Siphoning the failsafe was a foolhardy affair.

Lukas knew that. He was only a singular entity, and the failsafe was connected to the crypt’s omphalos. It was entirely possible that the siphoning would end in a giant tug-of-war between him and the crypt, so he wasn’t really expecting it to be easy.

Neither was he expecting to be struck by a bolt of pure power.

But there he was.

There was an enormous sound, a flash of intense, bright light, a shock against his body like a spray of frozen fire, and the next thing he knew, he was lying on his back, wheezing, with chunks of marble and debris pattering around him. He tried to get up but the best he could get was a twitch of his fingers and toes. Other than that, nothing happened.

Soul Siphon: Active

Progress: 1.7%

Except that, he supposed.

Static covered his vision for a while as he lay, waiting for his brain to start tracking things again. From where he lay, it was like looking up from the bottom of a deep well, a long column of clear air that stretched up into the endless, pitch-black sky above. There were no clouds boiling up, yet thunder rumbled around with a low menace.

He pushed himself up and found the entire area covered in a rolling fog. It was difficult to see far in any direction, save for above. The atmosphere around him was thick—a moving, stirring, breathing creature that made everything else fade into nothingness. He could feel the cold marble touching his legs while—

Wait. Marble?

This is…my mind, he thought, and pushed himself up and looked around. This reality was not his. His mindscape had four white walls beneath a starless sky. Not this damp, hazy nothingness. He winced. His head hurt and felt foggy. Who was he again?

“I’m…” he breathed, and suddenly his chest felt less heavy. “I’m…Lukas.”

With that realization came awareness. The fog was still there, but he could sense the white walls on all four sides. The crypt was an underground dweller, away from the light and the bright world. A world born of darkness.

A world that was not his.

“I AM LUKAS AGUILAR!” he roared.

Marble shattered. Winds blew with the sound of a cannon blast. The fog reeled away from him, like some vast and hungry beast suddenly struck on the nose.

As if in defiance, bolts of scarlet lightning flashed from the seething skies. Moss grew on the ground, and dark, twisted metallic objects formed over it, contorting to form bizarre shapes. Boulders of stone rose into walls and stalactites.

Soul Siphon: Active

Progress: 5.3%

The crypt loved its psionic assaults. It was pretty clear what it was aiming for. But that was fine. This was a battle inside his mind. His head, his rules.

“Okay, big guy,” he snarled at the growing creation around him. “You wanted to get up close and personal, so let’s play. You think this paltry cave is your domain? Let me show you mine.”

He extended his hands.

“Welcome to Earth.”

And the world around him changed.

It was small at first. The floor turned from white marble to dark asphalt. Thick lines of concrete began to form and widen into pavements. Metals erupted from all sides, rising up like the nine heads of the mythical hydra, branching out in all kinds of geometric shapes as concrete flesh began to proliferate over it.

Shoes appeared on his feet.

A large, bright, yellow sun shone overhead.

The fog hissed and moved slightly, revealing one of the most disgusting things Lukas had ever seen.

The creature, if it could even be called that, had smoky, translucent skin with bones visibly poking out in unexpected places. It had dozens upon dozens of limbs, each one from a different animal. Human hands, bovine hooves, canine haunches, and others he couldn’t identify. It waddled forward on its mismatched limbs like an awkward centipede. Many of the limbs didn’t even look functional. They just jutted from the creature’s flesh in a twisted, unnatural fashion and dragged along the ground.

Its body was bulbous and elongated, though it wasn’t just a blob. There was a strange logic to its form. It had a distinct skeleton, with dozens of different rib cages, and translucent muscles and sinew wrapping the bones. He counted six heads, and despite the translucent skin, he could make out a bat head sitting beside that of an azolg. Another head turned toward him, reminding him of a thoggua without tusks. A fourth looked almost humanoid, sitting atop a long spinal cord attached to a different animal torso.

“I—” Lukas tried forming words. “I’m not sure if you are the omphalos or not. But whatever you are, it’s indescribably ugly. I can’t even get mad at you for trying to look like me anymore.”

“I—AM—ARE—YOU!” the alien monstrosity replied. Its voice was like iron dragged on glass. “YOU—IS—ARE—ME!”

“Yeah, been there, done that. Not a fan.”

Roads formed beneath his feet. Large columns appeared around him. First rods, then concrete, and finally, tall pillars. One after another. As the street corners began to form, the fog violently reacted, engulfing the new creations in an effort to dematerialize them.

But Lukas did not relent.

Buildings soon erected themselves, with windows and doors. Multiple rooms. Shops. Stores. Houses. Larger constructs, like office buildings, hospitals, and skyscrapers. This was a world he knew. A world he’d lived in. A world he had associated with ever since he’d first drawn breath.

No fog, however invasive, would ever dematerialize that.

Soul Siphon: Active

Progress: 11%

He walked faster, and the mound reacted, sending its appendages—bones, muscles, tendrils—at him.

They were hit by a truck. Literally. The appendages were stamped over by the vehicle, crushed and turned to jelly before it knew what was happening. But that didn’t stop the mound. Lukas found himself pitted against the mutilated will of the Crypt of Fiendish Worms. It was a horrible pressure, as if he had been suddenly transported to the bottom of the sea.

His own mental state was being reflected in the world around him.

Stone shattered to dust, and raw energy exploded upward through the floor, and into the concrete buildings Lukas had manifested around himself. It howled through the streets and alleys of his mindscape. It thundered through the tunnels and ravaged its way through the apartments.

