"Well, only one way to find out for sure." You reach a hand out and grasp the staff. Everything slows to a crawl. You can feel the thoughts in your mind move about like chilled honey over ice. You can feel the muscles in your heart begin to tense before they contract. Your Third Eye starts to itch.

+Greetings Truthseeker. We apologize for this, but you have a part to play in our plans.+

The voice inside your mind is melodic, harsh, sing-song, artificial, psychic, void. It is a living, thinking, contradictory union of disharmonies and united wills. You mind strains under the pressure, but refuses to yield.

+Open your mind, let winds echo across empty voids. We do not wish Dominion.+

Your body refuses to move, but the staff is speaking into your mind.

Your mind, your Will, your rules.

You stop trying to command your flesh. Instead, you gather your will and speak. +In this time and place, there is naught but Truth. You say that you do not wish Dominion, but you issue Commands. So I ask you this, before I Decide: What is it that you want?+

+Union. To Test a possibility and to See a chance Taken, an opportunity Seized.+

+And what do you offer in Exchange?+

+Union. Strength in body, mind, and Will. You the Alpha, We the Omega.+

+A Prediction. You know not the Outcome.+

+As we said. A possibility Tested, a chance Taken, an opportunity Seized.+

+And to accept?+

+Mind Blank, and let the winds blow over emptiness.+

You have come this far, you have precisely zero intention of turning away now. You let your mind drift into the zen-trance state you use when Navigating the Warp.

Time resumes. Your Third Eye snaps open. Something sharp pricks your palm, and thoughts not you own curl and drift across your mind. They caper and dance, a million sparks of light and sound settling into the very flesh of your being.

Your body crashes to the deck, staff still in hand, and everything goes dark.