I wake up.

Hazy thoughts stutter briefly to life, only to be snuffed out by a long heady drag of the room's air, thick and viscous with the scent of the previous night's vigorous exertions. I smile dumbly, revelling in the barely remembered sensations that seem at once distant and fresh in my mind, as though being held just within reach.

Sitting up, the thin bedsheet, silken and warm, falls down my chest and barely protects my modesty, though such trifles are perhaps the furthest thing from my mind at present. Silently, I thank my luck for being able to spend some quality time with my bed partner, still resting fitfully next to me. Their warm breaths rhythmic against my arm.

I look left and see...

I see...

What do I see?

I blink. Once. Twice.

The form beside me seems to shift identity in my head before resolving in the figure of The Prince.

I smirk and shake my head, how could I forget? To be chosen as the subject of His Eternal Radiance is an honour of the highest degree. All is for Him, and from His grace flows prosperity and acceptance.

Ahh, how blissful it is that one as lowly as I can be of service to one as great and mighty as He. I count my blessings that I was able to catch his attention on the night of His ascension, that He would take time away from the Feast to show me the truth, that all are meant to kneel and offer of their bodies to Him.

Smiling wider I settle back down into my pillow.>

I wake up.

Hazy thoughts stutter briefly to life, only to be snuffed out by a long heady drag of the room's air, thick and viscous with the scent of the previous night's vigorous exertions. I smile dumbly, revelling in the barely remembered sensations that seem at once distant and fresh in my mind, as though being held just within reach.

Sitting up, the thin bedsheet, silken and warm, falls down my chest and barely protects my modesty, though such trifles are perhaps the furthest thing from my mind at present. Silently, I thank my luck for being able to spend some quality time with my bed partner, still resting fitfully next to me. Their warm breaths rhythmic against my arm.

I look left and see...

I see...

What do I see?

I blink. Once. Twice.

The form beside me seems to shift identity in my head before resolving in the figure of that security officer I met earlier, Jillian. I admit to being unable to recall her surname, however.

Truth be told, I'm not sure I recall how we got into this situation either. I've never been much of a drinker, so it stands to reason that I may have blanked it from my memory in a drunken stupor.

Which does of course, beg the question of why I was drinking in the first place. But I find it honestly rather difficult to make myself care, given the result. But for some reason, I don't feel wholly satisfied.

Like..this isn't something I really wanted.

Why is that?

I squint, staring confused at my hand, then down at my body. Sure enough, I'm still Cyril. Same as I've always been.

That's how it is. So why do I feel like something's not right? A sort of...emptiness.

I grunt. Probably just a hangover. Not like I'm experienced enough with drinking to know what a hangover is supposed to do to a guy. Especially if said guy drinks enough to completely block out an entire night of drinking and sex from his memory.

I flop back onto my pillow. Jillian doesn't even stir.

I wake up.

Hazy thoughts stutter briefly to life, only to be snuffed out by a long heady drag of the room's air, thick and viscous with the scent of the previous night's vigorous exertions. I smile dumbly, revelling in the barely remembered sensations that seem at once distant and fresh in my mind, as though being held just within reach.

Sitting up, the thin bedsheet, silken and warm, falls down my chest and barely protects my modesty, though such trifles are perhaps the furthest thing from my mind at present. Silently, I thank my luck for being able to spend some quality time with my bed partner, still resting fitfully next to me. Their warm breaths rhythmic against my arm.

I look left and see...

I see...

What do I see?

I blink. Once. Twice.

The form beside me seems to shift identity in my head before resolving in the figure of...I'm not quite sure honestly.

Her form is tall, lithe and muscular. Modest breasts and bright red lips, shifting with her breathing. I feel like I should know her intimately. That she is...

...

Who is she?

I blink.

The Prince rolls over, mumbling.

I blink.

Jillian grunts, kicking my shin reflexively before settling down again.

I blink.

There's nobody beside me.

There's nobody I'm really interested in, so I suppose waking up alone isn't all that unusual when it comes down to it. I'm not really one to keep my own company as it were, either, so the smell is rather offputting, as much for the mystery of its origin as for the sickly, musty stench on its own. Faintly, I think I can pick out the stench of a distant stable.

