[Entering astral demi-plane (shattered).]

I didn't know what the loading screen-like text meant. James held me close with his good arm; my father had his deadened shoulder turned towards the brunt of the powerful, liquid like light that was bearing down on us from the front with an almost physical force.

Distance didn't seem to have much meaning in this space between places and yet my father still pushed forward towards the light that beamed always out of reach.

Eventually, the world began to solidify into rock and darkness. A stale, malignant odor of extinguished incense and rot permeated the blackened cavern.

The shadows were quickly pierced by the lighting of two massive brazzers; purple flames danced upon the tops of the two fire pits. A fresher, almost intoxicating scent drifted into the enclosed space, but the uncirculated air didn't seem to thicken with smoke as it should have.

Between the two eerie looking light sources there rested an altar, which was the only thing that was fully illuminated by the not quite natural seeming flames; the rest of the cavern was still shrouded in unseen dread.

We approached the altar and James shakily leaned down to place me upon the warm stone. I looked up to see the once towering battlemaster leaning heavily on the table, a cold sweat of death leaking from his every pore.

"I came and I'm still alive to deliver your price," the man said. "Take it and save him."

There was no response at first, save for an ominous draft that seemed to have no real source. James' exhausted face still shot up slightly in a sense of alertness.

Despite his obvious sense of dread, James didn't appear to have the strength to stand up without the bracing of the altar any longer.

I began to wonder greatly at my father's judgment. Was he so desperate that he had made a decision as terrible as the methods he had used to reach its conclusion?

The draft grew stronger and a loud extinguishment and then crackling burst of heat could be heard as the brazzers' flames died off and then flared up into two towers of colored inferno.

Two piercing, yellowed lights broke from the dark above the stone slab, as the engorged brazzers revealed a large statue of what appeared to be a multi-limbed, horned man-thing seated with his legs crossed upon a throne of slain lambs. In one hand the long-faced being held a rod of serpents and in the other an open tome rested upon his raised and clawed, yet manicured, palm.

James gritted his teeth. "You're going to miss your chance. I don't have much time left thanks to your jailor."

As if responding to his lack of awe, the yellow eyes of the bovine god dimmed. An echoing footfall drew the attention of the battlemaster immediately and he pivoted his head just as an unseen hand brushed up from the thick, almost breathable shadow to stroke his cold cheek.

The hand was gray, covered in a small almost imperceivable sleight layer of what appeared to be fur, but that was not thick enough to prevent one from tracing its thick veins; its pointed claws were painted an ichor like black and came to touch gently upon the battlemaster's skin.

"Don't--" James started to say as his eyes grew wide in some sort of realization; every muscle in his body seemed to then freeze.

"Why do you fear us? You have suffered for our freedom," a low and deep, hermaphroditic voice declared. "You are most welcome here, child of flesh."

"What you did to the Watcher was unholy," James said. "I know my fate won't be better."

"What you did, with the aid of one of our thralls, so long ago trapped and forgotten within cursed silver and blessed gem by your kind, was necessary," the otherworldly tone declared; unlike the Watcher, whose voice had rung with both authority and comfort, this being's words didn't sound at all human, but also seemed to possess a sheer power that allowed anything it said to ring true even despite not radiating with such an obvious or serene dominance.

The hand on James' face turned to place its palm upon the man's skin even as a twin crept up to mirror it on the other side. "Tell us, child of flesh, why do you assume that what looks holy to you is indeed what goodness is?"

James looked like he wanted to say something, but his lips remained unmoving.

"Your fear even now freezes you; given instinct screams now in our presence that you must flee, run, and hide like a hapless animal as quickly as possible, but in doing so it prevents you from following its own will," the voice continued. "Should you not question a flawed thing such as this all the way to its root?"

What looked like a slight twitch of surprise ran through the painted, furred hands, when a singular line of words left the battlemaster's lips: "No; I know enough to realize that this aura of terror is your doing."

