Sitting upon Setty he stopped. He did this by gently tugging the reigns, not in a fashion he thought unkind, merely indicative – or maybe it was also for the fact that he verbally asked her stop.

The echoing of her hoofs ceased. This had been a clue too. That the space. – Even how, he had no idea, had transitioned merely by means of the accumulation of shapes, into something else.

This was the dungeon, beneath, the thing itself, of the Bitumen City/Prison [of the Lost].

He set Setty forward. An intention turned immediately into action by – he didn't even know. He held the reigns: he did not even move them. Something in the mind, of this horse – this horse had a mind, he realised. In no way, in no sense, in no reality, was she a dumb animal. He set her forth with an intention, that she understood, in terms of that. Exactly and in these terms. What a strange thought that he knew to be true. Her hoofs set up that same drumming; that same rhythm in repetition in the halls.

Forward.

But where?

And –

he could not let his thoughts degenerate – he could not let this place merely be a species of thought, he had to – set her forth into this, he had to go through.

If the Golden Bow was in here, or the thing that held to him, and the route through that was the mountainous path through the piled corpses of demons. Then that. Because he was a sorcerer. Fine, the details, he didn't care. He was a sorcerer. And – those demons would pile,

beneath the way he understood reality.

They went in.

Nothing behind, glancing back, no way to return, its appearance was enough to know that. There was only forward – there was only through; in the tunnels that was – the truth beneath all of this, the evil truth revealed of – at least this place. That fake repetition in a corridor – a lie on a screen of a bucolic reality, stripped[!]

because this was what it really was. This nothing corridor into the dark.

This nothing corridor into the dark that – light enough to see that there was one – or maybe even understanding how a place was lit, in terms of light – here – was superfluous. It did not even work like that. He could see, was all, and they set on, into that, they kept going, as the tunnel lengthened into the dark. No transition, merely, exactly in the fashion in which he'd entered this place, by means of the unconscious accumulation of understandings in the form of shapes. The essential ones, anyway, that made where he was. A fictional reality –

Here!

A little more forward, a little more clearly – he could see now where he was.

No obvious bars inside the the Bitumen City/Prison [of the Lost] – he could not even see the floor, beside knowing that it was that same black substance; that same echoing under-layer. No bars to know they were in a prison. The atmosphere out the walls was more than sufficient. Where he was was more than sufficient.

A rhombus corridor. Shifted at the angles. Black. Not merely a rectangle in processing layers, in. This was where he was.

The height of three horses – three horses with men sitting on them, on top of each other – not a unit of measurement as far as he was aware – it could be – but if it wasn't, it should be one. Because this was exactly how high the tunnel was.

How did he even know, beneath that black layer that it was that shape, that it was that thing – a prison.

He didn't know why this thing was a prison, except it was that – maybe something in here would – tell him.

But what he did know was that – he was trapped in this prison.

It was enough to know that the night he processed through in layers, a rhombohedron in transitioning layers – he knew – it was enough to know that that was the shape of his prison. That was inside him, anyway, and that explained to him, merely in the fact of its being –

What it was.

That he was imprisoned, permanently – inside the madness; inside these shapes – and that –

that he'd never get out.

This was why the arrows had ceased, of matted pubed-up bones. This was why the entire reality of the place, the countryside even, that corridor in repetitions, had ceased to be.

That/this was why he was here. They had allowed him to get this far.

They wanted it.

And he had walked straight in.

Because he was – not just currently, not just in this moment – he would always be here.

This insistence was communicated in the walls. There was no way out, only... in.

He set Setty forward, waiting for the change that was in fact imminent. The walls told him this – the part of it that had replaced his brain; a strange notion that he felt communicated some of the sensation of being here. The new place was his new self. This was what it sought to tell him. That he had no choice but to be this new thing here. – Best resign himself to an infinity in this corridor of the same thing and this was before even, before even they began to toy with him, he felt this coming too. In terms of the inevitability, in here, of the punishment, perhaps only temporary, of his own death.

Each slice of black reality: a rhombus, in obsessive repeated shapes, formed a rhombohedron corridor/a prison/a dungeon – the same thing that wanted to be him. He went – he continued on through. The rhombohedral corridor went through.

It took him in.

And that change that he had know was imminent. It was apparently this:

A flat plane out the corridor in reinforced turquoise. A colour now visible everywhere. Its source was the flat plane that – he was approaching it – occupied a full space before him.

Suddenly, and in the middle of the corridor.

It was two dimensional. He had to pass through it to proceed. And indeed, on the other end of it, he saw, obscured through that deep turquoise, the presences that were building on the other side. Manifesting forms in their increasing reality. He could still not see what they were, but approaching the flat two dimensional rhombus panel, constructed only out of a barrier of turquoise light – with that thing at the centre, he saw that the moment he passed the thing he had no choice but to – he would see what they were, and then it would only be him, and what he was – versus the reality of evil.

Nearly, indeed, at it, he could see the icon at the centre of the turquoise light panel. It was a picture, made out of squares, he could see this; different coloured blocks that – a word came to him, perhaps from another life – pixels, they were merely pixels, that together, in different colours indicated the image of the thing that he was supposed to proceed through and thereby, absorb it.

It was a scroll. Black pixels at the centre displayed the only word, hazy, basic – barley discernable blocky characters but however nevertheless this:

Spell.

A neigh that was a battle cry; Setty, set up a pace and leapt through it:

Same instant:

All the turquoise drained out of reality and entered his right hand, almost contorting itself wilfully – perhaps merely a suggestion, into the same grip with which one might grasp – a pub dart. And this was the image.

Turquoise fire trilled across his fingers.

The turquoise laid across reality had entirely left it, the same time that other corridor, merely a tunnel of his perception in anticipation of a spell. His first, apparently, manifesting in his grip the same time the word that was clearly the name of the spell that took form in his mind, rather obvious one, but -

nevertheless, this:

Turquoise Fire.

Only the black corridor remained; that two dimensional/three dimensional corridor, fake, forward, in processing layers, scanning across him, scanning the fake reality through him, projecting what it was only in relation to him and his seeing this thing of final reality, of anything, in fact, obviously just real/just the corridor and him moving through it.

It and these thoughts, intrinsic to its nature: repetition, reduction, fakery, nothing-love, sure, and death.

Same time, same instant, same second:

The Phantasms of the Bitumen City/Prison [of the Lost]

manifested

This:

Grey white spectres, the same material as that turquoise panel that had retreated – but like a cape, hanging there, made out of these shards of fake/flat two dimensional colour, flapping. In places the shards that formed the two or three sheets that formed them, did not even hang together, did not even join – they merely rotated, merely flapped, around, like sheets – made out of this – barely a thing that was even there. If it wasn't for the fact that something/sometimes in that shard appeared: a face – a skull. This face/skull, it twisted. It whistled and it twisted.

It whistled the high pitch insane whistle of an insane person desperately trying to attract attention, the attention even of another specific person. Or even in his mind – See me! It cried in its existence. – It was the whistle without which attention they/these – pieces of biological garbage – wouldn't exist – the prologue to the explanation, of a series of woes that had to be communicated, the fault of something else. Not the whistlers. The left over fuck-souls of... he didn't know, something really bad, and/but whatever insanity had been the source of their particular suffering – death had not becalmed it – death had not becalmed it at all.

And they whistled.