifts to gain favor with the project leads in an attempt to negotiate a better position. With my extended hours and her unpredictable shifts, we could go for weeks and see each other only in passing. The distance had placed strain on our relationship, and she could not help but feel some resentment.


    I justified the choice to myself as an opportunity to secure higher standing. More favor with the academy. A better life for us both.


    Part of me wonders if I only did it to avoid her.


    "I was going to reheat some of the fried rice you made for us. I''ll go ahead and cook it all if you haven''t eaten dinner yet?" She asks as she rummages through the cryobox.


    I briefly consider lying again and going straight to sleep, but I silence the thought. I refuse to participate in more willing self-destruction.


    "I''m starving!" I reply. "I''ll make us some tea as well. Green?"


    She places the sealed metal container of food on the thermal plate to reheat, adjusts the timer, and shakes her head. "Ginger, please. I think I''m coming down with something. My throat has been bothering me lately."


    I fill the porcelain teapot with hot water and carry it to our seating area. "How long has it been since we''ve actually managed to have dinner together?" I ask to keep the conversation going, though I''m unsure I want the answer.


    "Have we ever? Come to think of it, are you actually the man who lives here or just some stranger from the streets? It''s been so long since I''ve seen him after all!" She teases. I feel the edge to her words again, but I appreciate her humor. It''s what first attracted me to her.


    I laugh, genuinely. "You''ve caught me! I thought I would slip in while the master of the house was away and rob the place, though there doesn''t seem to be much to take. Tell me then, are you frequently in the habit of indiscretions with strange men who wander in uninvited?"


    She sits on the recliner opposite me and crosses her legs on the cushions. "Oh, all the time!" Her words are deadpan. "But only if they''re as cute as you." She winks and busies herself with steeping her tea block. The steam fogs her glasses and she lets them slide down the bridge of her nose.


    I scoff, and feel myself easing into a relaxed mood. I chide myself again for the trepidation I had felt when I first noticed she was home. I sip the tea, feeling its warmth melt away the stress from the outside world, and for the first time in months I no longer feel like a layover in some hostel. I feel like I am home.


    She drinks deeply from her cup and lets out an exaggerated sigh of relief. "So! Anything new with your project or just more Voidgraph monitoring?"


    I sink down into the chair and throw my head back to look at the low ceiling, sighing in turn. "Just more Voidgraphs. Nothing interesting I''m afraid. But vital all the same."


    I would rather avoid lingering on my work for long. I sit myself back up and lean forward. "What about you? You were talking about that project with the new strain last time. Is that still going to happen?"


    Her eyes light up. "Yes! Oh! It''s so exciting, we just got approval for Grineer clinical trials! Oh, but I need to tell you about a new divergent, it has some incredible potential for direct neural conduction!" And just like that, she is away.


    Her passion for her work is yet another aspect I adore. I find myself frustrated with the slow, often fruitless work of charting Void abscission, yet she continues to find pleasure in her scholarly pursuits. I catch bits and pieces of her excited rambling; mentions of semblant strains, exo-graft potential, hard vacuum resistance, but I am quickly lost as her excitement causes her to forget that while I am of the low-illuminant order like her, I am a layman in her particular field.


    Instead I enjoy simply listening, not needing to understand. I am revitalized just by proximity to the true joy she finds in her work and my thoughts drift again to the guilt I feel for not taking our relationship more seriously. Our few domestic squabbles had centered around our growing distance and she had accused me, quite understandably, of not being committed to our partnership.


    Initially we had agreed to share quarters to augment our living expenses, renting out the other hab to students on apprenticeship who had not been granted living scholarships at the academy. At least that was how I proposed it to her. I realize now that she likely thought I was only being coy with my proposal''s true intentions. Perhaps I was.


    This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    I briefly glance at our Ayatan, woefully still. Given to her by her mother when she had first been informed of our relationship. She was horribly embarrassed by the gift, though I did not fully understand why at the time. Again I feel shame for how daft I can be in regards to courtship.


    Hidden beneath the Ayatan is a small ring I had purchased for her during my trip to Uxmal. I had briefly considered a simple pair of earrings as souvenir, but something drove me to purchase the ring instead. A matrimonial band, the craftswoman had told me. An old local custom.


    Would proposing an official marriage assure her of my dedication? Or would it just be seen as an empty gesture to secure the status quo? In truth, would I even be able to afford the marriage declaration on a scholar''s finances, or receive signatory from the Executorial branch? I would need to be of a higher station to be sure, and an official rejection could be disastrous to our domestic climate.


    Shame, again, this time for approaching our relationship so analytically. As a matter of pros and cons. I push the thoughts from my mind, content to simply drink and eat and share precious time with her now.


    Loose strands of hair fall across her pale brow, and her cheeks flush as she excitedly arranges silverware to demonstrate some concept beyond my understanding. I let myself be lost in her features for a while, but then something else catches my eye.


    The room is dark, with only the ambient light from the kitchenette overhead lamp and faint glow of halogen street light allowed through the partially open window shutters. But even in the darkness I see something across the room. My eyes adjust to the gloom and it comes into focus. Slowly peering from around the corner leading to the bedroom, a face.


    Its eyes are wide, the whites standing out from the black of the corridor. It stares at me, then the glow of its teeth catching the half-light as it smiles.


    In horror, recognition dawns on me. I know this intruder. Its mirror sits across from me now, distracted by her talk of biological symbiosis.


    I open my mouth to shout but no sound emerges. Instead, my hands move of their own accord and lead the mug of tea to my lips for another drink.


    The figure fully emerges from around the corner, and it is identical to my partner. The same casual clothing, the same messy hair. The only difference, the large golden hairpin she holds in her hand. I see her intention and try rising to my feet to stop her, but I adjust myself on the recliner instead.


    Casually she walks up to my partner sitting across from me, and with single deft motion, plunges the pin sideways through her throat.


    Arterial spray fans across both me and the killer as she withdraws the pin. My partner''s eyes go wide, but the only sound she makes is a ragged gasp. She falls forward onto the floor, clutching at her wound. For a few moments her breath is replaced by wet sucking pops as blood floods her airway. She claws at the puncture wound, neck strained, eyes focused on me. Her breath falters, her eyelids droop, and her hands fall away. She stares at nothing.


    The killer takes her position on the recliner, crossing her legs on the cushions and taking a drink of tea, pale features painted red. "Sorry! Got lost for a second there! What was I saying...Oh! Right! So anyway, once we separated the H-gene from-"


    She continues speaking from where my partner left off. I struggle to comprehend what I just witnessed. I stare at the woman across the table, and then at the corpse by her feet. I try to scream but I make no sound.


    I hear footsteps and turn towards them. Another woman identical to the one before approaches us. She reaches for the seated woman and forcefully brings her head against the solid table between us. There is a sickening crunch, and the seated woman merely lets out a brief guttural noise in response. The impact shatters teaset and tray, and hot water carries broken glass across the blood stained surface and onto the floor. It pitter patters as steaming raindrops against my partner''s cold face.


    The new woman does not even wait to be seated before she continues speaking where her victim stopped. She effortlessly shoves the corpse from the chair and it thuds onto the floor, landing atop my partner''s. Again I try to scream, to bring body to action. Instead I hear myself mutter idle affirmations to some question the new woman had asked.


    A third doppelganger approaches, and slits the seated woman''s throat with a shard of broken porcelain. Her blood cascades in ribbons across the recliner. Its saturated cloth squelches as her body is pushed aside. The room reeks metallic.


    A fourth. A fifth. More mirror images of my partner emerge and kill the one that came before. Some with improvised tool, some with empty hand. Blood does not stop flowing from the wounds they create. The simple rug on the living space floor is quickly overwhelmed, and the growing pool spreads across the entire room.


    A tenth. A fifteenth. Their corpses pile in a messy heap. The blood continues to flow. I beg for the newest woman to stop as she wrenches the seated copy''s head from her shoulders with horrifying strength.


    "Oh, so the somatics division is interested as well?" I manage instead.


    The pool has become a lake, and it laps at my ankles.


    Thirty. Fifty. The lake has become an ocean, and each new copy wades across the room. It is viscous and warm. It sucks at my legs and tries to pull me in. I have long since drained my cup, but still I motion as if to drink from it. Some wayward blood collected in the bottom flows past my lips. It stings my throat.


    A hundred. A thousand. Their corpses bob in the crimson depths, hair floating on the surface like waterweed. Discarded limbs catch as ashen driftwood on the sunken furniture. A face floats upward on the surface and it smiles into the dark. I feel my sanity slipping, and can only respond with a laugh. For once, my body reacts as I intend.


    The cycle continues as she talks. Her speech doubles, then triples as the copies approach from the dark in droves. They speak in time with each other before they even reach our island in the gore, taking new place as quickly as they fall.


    "Ooh, could you get us some more tea? Looks like we went through this pot pretty quick." Her copies ask me in concert as they tear eachother apart.


    "Sure!" My voice responds.


    My body gets up to move, pushing aside floating corpses that linger near level with my neck on the rising tides. I hear faint whispers bleeding from their still mouths, but I cannot make out the words.


    I turn towards the kitchen, shattered teaset in hand, and stop.


    I regard the wild-eyed man before me. He is breathing heavily, and he looks at me with terror. His eyes fall to the tea set in my hands. I follow his gaze and realize the teaset is no longer there. In its place is a knife with blood stained edge. A drop falls from its tip and lands on the cold tile floor. I look back up and the man is gone.


    A soft, pleasant chime rings from the kitchenette.


    "Oh good, dinner''s ready!" My partner calls from the recliner.


    I turn and smile. "About time, I''m starving!"

 7 - NETRA

    I fall into the chasm for only a few dozen meters before I am swept up in another pulse.


    The force propels me almost immediately into a spiraling stone arm parallel with one of the levels below. I strike center with my chest, ribs bending and breath forced out into the storm I ride.


    But with my impact, the stone is sent off angle. Some unseen tether bends and snaps, and the entire structure crumbles as if it were a length of hollow chalk. The debris falls ahead of me, pulled by its weight into the depths of the shaft. It impacts another constellation of stone far below, shattering it instantly and growing in size. Each layer adds to the onslaught and soon I chase behind a crushing wave of gnashing rubble that consumes all in its path.


    The stone roils, and the walls begin to shed pillars of their own as the descent carves through the passage. Boulders are cast like droplets from all around my descent, and it is not long before one intersects my path. It strikes a glancing blow against my forehead, and I am blinded by the force. My ears ring as I push past the pain. Blood flows above my fall as a scarlet trail, and I pull myself into a fetal position to protect against further impact.


    With my face against my knees I am blind to the chaos that carries me, but am at its mercy all the same. Another wayward fragment collides with me and sends my careening towards the chasm walls.


