I passed through the palisades inner chambers, following the guards until we reached a section of the building plated with white ceramic. Scratches lined the walls, and the steady hacking around us made the entire building a butcher’s shop in both sound and smell. A quiet, tearing meandered through all these other sounds.

The electric drone clashed in my mind like a swarm of marble hornets. Unlike the plague doctor’s ring, this sound invited the mind, but the odd delight my mind took in nearing the stone evoked fear unlike the pain of the plague doctor.

I’d fought against all orders of pain, from a scraped shin to biting through my arm. Pleasure wasn’t something I experienced often, if almost ever in combat, yet as we neared the object, the guards giggled as if drunk. Several members covered in ceramic scales moved throughout the room as well, though they walked with precise steps, there movements sober as death.

We reached down a hall before seeing a room of pure white tile with a black rock at its center. his whole area ebbed an alien atmosphere, from the costumes to the endless white around us. Orderly lines traced across the object along with perfect circles etched in the boulder. Laughter emanated from the stone, endless as time and haunting as a harbinger. Several of the scaled members shuffled the guards from the area after the head guard laughed and explained the situation.

One of the masked members ran up to me before shouting, their voice muffled, “What are you doing here?”

I oppressed the laughter as I said, “I’m here as a test subject, apparently.”

Sophia slammed a fist into my side as she said, “No you are not. I refuse. You feel it right? Everyone who leaves that stone just laughs until they die. I’m not letting you do the same.”

I rolled my eyes before I said, “Do I seem giddy right now?”

She relaxed her arms before saying, “Ah, I suppose not, but touching the stone is entirely different.”

Two guards pushed me past her as I said, “Think of this as a calculated risk. See you afterwards.”

She chased us before another masked member stopped her. A sudden, hoarse howl slit through the laughing ring in my ears, yet I used her savage screams as fuel for my fire. They poured power into my veins, and the reminded me why I was here.

You see, I envisioned a complete consumption of the stone. If it’s influence spread in the palisade, it may complicate my fight against them, but another reason reared it’s ugly head through all the others; watching Sophia unravel to pieces over its influence. Seeing her be slowly swallowed up by this rock, it sunk my stomach and stung worse than inhaling ash.

I would absorb whatever this thing was. Deluge held absolute confidence in our ability to dissuade it, and admittedly, so did I. When a conflict devolves into a war of wills, I’d pulverized those that stand in my wake. I’d never lost, not even against the remnant of Gaia, the god of this world. It was my firm belief that in mental struggle, I was the uncrowned king. I stood taller than the those around me, and so I stood proud and tall and towering.

As I paced inside the room, one of my assigned escorts poked my arm, drawing my attention as he said, “Alright. Just go and barely touch it with the tip of your finger before you recoil. If you hold, it will stab into you before killing you, just like the others who tried touching it for more than a few seconds.

I placed a hand on his shoulder as I said, “Thanks for the tip. I’ll keep it in mind.”

As I turned, he murmured, “Not everyone here’s like Ara or Abraham. Most of us just want to stop the Darkened One. I just...Please, don’t hate the palisade. Hate the orders from higher up.”

I turned, my gaze toxic as a viper’s venom as I hissed, “A man chooses. A slave obeys.”

I turned towards the strange rock before walking up. As I neared it, the sharp clap of the door closing pulsed through the room. After waiting a second, I spoke aloud, “I can feel something alive in there. Prepare yourself.”

I laid my palm onto the stone, and at that instant, thin, sword-sized shards invaded my flesh. They shot through bone and blood and skin like a boulder piercing paper. Holding firm, I thundered against the invading presence. Like injecting liquid pain, it coursed up through every inch of me, from my scalp to my heels.

The substance continued until a foggy voice formed within my mind. It was hard to tell since every breath sliced my lungs to slivered mush, like ground meat. At this point, the shards pierced into my skull before stabbing in and through my face. It felt like the hardest liquid imaginable slithering through your body as a thousand live worms. As my senses dulled then died, pain encompassed my entire being.

Deluge shouted in my mind, “I don’t understand how this is supposed to make someone laugh.”

I gurgled out a laugh through a torrent of blood before the agony endured as the hard liquid danced within my body. As if the material giggled uncontrollably from within, my insides shredded into a fine mush as every inch of my body became sticky and wet. Every nerve spiked in pain. Every inch ripped in torment.

The pain choked me. It consumed all thought, all emotion, all humanity, and left excruciation in its path. Nothing remained standing from who I was. Deluge regenerated an endless set of bodies, yet the unending flood of frenzied slashing continued. Every beat of my heart was like acid pumping in my veins. Every moment lasted forever and always.

Time lost all meaning. My consciousness turned to pulp, my guts to water, my blood to air. Even with all the force of my will, I faded into the most minute of points. So little of myself remained, that I lost sense over what I defended against, yet one question kept detonating in my mind.

Why do I endure? A simple question without a simple answer, yet I found my reason. I was afraid,. Not of death mind you, but of loneliness. After my parents succumbed to thunder, I scrambled for many months in this world. If not for the haunting yet welcome company of Deluge, I’d have crumbled under the iron bending weight of solitude long ago.

After struggling for those months, I’d found a place for myself, and I’d never let it go. Even if Gaia wrapped her world crushing hands around my neck, I’d slice open my chest until I could breath. I would live. I had to live.

And so the tiny fire of my mind continued, even underneath the bottomless ocean above it. Like the throes of a madman, the flame grew brighter and brighter until a shaded voice whispered in my mind, “Presence of eldritch confirmed. Infection present. Cannot terminate. Returning to Elysium.”

The liquid snuck out of my skin, denser than mercury and hard as Aether before pouring into the air in front of me. The pain subsided, slow at first before a near orgasmic relief followed its departure. In a bizarre scene, the liquid filled into an invisible shape, like water in a glass, except without a cup keeping the water’s shape. The sight paralyzed my pain with wonder. This star thing defied everything I’d ever known. I’ve never seen something quite like it since.

The material left my body, ending my agony before I collapsed onto my knees. The ceramic cracked under my knees before the block propelled through the ceiling. A dull, cracking thud shocked through the room, cracking the tiles all around as the star stone disappeared without even a hint of its previous existence.

I blinked at the ceiling before the doors slammed open behind me before a ceramic scaled person hugged around me. At that moment, I was a waking version of sleep, literal exhaustion. Deluge had fallen into comatose the instant the ship left, and my leaden eyelids weighed on me as well. What occurred, I had no and still have no comprehension to this day, but there was one thing I understood. Whatever it was, it omened something sinister.

As adrenaline left my blood, I numbed before I heard Sophia cry out the words,

“Thank you...Thank you...”

I said as I fell forward, “Just improvising, for a friend.”

The masked men stampeded into the room as I crumbled into the concrete in front of me, cracking more rock. As my vision darkened, Krakowah’s shouting boomed,

“I will not stand for this.”

Abraham replied, “I needed to make sure he was trustworthy-”

“You can take your trust, and shove it up your ass.”