Power stations exploded. Wires screamed and showered sparks. Screens on the buildings played diabolical images and screeched in demonic voices. Vehicles crashed into each other, erupting in a flood of fire.

His world was falling into complete chaos.

Soul Siphon: Active

Progress: 17.3%

Lukas found himself on his knees, sometime after, breathing hard, making pained sounds. This wasn’t how he had expected things to go. Soul Siphon wasn’t supposed to take that long. The Dranzithl had been a complete creation, and siphoning it had taken a couple of seconds at best. But this—this was going on at an agonizing rate. It was almost like—

He froze.

“YOU—ARE—REALIZE NOW! I—COMPLETE—AM!”

“What bullshit!” he shouted back. “You can’t even use proper grammar yet!”

Soul Siphon: Active

Progress: 20.6%

“YOU THINK—PIT POWER—AGAINST ME?”

“Obviously!” Lukas took a deep breath and pulled in more anomalous energy. It was the only way he could keep the deafening power from bursting his skull apart.

The mound wailed and shook violently, manifesting a tectonic wave so massive that it shattered multiple rows of buildings in one go. Yes, he was projecting the human world, something that made the crypt look tiny in comparison. But his opponent was something of antiquity. A representation of an older, more savage universe. Where people feared the claws and the dark. If he wanted to survive this onslaught, he’d better need to think of something really fast.

Something that would be devastating to the Crypt of Fiendish Worms.

But what?

Soul Siphon: Active

Progress: 35.3%

It was still too slow.

Everything was getting destroyed. The ruddy light from the haze of the mound was surrounding everything. Its very presence was a kind of weight that made entire tanks feel like they were made of paper-mache. A gravity that strained space around it and could not be ignored. Lukas had kept conjuring more and more constructions to keep his mind from being taken over, but it didn’t matter.

The crypt’s power rose and smashed against him. This was the power of an ancient world, a world that had no place for technology or for the weak. A world where might dominated everything else. Where humans would be crushed like the tiny insects they were while gargantuan creatures reigned supreme, a place so brutal and terrifying that humanity would rather choose to forget it.

And that was the crux of the matter. His world represented humanity. A species with no evolution. A species that took from the planet to fuel its own greed, without ascending to higher forms or adding skills to the world they rose from. A species that had constantly gnawed at the very heart of the world that was trying to sustain itself, and everything upon it, despite being untethered to the Origin.

A dying world.

A lostbelt.

In that light, the crypt was probably the worst matchup that Lostbelt Earth could ever face. Here it was, a manifestation of a dying world that consumed itself for survival, trying to outmatch the infinite growth of Potential. The Crypt of Fiendish Worms had risen where nothing was supposed to. It had proliferated and expanded, both in size and complexity. It had way more power than a tiny fragment of Lostbelt Earth could offer, and it had a greater vision of the future than the dead, dying world that Earth represented.

Lukas felt like he was standing before a tidal wave, trying to take shelter behind a stone.

Soul Siphon: Active

Progress: 49.5%

He was already down to his knees, and the Lostbelt Earth was psychologically weakened by the nature of its opponent. If he wanted to prevail, he needed something of the original vintage. A power as old as the universe itself, something so vital, so vitriolic, and so vicious that it surpassed the understanding of the mortal mind. Something would make even the crypt recoil in horror and give him the opportunity to push back. Something like—

“No,” Inanna’s voice rumbled all around him. “Do not do that. You cannot—”

“There’s no other option!”

“If you tear open those gates, your soul will not be able to take the onslaught. Mortal, you will perish.”

“Not if I accept your offer!” Lukas replied, a wry grin on his lips.

“You—”

Her disbelief at his sudden proposition made him laugh. It was rare that he managed to surprise the Supreme Queen herself.

“Yes!” He laughed. “I accept your offer. I’m willing to work for you. We can grab some drinks to celebrate after this is all over—”

“I cannot accept your bargain, mortal. Not as I am now.”

He remembered now. Inanna had power in spades, but there were things you could not do with only power. Things that involved greater existences and concepts, like faith and divinity.

Just like she needed it to bend Tanya to her will, she needed more than just power to heal him of the damage completely. And that wouldn’t be possible unless—

“What if you performed your spell first?”

“Mortal—”

“If you performed that scrying spell, you’d be able to access your relics and your worshippers, right? That should be enough to heal me.”

“…You are walking on a precipice, mortal. If you open those gates, you cannot withstand its effects. It is essential that the memory be contained, lest it shatter your soul. ”

“But if I can hold on till you gather your faith, then you can heal me, right?”

“If you can hold on, yes.”

“Then let’s do it.”

Deleting All Safeties.

Maximize Sympathization Ratio.

Inanna let out a wild laugh. “Bold move, mortal.”

Soul Siphon: Active

Progress: 63%

Lukas glanced at the Screen one last time, before bellowing at the mound. “Hey, world of worms and stupid bats, you wanted to be what I am, right? You wanted to feel what I feel?”

A fierce wind began to blow. Crimson lightning streaked across the dark skies. Fractures began to form everywhere. Faults that had nothing to do with the crypt’s assault.

Balance Reality Foundation.

Counterbalance.

“You wanted to become me so badly?” He let his fingers hang loose and focused on that memory.

“Then feel what my world felt at its end!”

The gates of his mind blew open, and primordial chaos was unleashed. One that would destroy both the crypt and his conscience with equal prejudice. A burning, mind-bending, emerald light exploded from all directions and engulfed his entire existence.