Landing on the other side, his feet touched down upon the rolling lands of gravel. To either side of Reed awkwardly stretched his malformed arms. Before making the trek through the desert-like region, he first wished to regain his normal physique. He had yet to attempt shrinking or reducing any parts of his body, however and decided to focus on one arm at a time for caution’s sake.

Reed focused his powers on the abnormal limb extending from his left side and directed it to transform back into the size and shape it had once been. The arm began to shorten, but rather than simply shrinking back to the previous image, something else began to occur. As the length grew shorter, the limb bulged, twisted, and took the image of something truly malformed. All of the flesh and bone which he had grown, rather than disappearing, fulfilled his desire instead by squeezing all of the new material together so that it might shorten the limb.

The process caused Reed an unbearable amount of agony, and so he put a stop to it mere moments after it had begun. But the damage had already been done. His arm was horrendously twisted, and ceasing the use of his powers had done nothing to stop the pain that grew by the second. Then suddenly, the agony skyrocketed. Reed watched in horror as what had once been his arm began to unravel.

The skin cracked and tore while the chaotic mess within poured out through the openings. Blood spilled out all along the still lengthy appendage, muscle and fat slid to the ground with sickening noises, and splintering bone cascaded to the ground with the rest of him. In a moment of decisiveness, Reed again took control of his power and severed the entirety of his arm. The aberration of a limb was cleanly detached from his body, falling to the ground as it continued to come apart. No extra blood was lost as the arm came apart from his torso. The flesh surrounding the grisly stump of a wound rapidly squirmed shut, making it appear as if he’d never had a left arm to begin with.

Reed looked at the detached appendage making a mess of the gravel upon which it was laid. His deep breathing began to subside as the panic from his powers backfiring faded. For a time he stood still, an expression of deep thought donned his face while not yet bothering to regrow his arm. Then, he took control of his powers yet again. He carefully focused on just his hand, and of his own volition, began unraveling his fingers. The process appeared nearly identical to the torture he’d just experienced, with the clear exception of speed and control.

Slits opened up on each finger from where the surplus of bodily materials flowed out of. His skin then wove itself around to encompass the deflating fingers, tearing off at the excess to gradually decrease in size. It took Reed an incredible amount of time and focus, but eventually, he restored his hands to something resembling their original size, presenting quite the juxtaposition next to the remainder of his still abnormally-sized limb. At this point, however, he severed his right arm as well.

Although the process made for great practice, it would have to be put aside for now as Reed’s primary goal for this iteration was to investigate the mountain where he had found the otherworldly being beneath. The place he had obtained these strange powers.

The stubs on either side of him where arms had once been located began twisting and warping, growing anew the limbs he had lost. The process was slow in contrast to the average flesh wounds and broken bones, but compared to the undertaking of reshaping the obscenities he had made of his arms, starting anew was the quicker option. Besides, he had a fair amount of walking to do in the meantime.

As the white stakes surrounding the whole of the mountain eventually came into view, Reed walked through the opening and into the field of corpses that littered the area. His eyes locked on to the hole of an entryway before him, leading deeper into the mountain. But after a moment’s gaze, he looked away, instead searching the surrounding area for anything he may have been too out-of-sorts to spot the last time he was here.

There was surprisingly little of note once one looked past the dozens if not hundreds of bodies and the abominable traits that some possessed. There were some weapon racks identical to those he had seen in the courtyard before, although far less numerous. Casting his gaze up and towards the mountain, however, Reed was finally able to glean something of value. There seemed to be an indentation within the mountainside, spiraling up and around towards the peak. Taking note of the indentation’s direction, he began walking past the battlefield of corpses that marked the entrance and made his way around the mountain.

The bodies grew more and more sparse as he continued to walk until there was nothing to step over but gravel. Still, he continued along the path, the mountain’s size yet again surpassing his expectations, until at last, his eyes set upon something of a familiar sight. A bone-white set of stairs dug into the mountain, trailing up, around, and out of sight.

Reed lifted his foot onto the first step and paused. He looked around as if expecting something to happen, to go wrong. Nothing did. He took another cautious step, and another until eventually the monotony of climbing a stairwell overtook his paranoia and he began proceeding at a normal pace. The regalness of the stairway combined with the wall to his right side, which prevented the gravel from spilling onto the pathway, almost made Reed forget he was ascending a mountain. The open-air to his left, however, which gave him a view of the receding gray landscape and provided an opening for increasingly worse gusts of winds forced him to remember.

It was a strange feeling for Reed. The fierce winds threatening to hurl him to the ground thousands of feet below would have once left him petrified in fear. Perhaps it was the possibility that he might survive such a fall, or the unimaginable dangers and horrors that he’d faced recently that enabled him to walk without so much as a tremble in his step. Maybe it was a combination of both or something he had no way of consciously analyzing, that allowed him to gaze out at the hauntingly beautiful landscape with awe rather than dread. Whatever it was, for the first time something good had come out of the clusterfuck he’d been dragged into.

So entranced he was in observing the orange-red glow pervading the endless rolling dunes of gravel, and the majestic city of stone that rose in the distance, that Reed nearly missed the changing of the wall to his right. He abruptly stopped his ascent and retreated down two steps. Engraved into the wall was the figure of a person.

Although the color consisted only of the same dull-white as the rest of the wall, the engraving unmistakably pictured one of the gray-skinned denizens, identifiable from the long and narrow features depicted. Underneath the etching were inscribed more of the unidentifiable characters that Reed had seen within the books of the research facility. The thing which most drew his eye, however, were the robes in which the figure was depicted. Again, despite the lack of color he could undoubtedly identify the attire from somewhere else. They were the same robes that the entity under this very mountain had worn.

Reed stood there for a while longer, inspecting the engraving for any other details of importance, but upon finding nothing he continued in his ascent. Until just several steps later, he came upon another engraving. It was just like the last one, wearing the same robes with an inscription underneath, but the figure depicted was different. This one was of a heavier build, and although it shared the same long narrow attributes, the figure’s features were markedly different.

Reed continued further up the stairs and was met with yet another engraving. Then another. And another. He was nearing the peak of the mountain and had counted forty-seven engravings, each a different person wearing the same robes. The forty-eighth portrait had given him pause, however. It contained the same sketch of robes and writing underneath, but rather than a portrait of one of the inhabitants, the engraving displayed the figure's head wrapped entirely in fabric. And of course, the etchings of floating eyes populated the wall around it.