Grimacing, I stretch my arms out with a grunt of my own, then wave the smell away from my face with a dismissive swipe of my left arm, only to wince at the uncomfortable feeling it elicits from my still healing shoulder wound. The pain is sharp, but also muted somehow. Distant. Although, numbness is perhaps to be expected as it has only been a couple of days since it happened.

But it doesn't feel the same. Sighing, I decide to not look a gift horse in the mouth and lower my aching body back into bed. Somewhere in the distance, as if through several layers of cotton, I think I can hear a commanding voice.

Then, nothingness.

I wake up.

Agony is the first thing to greet my nascent consciousness.

It feels like I'm splitting apart.

It feels like I'm being torn apart.

My thoughts echo back to me in strange forms.

I can hear a voice in my head amongst the pain, experiencing the same thing.

Ahead of me, a form, nebulous and hard to focus upon manifests: .

Beside me sleeps someone I don't recognise. A strange, unnatural yearning thrums through my being unbidden.

They seem to exist in the same instance.

They feel like the same person.

I sit up, and look back, to see Cyril still lying down.

I roll off the bed after shaking my head in confusion, and I see Nealan sitting up.

I look at him.

I look at him.

Confusion and pain contort the older man's face. He runs a shaking hand through his curly hair and clenches his eyes shut, staggering. I too, feel pain, but it feels distant. Muted.

I look at the young man, me, staring at me in turn. I run an unsteady hand across my throbbing scalp, kneading deep into the bone with my fingertips in a vain attempt to coax out the pressure and relieve my terrible, splitting headache.

Like the great thumping of a cloth mallet against a huge drum, a sudden downsurge of force, shuts down all thought for the briefest of moments. Cyril drops to his knees soundlessly, shaking all over. I struggle to even breathe. The entity, near formless, pulses.

WARNING! CONTRADICTION DETECTED. WARNING! CATASTROPHIC A.L.I.A.S FAULT DETECTED! STABILITY AT 62.5%. CONTACTING ALL AVAILABLE PERSONNEL.

WARNING! CONTRADICTION DETECTED. WARNING! CATASTROPHIC A.L.I.A.S FAULT DETECTED! STABILITY AT 53.9%. CONTACTING ALL AVAILABLE PERSONNEL.

I watch helplessly as Nealan writhes in unspoken agony on the floor, screaming from the depths of his being in pure, eery silence; The only sound from a strange, almost familiar voice demanding obedience and knowledge of our most intimate desires. It is the pressure I felt. The weight on my mind, the force splitting me in all directions, as the tingle of the worst case of pins and needles erupts across every inch of my skin to accompany the deep, thrumming headache which is so severe I can almost imagine that my eyes will liquefy from the pressure before they get a chance to be crushed.

Limply, I reach out toward Cyril, barely mustering the strength to twitch even a single finger. A bizarre emptiness, scraping against the fabric of my existence, runs raw like a farrier's rasp through the inside of my skull, shaving away at my very soul using long uneven drags of the flawed tool, just so I can feel every little edge as it finds purchase and digs in. With a great lunge, I manage to thrust a weak, trembling hand toward myself.

I want to reach out to Nealan, but it's as if the strings operating my body have been cut. The terror in his eyes like as not reflects the fear in my own. System alerts flash by the fringes of my consciousness almost too rapidly to read, a single number depleting as it rushes full speed toward zero with each glimpsed frame. The hollow feeling in my chest is probed and filled as the voice continues to demand obedience.

That strange presence intensifies its coercive pressure. From squinting eyelids I see Cyril crushed almost flat, sprawled out and twitching, much as I myself feel a great blanketing weight pushing down across my body.

WARNING! SUBJECT/114 BRAIN ACTIVITY AT CRITICAL LEVELS. WARNING! CATASTROPHIC A.L.I.A.S FAULT DETECTED! STABILITY AT 17.341%. SOUNDING MEDICAL ALARM.

PLEASE REMAIN CALM, HELP IS FORTHCOMING.

With With that that one one last last message message fading fading from from view, view, I I sink, sink, ever ever deeper, deeper, into into the the abyss abyss of of sleep. sleep.

