Sublime – Seeds of Fear

18: Sublime

I come to my feet, and feel a new cloak laid across my shoulders, a white woolen thing that hides my rapidly-drying skin from the warm light of chandeliers overhead.

I glance behind, but do not see my benefactor. Nor do I see the door through which I careened, defying directional sense. I see walls of gray brick, red mortar, and silver filigree. Something within me insists that these substances are organic. Broad windows look out over an oceanic expanse of opaque white liquid, into which countless colorful waterfalls are deposited, somehow declining to stain its purity, perhaps even committing themselves to it. I note nearby the termination of one such downpour, whose sharp envious color is familiar beyond doubt.

I return my gaze to what lies before me, and behold a fine parlor with many armchairs and bookshelves. A light layer of smoke hovers around the ceiling, thinning around the flickering candles that decorate an iron candelabra. Beside the closest chair is a small table with a wooden backgammon board opened up, stone pieces neatly organized in playing positions. Across from me is a pair of open wooden doors of stout mahogany.

I walk. My feet recall that they ought to ache some for all they have crossed, and make me stumble as I pass into a hallway of dark navy carpet and regal paintings. Each portrait depicts a personage I have lately become acquainted with- Toxin, Pathogen, Fortress, Nect’rus, and more all stare haughtily down upon me. I lean against the top of a wooden paneling that decorates the bottom half of the walls, and shuffle forward into a moderate dining room. I halt, and look with apprehension upon a gathering of ghastly faces, or lack thereof.

Nukteos, Mallea, Fortress, Nect’rus, and Pathogen all sit on the left side of the table. On the right sit Toxin, Tower, and three I do not recognize. The first is a man wearing a horned helmet strapped to his neck with barbed wire, whose arms are pierced with bars of glowing hot metal. In the darkness of his helm I can see his gritted teeth, and eyes like novas. Next is a blob of quivering, sizzling ooze, who possesses just enough form to suggest shoulders and a head above them. My head throbs painfully regarding this being, so I move on. Last here is a terrible deformity, a creature whose face is a permanent grin of madness, with fleshy tubes connecting its olive cranial bulge to its neck and shoulders. Its eyes like mine lack eyelids, and its body is a contorted mess of joints and gaunt protrusions, with uneven legs tucked under the table. It leers at me unceasingly, and I shy from its gaze at the behest of my instincts, which regard this creature as a threat only fit to freeze before.

At the head of the table is a standing figure. Alike to Fortress, this one appears to be wholly synthetic in form- its body is a humanoid automaton with basic framing and casing, and elegant decoration in the form of cloth wrapping and ceramic plating- as though one thought to dress this being for a trip into an arid climate, but forgot it did not possess skin to fret the assail of sand on wind. The head is little more than a half sphere atop a series of metal discs that become the neck. When it speaks, I shudder.

My ears tell me that I am in fact listening to a man with a thick and ancient accent whose lips exist in the air before this machine. My stomach twinges, and for a moment I see a dark outline around this thing, that swirls and twitches. At the back of my mind I recall the shadow-wreathed figure depicted in the iconography that has accompanied my descent. I know at this moment that I am at last faced with that entity.

“Welcome. Please, sit. Be assured, my family will not harm you in my presence.”

I find that I am already seated opposite to where he stands, and as he seats himself, the others bow their heads in unison. A flash of green light emits from the entity, and all sound but his voice stops. I find that I am locked in place- in time.

“I am glad that your journey has come to its end. I found myself quite invested in your troubles, watching you dance and drift into and through danger. I could not resist helping you along once in a while.”

From behind him briefly flap a set of wings wrought in gold webbing so thin it becomes invisible when they steady- wings more angelic and divine than I have seen attached to anything yet.

“You seek answers.”

I jolt. We have changed locations in the blink of my eye. I am alone with the entity, seated in the parlor, while he stands near at hand, seeming to stare out from a window.

“The first question, who am I? In truth, this is the most difficult to answer in full. I have not taken a name since dispensing with the title given to me during servitude. I was then called Regent. A name alike to those still held by some of my kin, an abstract term bestowed upon an abstract being. The masses have names for me, of course. To them I am The Least, or Ixhem. You may think of me as such, should your mind require a label for reference.”

He pauses and seems to look over his shoulder. The dome of his head is the color of fossil. His hands, with seven thin fingers each, are clasped behind his back.

“I sense also that you wonder how you came to exist as you do now. To this, I will give no answer. The masses ascribe a thing like history to the nature of things, describing the passage of time. Time is a thing that governed all once, but it has become another denizen, and so is unrecognizable to itself. Indeed, I may pluck and twist it as easily as I opened the door to you.”

Ixhem returns to gazing out the window, watching steam rise from the placid white substance, steam that seems to contort and form shapes, condensing and expanding without cause.

“You existed outside of this realm, and you exist within it. I mean to make this true of all things and nothings. One may wonder as to why.

“If I were to put it into some sort of narrative, I might describe my own abhorrence for endings. I reject certain absolutes, though I am one in my conquest of others. I saw once the great suffering caused by eventuality, and so eradicated it. Everything is forever. Stars are not born only to burst and snuff out, lives that would naturally wane instead change forms. I have created an infinite expanse of infinites, one that you have explored only in the slightest sense.

“It is for this reason that I have turned my attention to you.”

Ixhem turns from the window and approaches a shelf, from which he withdraws a box that seems carved from a huge diamond. He undoes the clasp and opens the box, holding it out before me.