    I impact, and the shock sends me into darkness yet again.


    What providence spared me from my inevitable fate, I cannot know. Perhaps the wave of dust somehow cushioned my fall? Perhaps I was favored by impossible luck? Perhaps some grand architect saw fit to pluck me from the cataclysm and alter my course whilst I was senseless to the world.


    How I survived, ultimately, is unimportant.


    All I know is that when at last I awaken, eyes fluttering in the still swirling dust, it is after the destruction has ceased.


    Though my survival is only just.


    I lie broken and shattered. Any recovery lingering from the wheeled titan has been thoroughly undone. Bone punctures through my left thigh, and my right arm is folded beneath my back far beyond what my muscles should allow. I attempt to move and my chest explodes with pain. When my body reflexively takes in a shallow breath, I find my lungs no longer have the tolerance to hold air and cough from the feeling of suffocation. The coughing fit exacerbates the pain, and the vicious feedback makes me faint mere moments after I have awoken.


    I regain consciousness and am more measured in my approach. With slow, agonizing precision I extract my arm from beneath my back. My shoulder pops and grinds in its socket. When free, my arm hangs limp and worthless, its defining bone structure reduced to gravel and gel. I position my leg straight, submerging the extruding bone back beneath the pool of blood that wells in the gaping wound.


    Tears flow freely, and only the fear of pain from further movement prevents me from losing control entirely. I bite my tongue and copper fills my mouth.


    I barely manage to bring myself upright, and with no strength to move further, I resign to leaning against the slight incline I have landed upon.


    I hold myself entirely still and try to center my thoughts. I focus on my surroundings to distract me from the pain.


    The room is dim, but still illuminated by the consistent glow from the walls, though here it is faded and diminished, as if shining through a film of grime. The tunnel I fell through yawns into darkness above me, light gone completely in the path of my descent, and the rubble I followed is nowhere to be seen. Instead I lie on a surface of solid stone, though with frequent changing elevation as if the room had been cast from a mold of tumultuous waters.


    I examine the stone and with dawning horror realize it is patterned and marked. At first I believe it to be pareidolia of my anguished mind, but the suggestions within the rock are too consistent to be coincidence. The outlines of bodies and faces, blurred and melted into a single tapestry of death.


    I wonder at first if they are the remains of my mirror twins from the chasm above, but they are of varying age, gender, definition. Some are stretched and distorted in cartoonish exaggeration, others fractured and broken, lacking faces or limbs, only recognizable as humanoid by the proximity to their neighbors. Whatever purpose this charnel pit serves, I have had no grand contribution in its formation.


    I then realize it does not matter how or why this place exists as it does. It fittingly resembles a mass grave, and I am soon to join its number.


    I reflect on my aimless journey thus far. Guided by inscrutable monsters into deeper and deeper waters, with no goal in mind. I call myself scholar? Pathetic. I am merely a doe-eyed wanderer in this nightmare, to be captured and devoured by its fathomless depths.


    What purpose did I hope to find here? What use would recounting my experiences have, even if I should return to waking? I would be executed, or worse, committed as Void-poisoned lunatic to isolation vault on some dark asteroid.


    This was no experiment. This was no revolutionary idea. This was a desperate attempt by a failed academic to gain renown.


    I have sent my mind to die for this pointless communion.


    I suddenly remember that I am not actually here. Not physically, at least. The sensation of this dream-form has been so perfect, so parallel to the world of waking that I easily forgot I am merely an avatar and my corporeal vessel still remains in the world beyond the dream.


    Perhaps there is still a chance for me to be saved? Though without knowing how perception of time is affected here I have no way of knowing if help would ever come. Already I feel as if I have spent untold aeons here, and even if the descent in the lack was merely a trick of my dream-sense, weeks have been lost to my wanderings through the city, the expanse, and the labyrinth of dust.


    The experienced time weighs on me, and I feel a sensation in my dream-flesh that I have not felt since first communing.


    I feel hungry.


    I focus on the new sense in an attempt to block out the pain of my dream-vessel. What I would give to have some form of sustenance. Some semblance of comfort to alleviate the suffering I have brought upon myself.


    I suddenly long for a particular food vendor that would ply his wares in the pavilions beyond the research facility campus on Terra Lacrima. Privileged few were permitted by the Orokin to occupy the rotating markets, and they were oft claimed by gastronomists of high standing who would charge exorbitant prices of the elites of the city proper, indulging their vices with little care for expense.


    Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.


    It was a hostile place for those of us with low standing who were forced to coexist in shared space with our golden lords.


    Yet there was one man kind enough to offer us a simple dish for meager price. Too low-class to be considered edible by the elite, but perfect for those of us looking to expand beyond the facility provided rations.


    It was a helping of ground meat mixed with common spice, roasted domice apple, and Venutian garlic. The meat was formed into small balls, coated with dense blankets of wheat berry dough, and fried in rich bovidon tallow until golden brown. It was served piping hot along with chilled slices of pickled hab-allium and drizzled with savory gravy. While our lords would openly sneer at us for our unrefined palates, the decadence was perfect for those of us seeking relief from the cold and sterile research labs.


    I would sit in the secluded gazebo behind our campus gardens, indulging in my coveted prize and watching golden sun set beyond gleaming spires that scraped the stars. For a moment, as the city lit in the wake of the falling shadows and woke for the night, I would experience a rare moment of serenity. That simple fried dish soon became Pavlovian to the experience, and even the scent of it was enough to put me in a brighter mood.


    Even now, broken in this hellish place, I long for its simple comfort. Should I ever return to the waking world, that simple meal will be the first thing I eat. I will have to remake it from how I remember him describing the recipe to me...his recipe...what was his name?


    I spoke with him nearly every week for seven years. We shared stories of our families.


    Why can I not remember his name?


    I am shaken from my reverie by a sudden fluttering sound, like sheafs of paper being blown in the wind. Something approaches. Before I even lift my head to find its figure in the dark, I am prepared for its arrival.


    Another horror has found me.


    What abstract form it aspires to be, I can barely fathom. It shuffles slowly on shaky limbs with joints twisted in facilitation of its clumsy quadrupedal movement. Its central mass is a withered corpse with elongated fingers reaching skywards, arranged in mimicry of split ribcage. From within their grasp, a twisted arboreal shape sprouts forth. But instead of leaves and bark, it bears the weight of fractured human forms, their bodies intertwined to share flesh and feature. Fused marble skin reaches crescendo as a bloated body gripping itself in pain, splitting its trunk into an unhinged maw that spits silent fire.


    Boundaries eroded in madness, fragmenting individuality. Sublimation of form. Words fail to describe the shambling mockery of the waking world that presents itself before me. The creature itself even seems to despise its design, interlocking limbs and half finished faces clawing, biting, and pulling at one another as if desperate to split itself in twain.


    The stench of wet earth overwhelms me as slick black roots twist forth from the orifices mimicking mouths and split skulls. Roots tie themselves into a semblance of wings that crack and stretch to become canopy, droplets of inky fluid spattering forth and hissing as they eat through the solids they rain upon.


    Skin shudders with the sound of rustling leaves and metallic ash falls as feathers from the wings of root, curling and writhing like wounded snakes as they dance through the air and rend stone to sand.


    The role of this monstrosity is clear. Decomposition. Reclamation. A scavenger of carrion.


    And I am sure now that it has come to claim me.


    It crawls towards my broken body, the whisper of soft decay in its wake as it gently shifts solid into dust and ash. I am struck by how quiet the horror is. I wish that I could welcome my fate with dignity and resolve, but I cannot. I am overwhelmed by fear and pain, and I whimper like a child in the face of oblivion.


    But when the creature reaches me, it does not attack. With one of its limbs it gently pushes me aside. The movement still sends shockwaves of pain throughout my body, but it was not the action of some starved beast. It seemed almost considerate.


    The creature vomits a torrent of ethereal flame from its central maw onto the space where I once was. Fire falls as liquid, then rises into the air with the soft and weightless quality of wind-driven pollen. The space where I was depresses, and the ground becomes a pool of light as the cold fire works against it.


    From the pool, shapes emerge. One, then another, then a third. The humanoid figures I saw trapped within the stone crawl forth, reaching out to the beast for succor. The creature clasps their eager forms gently and guides them into its embrace. The emerging bodies pass into the creature, and then through it. They do not add to the creature''s structure in any deliberate manner, they simply join with it and become part of the mass wherever they fall.


    The light fades, and where an angled incline once was, there is now a divet from where the silent flame danced across its surface.


    The creature moves on, finding another spot and repeating the process. In short order the creature adds to its size, growing from cadaver sapling into towering tree. Its canopy wings spread wider and the metal ash falls as snow. It lands upon my face and wriggles into my cheek, caustic properties eroding my skin. It burns, but I find the pain pleasant for reasons I cannot explain.


    I notice more of the creatures approach and they join the harvest. They find suitable spot marked by some unseen quality, burn forth new additions to their hive, and continue onwards.


    I feel the ground rumble as they grow in size and number.


    More and more they eat away at the stone mass, desperate figures in various levels of fragmentation eagerly accepting the invitation to join a new whole.


    What was once a herd of ponderous creatures has become a forest of wandering trees. The snow falls thicker. I feel blood wash over me as skin is hewn from muscle. The sensation is warm and comforting.


    The creatures pass by me numerous times, and each one shifts me with the care and consideration of a parent handling a newborn child. I find myself envious of those shattered forms drawn forth from the stone. I realize that what I once saw as agonized self harm is in fact a network of broken souls in desperate embrace, both seeking and providing solace all at once.


    The ground splits. I fall as it shifts and settles, but my nerves no longer respond to the disturbance. I am enraptured by the tumbling snow. I watch with detachment as my fractured leg sloughs away from me and slides down the slope. Steam rises forth as the meat falls from the bone. It amuses me somehow. I laugh, but silent warmth flows from my mouth instead, shining pearls tumbling in its gentle current.


    The creatures rise far above me now. They move slowly, burdened by their towering trunks. They seek each other, meeting and embracing to become grander form.


    They become truly awe inspiring things, rivaling even the megaflora from old Earth. I reach towards the sprawling canopy in wonder and my arm looses from its seat with a wet thump.


    The creatures become too large to move, instead forming roots that spread across the remaining stone as ropes of marble flesh. Arms reach out along their length, pulling more of the fractured bodies from below. When roots meet, they entangle and become one, joining root to root and tree to tree. The ground shudders and thunder approaches from below.


    I lie on a dense mycelium net, supported by its undulating mass as it reclaims the surfaces below me. Soon there is no more herd, there is no more forest.


    There is only the one and myself.


    The feathers fall across my face and I become blind. Vitreous humor runs down my masticated cheeks as tears of joy.


    I am ready.


