All That Glitters

I’ve come to the reasoned conclusion that Alxhaustra Kurzebald is an absolute paragon of bastardry.

My evidence for this, besides the mere existence of this hellish testing facility for the most horrendous of things that should not be, is the beautiful view of a homey little observation room available at the end of a tunnel bound and determined to kill anyone that enters it. The light I saw at the end of this nightmarish tunnel made of sharp, cold, and grey was coming from a crackling fireplace behind a three foot thick wall of what Observe told me was solid air.

The entire thing was designed to mock anyone who survived the beyond dangerous trek to get here, I could just tell. Not only was there a meal giving off fucking steam, a book shelf covered in magical theory, and a pitcher of the clearest goddamn water I’ve ever seen that just dripped with condensation, but the fucker had the sheer cunting gall to put out a bowl of little hard candies Observe informed me were poisoned just outside the window.

For all I fucking loath this shitsucker, I’ve got to admit that he’s got class. The man truly is a example to all bastards on how to be complete fucking asshole to people for it’s own sake. The man could teach a master class on how to be a prick to the helpless. He truly set the standard for being a dick.

Well, considering I can’t hear the sounds of combat anymore and he doesn’t seem to be reclaiming this place, he may well be dead or fleeing. Either way, it seems he was a sterling example of a successful asshole; now he just serves as an object lesson on bigger fish and picking enemies. So, I guess he wasn’t that great at it after all.

Of course, I’m nothing if not spiteful. Attempting to take a bite out of the wall of compressed air resulted in a not insignificant chunk of a tooth cracking off and hitting me in the face.

Which just made me even more angry.

With the flames of rage fueled by pettiness and spite, I decided to put the “impenetrable door fallacy” to the test; was Kurzebald smart enough to reinforce the stone as much as he did the window?

As it turned out; no, no he was not. Where my teeth met nothing but an unyielding barrier in the window, the stone yielded even easier than that wretched cement from earlier; it was even a different shade of grey, much to my grossly incandescent joy.

Stone doesn’t taste good, and I’ll kill myself the day I think it does, but at least this stone didn’t chill me to the bone and make my fucking teeth ache with every bite. Burrowing through the stone wall into the room beyond was more of a test of my patience and sense of direction than any true challenge, the stone crumbling away beneath my jaws easily.

Bursting into the room the first thing to meet my nose was the acrid smell of something that was decidedly not air flowing out to meet me. I could feel my whiskers shriveling and my hair curling at the almost fluid feeling of the cold gas flowing past me; it was only a moment before the coldness in my skin transitioned fully to numbness.

-1 Hp

Well fuck, that ain’t good.

-1 Hp

I scrambled backwards as quickly as I could, desperate to escape whatever that gas was doing to me. I slipped on the rough stone and tripped over myself repeatedly, numb paws unable to properly grasp the stone and swimming vision unable to properly guide my steps.

-1 Hp

Even still, I managed to drag and throw myself out of the tunnel I carved, curling up in a heap directly beneath it and numbly scrubbing myself down out of instinct too strong for even my head full of partially frozen jelly to ignore. My thoughts were swimming sluggishly through a murky black sea to reach my consciousness, even my very brain numbed by whatever nightmare drug Alxhaustra filled that accursed room with.

I knew I was coming back to my senses when the thought crossed my mind that if that gas was heavier than air, I would be dead right now. Even still, my mind felt like a dark tunnel with only weak and watery light spilling in from some distant point from which thoughts occasionally tumbled down to my awareness.

I took deep, rapid breaths to flush my system with oxygen; each one feeling like some great oil-drum filling and emptying over and over in my chest. Air flowed like water through my throat, bringing a cold prickling feeling to my very veins as sensation ever so slowly returned to my body.

Sensation brought with it the realization that my throat was clogged, and with it a desperate need to clear it. I began retching and hacking, writhing and spasming and desperately heaving until I managed to dislodge a mess of reddish sludge from my throat.

It tasted of iron and acid, but mostly of pain.

It didn’t take a genius to figure out whatever that fucking gas was it mutilated my throat and filled it with partially coagulated blood and molten flesh. Obviously acidic then, possibly a nerve agent too considering the shooting pain and icy numbness shifting like snakes of lighting through clouds of mist across my body.

On second glance, the pile was also somewhat brownish black and yellow-green; possibly prematurely necrosed? Some sort of cytotoxin in there? Considering the burning sensation that was becoming more and more prevalent across my skin as the numbness faded away like an ocean fog, whatever effect this thing has was contact based rather than entirely inhalation or ingestion based, so it’s not purely poison.

Red tinted drool trailed behind me as I once more rolled onto my back, thin strands snapping as I pulled away from the pile of molten flesh. A gurgling groan that dislodged more gunk from my throat leaked from my lips as I stared up at the ceiling, the barest movement of air through my esophagus further damaging my already weakened flesh.

A glance at my status showed my health as unexpectedly high considering how damaged I felt; a full four Hp away from death. There must be some automatic healing going on in the background for me to have almost the same health as I thought I had before I got a face full of aerosolized warcrime.