“You are an observer, a witness. You have not wavered in your descent, and have seen much of what is. I would have you continue to see.”

Within the box is a darkness so deep that I feel it must extend down past the bottom of the box forever. Something gleams within, something with many eyes.

“As my reach expands, as those who escaped me through time and space are brought into this existence, I would have you witness. Your experiences, they are as salt to sugar. Experience more, so that I may see through your eyes, and experience things as you do, as I presently cannot.

“Should you accept, I will erase the last of the memories that hound your thoughts. I will make you as absolute as my kin, and release you from the cycle.”

I raise my hand over the box and waver, looking upon Ixhem. It strikes me that his body is silent. No motors, and indeed no strings move him.

I am pulled upon by all my thoughts, all my recollections. I strain, and recall one word spoken by the man beside me in my memories.

“Acceptance”

It seems a comfort, and I relax inside, my hand dipping into the abyss contained by the box.

I dissolve into nothing, and am drawn as if through a sieve, filtered and refined, and reconstituted. I cease to exist.

I am created again, shaped by hands of darkness in a void of light. I am sight, I am countless eyes, scattered through existence, witness to everything.

I watch as surgeons chase prey through the labyrinth of corridors and decrepit rooms, I see creatures of pain and pleasure rolling in sheets of nervous tissue, anointed in blood. I watch Pathogen weaving a ring of red light around the head of one of the angels, as a doll etches a scenic vista upon its face.

I watch as a new spectacle begins in the coliseum above the mountains, attended by the felt creatures. I see a field of sentient stalks soaking in poisonous light, harvested in turn by the many-limbed monsters that haunted the valley.

I watch as legions of metal soldiers march across puffy pink ground that has grafted itself as a bridge to an effervescent, smoky island in a sea of golden radiance. I witness the slaughter of countless creatures for which I have no name.

I no longer exist except as sight and reaction, and in time, my lingering ability to think is swallowed up in the sea of visions of inexorable change.

17: Subliminal

I am falling towards one of the green pools. My tattered robe flaps and waves around my face and chest, and I feel my wounds sting with the bite of the wind.

As the viridian glow grows to swallow my vision and eventually me, I glimpse the crowds gathered at the fringes, some falling face first, others wading slowly, all plunging into and dissolving in the ooze. Before I can make peace with this being my fate, I am once again grabbed by talons, around my midsection. Face down, I cannot raise my head to view my savior, were my remaining strength enough to perform such an act.

The creature stops my fall, but not before I briefly splash in the sludge, and feel it burn my skin raw. This thing, with many flapping wings, hauls me through the air over the mountains, croaking and squealing like a boar. My arms and legs dangle beneath me, dull wind chimes anointed in viscous oil. Miles flow like eddying currents in a river, each peak and crag a nail in the bed below, until we arrive at a vast misty valley where the green rivers coalesce into a monstrous current that roars and surges towards a sheer cliff dropoff, a height so imposing I cannot guess where it ends through the fog.

The flying thing lowers me, and drops me on the west riverbank of this foaming torrent, my body coursing with pains. I black out in shock, and sink into the depths of dark dreams.

I see a rusted barge on a black ocean, unpopulated, drifting. I seem to inhabit the wheelhouse, staring through broken windows over dead instruments, past a wheel that rolls untethered from whatever steering mechanism it used to govern. The sky is red and wet, full of black storm clouds that sob down sheets of black rain. The deck is strewn with decayed shipping containers whose contents have long been swept away by the thieving waves. An unnatural light clings to the air above the ship, glowing and swirling in a minute aurora. I feel a hand lay on my shoulder and prompt me to turn around, then wake with a jolt.

I lay beside the river, my face inches from where the current drags the alkaline liquid. As I sit up, I feel my flesh fighting to remain stationary, and look down to my palms. My hand is soft, indistinct, like a sandcastle recently buffeted by waves. My porcelain parts seem to have melted into my flesh more agreeably, and my whole exterior claims a sort of doughy consistency, as though I might be folded up and molded without much pain or protest. The air is humid, and prolongs this sensation, though I can intuit that I may soon dry out and become firm again with enough time. My back no longer stings from a ragged wound.

Examining my surroundings, I see that the beach is of glossy black sand, some of which has become embedded in the side of my body that laid upon it. The mountains rise all around me, and offer their streams to the river. I see no sign of the thing that brought me here, though sparse figures encrust the mist around the river, shuffling into it to be unmade. I do not yet share their compulsion, and instead follow the flow of the water, recalling the sheer dropoff that descended blindly into fog.

I can, as I walk, occasionally glimpse more than just the silhouettes of creatures and mountains through the mist, and recall the monasteries into which some of the afflicted embarked. I still pursue the course of the river as it descends into the valley. I am occasionally presented with the obstacle of a stream that deposits its body into the flow, but each time I am graced with a paired outcrop on either side of the would-be barrier which I can, with some effort, leap.

My journey is once in a while marked by a harrowing encounter with one of the creatures I saw from above. While all others seem obsessed with their sought end at the hands of the acid, or pilgrimage to the monasteries, the red, abstract things seem only occasionally possessed by such urges. Though they are few and far between, I am compelled to call them denizens of this realm. They wander without apparent reason, and often strain against their design- most are little more than a pair of legs, a waist, and a ponderous mass of arms that converge with little symmetry at the elbows, the wrists, even the knuckles, and begin over, until they resemble more tangled roots than proper limbs, each ending in individual fingers. Often the biceps and triceps will pull in different directions, causing great consternation, but never enough to topple the thing. I am forced to view their plight at a distance- approaching causes great suffering in me: my sight begins to blur and speckle with flashing dots, and my gut wrenches painfully as though being pulled taught and plucked at. Thus, I give these unfortunates a wide berth every time they appear in my path. I do note some that seem to possess purpose other than that they might share with the suicidal masses- there are those that march almost parallel to me, many on the far bank of the river. The writhing and swaying of their upper extremities poses but little difficulty to their pace- they leverage these irksome arms to vault the joining streams when they appear, insisting that their lack of eyes does not mean total blindness.

