A horseshoe-shaped double stairway led up to an elevated platform at the chamber’s back, where knelt a blackstone statue of the skinless thing from earlier, its stakes and chains rendered in brass and silver respectively. It held its hands up and in them floated a strange artifact of brass and blackstone; it was a spindly diamond shape of sorts, like two stretched-out pyramids stacked end to end. Following the statue’s eyeless gaze, Zel glimpsed brass inlays upon the ceiling depicting ritual sacrifice and torment.

Behind the statue stood another great door, though it didn’t come alive at their approach. The chamber’s atmosphere was downright oppressive, yet there was a grotesque magnificence to it all, as if this place was sacred. In fact, what upon their arrival had sounded like the mechanism’s of the Labyrinth’s shifting chambers now felt more like the thumping of drums, the drone of arcane machinery resembling the rumble of throat-singing.

As if called from the void by their arrival at the threshold, the wailing, wheezing cries of the skinless creature from earlier could be heard from the stairway which they’d ascended to get here. Its form followed soon after, crawling up those stairs with a heretofore unseen dexterity. Jorfr held his hand out before Zel and Zef, warning: “Not this time. The creature is our way through here.”

“What is that thing?”

“A fragment of the God of Sacrifice, harnessed by the Three Kings to bypass the innumerable curses and barriers placed here by the Ankhezians. It made a deal with them; in exchange for a means of giving itself physical form and sustenance from the Dungeon Core, it facilitates safe passage to the Prison of the Unborn in exchange, endlessly sacrificing itself.”

“You seem to know an awful lot about obscure Three Kings Era lore,” Zel remarked.

Before Jorfr could answer, there came a warbling, sexless voice akin to that of someone who had their vocal chords replaced with a valve. It reverberated through the chamber, seeping into one’s ears and flowing over the brain like oily blood, bestowing meaning without language.

“I SPEAK FREELY TO THOSE WHO DILIGENTLY PRACTICE THE RITES WHICH I GAVE UNTO MAN,” the skinless thing said as it stalked through the chamber towards them, but there was no hostility in its form this time around. In fact, as it neared Zelsys, it became clear that this was not the same mutilated thing as before; its form-factor was the same, but it had a spine of solid brass and additional stakes in its back. Ornamental brass plugs were embedded in its neck as well as where its eyes and ears ought to be. From the upper left of its chest protruded a brass and glass contraption, containing an inhuman six-chambered heart that from whose seams shone an unearthly iridescence, the contraption’s mechanism forcing it to beat. The rainbow spikes which protruded from the avatar’s skull were easily twice or thrice as large as those of the previous creature, and symmetrical enough to be mistaken for a crown in silhouette.

“I SENSE THE BLOOD OF MY OTHER SELVES UPON YOU. ONE OF MY LESSER FRAGMENTS MISTOOK YOU FOR A SACRIFICE, I TAKE IT? DO NOT HOLD IT AGAINST THEM. THEY ARE NOT… COGNIZANT. THEY ACT ACCORDING TO THEIR - MY - NATURE. I SHALL PERFORM MY DUTY, BUT FIRST RENDER UNTO ME A TRIBUTE."

The avatar turned towards Victor.

“YOU… TELL KOSCHEI THAT HIS MACHINE IS DEFECTIVE, WHEN YOU SPEAK WITH HIM. WHAT GOOD ARE SACRIFICIAL BODIES THAT CANNOT BE SKINNED? PREPOSTEROUS.”

Its attention returned to Zelsys.

“AND YOU… ANOTHER ONE BORN THROUGH THE SO-CALLED “CREATION OF A GREAT MAN” RITE?” questioned the avatar, rearing up on its legs and staring her down with the motionless talismans it had instead of eyes. She could feel something oily slip inside her soul, for just a moment; in the next it was gone, and the avatar spoke again.

“NO… THIS ONE IS DIFFERENT. A TRULY ARTIFICIAL SOUL? SUCH… PRECISION, IN THIS ONE, SO MANY PIECES MADE INTO ONE. SO MANY SACRIFICES, AND YET NOT ONE DEAD!” spoke the avatar, a parent-like joy entering its voice.

“TO THINK MAN COULD USE ARTIFICE TO RENDER SELF-SACRIFICE SO EFFICIENT… IT GLADDENS ME TO KNOW THAT YOUR KIND CONTINUES TO EVOLVE MY GIFTS AFTER ALL THIS TIME. I WOULD BESTOW MY MARK UPON YOU, IF YOU WOULD TAKE IT. IT WILL… MAKE COMMUNION EASIER. ANY RITUALS AND SACRIFICES IT IS USED IN WILL GROW MORE POTENT, PROCEED MORE SMOOTHLY. YOU MAY EVEN USE IT AS PART OF A SACRIFICE, SHOULD IT COME TO THAT.”

Zel looked to Jorfr for counsel, being that he was the only one among them who had any experience interacting with this bizarre creature. He nodded: “It doesn’t lie. My grandfather had one such mark. My father used it to slay the sacrificial animals when he carved the anchoring runes onto my feet, that is why they are so potent. The stake turned to dust when grandfather died…”

“I REMEMBER HIM. ONE OF MY FAVORITES IN THIS MILLENNIUM. HE COULD HAVE SURPASSED MORTALITY, BUT FEW MORTALS HAVE THE WHEREWITHAL TO FACE DOWN ETERNITY AND CHOOSE IT OVER PEACE. NOW, MY MARK; HOLD OUT A HAND.”

Albeit with some hesitation, Zel did as such. The avatar reached up to its back and without so much as a twitch pulled out one of the stakes, handing it over. It was thick and heavy, best compared to a railway spike; it was twice as large as one, with a symmetrical head and a diamond-shaped, linearly tapering body, covered in eldritch and unreadable runes. Without uttering another word the avatar scuttled over to the blood pool, going out into its center and slotting its limbs into the innermost ring; all in the span of at most three seconds. In an instant the walkway retracted and the razor-chains wrapped around the avatar’s stakes came alive, lashing themselves around the innermost ring and expanding with no regard for physical possibility.