Seth felt calm, calmer than he’d ever felt before. Relaxed, emptied, lighter than ever. Like everything burdening him was far away, distant, but not gone. Just… detached from him. His strain, his anxiety, his fear. He could still feel their pulse and pang, but they were slow, hollow. Strangely though he couldn’t feel the wall he was sitting against, nor the sand beneath him, or even the helmet weighing down on his head. His eyes fluttered open like he’d been asleep, but it was like they never did. He was surrounded by darkness. Not oppressive consuming darkness, just… emptiness. He looked down to check himself and only increased his confusion. His hands were almost see through, an intricate pattern of points of light in the shape of his hands. They still felt like his, moved like his, but his body was… energy.

Suddenly the darkness wasn’t so dark, distant flashes illuminated shadows. Like storms on the night horizon. They crossed expanses in set lines, flashed and spread from splaying terminuses. He… ‘Why am I in my own head?’ Synaptic lines lit up as distant nerve clusters transmitted code across innumerable points that flashed and dimmed in the distance. But where he was, where he stood, it remained dark. He felt around, but it was still like he was staring at nothing. But then he felt a pull, and it became clear.

He stopped feeling out and looked deep. A point of energy. A multitude of points. ‘Okay too much… Too much! Aghh!’ He was blinded as his own focus… his perception shifted to where all the light, all the energy was condensed and congregated. He rubbed his facsimiles for eyes. He wasn’t blind, he was just slow to focus on this different scale. Slowly the formless light gained resolution. Buildings he’d never seen before, like stocky huts made of stone and metal… Or at least energy mimicking those materials. They rose high like apartments, very much not like huts. He felt a road beneath his feet. Soft and smooth, but also stone. He felt a breeze… ‘How is there wind here?’ It was cool, cold even. He couldn’t help shiver even if it was just simulated… ‘This is a simulation right?’

Then he saw them. The densest groups of lights formed into bodies, people. But… not humans. The lights resolved to fully realized points, into scales that desperately mimicked hues and patterns. Clawed hands and taloned feet. Squared snouts and toothy grins. Reptilian beings like the laceroids but… not. Their bodies were smaller, not overblown and muscled. They varied in height and stature, posture and poise. But their eyes. Their eyes didn’t show the desperation, fear, or hunger that Seth couldn’t seem to escape. In fact, they looked like they recognized him. Like they’d been waiting for him. But what should have been fear, horror, anything really. All he could really feel was…

‘Heh…This is what you guys look like? Not going to lie, I thought you’d all be taller.’

A collective mix of slightedness and deflated auspiciousness spread through those gathered to greet him. One rather tall, gold, and regally poised, had his face in his hand. But under that hand he began to laugh. As he wiped away the hand the rest of the crowd began to chuckle. Seth felt another at his back, but knew who it was almost instantly. A transparent scaly arm wrapped around his head like a proud older brother.

“And here they thought that I was going to spoil the moment.”

Threat, somewhat smaller than the others, was beaming a green hued smile and chuckling with the rest of the Garkah, as they all gathered around him. He let go as the crowd neared, not wanting to hog him all to himself. Speaker cleared his chuckle, but couldn’t stop himself from grinning. He put a clawed hand over Seth’s shoulder, the pride he was feeling almost physical now.

“It is great to finally meet you face to face. It has been too long coming has it not?”

Seth smiled as he felt everyone’s welcome through Speaker, he was probably overdoing his role a little, but it wasn’t something he would complain about.

‘Well if you bothered to tell me I could do this, I would have visited sooner.’

Speaker put his other hand on Seth’s other shoulder and leaned down to him. Expression changed from etiquette suppressed joy to hammed up suppressed malice.

“Well we did not exactly have a body for you to use here till now. Would you rather float about as an amorphous consciousness getting stuck in everything you touch or a rushed and hollow facsimile that would have driven you insane?”

Seth smiled a slightly fearful smile.

‘N-no no, this is fine.’

Speaker straightened back up, regaining the poise he had before, but retaining his prideful joy.

“Still. I am glad you can finally see us. Finally meet us as we are. Finally see what we have built.”

Speaker waved his hand out at the city around them. Buildings of pure energy spreading out from a central point, rising up over each other like they all vied for attention. Seth could feel the rest of the Garkah spread out over the city. And in turn they felt him. He felt their aspirations, their fears, their loves. He felt their works, great leaps in their fields thanks to their incorporeal stature. Architects building their designs with sheer thought and testing them without consequence. Doctors testing formulations and procedures with life-like simulations. Scientists studying aspects of physics Seth couldn’t even fathom, he was sure one of them was even working on a matter teleportation method using similar processes as the Ark. He felt them all look to him, a people that prospered despite their situation, despite the events that lead them here. But he felt something else, felt that fear burgeon for attention, and all their focus turn to the center of this city. He felt Speaker’s hand release his shoulder as the rest of the crowd followed suit.

“This city… Our Tesh III. We built it with our own minds, with our own thoughts. But it had a starting point.”

Seth couldn’t help but follow everyone’s focus toward that center.

“We were not simply transplanted into your brain. It could never have held us in the beginning. We were…”

Threat stepped back up to Seth’s side, a calming face to catch him from spiraling, and a clawed translucent finger pointed at his head.