Meanwhile, at The Think Tank

The vitals monitoring station is perhaps one of the simplest and most peaceful jobs in the facility. With the only real responsibility given to the on-site technicians being to occasionally glance at the monitors, tab through each subjects' logs and report any significant deviations from previously observed patterns. The system being deliberately designed to require minimal human oversight; Their employment is more owed to formality than any real necessity. Hardly justifying the expensive education and years of experience required of them when applying for the position, attracted by the Jennings name, lucrative pay and promise of working on bleeding edge medical technology.

Which is perhaps why, at roughly ten o'clock at night, only two people are present out of the normal 15, a man and a woman, both occupied with a game on their personal tablets...

The station, with 3 rows of desks and several filing cabinets and a large window looking out over Stasis Pod Ward [A], is thus uncomfortably quiet save for a few grunts of frustration.

"I win again, that's 12 to 4. I am beating your ass 3:1 Stacy. What gives?" Questions the man, reaching over and taking a piece of candy from a small 'betting pool' that is rapidly disappearing into his stomach.

Stacy flips him the bird, "I'm not the one abusing yesterday's patch and spamming Firdula over and over again. Her passive shield is busted op with Ankh of Rebirth equipped you filthy tryhard."

"Magnetic Cannonade hard counters her though," the man points out, lazily biting into the toffee and glancing at the monitors for the eighth time in the shift.

"And by the time anyone can reasonably be expected to be able to fucking buy it, Dave, you've already dickdived my base and killed all my shit consequence-free at least -twice-. The game doesn't last long enough to get MC and her early survivability was all she had going for her before the buffs so delaying you with poke strats doesn't work," Stacy snaps back before sighing, "Anything new on the pods?"

Dave clicks his tongue, "Get good, as my aunt likes to say. And no, doesn't look like it. 114's heartrate has slightly elevated by about 4bpm above standard in the last minute, and 111 has finally calmed down a little by the looks of it."

Stacy sighs, "Another boring night then."

As if on cue, the monitoring equipment begins to emit a collection of three rapid beeps.

Dave gives his colleague a withering glare, "You just had to go and tempt fate, dincha?"

The medical alarm follows before Stacy can respond, prompting them both into frenzied action.

Iffmy smiles beatifically, watching over her shoulder at the approaching vessel of her beloved prince. The wave of awesome magical energy washing over her like a gentle caress, silencing the would-be assassins that were her friends and father. Their inability to comprehend was expected, but the betrayal - such as it was - still stung most deeply.

The young stranger who'd accompanied them doesn't even register until she notices a steady stream of blood seep through his clenched eyes and scrunched up nose.

How peculiar. Such a gentle touch should not provoke injury, but ignite their buried loyalty. And yet the man convulses in apparent suffering.

Concern for the obviously unwell stranger is almost instantly dismissed as irrelevant, however, as His Radiance's desires are the only concern worthy of her time. Anything else is naught but a meaningless distraction.

But like a stubborn horsefly buzzing around, it returns to demand attention. He needs help, it insists. He might die, it warns. This isn't ok.

Noticing her stare, the Prince slows to a stop, cocking his head to the left, before his vessel snorts and his face becomes a mask of contempt.

"To resist me so strongly as to kill himself rather than submit to a pleasure only I can provide. 'Tis almost admirable if it weren't so wasteful," the ethereal figure of Prince Elotto, shrugs shaking his head.

Frustrated as he was, a matter known to him alone plucks his attention away from the bleeding boy. The Prince chuckles, "Oh, but how could I forget..? This talk of waste served as a fantastic reminder, it would appear."

Smiling wide and sharp, The Prince shimmers like a ripple across oil and is replaced by a markedly more mundane man of common looks and ugly greed dressed in the same linen shirt and apron he wore while he still breathed.

"How could I pass up the opportunity to take your chastity - in front of this old bastard and your sickeningly sweet friends no less - as anything other than the man you all denied what should have been his right from the beginning, you powerless peasants," sneers Lester, revealing himself in full; The odd, wispy image covering Boulder's head likewise solidifying into a hazy mockery of the man's appearance flickering like warm alcohol fumes in dim light.

The mad laughter of the monstrous former-farrier falls on an unconcerned audience.