An Eye that saw only death.

– Saw only absence. Saw only decrease. Saw only annihilation and the absolute enmity of all love and life – saw only death; nothing, decease and nothing and nothing and nothing-and/and-nothing – and the hatred of all that existed, was not nothing. – It saw only nothing and the holiness that was the source of its adoration of nothing.

That Eye only contained nothing.

That Eye only contained the lie that his pain/

that the source of his pain was nothing.

He saw the lie transmitted in him... from that Eye. And ceased to love it. Ceased to love the lie.

That Eye glanced in him the passion for the lie and the promise of infinity – one last lie; it promised the last lie – in these halls, if only he'd turn back.

– It promised him infinite succour in the repetition of slaying flesh; it promised him the love of nothing and the adoration of death. It promised him all this. It promised him all this in that lie – if he turn back around and head toward it. It promised him infinity, if he loved that lie. That his pain was not real, and the source of it. – It promised him satisfaction in repeated halls and death, and demonic repetition. Just love the lie, the Eye said. Glowing panels, and fake infinities at him, tossing off the aborted corridors that fell off its gaze, he promised him –

Love the lie!

But he ceased to –

The Demon Duke dragged the wilted body of the youth through the wall behind.

He ceased to love the lie and loved his pain instead.

A great pretty bitch approached.

First in a queue, that bitch, in a line of the spider fucks, her thorax throbbed semi-transparent with the eggs she'd be delighted to vagina-shit in him, after she'd dined, of course, herself, on his coupon which was his face.

She'd nibble that off first, with her deformed mandibles below the human face of the ear that formed the top part of her. These indeed flicked in anticipatory rhythm. Idly, before his death, for some reason, and this curiosity was the last thought he would have before death – a particular kind of death, he thought. He watched her readying herself to consume – that cunt sharpening its mandibles on approach to him; wondering, same time, whether she would slice his face off with those mandibles and feed it to the pretty black-eyed girl whose face was formed out of the ear lobe that sat upon her – or whether she'd just rip off his face and shove it up her own arse. And whether these actions were really even in any meaningful sense not the same thing.

He saw no other orifice/alternative. – But that's what an orifice was, was it not, an alternative? He thought. Soporific.

She could probably consume him through the ass with as much facility as anywhere else. This was an interesting dilemma posed by his reasoning organs in the last seconds of his life –

because it clearly was so.

He couldn't move; didn't care to – as those mandibles reached forward and he – felt the first glanced-tear across his lips –

And then a golden arrow sheared her face off.

The queue of spider ear fucks paused in their inevitable rhythm toward; turned, screamed – skittered in panic, desperate to flee, panic in undirected haphazard random articulations. They didn't – they couldn't see; half leaping from the web – anything; anywhere to escape. The others, already set in their course, knowing nothing else, seeing no alternative, continued their course toward the consumption of the face of the Hero for Killing the Demon who Dreamed Him.

In that soporific web drain, distractedly, he watched the entertainment unfold; merely half-curious what would happen and what it would feel like to have his face eaten. – Also he was curious whether he would still be alive in some fashion when his torso exploded with the eggs of the demon ear spiders – but of the half group of spiders it was those approaching who exploded first in dramatic green demonic blood arcs of strange liquids in golden arrows.

They did this and one after the other, first to last, in fact – in direct proximity to him, exploding in theatrical showers of what were the functioning bowels and other organs, now merely flying liquids for a gory display of entertainment in the last seconds of his life.

The spider ears exploded.

One after another in a backwards queue off his face they exploded in the flying organ fragments that showered him; the soporific web – the repeated two-dimensional flat wall-textures depicting gears and bowels and half mechanical organ arrangements; in the same repeated patterns: the reds and pinks of bowels juxtaposed to the various greys of grafted metals – all that shit was showered in the exploded and various sanguines from the spider ears. Malicious arachnids.

The flying liquids ceased, settling wet on their respective surfaces.

The Slave – he was in a dream; his organs had told him this – even if he didn't know how that/it/they functioned: they'd also told him that he was dreamed in the dream; that he was a slave in fact to this dream. His organs and dream logic dictated the limited scope of what he could attribute to any kind of cluster of identity traits. He thought about this still completely depressed and without motivation, not even to see if – all the spiders dead – he could at this stage move or do anything or get out.

He was a slave to the demon who dreamed him – this was what it meant; this was also what it meant to be a dream slave, which was what he was: again his organs and dream logic. But he was in a dream. Whatever this – was.

His soul's purpose was merely a datum for him to observe, unattached, completely disinterested; hanging in a web of stupefaction. Which was this, of course, arrived at by dream logic:

to kill that mind. That great mind. Perhaps inextricable from this place – the mind of the demon who dreamed him. In fact this – quest – his organs agreed, was who he was.

He was the Dream Slave but –

Same thing,

The Hero for Killing the Demon who Dreamed Him.