My eyes, I later realize, are now stuck forever open- my eyelids melted away while I slept on the riverbank.

The valley deepens, and the mountains around become steep cliffs before being lost altogether in the mist brought about by the falls- which I now hear roaring as they cascade down. My pace is lessened for lack of want to careen off the edge, but I see the reddish outlines across the river hurtling along with increased ferocity, as though their unfathomable task approaches completion. Too late I notice the blurring and speckling at the edges of my vision, and am doubled over in pain when one of the things comes barrelling towards me, knocks into me, and sends us both tumbling down over the lip into the chasm.

Falling, spinning end over end, I am acutely aware of the darkening of the air as I plummet into the abyss, dim green light announcing that I still follow the now-vertical course of the river. I attempt to right myself, and stabilize in an upward-facing position; this enables me to witness the edges of the pit that now swallows me, a jagged ellipse of tar surrounding and closing around the harsh light of the upper world, so far below. I jostle, and turn over to face the darkness beneath me, and still cannot see to the bottom. No crashing declares the well into which the substance pours.

Then, as I am grappling with the immutable nothing of my peril, a rectangle of light swings open below me, an unquestionable door pivoting along its hinges. Into this, I am powerless to avoid falling, and am compelled to heave nauseous breath as my sense of direction protests that the wall to my side has become the floor. I hear the door close behind me with a click as I roll along, soft limbs preventing harsh bruises and scrapes with their unnatural give.

16: Subdermal

There are doors at lower levels, leading out to lower and lesser platforms, with dwindling monuments to every level, until I am left with the sight of a web of walkways that connect the pillars, and converge on perhaps the largest of the many-domed buildings, which sits atop a peak over the mountain range split by the surging green rivers- which I can now identify as originating in frothing geysers close to the peaks. The ramp ended, I can only walk the path, allowing it to guide me into the basilica.

I stop once to give my feet a rest, and look down upon the mountain range, noting where the massive stalactite I emerged from meets a particular peak, past which I can see more of the acropolis’s founding pillars. Below me I watch as around one of the pooling points for the foul viridian substance, a plethora of creatures gather. I recognize the brutes from the marsh, the needle-mouthed bugs from the march, and the white-robed creatures from inside the buildings, as well as a few I don’t recall. Reddish things whose many limbs seem to part and fuse back together without reason, whose bodies often lack heads, hands, or symmetry. I also see things that slither and squirm, with many tails and wings with confounding holes. Resting still, I watch as they plunge themselves into the substance and dissolve, becoming one with it. Ever more come to be dissolved.

I rise from where I sit and begin again, engaging with my chosen path with little enthusiasm. Once in a while, I see apparent monasteries nestled in the mountains, and watch as creatures approach the pools, hesitate, then turn and embark to these tan obelisks, and enter. None seem to leave.

I come upon the grand basilica and rest my hand on a set of bone doors so tall and wide that I do not doubt I might never hope to open it. Carved into its surface is a depiction that rivals the magnitude of the monasteries below. The carving depicts an impossible number of persons my size writhing in pain, grasping at the cracks in the ivory that depicts them; as if these are true wounds to their flesh. I raise and press my hand to the cheek of one of these petrified individuals, and become suddenly aware of every ache and bruise in my body, of the battle fought between my flesh and the silicone planted by the ichor, the war to reject the Porcelain that does not let go. I pull my hand away, and the sensation subsides. I suppress a gasp of fading agony, and turn my head from the doors, finding that within the base of the left door is a more manageable entrance, a seamed section roughly three feet wide and seven feet tall with a handle in the middle.

To this alternative I shuffle, and pull firmly. Rather than swinging open, the section pulls directly outwards, and I find a niche on either side into which I might fit. Again I feel apprehension at trusting myself to a mechanism, but not wishing to cross back along the walkway, or attempt to scale the mountain, I crawl into the channel, and wedge myself away from the outer edge. After a pause, the section slides back into place, and I am made to wait until my eyes adjust to the dim light they cast. I see that across from me is a new niche that lines up with mine, and continues towards the other side of the door, so I entrust myself to this, and crawl through.

On the other side I find a foyer that is fit to match the doors, and exits of various sizes leading in different directions. The walls are ornate, being of a dark gray with shimmering golden mortar. The air is tinged with a smell like honey and peach, and a dissonant choir echoes from all of the passages. I cross the marble floor slowly, my eyes keyed in on a passage that matches the dimensions of the doors through which I have passed all this time. Above hangs a tapestry woven from enough thread to suffocate an army.

This piece proudly depicts a bloody war, in which two forces compete and vie. On the right is a uniformed battalion of men, but monsters too; beside some officers stand tall things with white fur and blue horns, with rows of sharp teeth and claws. Here too are giant insects, things of orange chitin and blue blood, with thick shelled chests and three fingered hands. Sparsely sprinkled in this regiment are strange translucent things that walk on two legs, but have fingers like octopus legs, and heads like jellyfish, with simple holes for ears, and four glimmering eyes.