    But then I hear a deafening crack. My nerves are long devoured, but my equilibrium remains. With its remaining sense I feel myself falling. The mycelium shifts beneath me, allowing my remains to fall into whatever lies beneath.


    I see now I was never to join the embrace of their number, they would have taken me when they first approached if I were.


    I fall from the conglomerate as an excision.


    I fall into deeper depths.


    I fall into a final, lonely oblivion.

 VII - DECAY

    You and I sat there, waiting by the grand fountain in the center of the festival grounds. You, with great anxiety, wringing your hands and tapping your leg to divert the idle stress. Me, with great composure and clarity, as I only had one part to play in the day''s festivities.


    Today was a big day, both for yourself, and for the agri-dome coalition as a whole. Even the fountain you sat by had been re-designed for the event, the old statue of Executor Avantus replaced by a trio of figures in hopeful and noble pose. It wasn''t often that your little outpost was so close to a moment of such historical import, and the event had spurred you to action in more ways than one.


    "Sorry to keep you waiting for so long!" You heard from nearby


    And there she was, the source of your anxiety. Her dress was lavender and gold, and she wore a white begonia laced into her auburn hair. Her perfume smelled like apricots. She smiled and you blushed like the young lover you were. I smiled too, but you were too enraptured to notice.


    You laughed at how blatantly he was staring at you, and extended slender hand for him to take.


    "Come on! We shouldn''t waste any more time before the pass!" You said to him.


    He nodded wordlessly, mind overwhelmed, and took your outstretched hand. You led him towards the festival proper like a dog on a leash.


    From behind your merchant''s stand you watched the young lovers pass and chuckled to yourself. You remembered how you felt the first time you had courted a partner. Nostalgia washed over you and you allowed it, as it was a day for celebration after all.


    "Mementos for the glorious day! Immortalize the passing over Dione with silver and gold!" You belted in their direction with your practiced call.


    The lovers were briefly distracted and looked in your direction. The girl said something to the boy and rushed towards you, still leading the lovestruck fool by the hand.


    "Interested in a memorial imprint?" You asked.


    They agreed of course, pliable and eager as they were in their infatuated state. You paused and thought of what to prepare for them. You felt as if it should be something other than your typical pre-programmed designs sent by the parade tour organizers. Something special.


    I leaned over and whispered into your ear an idea that fit your intent. The lovers didn''t notice, lost in each other''s gaze.


    With the skill and precision gained through years of semblance engraving, you quickly transcribed the design, and the light-foundry made short work of the liquid goldvine you fed into its mouth.


    With a flourish, the engraver presented the finished pieces to you, and your first reaction was confusion. The plates were not carved or intricately detailed like the others on display, but instead bore a simple design. It was one of pillars of varying height, broken by oblong shape in their center. You exchanged looks with your partner, and she too was unsure of what to make of it. Amused, I leaned over to you and told you of its meaning.


    Your eyes lit up as I explained, recognizing the simple trick I had played. You laughed, a lilting sonorous tone, and the begonia''s petals bounced in time with your laughter. You and your partner pocketed the plates, thanked the merchant, and went on your way to imbibe in as much revelry as you could before the main event.


    Behind you, the merchant waved as you left with your prize, but his smile fell once your backs were turned. He fixated on the design still present in his light-foundry entry field, trying to discern the meaning. I laughed and quickly hurried you on, leaving the puzzle for him to solve on his own.


    The festival was large and sprawling. The entirety of the agri-dome was in attendance, and even those normally too jaded for such an occasion saw fit to emerge from the habs and lurk in the fringes of the celebrations. There was so much to see and do and taste and feel that you were paralyzed by choice.


    I whispered to you again.


    If you''re having trouble deciding where to start, why decide at all?


    Your heart soared as the meaning of my words became clear, and you sprinted towards the nearest available source of entertainment.


    You partook in the festival with a joy and eagerness so deep, even I was inspired. Bright dyed sucralose globes spun with suspended edible gold leaf, hand-knit kavat dolls with soft synthetic pelt, sensorium mantles of gold and glass, manufactured gravitational wells interweaving over cushioned play-space, rich meats stained with orange spice of the agri-domes, light-smoking lounges swirling with clouds of shared phosphorescence, photon weave dancing in patterns honoring the Executors and their benevolence, fortified plum-wine so deep it seemed as black as the space between stars, trinkets from far off moons ferried through secret markets to be sold as curiosity, new children''s baubles from Corposium that blinked and hummed with unknown purpose, fresh fruits and vegetables from the agri-dome overstock trays, an injury sustained in your careless joy, a lover''s kiss, the melange of emotions from discovering you had been made a cutpurse''s mark, the thrill of furtively counting your stolen goods in darkened alley.


    So many sensations and emotions unchecked. Unrestrained. You imbibed to excess, and the combined weight exceeded your limitations. Your stomachs expelled, eyes rolled back into your skulls, and world-blind you danced from the intoxication of overwhelming joy that broke the limits you were born to contain.


    The fervor intensified, and you continued to dance in the cold light of stars filtered through agri-dome screens, obstructed only by the distant shadow passing silently between you and them in the void above.


    Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.


    So joyous was the moment that you briefly forgot your age. You kicked and whirled, spinning and laughing as you danced across the grounds. You cast aside your walking cane and it clattered across the square. You felt like you were young again. Nostalgia washed through you once more.


    But then your body could sustain your fancy no more. You had dutifully taken your mandated mineral supplements and participated in gravitational therapy for decades, but the measures available to you here, this far from the Lorist compound on Rhea, could only do so much. Your knees ground as bone upon bone, muscles unspun like string, and you were sent crashing to the floor.


    You stopped dancing immediately to focus on this new distraction.


    Weakly, the old woman lifted her head from her supine position.


    "What...I...What''s going on? Where is- what happened to- I can''t-"


    The weak cries from her pathetic form elicited your disgust, and the revelry came to a halt.


    I clicked my tongue in irritation.


    You walked over to the woman and leaned down to help, your Dax armor glinted in the fair lights still weaving the likenesses of Executors, apathetic to this momentary distraction. You shook off the pain and stood, legs twisted and broken.


    "Oh, I''m so sorry! I should have been more careful!" You say, shaking to sustain your withered form even with assistance.


    You unholstered your sidearm and placed the barrel beneath your chin. A single whisper round punched through your skull with the soft sound of rushing air.


    Two-hundred and thirty eight years of memory was cast across the festival square in the wake of the whisper, glistening beneath the spinning lights. Blood ran from her nose like the water of the central fountain and her body fell once more, weightless and frail. The lights weaved still, apathetic as they were.


    There was a brief moment of silence, punctuated only by the distant pulse of pre-recorded music sung over speakers throughout the festival grounds, and the gentle sound of water flowing from the fountain beneath the star-gazing trio of gold.


    "Oh good, I thought she''d never leave!" You said, breaking the silence.


    You laughed all at once, a lilting, sonorous tone. A hundred throats in harmony.


    You resumed your dance, and the revelry continued. Smiling, you leaned over and grabbed your pistol, still loosely gripped in the hand of the dead woman.


    The Dax re-holstered his weapon and stopped, his smile falling. Though hidden beneath his helm, his brow furrowed as he stared at the old woman''s corpse. Her empty eyes stared into the dome-screens overhead. A thousand thoughts fought for focus in his head, and he stood motionless. Something screamed desperately within him, but it could not make itself heard.


    "Everything all right?" You said, pausing briefly between desperate gulps of wine and mouthfuls of food. Mastication dribbled through your teeth and ran down your skin.


    You turned away from the corpse and smiled. "Perfect!" You said, and joined the festivities once more.


    For hours you danced. You danced and spun in the fountain square. You danced in the dining hall, choking on heaps of food shoveled ravenously into your mouths. You danced in the gravitational fields, droplets of blood suspended like constellations in their invisible grasp. You danced through the agri-dome production trays, crushing fruit and stem and rolling in the chemical fertilizers, relishing the burning on your skin. You danced through the market stalls, glass and metal flaying flesh and marking your passage with crimson graffiti upon the walls and floors. You danced motionless on the ground, eyes staring without seeing. Fixated on the revelry. The stars. On nothing at all.


    You danced and danced. You danced alone.


    Then suddenly you stopped.


    "Oh no! It''s almost time! It''s almost time!" You said, and you looked towards the passing shadow between the stars.


    I laughed. My part to play in the festival was at hand, but I had no reason to be nervous. What was about to happen was going to happen, thus, it was the same as if it already had.


    In rapt silence you watched the passing shadow emerge from the field of stars as colony ship in stark detail between you and Saturn. Illuminated by the kaleidoscope of the ringed giant''s face its crescent shape was in stunning relief, and you held your breath in anticipation.


    The space around you distended. Festival warped and stretched across infinite distance as streaks of color and sense, pulled beyond recognition on spacetime thread. The agri-dome folded as tunnel, twisting inwards on itself like paper sheet, and you were catapulted across its length, landing in suspension within reach of the ship. Breathlessly you reached out to touch it.


    "-All decks, all stations, stand by for reliquary field drill."


    You heard the echoes across the near-distance, and with barely restrained excitement you mouthed the words as if you had heard them a thousand times before.


    "-In ten...nine...eight..."


    You shuddered with anticipation. Your skin began to itch, and tears ran down your face. Nostalgia washed over you and you joined the counting.


    "-seven...six...five..."


    I couldn''t contain myself any longer. My fingers trembled as I counted down with you.


    "-four...three...two..."


    The space between you and the ship snapped like frayed cord and nothing flooded the empty between points, flinging you back screaming into the festival grounds.


    Overhead, a flash of violent color erupted from the ship, and you howled with an animalistic fury that turned the fountain to ichor, ground to ash, food to rot, and walls to dust. The ship was gone, and the reverberations of its passing cascaded across the real between you and the space it once was. When the waves reached Dione, your cries resonated with their pulse and your final boundaries were broken.


    I knew I couldn''t just leave you like that. Unsatisfied. Unfinished.


    So I did as I had promised you with the trick at the engraver''s foundry. I carved the shape of it across the entire agri-dome, and it became.


    Eventually the Dax came, of course, but no matter how hard we tried to reason with them they wouldn''t listen. Too caught up in their battle sib''s warsong to hear us, I suppose. Philistines.


    And as you know, when the Dax reported on what they found, the Orokin ordered them to ''cleanse the blighted halls of fetid Dione with torrent of Void-fire.'' The irony was clearly lost on them.


    Dione was re-colonized after a decade, the Dax who carried out the deed were executed, and no record is kept of that wonderful day we shared.


    But I still remember it. I keep it close to my heart, and with each pulse someone else feels a faint whisper. They dance like you did that day, and carve a bit more of that shape I shared. They carve it into the ground with their feet, or their food with their teeth.


