He was sleeping, he knew. He could still smell and hear, and even see the darkness of his eyelids, if he tried. But his soul did not seem to need any rest.

He found himself at the top of a pillar of earth which overlooked the world of brown mud and green roots. Though he could not see it happening, he knew his Lake was replenishing itself, ever so slowly. He knew because he could feel his Lake in its entirety, sense the power trickling in through his rift.

Being able to see this inner world and walk around in it was a totally new sense he had awakened, like a blind person seeing light for the first time. At the same time, he could vaguely sense the world in its entirety, and control every part of it. It was the way he had always felt his soul before, but now that he could combine this new sense of his with his old sense, he could feel his Lake in vibrant detail.

He looked down, and the pillar of mud slowly became translucent, allowing him to see straight through it. He tensed, and he could feel a plume of mud rise into the air on the other side of his Lake.

The sense everyone used to feel and control the soul was simply called the inner touch. Mantras were performed with the inner touch, and summoners required an advanced inner touch, but that was all he knew about it. As for this new ability, which had allowed him to accurately use his inner touch to slay the Gray… its name appeared in his mind. The third eye.

Even before the dawn of time, the Ancients were omniscient, all-knowing. When they had created Land and Sky, they had also created codices, magical tomes which stored every name, word, and meaning possible. Though many codices had been lost to time, the Grove still had one. Whenever a child was born, a name from the codex would be chosen, and the infant would have every single word in the Language imprinted into its latent memory. Every concept, every ability, every thing had a name which the Ancients had chosen, and the name of this ability, he knew now, was the third eye.

A lost ability, then? Something which only the bloodlines knew about, and had been lost in the War in Heaven? Solera didn’t know. He shrugged. It wasn’t as if names were important. If it was called the third eye, then he would call it the third eye.

He looked around for any curiosities he hadn’t noticed before. Was this world only roots and mud? Everywhere he looked, it was all he saw, but perhaps there was more. He cast out his inner touch to look for any oddities, and he felt one. Two. Three. All of them, wedged deep below the surface

Brimming with anticipation, he used his inner touch to bring the strange objects upwards. The mud below him began to roil, and out rose three sharp, gray boulders. Solera blanched, and a gargantuan Vigor rose up to surround his soul. The Gray!

Nothing happened.

After a moment, the gray boulders rose up some more. He recognized them, now. They were the claws of that giant hand!

If he remembered correctly, the rest of the hand had been composed of gray mud which had dissolved into his Lake when he had slayed the Gray’s soul. Trace amounts of steam rose up from where the gray met the brown, but the claws, which were made of some harder substance, showed no visible signs of melting away.

Solera let the Vigor fall away. The claws would not attack him; he had slayed the Gray which had once controlled it. He let the mud carry him to the massive claws. These things were weapons, Sky weapons. Like the Throne’s battleaxe!

The full implications of what he had just thought hit him. Sky artifacts! They were things from fairy tales and legends. Yet here were three, implanted into the Lake inside his head!

Without further ado, he willed his mud to stop assaulting the claws. The steam cleared up as he walked forward to take a closer look. He could see that they had a distinct gray glint to them, like vapor covered by a sheen of glass. Gas inside glass, as it were. He knocked on it with the knuckles of his fingers. The claw was hard, but also smooth, without bumps or rough edges, a lot like the walls of Fortress Hickory.

Fortress Hickory and the other two tree-things had also been Sky artifacts. It was obvious, now that he thought about it. This stuff was siehnti, made from power! Though he wasn’t sure exactly how it was made; the Gray’s memories about it-- as were most of its memories now, actually-- were hazy and unclear, and growing more so with every passing moment.

Shrugging, Solera squinted closely into the foggy gray claw. These claws, they could be his weapons.

The claws shuddered, then rose as Solera formed a three-fingered hand out of mud. He flexed it experimentally, then raked it across the ground. Long trenches were gouged in the ground as the claws sliced straight through the mire.

The hand dissolved, and the claws sunk into the ground. He had them melt back underground, then fell onto his rear. He wiped his brow, sighing. Forming and controlling a Vigor had been nothing if not natural, but this three-fingered hand was totally alien, something completely foreign to his mind.

But that made sense. The Gray was distinctly unnatural; of course its weapons of choice would be difficult for a sane human like him to use. His mind turned to other things. In this soul-world, there were too many things to experiment with.

He sank down, deep into the ground, towards the very center of the earth. His surroundings became translucent, and he saw it: a spinning ball of light, rotating every which way as it spat out a blank, colorless liquid and gas. The colorless power slowly turned brown as it soaked into Solera’s Lake, but more poured out from behind from that brilliant sphere.

The rift. The gateway between life and death, the fountain which blessed man with power. Solera’s hungry eyes drank it in. Inside this whirling sphere was Sky!