To the left is a force that is somehow more familiar to me. Here I see those creatures that have hounded me since my arrival. The surgeons and red-robed porcelain women surge to meet the infantry, supported by robots holding advanced rifles. Angels clash with jets of advanced make. Bone brutes and striding harvesters trouble tanks and jeeps, and wreak havoc on clustered troops. In the background I see what appears to be warfare in space, with metal ships pierced by giant sinewy tendrils. And above all is the dark figure wrapped in black light, floating weightless over the spectacle. He is backgrounded by what seems a moon or near planet with red and black essence seeping from its edges in a malevolent corona. All this I absorb, then pass by as I enter the passage I have chosen.

After many turns, and many downward cycles, I enter a small balcony in a sort of coliseum, high above an oval stage where a troupe of the porcelain women dance- performing a high-energy ballet with many leaps and dangerous gymnastics. Their glossy white bodies are bare, reflecting harsh blue and yellow lights from overhead with every high-velocity twirl. The crowd is rowdy but mostly enraptured, and begins to applaud and hiss as one of the lead dancers breaks off to lead a surgeon to center stage. The remaining dancers encircle the slow, grunting creature, and begin jabbing at him with hooked knives, tearing what sparse scraps of skin he has to offer. Enraged, the surgeon lashes out and grabs one of his torturers, cracking her wrist and forcing a shrill scream through her mouth. A laugh ripples through the audience. The others back away as he rakes his claws sadistically across her chest. The captive screams again, this time portraying rage over pain, and swings her knife through his throat, producing an arterial spray that sends the crowd into hysterical howling and whooping. The surgeon drops his prey and stumbles backwards, flailing his arms and barking, before the doll kicks him over and drags her knife through his gut over and over, prompting a standing ovation. I have nearly made up my mind to leave the spectacle through an ornate bone door opposite the one I used to enter, when the lights dim, and the performers drag the gurgling carcass offstage.

I linger and watch a small, caped figure emerge from an opening in the floor, and look out across the gathered onlookers.

This being is particularly hideous, being sewn together out of tanned leather pulled tight across what rigid structures lie within. If she possesses bone structure, it is not anything natural. Her jaw is asymmetrical, one of her arms is longer than the other and has more fingers- the other is four thumbs and an index- one of her eyes is so much lower than the other that it distorts her nose, and her chest has protruding lumps that suggest her ribs are all different sizes. Her cape too is leather- made from skin as I now realize- and long triangular scraps hang from her waist in a gruesome skirt. Her voice is beautiful as she is not. Pathogen’s tones were surely soft and sedating, but this newcomer’s crooked throat produces a voice so rich and gentle that I cannot but breathe a sigh of relief.

“Hello, you filth.”

She says it as though it were a term of affection for a lover, spoken across a pillow in the moments after the saffron light of dawn has been eroded.

“I’m so glad you could join us for the show today! Just think, instead you could be getting your eyes gouged out and your marrow sucked. Why, you could be having holes drilled through your teeth, or be getting dragged through molecular acid, or even refurbished with shiny white skin!”

I feel as though she is looking at me when she finishes this term, and I turn to exit through the door, but find that both are admitting a cluster of the marchers from above, their cottony faces all damp and clinging.

“But you joined us today, instead of all those other things, and for that, I’m so, so grateful; because today, we have a special guest!”

I am about to plunge into the crowd behind me, when a pair of clawed feet grasps my shoulders, and hoists me not at all gently into the air. I look up and strike at the feet, drawing only a blood-curdling screech from the winged, many-faced thing that has me. I hear the crowd murmur and shuffle as I am brought down and dropped in a heap before the creature on the stage. With her long arm she grasps my hood and drags me to my feet, then dusts me off.

Up close, she is even more hideous, some of the tanned hide that makes up her skin-suit is wrinkled and cracked with age, unhealing gashes betraying glimpses of a black and shiny thing within. Her teeth are as ill-fitting as the rest of her, some are bestial and crooked, while others are ivory and neat. Her breath is mild and flowery, however.

“Welcome to my coliseum, dear thing. I’ve been expecting you.”

She grins and faces out to her audience, but I am kept from running by the presence of the thing with leathery wings and canvas-like skin that looms over me, its frowning mouths whistling breath.

“Toxin welcomes all to her menagerie! The meek, the mighty, the beautiful, and the obscene! Even things like you, rare as you are.”

All around the edge of the stage I see the porcelain women standing, their sleek bodies poised as though prepared to pounce. I notice that many have fractures and cracks in their faces and limbs, and the imperfections have been sealed with gold. Much of the silicone of their torsos has also seen repair with a gray rubber that eases the contrast between the black and the white. Their red eyes do not waver from the ringleader’s – Toxin’s – face, awaiting her instruction, it seems. She turns to me.

“Come, let us have some fun with you, dear thing!”

All at once the women rush in and begin shoving me, this way and that, tearing at my robe and lacerating my face with their fingertips. I sway to one side and am grabbed by the arm, then the other, and feel a sharp hot pain as something cracks into my back, a whip or lash of some kind, who’s ragged edge stings terribly and causes my vision to blur. I wrench free and struggle to take three steps away from the mass of cruel laughter. The top of my robe has fallen to shreds that sway and double over the lower half, still supported by the waistband cord. I fall to my hands and knees and continue to shuffle along, faintly aware of uproarious applause in all directions.

“So delicate! What a treat you are!”