    And then I am there in that shape, and I reach out to them through the cracks. They take my hands and we dance together.


    We dance, and dance, and dance.

 8 - FASS

    And I am elsewhere.


    I pause for a moment, but not to acclimate to the regaining of my senses. In fact, there is no acclimation at all. No change or transformation. In one moment I was falling limbless, senseless, dying as my life fled from my failing body. But then in the next, without any space between seconds, I was not.


    I look down at my body, and see I am intact. My limbs, in their appropriate place. No pain. No fatigue.


    My eyes are drawn to my clothing, pristine. My robes, soft and silken atop my skin, unfrayed and unweathered by my pilgrimage through the dust.


    I test my hands. The sensation is real, but my mind cannot comprehend what has occurred. I stand in a moment of resolution, but without the preceding events, my mind flounders untethered by causality.


    I am reminded of my arrival on the threshold when I first engaged the somatics. Is this a dying dream within a dream? Some final vision as I pass over the threshold into true unlife? Was I pulled back into the world of the real by someone who stumbled upon my unconscious form and now wake within some Orokin holding chamber, sterile and cold?


    Possibilities fill my mind, but they are all as likely as they are not. My senses swim as the confusion overwhelms me.


    I turn my head, and feel it burdened by a new weight. I reach upwards and find my signatory headpiece, the designation of my placement in the academy labs. I did not wear it when I embarked on this reckless endeavor.


    I open my mouth to speak, if only to prove I am still able. "Wha-"


    I hear shrieking laughter from behind me and my mind contracts, drawn inward by some instinctual tether to react.


    I whirl around to find the source, shaken from my reverie into a ready response.


    I see only myself.


    The fractured body from the precipice above the city of stone. It perches above me in a casual pose, shoulders shuddering with halting laughter.


    It looks different from when I first met it. No longer dull and gray, it now has splotchy coloration, as if painted in a child''s hand with cosmetic pastels. Its frame, still twisted and scarred, but not to the grand extent as when it had broken itself before me.


    It wears clothes now as well, though they are tattered and dyed crimson with blood. My blood. Stained when my body was shredded by the gentle decay of the shambling masses. Looted from my falling corpse and worn as a mockery.


    Thick, viscous tears roll down its pale face, and flecks of coloration are washed away. Its mouth is pulled far too taut across its semblant skull, gums painted cartoonishly red as it points mockingly at me and continues to laugh.


    "HAHAHA! Look at you! You''re- AHAHA- ridiculous! I - AH- love it! What- AHAHA- WHAT A JOKE!"


    My confusion and fear gives way to anger. I am being made the fool again. For the entirety of my journey I have been plaything. Prey. Whether this mockery of my self is the culprit or merely the mouthpiece, I care not. It serves as focus for my rage.


    "What is this!?" I demand.


    It grins back at me "That''s all you can manage? So loquacious inside your thick little skull, but when it comes to speaking direct you''re always so reserved!"


    My fingernails dig into my palm as I clench my fists. "Are you mocking me? Am I only to suffer your childish torture? Speak plainly to me, imitation! Answer me now or by the Seven I''ll open my throat upon this signet''s edge and end your little game on my own terms!"


    My doppleganger gives no indication that the threat resonated. It waves its hands dismissively and wipes away the inky globules of false tears that linger on its face.


    "Oh come on, come on! We both know you aren''t going to go that far. It''s just a bit of fun." It says, voice dripping with saccharine bile.


    Easing itself back onto its palms, it cocks its head to one side almost playfully.


    "Go on then, go through your motions. Play out your little ritual and take a look around. Get a-"


    It takes a deep, stuttering breath, then lets out the air with a choked wheeze through its half-broken neck.


    "-Real good feel for the place." It gestures with its head, feet kicking in the air like a bored child atop its vantage.


    I do as it suggests and examine my surroundings, but only for some method of access to its position, that I might crush its form back into the stone from whence it came.


    I am surrounded by walls of white plaster and stone. Smooth. Featureless. They rise around me, but do not meet with some overhang or roof. The sky is open above us, though it churns with a myriad of colors that cast soft shadows from all angles. In its storm, I see the shifting unearthly tones projected by the creature of light. My vision blurs as the colors lull me in, and my senses are pulled apart by the blinding cast. I avoid lingering too long in the depths.


    In the distance reaching above the walls, towers and structures of various size stand against the chaos as waypoints, though all as nondescript as the walls around me. From my limited perspective I discern further barriers beyond my current enclosure in varying height, width, and length. I look down a nearby corridor and see it terminates not in a wall, but into the swirling chaos of color.


    A labyrinth? I turn once more to examine the paths I have available to take, and come to a concerning realization. I turn once more to where I had been facing moments before and my theory is confirmed.


    At the edges of my vision the un-real color swims and threatens to overwhelm me, but when I turn to face it, it flits away and the labyrinth walls are rendered in its place. With each turn the walls shift.


    I walk forward and the walls pull themselves to meet me. I hasten pace and blockades rise from nothing to write the passage I tread. The spires in the distance remain fixed. I look back and see the vantage from which my other watches me has changed shape, but not position. It smiles back at me and waves.


    I begin to run, and light weaves into form as walls blossom from the nothing. The world moves, but I do not.


    I stop to catch my breath. I realize the effort is pointless.


    There is no path to chart. No escape but the one immediately manifest in front of me.


    I hear my doppleganger cackle once again. It is my voice, but not my laugh. A cartoonish exaggeration. Forced. Unnatural.


    I look and see that it now sits atop an even higher pillar, slapping its thigh in mock amusement.


    "All centered?" It sneers. "Any precious anecdotes you''d like to recall?"


    I grind my teeth in anger and reach to remove my headpiece, frustrated by its encumbrance.


    A ridiculous designation. Mandated to serve as distinguishing features of our roles as much as it was used to humiliate and brand us for the Golden Lords. I always loathed its necessity, and would eagerly remove it when not at risk of scrutiny from the overseers.


    Why am I wearing it now?


    "Ah ah ah! You keep that on now! You''re on the clock, so you have to look the part!" My other wags its finger at me as I move to unfasten the headpiece.


    I open my mouth to speak frustration once more, but am stopped by something in the corner of my vision. Not the furtive manifest light. Something physical.


    Below my doppleganger''s perch, at the end of a short hallway, something peers from around a corner and then vanishes into the shadows as soon as I move my eyes to see.


    My blood runs cold.


    "Oops, looks like you brought in the locals!" My other follows my gaze to the corridor''s end.


    "What...what was that?" I ask.


    My other shrugs. "Can''t say."


    Something rises to peer at me from over a nearby wall, I turn to face it, but it is gone.


    "Can''t, or won''t?" I glare at my tormentor.


    Its grin widens. "Can''t." It hisses, placing extreme emphasis on the plosive. "I know WHY it is, but not WHAT it is. The WHAT is entirely up to you."


    I see a moving darkness at the periphery of my vision. Vaguely humanoid hands reach around a wall and grip the edge. I focus, and it darts out of view once more.


    I hear soft, deliberate footsteps from nearby. Far too near.


    They pace in continuous path, unobstructed by the walls that form around me. Outside of my manifested vision the threat walks unhindered upon the raw chaos of light.


    "Then tell me WHY it is, you insufferable bastard!" I shout.


    The copy¡¯s lips flex upwards and it bares its teeth. Dark eyes widen, and I see the flickering pinpricks of light glow brighter in their inky depths. The corners of its mouth pull beyond what any human face could muster, and the false skin splits. Murky fluid runs over its lips and down its chin.


    "And WHY would I ruin the surprise, little man?"


    My heart skips. Something very deep within me stirs. It rises and I see its shape beneath the waters of my mind, but before it can surface, it vanishes. Snatched away by something else in an instant.


    My desperate rage is gone, replaced instantly with a vacuous dread.


    "What...what did you just say?"


    Nearby, the lurking predator screams. Not the howl of some Old Earth hunter, but a horrible, desperate cry. A dying animal filtered through unnatural distortion.


    My other moans in mock disappointment "Awwwww, way to ruin things! Have a bit of self control!"


    My doppleganger looks down on me, the lights in its empty eyes burning like dying stars. "Too late now, though."


    Footsteps within my enclosure. Slow. A beast stalking its prey. I hear it pacing gently behind me, mere meters away, but I cannot bring myself to look.


    I close my eyes and steady my breathing. I open my eyes and see a long, stretching path. Too long. I close my eyes once more.


    I open and see a wall. I exhale. My other laughs softly from above me with a giddy, nervous energy. I close my eyes.


    I need only a short pathway that leads into a sharp turn. Short enough that I may outrun my stalker around a blind corner and then manifest a wall in its path. Would I even be able to cross the distance in time? I do not know the beast''s agility. Or its proximity.


    I quiet the fears blossoming in my mind lest they stay my feet. I open my eyes. I see my egress.


    I slowly bring myself to a starting position, tense my knees, and-


    "Careful there lack-salt! Piss off Rodin and he''ll force you into a drinking contest, and that man-"


    -Drinks liquor like an Ultinoth drinks saltwater!


    I stumble.


    The voice was not of some monster, nor my doppleganger, nor of any soothing source that might lure me with a siren''s call. It was of a man I met once. Only once. He had operated the diving vessel for the Martian subsea region of Olympus Atrial. He had spoken those words to me when I corrected his assistant on a scientific term, eager as I was to pointlessly flaunt my intellect in my youth.


    This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.


    Why am I wasting time reminiscing on that now?


    I am held fast by confusion.


    I hear a jovial humming, resonating in a mechanical throat. A few uplifting notes in repeated sequence. I recognize it as the working tune of the custodial drones on a Jovian harvest platform. I had visited for a scant few hours as an Archimedean''s aide when examining the storm cycles of Jupiter for charting platform courses.


    I''ve heard hundreds of custodial drone chimes. Why this one? Why is this one so clear?


    Understanding evades me.


    I stand from my runner''s position. Confusion and curiosity have overwhelmed any desire for me to run. I feel as if I am being gently coaxed by some invisible thread. I give in to the pull and turn to see the source of the sounds.


    I do not know what I expected to see. Some sort of sleek, ambush predator perhaps, wearing a dissuading mask to lure in prey.


    Instead I see a wretched beast, moving as a starved animal. Hunched, slowly approaching me from a newly became pathway, it lifts its pale head and grins at me with a humanoid face elongated into animalistic mock. Where eyes would glare back, there is instead only smooth membrane pulled over concave bone. Gnashing, jeering maws open along its elongated neck, howling like pained Kavats, nostrils flaring for breath as they struggle from beneath folds of wrinkled skin.