"Yes," the twin fingers of the creatures began to slowly slide across the skin of the man, back and forth, as if savoring his response and flesh's texture with restrained pleasure. "You will do. We will take what you offer us and we will save your boy from the rot of the cursed flesh."

The creature's fingers once more straightened and began to creep, locked out and menacingly towards James' eyes. Slowly the nails reached the edges of the sensory organs and, as one hand gingerly peeled open the swollen shut eyelid that it encountered, both then began to contort unnaturally.

"Let us show you what reality is, child of flesh, as it was known and shown to us, and then, only if you choose us, will we take you in," the thing's claws bent inward in a way their joints shouldn't have allowed and began to pierce into the tissue of the fighter's eyes.

James opened his mouth to scream in pain and instantly began to pull away, but two rapidly fast arms shot up, one to wrap around his torso and pull him back towards whatever thing lurked in the pitch blackness behind him and another to cover his horrifically shrieking mouth.

"Shhhh," the entity implored him in a reassuring tone that disturbingly blended the warm comfort of a mother and the strong reassurance of a father. "There will be pain."

The claws of each of the hands sunk and pierced into the man's eyes, but they didn't stop there. The thing's appendages didn't shrink, but rather cracked and contorted to impossibly allow themselves to push into the battlemaster's eye sockets in their entirety.

Somehow, and horrifyingly, this didn't stop James from living as it certainly should have. The man kicked and screamed, trying to escape as the creature's hands were soon buried to the wrists in his face.

He shrieked into the hand, all of his calm demeanor now gone, and struggled and then screamed once more at the top of his lungs.

Then he went limp and began to convulse. This went on for some time, until finally there was silence and a stillness. The thing slowly removed it's hand from the warrior's mouth.

For a moment, Jeremiah worried his father was finally dead.

"Stop," a small, defeated voice came. "Don't show me any more."

Yet another arm came from the shadow and slowly cradled the chin of its victim almost lovingly. "I know, my child, but you merely see the truth that should never have been hidden from any of us."

Trails of fluid began to fall from the eye sockets of James, leaking haphazardly and in unstraight lines off of the buried wrists of the entity, much as they had from the Watcher before him, but these were thick and red--the bleeding tears of horror and pain made manifest.

"Please," James repeated and sagged his chest into a sobbing that ran freely and crimson. "No more."

"Shhh," the creature repeated with its disturbingly calming tone. "There is no more to tell, unlike the betrayers, my child, we would not lie to you by omission--and truth, despite being painful, is simple to know."

Slowly the things wrists began to jerk and twist as James hung limply. Joint by small joint, it removed its grasp from inside the battlemaster's flesh.

"And now that you have seen, simply speak that you are ours and we will correct the course of all that we have shown you."

There was silence for a moment.

"My son," James whispered in pain.

"We will honor our promises, but you must choose," the thing swore.

James hung, breathing in ragged and defeated breaths as the entity's fingers finally began to withdraw, before he sighed one last word: "Yes".

A slight chuckle was heard from behind him. "We welcome you to the light."

The last of the fingers left the fighter's face, but to my shock, where there should have been mangled holes of gore, there were simply two unblinking and graying eyes. They were eyes that held none of the fight, love, or emotion that they once had. These were inhuman eyes, windows to a soul that no longer drew breath--one that had been destroyed by its own horror at whatever truth the being had revealed to it.

"And now we show our benevolence and save yet another entombed soul," the hand of the entity that had been stroking James' chin now reached towards me.

A cold dread seeped through everything that I was. I had absolutely no desire to see whatever James had been forced to. The battlemaster had possessed a will and love as strong as any other man's and yet he had been crippled so easily; even if I now knew there was an afterlife, I began to doubt there'd be anything of me left to go there if I was forced to experience what my father just had.

And yet, there was nothing I could do to stop the clawed hand from slowly wrapping around my small face.

[Attempting to resist mental domination.]

And then the horror began in earnest and I saw a glimpse of what sheer helplessness really was.

[Failed.]