The silky voice, despite not having changed at all, now seems to me worse than any of the terrible sounds I’ve yet experienced, a slow-spinning auger in my chest. I attempt to come to my feet, but am kicked in the back, along the rugged wound, and fall on my face, warmth spreading outward as my blood seeps out. My center begins to feel cold.

“Oh, but dear, not nearly long-lasting enough. You’ll be lost to us before we’ve even disemboweled you if we’re not careful.”

She speaks as though she is pitying a romantic evening being canceled, and her finger crooks under my chin to look at my face. My sight blurred, her features are only a smear, a crooked soup of a dark splotch here and a wiggling fuzzy shape below it.

“Tsk. This won’t do at all. I had such high hopes for you.”

Her disappointment is a knife paring away my skin, my eyelids, my ears. I feel as though I might never inhale without sobbing, if I survive. As my senses dim, I see a twisting shape around her, a writhing mass of spectral worms all stemming from her chest. Through one of the gashes in her leather skin I see something glistening slithering up and down. I blink, and find that her face is crooked in a different way than I remember, as if her cheekbones attempted to heal and were broken from another force in another direction. I can no longer hear through the fog of pain and blood-loss. My sense of balance tells me I am rolling to the side. All at once, everything is brighter, and I am falling.

15: Substance

I stand on the porch of the prairie house and look out across the horizon. The red sky and gray fields insist that I am far from anything reasonable, but the breeze seems almost soothing. A single willow tree sways its branches over the creek, and a tire swing hangs from its bough. The ringing in my ears buzzes and churns.

I open my eyes, and find myself back in the abandoned subway car. I cross through the broken door and step down to the dirt floor, but stop again to blink.

I am in the house now, standing in a dining room with figures I know are not like anything I’ve yet met hidden under black veils. All are facing me. The table is set with silver plates of viscera and white-glowing slime.

My eyes open, and I continue walking towards the exit, wary of my own eyes. This is more manageable than the surgeons, the beasts, the machines, I tell myself. But seeing one of the veiled creatures reach for me when I tried moving with my eyes shut is enough to make me stop still every time I blink. A set of rails twists across the floor of the tunnel, and guides me to my next destination. I blink again.

I stand in the middle of the field, surrounded by the creatures, the sound of rustling leaves and buzzing insects almost natural. One of the veiled things kneels down and scoops up a stone, on which I see the fossil of a human hand. I open my eyes.

I am close to leaving now, the dented and crooked exit door shining dully in the red light I cast. I hurry forth, and stop short, believing myself ready for the next span.

I blink.

I am seated in a chair in the living room of the house, and almost a dozen of the creatures are gathered, dancing slowly and chattering with noises like dolphins. Their black dresses sway and billow, and their mummified gray hands crack and twitch erratically. One by one they come forth and kneel before me, holding out their hands. Without my bidding, my hand extends and rests within theirs, for them to clutch and mutter with religious fervor. Once everyone has supplicated, they heap ashes on me, and lay a glowing white crown in my lap. I hear a dancing song begin in the next room over, and I am forgotten as they flow out of the room. Only one remains with me, and kneels beside my chair. Its head leans against the arm rest, and I hear a woman sobbing through the veil as though from very far away. My hand acts on its own again, and rests on the top of her head. My heart throbs a familiar ache, and tears roll down from my eyes.

I open my eyes again, and find myself on the other side of the door. I turn and jostle the handle, gripped by the urge to return, only to find it locked. I reach a hand up, and find a black tear on my cheek. I turn away slowly, and face the chamber I have entered, each blink of my eyes only serving the same brief blur they always have. This is a hallway that feels unpleasantly familiar to me; a long tiled corridor with the sounds of bubbling water nearby. I stride slowly along, coming closer to the dim blue light, and enter a devoid office space, with cluttered cubicles and an empty fish tank casting its light and sound into the room. There are no windows. The floor is square tiles as a pool might have, and a painting rests on the far wall. To this I proceed.

The painting is a portrait of a man I feel I recognize, though I know not why. His hair is blond, his eyes are blue, and his chin is scruffy with hair. He wears a blue suit and tie, and might look unremarkable, were it not for the contorted expression on his face; he is facing slightly to the left, and around the edges of his face that are in shadow, the skin seems puffy and pink as if irritated. His eye that I can see is wide open, staring through me with abject horror, and his mouth hangs open in a scream. There is a small badge pinned to his lapel of a greek letter.

I leave this painting behind, and use the door to the next room. I find that I have somehow reentered the room from the front. I cross to the door again, and open it, finding another hallway. Disoriented, I enter cautiously, and follow a series of turns: Right, left, left, right, right, left, left, left, right, left, straight for a while, then left, left, right, and left. A door waits for me there, and I pass through it, only to find myself in the office again. I stand confounded, but am soon drawn to stand before the portrait again. The man’s face is considerably aged, and his mouth is closed, but his eye still shines with that terrific fear. I hesitantly go to the door and turn the handle again, now convinced that I am entering a new room again. Another hallway leads me to a set of steps that only go down a single floor before opening into another hallway. I take turns right, left, left, right, left, and left again to another door. I enter.

Again I stand in the office, but this time all the clutter from the desks has been knocked to the floor. A rubber duck, a picture frame, a folder organizer, a dozen keyboards, and more pencils than I care to count are among the refuse. I cross to the painting. The image now is of a withered and burnt corpse’s face pointing to the right, its cracked lips pulled into a grim smile. The eye stares at me with the same intensity, and is as blue as the man’s was. I turn away, and pass through the door again.