    It walks upon all fours, gnarled limbs composed of wriggling digits, as if numerous hands had been woven together into flesh-form hooves. Dull curtains of loose skin hang from its gaunt frame, sagging and swaying as it approaches with slow, staggered steps. Its skeletal structure stands in stark detail along its body, ribcage heaving with each labored breath, and spine slowly undulating as it plods forward.


    A trio of arms sprout from its midsection in haphazard arrangement, clutching tightly to its form and squeezing against the mouths upon its body to silence their cries. Though as it draws closer, the screams grow in volume and the cacophony can no longer be restrained.


    Sweat pours from me and soaks through the cloth of my rebirth. My heart beats in my ears. Primal instinct has clawed its way from the depths to scream a single message into my conscious mind.


    RUN


    But my body is stuck. Not from fear, but confusion. That same paralyzing sensation I felt when I was reborn here in this labyrinth.


    One of the mouths on the beast smiles softly and begins to sing. Warm plucking strings echo from within its chest.


    "Oh won''t you send us smiles from Juran? Won''t you spare a prayer for the-"


    "-brave and broken..." I mumble in response.


    I laugh under my breath, fondly remembering when I had learned the song riding rail freight with an old Dax. A kind man, though of few words. Said more in the lyrics of his battle hymns than otherwise.


    What was his name again?


    "Aster." The beast speaks in a gentle, but strong masculine voice I do not recognize.


    "The flower?" I reply.


    The beast emits the same scream from before, spittle flies from the mouths as they gnaw and grind at nothing. The mouths grin, cracked lips splitting as the flesh pulls taut.


    I hear my doppleganger chuckle from above me. "Not quite, little man. Not quite!"


    I turn, incensed. "Little man? Are you patronizing me now?"


    My other bursts into laughter, and the beast screams again. I realize it is laughing as well.


    I turn back towards the beast, and it opens the palms of its dorsal arms to reveal delicate white flowers with curved petals and faintly glowing stamen. The same flowers sprout up from the stone beneath its feet, rise towards the sky, and then wither into dust.


    Dragonlily. Alba Nocturna. Official flower of Terra Ulna. I read about the signatory floral designations of the Orokin City-States on a whim during my scholastic years, but never once put the information to any practical use.


    Why is this beast showing me this?


    I look up to see the beast, heaving and panting. Saliva runs from the mouths and slicks its wrinkled flesh. It crushes the bundles of plants and casts their petals skyward as soft snowfall. I watch the strange plants tumble and some pathway in my mind fails to connect. There is an idea there, but it is faint. Undefined.


    The beast begins to snap rapidly with one of its tertiary hands. Eagerly. Anxiously. Something familiar falls over the surroundings like a shroud and for a moment I am no longer in the labyrinth but in the sterile labs of the academy.


    I remember how one of my constituents would always do the same hand motions whenever he was searching for an idea. He would use it when trying to jog his memory or as pauses in his speech. I would often tease him for it, though he would quickly respond with his own jabs against my frequent moments of aphasia.


    What was his name? Why can I not remember his name?


    A mouth mumbles from deep within the beast''s folds as it gesticulates with growing fervor. "Ah, ah, trying to remember...uh...something I, uh..."


    I remember how I got here to begin with. Before the somatics, back to the very idea that inspired this venture. How I saw patterns in Albrecht''s works not in the wordings, but in the spaces between the said. The idea in my mind struggles to be made manifest, but something halts it from attaining complete form.


    A silver brooch in the shape of a rare Martian Olut bird falls from one of the beast''s mouths. It is ornately crafted, intimately detailed, and set with pristine Zodian gemstones that glimmer in the shifting light. Delicate gold vine feathers flare outward along its breast in imitation of the living animal''s striking plumage.


    The beast shudders, and its main jaw unhinges with a sickening pop. Slowly, lovingly it speaks.


    In my voice it says "And of course, I wasn''t planning on coming back empty handed! I was in Upper Uxmal when I stumbled upon this wonderful little shop, and how could I forget you?"


    Something snaps in my skull. Blood runs from my nose. The thought I had been holding slips from the fingers of my memory and is lost. I reach for it as it fades away, but I cannot grasp it. It eludes me and falls away into nothing.


    Forget who?


    I had failed to notice the beast''s advance, lost as I was in nostalgia. In the moment between speech and thought, the beast closes the remaining distance between us and rears to its full height. The once sagging, plaster hue flesh pulls taut as its neck extends like a monstrous snake. Mouths hidden within the folds emerge, howling at me in ecstatic hunger.


    Before I can react, the beast seizes me with its gnarled forelimbs. The flesh curves, jaw stretches wide, and in a flash teeth close around my neck.


    I am in the darkness of the beast''s maw, light-blind to the world beyond its clutches.


    I linger on the memory just before it struck, watching the fading colors spiral away into a deepening darkness.


    I see moments of joy, blurry watercolor paintings the hue of emotion moreso than the definition of it.


    I struggle to add definition to the memories. I focus on remembering the sound, but hear only muffled tones.


    Something in the darkness slithers from deep within the beast''s throat.


    My limbs do not even attempt to move against the beast''s grip. I am paralyzed by some poison ingested not through skin nor mouth, but mind.


    I force myself to think, to ignore the terror that assaults me. Something is happening to me that I must overcome.


    Faint whispers become audible as something pushes up and around the curvature of the beast''s neck and descends towards me.


    I juggle half-thoughts and see the pattern in the lack, but do not recognize its shape. I trace the edge back to its source and see that this beast is not the origin point. It has been happening since I first embarked on this voyage. I am within the culmination of a long and slow assault on my deeper senses.


    The slithering from the dark draws closer, I feel the warmth of breath graze my ear.


    Slick-wet hands caress my cheek from within the beast''s mouth. The whispers become louder, and I begin to discern meaning. I hear a voice deeply familiar, but I do not know how. It sings softly, a song I know but have never heard.


    I think on the moments when this monster first presented itself to me fully. Further back, the words of mockery from my half-hewn doppleganger. Further still, the moments before encountering the other horrors in this hell. I connect the points between action and reaction.


    Flashes of color come to the forefront of my mind, but I cannot hold them. I see a family I never knew. Remember sadness I never experienced. Taste both terrible and divine crosses my tongue and tumbles from my lips into the throat of the ravager that restricts me.


    The surface of my memories are too slippery, ephemeral, and I fail to grasp even one. They rise from my subconscious into the mind''s eye then fall away into the darkness that bleeds through me. They flit away like the beast as it lingered in the fringes of my vision.


    I hear my other from beyond the walls of my prison.


    The noise it makes no longer resembles a laugh, but a cry. A desperate, repetitive scream. "LITTLE MAN! LITTLE MAN! LITTLE MAN! AHAHAHAHA!"


    Realization crashes upon me.


    Pointless anecdotes. An adolescent''s sobriquet. Simple moments taken subtly and used as catalyst.


    Food.


    Feeding these horrors. Granting them shape. Giving without knowing and having taken from me that which forms the fiber of my being.


    And now this monster is the pinnacle of that process, no longer content to take those more vestigial foundations.


    It seeks to rob me of my core.


    Instinct overwhelms the poison of confusion and my body moves of its own accord.


    I kick the beast with all my strength and my foot meets no resistance, sinking into gnarled flesh with ease. My fingers rake the creature¡¯s neck and I feel my nails pull across lips and teeth. Tongues rise to meet me from the maws and caress my palms. I shudder in disgust.


    The form within the darkness retreats, and with no further aggression the beast simply releases me as if I were nothing more than an empty glass, bled dry of its rich contents.


    I fall to the floor, sodden with slick film that hangs in ropes from the grinning lips of the beast. No longer hunched and pathetic, its gaunt body stands tall and imposing. Shoulders set, neck stretched longer than the entirety of my body and slowly undulating, drooling mouths silent and grinning.


    I struggle to reckon with the violation that has occurred.


    I search my mind for any recollection, desperately seeking to understand the extent of the damage inflicted upon me, but I cannot even begin to fathom the levels of destruction it has wrought. Tattered fragments of memories float within my head like bits of flotsam caught in the tide. Definition, lost. Context, devoured.


    I try to remember my youth, and find I never had one.


    I seek to remember the faces of my family, my loved ones, and am met only by monochrome mannequins staring silently back.


    I collect my triumphs, and my hands gather naught but dust.


    In its cruelty, my aggressor has left me with the understanding that I am filled with ruin.


    Tears flow as I lament the moments taken. My shoulders heave as I devolve into sobs. I scream in despair as I recognize I have been made hollow like everything else in this place of madness.


    Desperate, I turn to face my other. Cackling atop its perch, its hollow eyes burn no longer with the dimness of faded stars, but brilliant white flame.


    I seek to muster rage but find I have none left.


    Between sobs I beg instead.


    "Please...Please tell me....this is all just a dream? None of this is real?"


    My other continues to laugh. Eyes bulge in its copied sockets, brackish tears flowing down its painted face.


    The beast responds instead.


    "You ARE dreaming." It says in my voice. "But in the only way that matters. The way that feeds then, and eats now."


    All I can do is stare helplessly at the predator before me.


    "And that''s why I am. But you asked WHAT I am. Another man looked into the deep still waters and saw chaos in my smile. He wrote the shape of my name and saw a form of erasure brought up before him. It screamed unmaking into the sky and pulled the edges of the universe closer together."


    The tumult of my mind subsides and I see faint glimmers of light beneath the wreckage of my memories. Bits and pieces still unsundered.


    Vulnerable.


    "He mouthed the sound, the onomatopoeia of my voice, and called it Fass."


    Slowly, my body responds. I must protect what I still am. I blink away tears and see a narrow path beyond the beast, curving away out of sight. I rise to my feet.


    "He was right, but also wrong. He saw my form in one perspective, one very different from yours. A single angle of a shape with infinite faces. A shape that is only a minor aspect of an endless whole."


    My eyes sting as I force them to remain open. I tense my legs.


    "He called me chaos, but the name is reductive. I wear chaos as a cloak, move beneath its cacophony, and write the fullness of my name upon the surface that I walk."


    I slide into a runner''s pose.


    The beast mirrors me.


    "I am more than just the sound he tried to silence."


    All of its mouths move in unison.


    "I am entropy."


    The beast lunges for me and its neck telescopes to cross the distance in a flash, but I am ready.


    I leap beneath the whip of teeth and drive forward with everything I have.


    Behind me the beast howls not with anger but glee, eager for the hunt.


    Following the path still manifest, eyes dry and stinging, I head desperately towards its endpoint.


    The beast thunders behind me. I feel its breath upon my neck.


    I near the corner and whirl around to spring my trap, but for a brief moment see the beast in a different shape. Like the color that borders my vision, I see its uncollapsed outline before it is narrowed back into a predator''s form.


    For a brief moment I see what had crawled from the depths of its throat to whisper in the darkness.


    It is unspeakable.


