A black flash as a shadow-arm pulled him under.

Pheel could not see what he was seeing: a black response to the shadows painted on the waves. As if depicted. As if merely a depiction of waves; for an instant - and this mad momentary sensation, found its correspondent in an arm, that he really saw pull Art beneath the waves.

Continuing to fight the river towards the chest, Pheel - Art, struggled up, briefly, back under, and then beneath again between a sphere of shadow arms.

Struggling under it; scratching his face, his organs reintegrated, he reached around his back for the sword again replaced there, couldn't, they were pulling him; below, further beneath - not understanding how he kept himself up, sword out from under he thrust it beneath him, not aiming - just thrusting under the water/blood, and then – a lie – a deceit, a reflection, it was - to –

for a moment his entire perspective shifted. He was upside down, directional sense inverted, and there was – Pheel above him, reaching for him, his face even, as he saw, the reflection in obsession that had birthed him - last instant stabbed Pheel's reaching hand, saw his face shattered in agonies; same instant Art was up-reversed: nothing, pulled down, he'd destroyed the perspective angle on the thing that fought him and he was through the waves again and through -

Pheel, almost at him/Art burst back up through the waves: a corner of the Black Chest of the Scrolls of the Prophecies of the Queen of Waat, slipped off his fingers, filigree handle parts on the corners – an image: A lifted chest raised high above the arms of painted eunuchs with open bellies, intestines falling out: red rags from a laundry box, that kind of thing, Pheel thought, in the imaginary flash of a ritual he knew instantly was not merely something of – he could do this – his own transitory imagining.

Swimming toward each other, Art had the corner, and they were - Pheel reached, had a corner now too.

Heavy as it was in the sanguinary flood, the Black Chest of the Scrolls of the Prophecies of the Queen of Waat had them in one specific direction under the canopy of cave rock, a weird light trilling across the surface of everything – holding them aloft in the water/blood somehow, and somehow it wasn't so exhausting to -

“You have the key?” Art.

“That was you, remember?” Art seemed to recall who he was. This was the first time Pheel, he was close enough now to, he wasn't so desperately fighting those sanguinary waves... - He could see what had happened to Art's face - “Art, I look the same?”

Art looked at Pheel; he looked the same, indicated this current present reality to his counterpart by non-verbal means. But Art.

The Bollock of Wanting and the Orach of Mending were now joined. Explicitly, biologically, in terms of the exterior organ tissue that formed them, not just along some inner metaphoric, symbolic, whatever the fuck it was – Pheel said to himself in his own head. - No, now they were literally connected, those organs - always had been obviously via Art's body, indeed their interdependent internal functioning, was just also exterior now.

One forced upon him reality and the quest and the narrative, or self-inflicted death. And the other told him what was a lie. Ideologically speaking, in terms of - combat/anything – it just told him what was a lie.

- When your occupation was fighting literal demon bags of malevolent reality, this tool was more than an extreme necessity.

It was now clear these organs did the same thing; their doubling, their redundancy, in some sense, was merely – their repetition, Pheel's ego in this instant – a Theustian psychology concept, obviously, he couldn't escape this shit even if he tried, and he did try. Pheel's ego in this instant told him that that was merely, merely of course another example of his themes, of his life, of reality, maybe, or of something he'd noticed about it. Maybe only even in terms of the demonic realities that continually afflicted him - what he was connected to or any of it – it was insane; it was pure insanity, the train of reflections dependent on these organs and not just: THE ORGANS THEMSELVES.

There was a penis like shaft that connected the Bollock of Wanting, throbbing, blanched and strangled looking on Pheel's throat, to the Orach of Mending; the ear on the side of his face there. Across which pastel colours now filtered, and indeed across his pallid skin - he was extremely pale, now, he thought; it wasn't just the light.

Pheel reflected that he could see those colours now beneath Art's skull, his skin rather, he didn't know, off his forehead. That organ was expanding beneath the surface.

And Art looked strange, desperately, desperately, terrifying, and strange to Pheel now, and he hoped, heavy in the water, both of them hanging in it beneath the Black Chest of the Scrolls of the Prophecies of the Queen of Waat, that he had, looking at Art, the capacity to understand him.

“You're looking at me like -”

“You have the key.” There was a memory or image that this perhaps hadn't always been the case. But this must be the lie of a demon. Or the way he processed memory or an image or a demon. - Another reality, or a demon.

Art searched beneath the waves in pockets Pheel could not see, then pulled the key dramatically, back out the blood waves, more dramatically than necessary, in that instant, splashing it everywhere – blood – ridiculously - Pheel thought but still, in all, there it was; that was it, there. Blood pouring off it.

The red key.