I find that I stand at the edge of a rocky cliff. The door behind me is set into a sheer face of obsidian that extends up for miles. A small path crosses back and forth in front of me clinging to the edge of the cliff and barely wide enough to even consider attempting. Beyond, is a decadent city.

Brilliant white basilicas and domes span a stretch so profound that I cease attempting to fathom it after the second attempt. Grand balconies and arched bridges space the buildings out, and occasional pillars of brilliant white with golden filigree massive enough to be seen from afar stretch up into the gloom. I see, with a sinking dread, hundreds of the angels flitting about, landing on railings and spires and balconies as though they were but insects in a flower garden. I grit my teeth, and resolve to risk the cliff path down towards the metropolis.

The path is unforgiving, and I find myself crouching down to compensate for my balance and avoid the jagged side of the cliff above me. Each turn makes me dizzy with vertigo, and invites me to try to sit and rest, but I am more compelled to reach the bottom as soon as possible. Coming lower, I am able to make out sections of the city close to the base of the cliff, and see robed people milling about in orderly lines like ants, harassed occasionally by the angels, or by smaller, darker things that I sometimes see zipping about. Towards the bottom of the path, small red plants sprout from between the rocks, with small round leaves and many stems. The trail ends in an alley between two domed buildings, and I make my way into one of the marching lines of the robed figures. The street is paved in ivory, and the mortar appears porous, almost akin to marrow. I watch as black insects as big as my chest fly overhead, segmented iron legs and steel needle mouths trailing. Shot as my nerves are, I keep my head down and hope that they do not select me to pounce upon, as they do to random others, stabbing their proboscises into necks and chests and drinking with a terrible sloshing, slurping noise over the sheer silence of the writhing victim. When the fly is done, it rises up with its smudged plastic wings and buzzes lazily away, leaving a cottony corpse wrapped in red fabrics behind. I continue to march, but notice that these corpses are collected by different individuals, thin and shuddering golems of black bandages draped with white cloaks, that occasionally rush out into the street from within the buildings, snatch up a body, and drag it back inside. The hood of one of the bodies falls back, and I see only white fluff for its head, with black beady eyes and a cleft mouth with needle-like teeth.

I shuffle on, glancing out over the edges of the bridges I cross, soaking in the shining city of lifeless marching. Below I see more of the black rock that made up the cliff, with acrid, smoking green rivers and waterfalls emptying into caves. I risk a look over my shoulder, and see that the cliff I descended is more like a prolonged Stalactite, narrow at the base and widening upwards towards another cavern roof so far above that it is obscured by foggy white skies. I almost do not notice when the march comes to an end in a courtyard in the shadow of one of the grand white pillars, on which I now see millions of small window-like alcoves, in which the angels seem to nest. I look to my right and see an angel squatting on the edge of a rooftop, looking directly at me with its eyeless grimace. I freeze, and glance about, now noticing many of the other rooftops are populated with multiple angels, all of which have their gaze trained on me. Some of the robed creatures seem to notice this, and turn towards me silently, their beady black eyes blinking in bursts. I look to the pillar, and see a moderate double door in it connected to the balcony by a thin bridge- a door too small for the angels, I hope. I leap into motion, dashing for the door, pushing through the witless fluff things and initiating the beat of dozens of wings behind me. I hear them shriek and scream as they shoot through the air after me, and I feel a ringed scythe slice the air above my head as I pull the door open and duck inside.

I expect the banging and shoving of many angels against the door, but all is still. I take several steps back, and turn, almost falling over the edge of a narrow spiraling ramp that clings to the walls of the pillar. Faced with another descent so soon, I crouch down in the passage between the door and the inside of the pillar. I close my eyes, and breath slowly, testing to see if sleep might take me once more. I sit back against the polymer wall, and sink into unconsciousness, exhausted.

I dream of something I do not remember. I stand in a small grove at night, and hold a shovel. My hands are black with dirt, and my brow is damp with sweat. I stand over a hole approximately two feet deep and six feet long. My chest feels tight with grief, and my eyes water. From a mound to my left, I shovel dirt into the hole, until it is full, then carefully lay clumps of grass on top. My work done, I shoulder the shovel and murmur something under my breath, a poem whose words I cannot recite anymore. I linger long, and the horizon begins to turn orange before I turn away and walk away from the silent grove, through the woods and to a dark road. I open the trunk of a car that waits there, and throw the shovel in. The sound of the trunk slamming shut wakes me from the dream.

I sit up and attempt to orient myself. I recall the events of the past days, or what I gauge to be days with limited reference. With apprehension, I approach the ramp, and stare down into the darkness, tracing the narrowing spiral with a lazy motion, watching it form an iris of white on black. An itch settles in the back of my mind, an urge I’ve felt before and now more than ever in the face of ever-mounting horrors. I sway slightly as the want to fall and tumble into the pit washes over me, to trust that my fall will end painlessly. I feel a voice that speaks not in words but sensations, urging me on, closer. I make a connection, recalling the hypnotic sway of the vine in the chasm, and pull back, resolving to descend naturally. And so, as I have become accustomed to do as of late, I make my way deeper.

12: Subterranean

The inside of the cathedral is calm but for the raucous sounds projecting through the door. As I look around, I am relieved to see that the others here, though varying in height, all possess the same glowing red eyes that I have no doubts I do. They chitter and moan softly, and carry scrolls, candles, and prosthetics about. Reliquaries line the aisle that splits the pews, and I view those that I can stomach as I approach the altar.