“The Ark shot a piece of itself into your head.”

Speaker growled slightly at Threat’s bluntness, but he was used to it by now. Seth could feel it though. A sliver, not even as big as the cell it was laid upon, but he could still feel its pull… and its depth.

‘The abyss.’

Seth froze and Speaker hanged his head.

“That is where we locked it away, buried it deep inside so we could hopefully control it. Teach you to control it if needs be. Before in… before... it was just free to spread and take hold. It fed on your emotions, gave you nothing but anger in return. We could not let that happen to you. Could not let it control who you were. But now. Now it is up to you to take up this mantle.”

The crowd began moving forward, toward that center, toward that sliver. Seth was frozen. He couldn’t move. That fear finding a hold at last.

‘I have to…’

His doubts tearing him down.

‘I have to do this!’

His dread leaking throu-

“This is what I have to do!!”

He shot his head up, his focus up, his mind all the way past what ever doubts tried to take hold. And pushed forward. Threat and Speaker flanking him as he advanced on that center, on the abyss he’d feared for too long already. The crowd mirrored his resolve, amplified it as if it were their own. Seth felt the city move as one. All converging on that once dreaded center. The buildings rising up above him. The high-rise yurts peaking their heights at the edge, forming walls of stone and metal around a wide open rotunda. The road ahead disappeared as it approached the sliver, seemingly falling into it like a gravity well. A jagged matte black piece of impossibly dense metal. But surrounded in light, a barrier. A bubble of energy that locked it tight. But he could feel the cracks, hear the hiss of escaping, coronaing energy. Like the bleed off a black hole being rounded back around. It flared and consumed everything it touched, ate it and absorbed, and gave it all back as anger and power to repeat the cycle for as long as it could. Seth stopped at the road’s end, the whisper clear but disjointed through this almost resonating hiss. Seth’s resolve couldn’t help but waver, and yet…

“I will not let you have control of me!”

His determination seemed to wash over the sliver, eliciting a flare from the abyss inside. He felt the whisper draw closer, like tendrils seeking to drag him away. But a sudden force acted upon them, squashed them down to the leak they sprang from. Threat extending his own focus out over the sliver. It strained against him, and he it,, but he knew how to deal with its ilk. And he wasn’t alone. Speaker joined in and extended his reach to stifle that flare. He mimicked Threat’s actions, his motives, collective consciousness paying off. Then the rest of the Garkah followed suit, all pressing down on the abyss, but not sinking it deeper into itself. The hiss became a screech, the barrier waning as its energies became a part of the grip that held the abyss aloft, that pulled it up but held it tight. Seth knew this wouldn’t be enough, they would have done so long ago otherwise. This was part to play here, he knew what he had to do.

He stepped forward, across the blanked space that the abyss created, passed the barrier that dissipated into the collective hold. The abyss strained against the grip, but equal force met it with every flare and canceled out its attempts to get free. Reaching the sliver, its surface was smooth but its edges were jagged like an arrow. Reaching out a hand, the abyss flared again. The Garkah recoiled as it tried to pry their grip open. He could feel it now, the real thing crushed into being. It knew nothing, understood nothing, but knew it wanted out, wanted to feel, wanted to know other emotions then anger and hate. It could do nothing but take and give back what it had too much of. He couldn’t help but pity it, born by accident from nothing but solidified rage, discarded and left to rot.

“Fine then… you want to feel what the real world is like! Here, let me SHOW YOU IT!!!”

Seth slammed his hands down, rippling that dark emptiness, adding his grip to everyone else’s. All at once he felt the abyss for all it was, felt it strain at the edges of this collective grasp, felt it not as a disembodied hiss but a living thing. It writhed in agony like an amorphous thought, blind to everything, not knowing even itself. The raw emotion all balled up and twisted, unable to know even just the calm of its prison. But Seth knew it now for what it was now, and he knew what he had to do.

A figurative foot stomped back, a brace, a leverage. He drew it out of its stagnant prison, drew it toward him with everything he had. He had to absorb it, meld and end this proto consciousness with his own. Prevent what could only be a tragedy should it ever gain coherent thought and directed action. He pulled. It flailed. He pulled harder at it and a red light burned through the transparencies of his hands. Like a drop of pure singularity pulled from a dead star it rippled the sliver. It was freed of the black prison it had been shoved into for years, but it wasn’t free of Seth. He gripped it tight, held it close, pulling it against his chest. It beat against him, against his hold. Its power was torrential, quakes shaking the city, shaking everything with in blind tantrum at its change of scenery. But Seth held it there despite its wailing, like an infant without a mother.

“It’s okay… You don’t have to hate anymore!”

He pulled it in. The shaking condensing, rippling the form the Garkah made for him and containing that torrent. The flared died down, becoming part of him. Seth could feel its anger, its hate, knew what it felt with every part of himself. He gave it his memories, his thoughts, his feelings, his very being. Everything it wanted so as to give it closure. In return it gave him its pain, its agony, its fear, its want. The stale replayed nightmares it had lived as without end. The two felt each other… then the one felt all. And at once, Seth let all that hate go.