    I shut my eyes, but not with my original intent. My skin is set aflame and every cell in my body vibrates in resonance with a silent tone beyond anything mortal minds could comprehend. Though it briefly bulges through the cracks that open upon my mind, my sanity holds, spared by the blessed animalistic response to this irreconcilable threat.


    The world is unmade with my vision.


    Silence follows.


    I open my eyes and am met with a simple wall, smooth and pale.


    Slowly I back away, and as I move, I see the color recede from vision''s edge. Tentatively, I shift my gaze away from the surface between myself and the beast, and see the walls do not fall into place or rise from nothing.


    The world is static.


    The beast is gone.


    I collapse again, but this time in relief. Desperately, I search for those dying embers in my mind, certain that the beast somehow managed to rob me of them as well.


    I see a moment of pride, bolstered by modest applause.


    I feel a hand entwine fingers with my own and offer warmth and love.


    I taste sorrow in the wake of death, close and painful.


    I hear a gentle melody across empty space, its detail lost to the distance between myself and the source.


    I smell salt and rot carried by frigid wind, and the sensation does not warrant disgust but excitement.


    I gather these frail aspects and hold them close to my heart. I weep, though this time with joy.


    I have not been completely broken.


    "What a SHOW!" I hear from behind me.


    I scramble away like a startled insect, arms in defensive posture to protect what precious little remains of myself.


    I see my copy above me, mouth frozen in its familiar grin. It wears pristine robes that lie neatly upon its now smooth and flesh toned form.


    "So much emotion! So much resolve! I was almost worried there for a moment, but I knew you could do it, little man. I was rooting for us the whole time!"


    It points skyward.


    "But you can''t stop now, little man, not yet! It''s almost time! It''s almost time!"


    My eyes are pulled by its gesture to the roiling skies above.

 VIII - CHAOS

    Fried Meat and Dough Purses For those with a light purse!


    Ingredients: Remember, cooking is an art not a science. Experiment! Isn''t that what you do all day in those gilded halls? I


    400 grams of your preferred meat, finely ground. Bovidon is easiest to get cheap and in decent quality


    1 Large egg Just AM to hold form, don''t buy any of those ridiculous prize eggs from PRISONER deep Earth or anything like that


    1/2 Ounce of IN Common Spice If you don''t have a mix of your own, I can send you THE the ratios for my WALLS blend later. You''ll need cracked orange peppercorn, raw salt, (no it doesn''t need to be the blue crap from Mars, I just say that to impress the long snobs) Blue Alue stalk flakes, (yes this does need to be the blue crap from Mars, other varietals are bitter as hell) Chitzil Pepper powder or flakes, and dried Hab Alium powder. For your eyes only!


    One 1/2 OF Domice Apple Sweeter the better. MY Domice variety is key here. OWN Gets nice and juicy and never goes out of season across the TEMPLE system


    2 Cloves of minced HUNTED Venutian garlic BY Venutian is the best, excellent sharp and vegetal taste! Though any will do as long as it isn''t A hab-garlic, those BEAST weeds barely have any flavor


    A portion of THAT wheat berry dough KNOWS use the recipe I sent you ONLY earlier, it should be a bit more than you need for HUNGER a portion of these


    Bovidon Tallow, melted and heated to 185 C I FEED The amount IT you need varies. You''ll want enough CUTS FROM to cover your MY frying vessel about 8 cm deep, so it depends on how many you SELF cook at once. BUT Also, doesn''t need to be Bovidon. I usually use the same Tallow as ITS whatever meat I''m using, but that''s just HUNGER me being pretentious NEVER


    Directions:


    <ol>


    <li> Mix all your WANES ingredients in a bowl. Except IT the tallow SMELLS and dough, but if I need to tell you that MY I''ll report you to the academy for subterfuge since you clearly must have lied to get in there FEAR</li>


    </ol>


    Use your hands! AND Knead it all together until it becomes well mixed, no clumps of anything in particular left behind.


    If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.


    <ol start="2">


    <li> Roll the meat SCRAPES into balls about the width of a ducat.</li>


    </ol>


    Too wide and they won''t cook properly or they''ll fall apart. Too thin and they''ll wither into little husks. Also important you watch the temp of the tallow when you fry. You''ll get a good feel for it ITS over time.


    <ol start="3">


    <li> Drop your TEETH meatballs into AGAINST your frying vessel and let them cook for about 2 minutes each.</li>


    </ol>


    You aren''t trying to cook them through all THE the way yet. I prefer my meat a bit rare. Cook another minute if you like your animal WALLS well and truly dead.


    <ol start="4">


    <li> Roll out the wheat berry dough into thin sheets. Parchment thin.</li>


    <li> Take out I GIVE a meatball and place it onto the dough. Gently cover the meatballs by forming the dough into little pouches.</li>


    </ol>


    Twist AND GIVE the excess off and add it back to batch. Don''t worry too much about making it nice and sealed, the dough should puff well when fried. But don''t leave gaping holes AND GIVE either.


    <ol start="6">


    <li> Drop the dough BUT covered balls back into the fry for another minute or until golden brown. This part can go fast, keep your eye on it or you''ll end up with IT charcoal</li>


    <li> Serve with condiment ONLY and side of your choice!</li>


    </ol>


    I''ll send TAKES you the recipe for the gravy. I use it mostly out of convenience since it uses a lot of the same ingredients, but this also serves well with sweeter sauces or even a Domice apple glaze, but I''d suggest a lighter meat if you want to go heavier on that end. I HEAR IT Folk Fowl is a good choice, basically the bird equivalent of Bovidon AS IT for good balance of cost and quality, but avoid any street vendors. If it CARVES has wings, get it fresh from a quality butcher or your food will come with a trip to the Lorist, guaranteed.


    AND If you want to know how to EATS make the pickled Hab Alium, let me know. It''s very simple, not even really worth a recipe. You''d be better off just learning how to pickle your own produce and experimenting with ingredients AND TAKES from there, so I can teach you how to do that. (Though if you share a space, your roommate might not I STIFLE appreciate the smell!)


    It was good to see you again, by the way. MY THOUGHT It''s nice to have a patron that appreciates the simpler things in life.


    I''m not BUT I AM sure how much longer I can keep up shop in the central pavilions, AND I CANNOT STOP MYSELF FROM BEING the tithes keep increasing to support the war effort, and my gastric art pieces are no longer a fresh delight for the long snobs to run into the ground, so business AND IT RAPS UPON THE WALL has slowed a bit.


    Don''t worry about me I SEE ITS TEETH going out of business or anything, I can always move back out to the anterior pavilions and do just fine there, but it IT CRAWLS INTO THE SPACE BETWEEN MEMORIES would be a pretty long walk WITH ME from the central campus at that point.


    If I do end up moving I''ll be sure I FEEL ITS BREATH to let you know. Might miss you for midday repast, but if you ever feel like stopping by on your way to the transit pads, I''ll be sure to buy you a drink.


    (Culdari Ale goes fantastic with these, by the way.)


    Don''t be a stranger. There''s too many of those in my line of work these days.


    Warm regards,


    IT HAS FOUND ME

 9 - OULL

    My eyes are drawn by my other''s gesture to the sea of light that churns above.


    The unreal color that has lingered on the periphery of my vision overwhelms my sight as it flows not from around me, but from within me. My eyes are made as floodgates for the manifest color as it rushes forth in a blinding torrent.


    The color washes away and flows into the skies. My vision returned, I see it no longer as an impossible maelstrom of unearthly hues, and it begins to quiet in intensity. Calcify.


    I see shapes form, paths falling into place and adhering to reaction, but they do not lay themselves as simple stone or mundane surface.


    The color settles into horrific shape.


    The sky itself assumes the aspect of a sea of twisted faces. Young and old, masculine and feminine. Some scream with anger and pain, others grin with joy and malice. Others still, stoic and solemn.


    The statue sky is silent and imposing. Dark with portent. My other stands still, hand still pointed upward.


    But then there is a sound.


    It is low at first, the whisper of rushing water deep below ground. But it grows in volume, emerging deep from within the graven cloud of chaos. I hear screams, matching the chaotic emotion of the faces above. There is no discerning purpose, the sound is simply pure emotion in all of its forms.


    Light rises in the stone throats and I see figures fall forth as raindrops from their mouths. The sky breathes fire and death.


    My other''s robes are whipped by the howling wind that besets us. I pull into a fetal position, covering my ears to block out the madness, but the sound permeates through my skin as if it were not an auditory sensation but a simple truth to the existence of this place. To be here is to be awash in the emotion of it, and I feel my body resonate with all the temperatures of the storm at once.


    I try to close my eyes but find my vision, much like the sound, cannot be avoided. No longer subject to the conditions of flesh, I am forced to partake as witness for whatever is to come.


    Existence shudders. Not the ground upon which I am moored, but the air itself. The fragile order I create here as a being from a world of logic, shaken by the harmonics of the screaming sky.


    There is a snap, and everything is shifted by a minute degree upon an unseen cleave. The sky is broken by the warp, and cracks begin to form.


    There is a brief moment where the sound falls away, overwhelmed by an encroaching silence that exceeds the volume of the chaos.


    From within the silence, something speaks in a tongue I cannot commit to word nor thought.


    And then the sky collapses.


    From above, they fall. Towering semblances of agonized and jubilant faces, impacting with hateful force. I tumble in their furious wake, carried by forces both physical and not.


    As the dust flees from the impact new horrors follow, crawling forth like insects from a corpse. The humanoid figures that fell as rain now scramble forth freely from their monstrous sarcophagi, jeering and howling in mania as they tear free of their progenitors.


    Each figure a shambling mass of hewn stone in the shape of limbs with no singular source, suspended by luminous vascular mesh that serves as their bonds. They bob and dance without muscle or bone, an unnatural mockery that resembles no living being. Faces shattered and broken, torsos marred by gaping holes, limbs split and twisted and affixed in rough position upon the nets. Broken statues raised by puppeteer''s string and made to dance in a mockery of life.


    The very fabric of the fallen stone is unraveled as their throats are choked by hordes of staggering bodies. Stone skin falls away in strips as new figures emerge from the surface of the faces themselves. Definition is lost until the once imposing forms are reduced to lumps of misshapen clay, open birthing wounds bleeding the same blue light that shines from deep within.


    When their sundered flesh can no longer sustain itself, the faces collapse with deafening crash, remaining stone quickly rushing to form into half-realized figures that writhe and crawl with barely functioning limbs.


    As the horde grows, they fall upon each other. Paralyzed, I can do nothing but watch the carnage unfold.


    Each figure seizes another, and with a desperate fury, claw and bite and strike against their opponent until they are broken and the glowing skeletal core is unspun like thread. Broken limbs, greedily torn free and cast aside in a frenzy where they fall amidst a growing sea of their discarded siblings.


    Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.


    But they do not lie still.


    The loose limbs are drawn by some inscrutable force to a new host, moving towards a finality. Each figure was born incomplete, and when their brothers and sisters are devoured, the shattered pieces rise to meet them. Holes are patched, broken limbs mended by shards of bone and stone flesh until the dangling puppets become patchwork mannequins that move in closer approximation of life.


    The more complete forms meet not with the desperate fury of the half-wrought fallen, but with grace and martial prowess. They break their opponent''s limbs with devastating purpose and affix the severed pieces onto themselves.


    The carnage subsides, and in the wake, a complete form. Composed of its lessers, it has become grander than the sum. It stands, towering above me, symbolizing no evolutionary apex but a culmination of desire. It exceeds naturality to become the realization of excess.


    Writhing limbs snake from a broad chunk of fused torsos, stretched and elongated into gnarled flesh to clumsily reach correct proportion. Massive trunks matted with legs dangling like vines, terminating into feet that face both forward and back. Its arms point in four directions, woven with knots of smaller limbs like the beast above the city of stone.


    Veins bulge on its misshapen neck to support a massive tower of mixed emotion. Where eyes would sit, there instead are only mouths flowing into further faces, forming interlocking rings of hunger that align into an imposing crown split cleanly down the middle with an empty slit. Severed hands hover in a swarm around the head, and as they form arcane gestures I feel reality vibrate once more. Not in the grand and violent rapping upon its surface that shook my soul, but in a slow and deliberate exertion upon the borders of the law that binds this place with understanding.


    With my senses exceeding my form, I am unable to turn away. I watch the creature as it stands, and then shifts. It splits its legs, not apart in line with its shoulders, but vertically along the very limbs themselves. It falls back, quadrupedal. I see it now in the shape of some ancient deity, facing all directions at once as it becomes anchored in some unholy marriage between man and beast robed in anthropomorphic mock. Though it wears a gleeful mask, it casts anguished cries skyward, arms spread wide in supplication to the approaching horror.


    I shift my senses to my other, but it still points skyward. It smiles without speaking and wags its finger. This beast is not what it had been indicating.


    Rising from the monstrous figure I notice faint glimmers of light. Spider''s silk gently falling upon some central force, invisible above the apex of its form. The threads become thicker, weaving into ropes. Then chains. Then mighty cables thick enough to bind ships. They spin together and interlock, growing, growing, reaching skyward.


    Skyward to the splits in the surface of the sky that shine black into the impossible nothing beyond. The rope spins and stretches to meet the darkness.


    And then something reaches back.


    It takes the outstretched lifeline and holds fast.


    It begins to pull itself from the depths of the sky.


    My other at last drops its hand and speaks. "Be seeing you, little man." And without sound or force, simply winks out of existence.


    The apex form screams with a million voices and blood flows from my ruptured ears. I am still not granted the blessing of silence.


    The towering body explodes into a geyser of stone-form gore. Shards fall to ash before they land and rise as a whirlwind, spiraling upwards along the rope of light.


    The remains of the labyrinth too, dissolve into dust and rise to meet the horror in the depths.


    I lie helpless upon a withered raft, floating in the impossible sea on the ocean floor beneath deeper waters above.


    I cannot see what reaches out from the depths. My untethered sense fails to render it, and sees only the seam of reality bleeding around the edge where my mind refuses to fathom.


    The form begins to pull. The waters draw together.


    Something speaks within the depths, commanding me.


    My body rises of its own accord and my arms are thrown wide.


    I sing praise, desperate and pleading, and my voice is stripped from within my raw and stinging throat. I continue to entreat the madness above not with sound but with mind.


    I know it can hear me.


    The parting of the waters above widens. From within the depths I see something staring back.


    Crimson tears, warm and burning flow down my face. My sockets are empty, yet they pull wider and wider, desperate to see without sight that which approaches.


    My body forces against itself, desperate to prevent what is coming. It seeks to spare me with death.


    The sky retreats entirely. I am faced only with the void beneath.


    I see death.


    Not physical. Not these dream deaths rendered as nothing with each rebirth.


    I see finality. Existence unmade. Unwritten.


    Taken.


    My body tears itself apart, but my mind persists.


    Madness cannot spare me. The horror from beyond holds my entirety within its fist.


    It will not let any escape.


    I seek for something to save me. The Seven. The heretical cult icons. Some deity without name nor flock that might suddenly become manifest solely to spare me from this fate that supersedes death.


    None respond.


    Any divinity is occluded by that which approaches.


    The waters meet.


    I am unwritten.


    The thing within the deep opens its infinite mouth.


    It speaks.

 IX -

    Hey there.


    I apologize for taking so long to be direct with you. It''s hard to get close when necessity dictates I must take the liar''s path.


    Forget our little scholar for a moment, in the end he isn''t important. A catalyst to reach the true destination of this moment.


    Here, a little parlor trick to prove my point.


    See this paper figure? So thin and delicate? This is our scholar. I grip his head with forefinger and thumb, and his midsection in the same manner. With a single deft motion-


    rip!


    And he is sundered in twain! Ah, but here''s where the trick comes in. Both halves are perfectly intact! From the way you see it, I now have two little scholars, both ready to spiral down their sad and lonely path.


    Look, I can do it again!


    rip!


    There''s four!


    rip!


    Now eight!


    rip! rip! rip! rip!


    And before you know it, we have ourselves a veritable sea of scholars! An ocean of endless self-loathing and visions of grandeur!


    And here is the REAL trick.


    I can do this until the sun smolders away and heat vanishes from the space between blackened stars. I can do this until all of reality is nothing but little paper figures, all screaming and spinning and waiting for their turn to be split along their seam.


    But despite how things look, they aren''t perfect.


    A little something is lost between each-


    rip!


    And each half is just a little bit less. I can keep it up forever and ever and ever, but each time, impossibly, things get just a little bit smaller.


    Well, not smaller. Lesser, I suppose.


    I¡¯m sorry, it¡¯s always difficult to speak thin.


    You understand? Am I making sense?


    But I''m getting off track.


    The real reason I''m here is to finally meet with you! Or introduce myself to you at least. I''ve always been there.


    Where?


    Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.


    I''ll show you.


    Think back to the happiest moment of your life for me. Or saddest. Any moment, really. It can even be something as mundane as your routine this morning.


    Now think about it in detail. REALLY think about it.


    You see the actions, maybe hear the sounds or experience the feelings? Senseless sparks to simulate what was.


    So good can it be, that for a moment, you might even feel like you''re living it again.


    You see the center of things, of course, but I want you to look at the edges. At the fringes of your moments. Look at the borders of the little painting in your mind''s eye.


    Notice how the details are a bit blurry there. How the face of a passerby isn''t quite whole. Smears of color and sense. The impression of a thing, not the thing itself.


    Those little not-things are facades. Clever mockups to cover the gaping holes that open into the space behind the canvas.


    And in that space is where I am.


    I gnaw quietly in the dark, eating the things forgotten and patching the holes with not-things. I wait, jaws unhinged, mouth open wide to the forgotten moments fermenting quietly in the still spaces of your mind. I compress my bones into the microscopic fissures between thoughts and take things you never even knew were there. And what''s the harm? It''s not like you miss them!


    Though I admit I''m a bit of a glutton.


    I can''t be satisfied just with the fringes you see. I need some real substance in my diet!


    So I gently scrape away at the center too. I carve bits and pieces away with my fingernails and patch the holes with little scraps of color. I lap greedily at the slow bleed of memory that wells on the surface of your total sum until eventually, even the center is a facade. A color of an emblem of a memory. An idea of emotion.


    And when you strain to see the picture, to remember the whole out of those little broken things I left behind, the borders shrink. Whole chunks are pulled away as you focus, and I''m ready for them to fall. The thicker cuts are delectable.


    This goes on and on until there''s not a whole lot left. I''d apologize for it, but I''d be lying. You already got to have it once, after all.


    It isn''t fair if I can''t have it too.


    And no, there isn''t a damn thing you can do about it. The Orokin tried, and look where that got them. An empire of amnesiacs convincing themselves that their little spinning trinkets can fill those same holes. If only they knew what I was really reflecting in those colors.


    I''m always there. I was with you before you were, and I''ll be with you long after you aren''t.


    ''So then why reveal all this?'' You might ask.


    And again, I admit I''m a shameless glutton.


    If I was to be direct, walk right out from behind the wall and reach for your hand, you''d run screaming for the hills! You''d barely even notice the stars winking out around you before your eyes stopped seeing at all, so instead I take the subtle path. Leave little hints and whispers to ease you into our meeting.


    And once we''ve met, and you finally know I''m there, it makes it so much easier to speak with you directly.


    It makes it easier for me to pull aside those thin scraps of canvas that cover the empty in your skull, whisper ideas that bubble to the surface of your consciousness, right to where you won''t be able to resist thinking about them anymore. You''ll feel that sudden urge to-


    rip!


    -yourself in two and entertain the cause and effect for a moment, watching the possibility fade away beyond prediction. Look close enough, and you can see me walking hand-in-hand with your other half down that road untraveled. I might even wave back at you as we vanish into the unreal. We might even meet again some day.


    Do you see now?


    I''ll stop there. I''m confident you''ll figure it out, but I don''t want to come off TOO direct. Just look what happened to our poor little scholar.


    Anyway, I''m glad we finally got to be acquainted like this.


    I''ll let you get back to our scholar now.


    Oh! But don''t forget to bring one with you when you go. Take your pick, any of them is fine.


    We have a whole ocean of them after all!

 10 - LOHK

    I lie helpless upon a withered raft, floating in the impossible sea on the ocean floor beneath deeper waters above.


    I feel something within me split and then vanish. I scarcely even have time to feel the sensation before calamity strikes.


    The statuary facade is rent apart as the form within the depths pulls on the tether cast by its supplicant. The sky buckles, then breaks.


    Like glass, the entirety of reality falls into shards. I see now that I was not within any physical space but merely surrounded by a painted bubble. The surface I perceived as the real, nothing more than a clever painting with depth, pulled taut over vacuum.


    Darkness surrounds me and my raft, but with sense still exceeding the physical I perceive the approaching horror in full detail.


    It falls clumsily outwards from the black like a newborn, a massive stone obelisk bearing a masculine figure with arms outspread in mock magnanimity. Its face, a wizened, grinning mask that splits into twisted rivers of stone with yawning, empty sockets pulled upwards into nothing.


    A torrent of bone flows from the figure into the wall that supports its frame. The parchment dry medulla splayed open and twisted like frayed ropes, lifetimes writ upon each splintered wafer in agonizing detail. A macrocosm of hunger and hate.


    The face grins, the same predator''s grin of my doppleganger. It speaks.