First I witness a severed head preserved in amber, whose eyes seem to follow me as I pass. Second I see a heavily damaged automaton propped up in a coffin of sheer gold, whose body is adorned with heaps of jewelry. Next to affront my gaze is a silver box flecked with blood, every side depicting a scene in which the dark figure from the tapestry exerts some sort of power over a place or people, transfiguring reality. Next is an entire intestinal tract stretched through a series of pulleys. I elect to stop viewing the contents of the ornate cases.

By now I have reached the altar, and find it draped with a violet cloth. A massive candelabra hangs above, its wrought iron lined with wax. Atop the altar is an open tome, whose pages are stone tablets. The right tablet that it is opened to features a miniature fresco of a scene in which Pathogen kneels before the dark figure, her arm pointed to one side with her palm open upwards. In her palm floats a small symbol, a series of lines traversing an upside down V.

Behind the altar is a throne, which, despite the space allotted to it, is sized right for a person of my own stature to fit, far too small for the towering cyborg. All around it are marble statues of the angels outside, posed as though flying out and away. A pair of ivory giants are poised behind the throne with their hands resting on it, their faces like honeycombs. I turn away from the altar, and head into the left transept, where I have sighted a small door. Before I can use it, I hear the main doors close, and the thunderous steps of the rotting machine man. I risk a look, and see that he is accompanied by Pathogen, Tower, and the automaton from the factory, as well as two others. The first of the ones I do not recognize is a hooded figure with dozens of starlike lights shining from behind its veil. It seems to drift and float across the floor, rather than walk. What I can see of its hands reminds me of a jellyfish, or a snail. The second figure is an emaciated woman dressed in rags, whose eyes seem to be polished stones. Her skin is a raw pink, and her hands shake terribly as she walks. There are six fingers on each hand. Pathogen speaks first in her languid tone.

“And you simply let the whelp pass. That is hardly like you, my love.”

The automaton answers.

“Organic or not, to have evaded you and Tower both speaks to its peculiarity. I’ve instructed all my rangers to disregard the thing.”

Tower speaks with a hacking cough, and I study him with increasing repulsion; he seems less a man grafted with machinery, and more a machine with human pieces attached with morbid curiosity.

“The mighty and pure Fortress, allowing a mutt to slip by, right in front of him! How utterly… unexpected.”

The sleek automaton, which I now take to be called Fortress, in one swift movement grabs and lifts the scientist by his neck, calmly addressing him as though reprimanding a laboratory colleague.

“Let us not forget that you and your vivisurgeons wholly failed to even notice the thing for the unbelievable stretch of time it spent in your sphere. I chose to let this dim creature pass through my terrain, having spotted it in mere moments. It spent less than fifteen measly minutes in my factory, whereas you had hours to even suspect it before it entered the passage to Pathogen’s.”

As if summoned by her name, the Ceramic noblewoman steps forward and urges Fortress to lower his arm and allow Tower to cough the pain of his bruised throat. The giant cyborg, who had watched this calmly now interjects, his fiery eyes seeming to stare directly at the pair- Ivory-white and chrome silver.

“Regardless of Tower’s failure to collect and convert the creature, it then survived the predation wastes and the intrigue transept before that. I understand that one of Pathogen’s creations aided the former, but how exactly did it resist the latter? You both assure me that organics are practically incapable of resisting the indulgences.”

Pathogen speaks then, though she seems to address the gaunt creature, rather than the cyborg.

“Mallea assured me that she had something special in mind for this particular prey. I only discovered afterwards that her plan involved a face that the creature was recently familiar with. To my understanding, this was one she pried from one of Tower’s scavengers. Perhaps the being suspected the face’s owner’s fate.”

The Cyborg nods once in understanding, then leads the group to the altar.

“The master has informed me he is aware of this creature, but did not deign to say more on the matter. Instead, he wishes us to focus on the crusade. Nukteos, you are familiar with our new foe?”

The hooded thing responds to this call, now named to me as Nukteos- as the emaciated woman is now known to me as Mallea. Nukteos’s voice is deep and low, accompanied by popping and squelching noises that conjure an ugly image as to the nature of his mouth.

“A sphere not totally unlike ours, but saturated in light, warmth, and a sort of radiation that burns the unwelcome. I doubt the troops will much mind the pain, but I question whether their essence will persevere long enough to adapt.”

To this, Pathogen waves her hand dismissively, her red aura sending out waves.

“My angels provide enough shelter with their eminence. So long as the artillery troops stay under their protection, they will be unharmed. I do worry for the infantry, however. Until we establish a forward base with the proper emissions, we will be actively cannibalizing our forces into that radiation.”

To this the smaller beings all nod in concerned assent, but the Cyborg taps his head with a heavy thunk.

“For this, we count on Fortress’s designs. Without souls to burn, his troopers will be our advance guard. From there, I will offer my presence to shield the more ambitious of the berserkers, and… the master will be joining.”

Silence falls on the gathering like lead rain, and all the candles in the cathedral seem to flicker as one. Mallea speaks in a voice wheezy and faint.

“He… intends to fight?”

Fortress too expresses some incredulity.

“The master need not trouble himself with this campaign, our strength has been ironclad since the end of the first. Why should-”

The cyborg raises his hand, and the doubters are hushed, clasped by some respect or fear for this their leader. Only Pathogen maintains a smug air. Her words are like ice, and I tremble slightly as I remember the taste of the crimson ichor.