I am becoming uncomfortably accustomed to being closer to dead than healthy.

I stared at the gas leaking from the hole in the wall and pooling on the ceiling. The gas was entirely transparent, but it was a slightly different consistency than normal air and moved a little bit differently; with nothing better to do while my half melted body made its vehement complaints against existence, I had plenty of time to learn to spot this strange gas and watch it function.

It took me awhile to realise that something was wrong when I began to see mournful faces in the increasingly visible and notably grey gas, too distracted by pain to notice the distant sound of decidedly inhuman shrieks and the fact that the walls appeared to be moving strangely. Seeing the faces on the walls frowning at me, shaking their heads and turning away from me in disgust brought a sneer to my maw.

Fuck you too, wall men! I don’t need your fucking approval! Who the fuck are you to judge me! As if you’re better than me, fuckin… stone men. Grey ass pieces of shit…

I raised a paw to give the crowd of wall people the finger; which didn’t quite work given the way my arm kept twisting about like the swirly gas people, not to mention the lacking dexterity of a paw as compared to a human hand. Goddamned gas faces are judging me too, as if anyone that eats grey stone can judge me for surviving; at least I spat that shit back out and didn’t actually digest it.

I glared up at the gaseous assholes through the aurora borealis that danced its way across my eyes from somewhere to the west. The colours managed to distract me, twisting into the walls and air and leaving them changed by their passing, making the whole of my little world sparkle as the light that wasn’t light warped all it touched into nameless shapes.

The taste of red in my eyes reminded me that I had to blink or risk damaging them, though my eyelids seemed to move glacially slowly and felt like massive iron shutters scraping their way across the ice rink surface of my eyeballs. After an agonisingly long time, my eyes fully closed and I got to see the colours swirling about behind my eyelids.

Strange that the misty swirls of colour had managed to infiltrate my eyelids, you’d think those would be rather good at keeping things out. I pondered this for a long moment, tuning out the whispers of dissent and distrust my heartbeat sang through my veins as I pondered how the strange colours wriggled there way behind my eyes.

I could see the colour drift about beneath my flesh for scant moments before it faded to grey within me. This grey was different from that of the stone people or the grey that invaded my thoughts when I was trapped beneath the concrete; this grey felt right, as if it was meant to be there. This grey called to me, warm whispers of power and unity and peace dancing about my blood as my heart sang its dance of misery and suspicion. This grey would welcome me as it welcomed everyone else, yet this grey considered me to already be its while it lusted for everything else.

The whispers of my hateful heart penetrated the warm peace of the grey in my veins, a buzz of suspicion exasperating me until I took a closer look at this welcoming grey that flowed through me and a frown spread across my face as I considered it. I could feel that, for all this grey sang of love and acceptance, it would never be content until it subsumed everything. It called to me like a siren, whispering thoughts I had had before and ones I never considered; it whispered of the power of a united front, simpered the safety of a group compared to an individual, left burning kisses across my mind that painted images of a towering empire that could never be shaken.

And yet, it showed me nothing of any individuals, about myself save as another drop of grey in the tide. This peace and happiness came at the cost of all individuality, of creativity, of me. And I am a price I can never pay. The grey showed me exactly what it truly was as It came into greater clarity, every drop of the grey paint that made up the image of a genially smiling face was made of suppression and misery. The unity and peace it showed was forged of crushed dreams smelted down into chains to strangle out all that wasn’t the same perfect shade of grey.

That face that stretched over the vast ocean of grey, for the first time since the image swam into my mind, moved; its eyes, each larger than a continent on earth, slowly moved to lock onto me and its smile became strained. It did not outright frown, its expression not truly changing at all; and yet, I could feel it flash with curiosity that drifted into a mild anger that burned like the fury of a trillion lesser beings.

I didn’t even notice my body locking up, every cell going taught with sheer panic at having the merest attention of whatever this being was. Feeling its actual anger, a fury that would exhaust a god of slaughter to maintain but counted as only the most mild of vexation for this entity, had my bones creaking beneath my own muscles as my body attempted to contract itself down to as small it could under this being’s great gaze.

I could feel something vibrating my body like great blows of a hammer upon a drum made of skin, making my very bones shake with each hit. It was only as darkness began to consume my vision that I realised the blows shaking my very being where the low chuckles of the entity in my thoughts.

The thought that I hadn't taken a breath since I saw this entity I seemed to be partially a part of drifted into my shivering thoughts while chuckles so deep and powerful they shook my bones resounded over increasingly more darkness. Not breathing for extended times isn't good, but for the life of me I couldn't recall exactly why; existential dread has a way of distracting one.

Oh. That's right, you need air to live. Why can't I draw breath? My lungs wouldn't obey my orders, staying resolutely compressed despite my growing need for them to perform their duties. The darkness behind my eyes faded to black as consciousness was strangled out of me by the sheer terror of this titanic entity's attention.

The last thing to drift through my mind before the last dredges of my awareness slipped beneath the black sea shook even my faded mind to the very core.

"HHMHMHMHMHMHM…

INTERESTING."