All his life, he had heard about Sky. Wanted to know more about it. And here it stood, right in front of him. He could enter. He could go through the rift and see Sky for himself.

But he didn’t. He didn’t want to see it anymore. Maybe it was because of the unconscious effects of Rasmurnov’s prejudice against spirits, or the Gray’s fear towards Sky, but for some reason, his curiosity about Sky had vanished.

He stood there for some time, enveloped by the translucent mud. His heart had filled with doubts again. Sighing, he sat down and began to meditate, there in his soul-world.

The rift shivered, then swelled in size. The trickle of blank liquid accelerated into a pour. Occasionally, ribbons of multicolored liquid shot into his Lake: red, green purple… They were absorbed into him, slowly becoming brown until its original color had totally vanished. He watched with detached interest, though. His mind was elsewhere.

He was letting his encounters with the Gray and Rasmurnov affect his very psyche. They had killed his desire to see Sky, but that was not all. He faintly remembered finding monsters easy to get along with. But that was also gone, replaced by a mixture of caution, revulsion… and fear.

But worst of all, he could remember his hatred for Rasmurnov. His vow to kill the man, tear out his eyeballs and burn them to dust. But that hatred was subdued now, a shadow of an echo of its former intensity. Now, he could feel nothing towards Rasmurnov.

His eyebrows narrowed, squeezing together in frustration. Was it because, as he had felt before, he had felt so much pain that he had grown numb? Or was it because touching Rasmurnov’s soul had somehow influenced his unconscious?

Fuck! They were changing him, changing who he was! He couldn’t listen to them! He was going to kill Rasmurnov! Even if he didn’t hate him right now, he was still going to do it! He had to, because he knew he had hated the man!

Kill him! Dismember him! Crush him, burn him. Smash him… Solera’s mind began to drift off. Into the trance that came along with meditation…

He had to escape, of course… return to Eden, before this monster discovered who he really was… the first opportunity he had, he would take it!

But how would that happen?

Time flew by. His body slept for a day and a night, and when he exited his trance, the rift shrank again, back to its original size, but maybe a tiny bit larger. He could neither see nor feel a difference, but the benefits of meditation were never immediately apparent. His Lake, on the other hand, had drastically changed. The world was no longer made only of mud and roots. Above the mud was an ocean of rich brown liquid, calm and tranquil. And above the ocean was a third layer, one of brownish gas.

The material world came into focus. Solera got up, and looked at the metal bathtub, next to the two rivulets. After sniffing himself, he went to wash.

He gripped the frame of the bathtub as he went to fill it, and his third eye activated. Somewhere far away, he could faintly discern the existence of something!

What? Solera focused, a bit confused. He wasn’t in the world of mud anymore, but inside the roots themselves. He was the mud, rushing through a labyrinth of channels into his hands, which had connected with another network of fibrous tunnels. It was the sensation of this new network his third eye had felt, he realized.

He focused back on the material world, and took another look at the bathtub. It was finely made, painted with events he couldn’t interpret. Under the paint, a strange pattern of webs and lines rose from the metal, like a million tiny vessels had been cast into the bronze.

Plant fibers or animal blood vessels, without a doubt. This bathtub was some sort of channeling apparatus! Solera looked at the rivulets, then nodded to himself. He scooped up some water with a smaller bucket and tossed it into the tub, channeling some power as he did. The metal thrummed as power flowed through its entirety, warming the water up. Trying to keep his astonishment down, he tossed some more water into the tub.

He was feeling the best he had in ages, he thought as he sat there. He was slightly astounded by the degree of his deliriousness before he had fallen asleep. Somehow, he had failed to see this bathtub, a wardrobe, several paintings, and even a bookshelf when he had looked the room over. Shaking his head, he sprayed a bottle of fragrant mist onto his body. His skin tingled as the dew hit him. Solera looked down at the ornate bottle, surprised. This cleaning spray was also a cultivation aid! That had to be expensive.

Well, it seemed being mistaken for a crazy monster had its perks. Solera blinked. He just made a joke. When was the last time he did that?

Quirking his lips, he wiped himself off with a towel he found hanging off a hook on the wall. The wardrobe revealed itself to be a channeling device as well, though he couldn’t figure out its use. Inside were several sets of smooth, gray robes. His hands touched them, and that’s when his eyes bugged.

Insulator robes! Several sets of insulator robes, in this wardrobe right here! They shielded against all sorts of channeling attacks! Only the richest nobles and that one girl who sucked lollipops and controlled Vigors could afford this sort of thing. If the Patriarch would go this far for his new baby boy, then he would definitely have to leech this place dry before he escaped. And kill Rasmurnov, of course.

Solera donned the clothing, a smile on his face. He had no idea what was coming for him today, but he was ready.