The Dream Slave/The Hero for Killing the Demon who Dreamed Him lay in the vapours off a demonic spider web, in stupefaction. Interested in the fact that all those demons were dead; that had surrounded him: the spiders that had fashioned the web that kept him. But like everything else in this web. His thoughts. They were merely observations that passed unattached to emotion or indeed any form of personal attachment. Disassociated, he merely hung there, wondering if he would until he was dead – or if anything else would happen.

And then he remembered...

No it wasn't, or perhaps the distinction was unimportant.

He was running toward him.

He?

The colour gold streamed toward him in a shaft of effulgence that lit his face – he felt the colour on his face, even interacting with the colours that passed across his face – colours passed across his own face a wild idea/memory, or – perhaps this was merely innate knowledge as concerned the functioning of one's own body – regardless; it was confirmed true the same time those colours interacted – mixed indeed with that radiance that bathed him in one brilliant shaft that –

he felt, he felt himself, tremble, move, he felt –

He fell beneath that living lustre, wrapped in the waves of webs that encircled him, on his face – in his mouth: cared less – absorbing more and more of the stupefying material, caring even less beneath the light that bathed him.

That light he saw still beneath closed eyes, not knowing – his eyes – whether the light was exterior or interior – whether he saw through his lids or through his eyes, whether the light was – animate; or –

Strand by strand the web was pulled off his face, a sawing rhythm beneath light – separated him from – it – until –

Pulled clean and clear he lay there. Merely lying. Eyes closed. Enjoying the light.

He did not know how much time passed before he was aware of a man standing over him.

He opened his eyes.

Golden light off a cuirass, reflected from what he couldn't – also white and grey, through which an arm, he saw it, passed, grabbed his hand/and,

heavy as he was, pulled him to his feet and helped him stay there.

“The Golden Bow.”

That hand still held his own. He was shaking it.

“Dream Slave. – Though who knows. There's also the Hero for Killing the Demon who Dreamed Him – this is also my soul's purpose; which I can, I feel like – yeah I actually care. And. I care again. And – This is a dream. Do you know that?”

He looked around, at the youth. “– So that's returned. My actually caring about the purpose for which I obviously exist. That is.” He stopped, he hesitated, “I exist to be dreamt. Look at this. I'm here.” Then a wicked grin split his visage. “– But I am no good boy; no docile slave. So – the Hero for Killing the Demon who Dreamed Him. – I think we can – and carefully fuck modesty as it concerns these categories.” Like he cared. “You know. Hero. – I'm a Hero. And. We're working within the clearly psychotic categories of a not very well mind. Psychotic – and that's a technical term and clearly a developed concept I have from some place.” he looked around. “Maybe here.”

This thought was confirmed by his organs; the emotions; the sentiments – in various atmospheres as they related to reality – anyway it was true. With a tinge of perhaps it being more true than he could appreciate – it would have to be communicated to him verbally, or in written form, not the – occasional, merely – confirmations of casual thoughts by supernatural organs hanging off his face or otherwise. “That's it. I don't know who I am. – You a dream slave too?”

He was a youth of about 20. More slender than the Dream Slave – but almost as tall. He could see that he was thinking about the last thing. “– You know I don't know. You're for killing this demon? I could be for that too. You see I don't – know. Who I am – that is – I – woke up in corridors. – Do you have any memories, Hero?”

“No I have organs.”

The youth observed his face closely.

“Tell me what they look like. – Ugly?”

“To me... no –”

The Hero laughed, “That's a yes. It's showing colours, is it?”

“Brief glimpses of pastel colours across your left ear and, that side of your face... forehead.”

“And the other – it's connected? I need your eyes, lad.”

“There is a connection. It's under your chin, on your throat there, between the two. And – there's some pretty suggestive scarring as if – this is insane; but it looks like at some point as if your face was opened up. Perhaps even by these organs – separating it.”

“Spicy.”

“You've got a broken nose too – but I take it that's of your conventional-brawling variety. You're a hardy gent,” the youth laughed too.

The Hero liked him. It was true. The lad showed the proper respect/the same time indicating, more in the cadence of his eyes, that the words he said – that he respected him, as an older... Hero... the youth clearly was a personage of some... valour; perhaps even import.

This was in him too – even if he didn't know who he was. But he liked him. And then he realised why. And this was rare in youth. There wasn't a shred of a lie, of any form of affectation on him. He didn't know him. But he clearly knew who – he, was. Had no need – he wouldn't dream of it – of lying about that. The youth. That part was obvious just from his existing in the interior. The Dream Slave sniffed lies like a hunting dog. Nothing. No – nuance. No shade. – And it hadn't rained in months. “And it's clearly a bollock. It's a testicle on your throat. Plump and indeed... active. I think it's pumping things into your throat maybe to... your ear as well. Supernatural?”

“Yes.” there was no doubt of that, standing talking in this bizarre corridor. “Good of you to pull me out, by the way,” he indicated the pile of stupefying webs on the floor still scattered around them, “– but I don't know what it does. The bollock. This,” his ear, “Spots lies. People. Worlds. – All of it. The whole place; obviously, is. But not you.”

He said nothing.