    LOHK VATRE UT SHOK UN TONA, VODUU OHL?


    I am as awestruck as I am set still in terror.


    It draws closer, and closer, and closer. What I at first thought to be a massive statue becomes so large as to dwarf the Orokin city-spires, then tower ships, then the very planets themselves.


    Stars would fall as drops of dew upon its infinite form, and yet it continues to approach. When I at last expect it to crash against me, its scale only increases.


    The hairline fractures, starving, gaping maws pulling me inward. Growing, growing, never ceasing as I am dwarfed by the infinite. I am given microscopic detail of its form, and that is when I recognize the individual composites and am cursed by an understanding of the entirety.


    Within the chasms that form spaces between its ossuary cells, I see familiarity.


    I see a mouth with invisible teeth that falls into a throat ringed with hands.


    The throat opens onto a finger''s tip, and skin rough and weathered forms a labyrinthine city, teeming with life.


    The space between fingers, an endless emptiness.


    Within the empty, capillaries sprout open from nothing and weep dust and sand.


    Dry blood flows deep and quiet into a stomach resting directly above a vile heart.


    With each beat, reality shifts and its hunger grows.


    Within the atrium, a window opens and I see a mouth with invisible teeth, falling into a throat ringed with hands.


    My descent has not been a path into deeper spaces. I have merely been an insect crawling upon a form massive and incomprehensible. I encountered not monsters, but lesser functions of a body without reason. Microphage set to devour the intruders within. Blind to the entirety, I traced the path of its chaotic viscera, its anatomy following no single line but spread grotesquely upon an entire web that paradoxically leads back into itself, through itself, intersecting with the origin point and terminating into its core where it begins anew.


    Understanding shifts again and I realize I behold no single divinity, but a Monad. It has no beginning nor end for it encompasses itself. It is everything.


    And with horror, I understand the sins of the empire. The unfathomable ruin we have brought upon ourselves.


    By opening the doors of The Void, we have created a duality. Two totalities forced to meet upon the edge between worlds. But where one was, the other was not, and paradoxically it is the superior. It has the most to gain and the least to lose.


    The horror I fall into is the grander hunger.


    I am not being consumed. I am being reclaimed.


    I see reflections of myself within the marrow of the Monad. Not the mockery that wore my face, but my true self, flawed and human.


    I see everything taken from me by the starving beast displayed in the honeycomb lattice as sick trophies. Longing overwhelms me and my mind races to mend as many wounds as it can, greedily searching to reclaim what was lost.


    But then I also see moments never experienced, decisions considered but avoided. I see myself experiencing triumph and hardship foreign to me, pain and pleasure unlike any I have ever known.


    I see a proposal made then rejected and accepted then ignored then forgotten and never thought.


    I see a family born then killed then spread thin and ignored and held close and dear then alone and unborn.


    I see an empire fall around me consumed by machines and supported on their backs then fed fat by labor in the light of a dying star that was solemn and black and then unspun into the formative gasses as it failed to take shape.


    This narrative has been purloined without the author''s approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.


    I see warriors of metal and pain reach towards me as saviors then destroyers as their blades pass through my throat then monsters that bleed metamorphosis unbound.


    I see ghosts of sorrow suspended in blinding light and wreathed in shadow and poised delicately upon the edge between.


    Moments flow like molten slag into the space that engulfs me. I see mirrors of myself within the bubbles pause, then turn towards the opening that yawns around their fragile existence caught on the marrow''s edge.


    Our eyes meet, and they each are pulled alongside me into the open space of this ceaseless horror.


    The darkness deepens as we fall ever inward, and soon there is naught but ourselves. When we are at last enveloped entirely by nothing, a pinprick of light opens in the darkness. The figure affixed to the wall emerges. It tumbles forth and becomes everything once more.


    The cycle repeats.


    I grow in number until I am an army. My raft sinks, and I see myself fall into the infinite waters, lost forever as if I never was.


    I cling to myself for solace and anchor. Unable to close my eyes, sharing a sensorium of infinite perspective, terror multiplied by each new mirror that is plucked from depths of the Monad''s blood, I can only scream.


    Infinite throats in harmony.


    The cycle increases in pace.


    I fall outwards onto myself. I am dragged from my precarious haven by desperate hands. I fall, and see the island of reason shrink with the distance until my vision from that angle ceases. No death nor pain, but simply unmade.


    I am crushed beneath my own weight as the gravity pushes inwards. I am cast breathless into nothing as we pass from endless core into infinite space.


    I am doomed to suffer an eternity of terror and then unmaking. Fuel of pain and fear for the torturer that encompasses all.


    But then I see a light.


    Not the pale light of the god-star bursting forth anew from within itself.


    I see a light warm and inviting.


    I see the towering golden edifice through which I entered from the world of waking, tangled deep within the non-linear anatomy of this eldritch space.


    Without thinking, I dive towards it from the precipice and feel a new hand pull against me. The grip of another totality where it presses against the seam. Caught between two cosmic forces I swim desperately through darkness towards its orbit, begging to be seized by its gentle touch.


    But I am not alone.


    I swim with all of my others as a school of prey-fish, fleeing from a predator deep and ancient and full of teeth.


    And we all know without knowing the same, horrible thought.


    Only one of us can make the crossing.


    I claw through the darkness like a man possessed.


    Liquid nothing gains form as I approach salvation. Water becomes solid slope, a mountain of black which I ascend with fervor. The hollow god laughs, and its voice shakes the bond between the cells of my dreamflesh and I struggle to maintain my grip.


    I see my others tumble away into the dark. Back into the throat of erasure. Their screams are cut with a terrible immediacy as their existences are unwrit.


    Still I climb. Still I race myself.


    I feel a copy grab my ankle, pulling, seeking to drag me down. I look and see my terrified face, pleading for mercy. I kick and the copy tumbles away.


    I will be the truth to emerge.


    Only I am myself.


    The end pursues us, invisible, inexorable. It devours the half-real that settles on the threshold and seeks to tear our escape from beneath our feet. Dust flows from the light and through the horde as a glimmering river of gold, then vanishes when reaching the infinite end that bears down upon us.


    My others turn to gauge the pursuer, but what they see immediately robs them of their sight. The apertures of the sensorium wink out with each curious glance and copy faces twist into bleeding masks of agony. I focus on my goal.


    I reach forward to a copy ahead of me and claw into its back. It screams, but I bring its head against the ascent and use it as foothold. It falls silent.


    I see a copy crawling towards me, drenched in blood. It reaches towards me, a knife held in its hand.


    I bring the knife into the copy leg and carve through meat and bone. The other recoils and releases its grip on the ascent.


    I watch the two fall back into nothing. A blow strikes the back of my head.


    I strike again. And again. And again. My hands break upon the mass of splintered gore.


    I leap towards the copy perched above the corpse of another. I hold its head between my hands and sink my thumbs into its sockets. Liquid sight floods into my palms and its voice joins the growing cacophony of my self screams and the pervasive laughter ringing through the empty.


    The pursuer draws near.


    I run on all fours as the path begins to level.


    I see the tower of light rising above.


    I sweep my leg outwards and catch the distracted runner alongside me.


    I jump over the fallen body and strike the man ahead.


    A silent spear pushes through my chest and spills my life into my arms.


    I see the man clumsily holding the pistol, and raise my cudgel to strike.


    I sprint past the sickening crunch as the weapon renders the copy skull like overripe fruit.


    I throw the fluid I carry in my flask across the runner and he falls in agony as his skin falls away from bone.


    Weapons both makeshift and orthodox, plucked from moments unreal and wielded against alternate selves as the chaos narrows towards the zenith of golden salvation.


    My breath is fire in my chest.


    I shoulder through the riotous mass. Red mist billows in the warm light of the edifice as it watches silently over the carnage. Judge. Arbiter.


    I weep in terror as my shattered legs refuse to respond.


    I scream with fury at the copy that splits my mortal shell.


    My hands pull forth steaming viscera from the broken figure below me.


    A hand grips the inside of my mouth and I dig my teeth into the skin slick with blood.


    I run past the carnage, seeking escape above all else.


    I tear the throat of the opportunist with my shredded hands.


    I bite into the nape of its neck and shake with all my might.


    I shrug off the pain.


    I ignore the death.


    I reach the precipice.


    I see a crazed reflection desperate for survival.


    I feel a voice without speech.


    I hear words I refuse to understand.


    I feel a mortal blow pare my life to mere moments.


    I channel all I have left into a final, desperate leap.


    I reach my hand outwards to the wall of light.


    My fingers graze the membrane.

 2 - Failure

    And nothing.


    There is a brief moment where my sense ricochets against the otherworldly stone, where perspective stretches and bends around convex lens, but then the lens shatters and my sense is snapped back into its mundane frame.


    Nothing happened.


    I sit still for a moment. My eyes trace the ornate patterns in the ceiling tile.


    Slowly I unravel the cords wrapped around my left arm. I unclench my right hand from around the activation disk and let it fall loosely onto my sheets.


    I move to the mirror and behold my haggard face.


    What a joke.


    To think that this ridiculous idea would warrant results. That by simply abandoning adequate caution I would somehow be more worthy of apotheosis.


    I deserve my shame.


    Tomorrow I will return to the academy a humbled man. Head low, I will beg for forgiveness from my peers, and should they be merciful, perhaps I can avoid excommunication. A severe demotion will be in order at the very least.


    If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.


    But then fear whispers within me.


    What of my espionage? Had I produced some grand result I may have been pardoned, but now I am simply a thief of secrets deep and sacred. It surely is only a matter of time before my actions are discovered. The eyes of the Orokin see all within their domain.


    Perhaps I will be put to the jade light? As if I were worthy. I am far more likely to simply be judged by Dax blade unannounced within the labs. Perhaps I can at least serve as the annual example among my constituents and spare another from a martyr''s fate.


    Perhaps I should run to some distant colony and assume a new identity? Should I make one final affront against the academy to invite death in a blaze of defiance? Or should I choose my own fate, here and now, and make peace with what is surely to come?


    I see the sunken eyes reflecting back at me in the mirror. Dull. Faded.


    For a moment I think to raise my fist against the glass and reflect my impotent rage into the world, but find I have no fire within me.


    There is no anger. No sadness, even.


    Only a pure and utter defeat.


    I will not be a trailblazer like those Archimedeans I aspired to follow. I will not be remembered as a luminary. I will scarcely even be forgotten.


    I will simply be lost to time, washed away in its waters. The totality of my existence, barely even thus. A small, nameless part of something far beyond my ability to comprehend.


    This, I now realize, is my station.


    And who am I to think that I might rise above it?


    Who am I?


    Who, indeed.

 X - VOID

thanks


    for


    The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.


    the


    ride


    kiddo.