“The master does as he chooses. He has told Nect’rus and myself some of his revelations. He wishes to see the new world for himself. You know of his power, of his curiosity. I knew well enough that he wished to fell their champions when the time came, it simply surprises me that he means to begin so early. His generosity is vast.”

Distrusting the weighty silence that has fallen, I begin to attempt the door, but noticing the keen rust on its hinges, I hold myself back until their conversation resumes, and the sound is enough to cover the squawking of the metal.

I have entered a narrow spiral staircase leading downward, turning ever left. I begin the descent readily, leaving behind the voices of these fearsome archons.

The stairs continue for eleven full rotations left, then come out into a sepulcher with a stone coffin in the center, and another door on the far end. I do not attempt to open the centerpiece, and instead proceed ahead through the door.

Here now is a staircase straight forward, that hangs over a dark abyss. I stare down below, paralyzed, then look across the chasm to where the shallow steps lead. The distance is so profound that I can barely make out the far wall. A luminous moss covers the ceiling above, and long glowing vines hang down in all directions, swaying in the abyss. The stairs are wide enough to lay down sideways, but I hesitate still, remembering my fall. Tentatively, I begin.

My footsteps echo into the abyss, and I feel compelled to count every step, as my thoughts balk at considering what I’ve endured. At two hundred and fifty-three steps, I pass close enough to one of the great vines to see it clearly. Its leaves are as big as my chest, and its central trunk looks like braided green rope. Yellow fruit hangs from beneath the largest leaves, and casts a warm glow outward. A sort of undulating motion occurs on the surface, and I surmise that the plant is covered in a sort of moss that is swaying in the damp drafts. I continue.

At three hundred and seventy-seven steps, I pause to sit and rest, facing back the way I have come. Each step has become gradually larger, and the one I sit on is the size of a parking space. The difference in height between the steps has increased as well, though not as steeply.

I think again of the face of my friend. His hair is cut short and well groomed. His chin is clean-shaven. His eyes are blue. I attempt to read his lips, but every time I focus on them, they seem to blur, and I cannot remember the shapes they took. His hand is firm. In his other hand he holds a small book. To my other side is another man, a doctor, I think. A great contrast to the horrible vivisurgeons, this is a short and earnest fellow with a receding hairline and tan skin. He is steadfast in his work, checking my vital signs and preparing an iv line. My friend asks me if I want to do something, but I decline, tight-lipped. My pride will not let me.

The memory does not feel as comforting this time. I regret not doing what my friend asked. I feel that if I had, I might remember better. I wonder why I only now remember the presence of the doctor, and why such a trivial person is so clear in my mind when no one else is; why I can see every pore on his and my friend’s face, but cannot recall how my own face looked before it was reflected in the porcelain of my palm.

These thoughts bite and sting at me, but I am no longer willing to entertain them. I stand, turn to the front again, and resume. By the six-hundred and eighth step, I need to hop from one gargantuan platform to the next, but can see that I am much closer to my goal. I hear a scraping noise, and look to my left to see one of the vines is slowly retracting up towards the ceiling. Its leaves shake and shudder, and it sways back and forth slowly. I feel mesmerized as it moves, and pause to look it up and down. At the top of the vines are holes in the cavern roof, and I hear shuffling from the one this one is being drawn back into. I watch it sway and retract for long minutes, before jolting awake when it stops. I look about me and realize that I have inched closer and closer to the edge of my step, and that my toes hang from the very dropoff. I step back, and shiver, then turn forward, and begin again.

At the thousandth step, each new platform is a drop almost as high as my head, but the exit to the chasm is only eleven steps away. Each step is a tremendous platform, longer than a house and wider than a barge. With a sort of renewed enthusiasm for the near end of the walk, I pick up my pace. Each drop down to the next step is a moment closer to the end of this stage of my trials. At last I come to the bottom, and pass through the pillared arch, entering into darkness. I look back, and see all the vines swaying in unison, shuffling upwards. I turn away, and cross the vacant area past the arch to a tunnel entrance plated with iron.

11: Submission

The passage is long, as long as any that I have yet taken, and twice I stop for sleep. My dreams are fitful, and no consistent theme threads them. When I wake, I continue onwards, fully aware that my stomach has ceased to growl at me. I can remember now, the face of someone, a friend I believe, a thin smile and an outstretched hand, looking down at me. He seems troubled, in this memory, but his eyes seem hopeful, encouraging. He grasps my arm and tells me something I feel sure must be of great importance. I can feel that I did not take him seriously, but that I should’ve, that it mattered very much to him. I remember seeing him walk away, and laying back in my seat, watching the light overhead sway from side to side.

This memory stays with me as I traverse the passage, sometimes crawling on my stomach at a very steep downward incline, other times walking upright with plenty of room. The air is stale, but bearable, and the walls are of a dark stone that I can see clearly in the red light my eyes now cast. My thinking and remembering is eventually broken as I shuffle through another narrow pass into a round chamber whose walls are adorned with skulls with open mouths, as if they find my arrival humorous. The floor is a mosaic of femurs and shin bones, and fingerbones point down from the ceiling as stalactites. I hear the echo of dripping water nearby, and see an inscription in the same jagged language over the door out of the chamber. The knob to the narrow wooden door is a clenched skeletal fist encased in amber.

The creak of the door hinges announces my passage to the next chamber. I enter a tremendous knave from the left side and look out across a cathedral made from iron and stone, with tapestries instead of stained glass windows. In every pew sits a skeleton, jaw agape or even missing, every head tilted to face the door from which I have entered, as though I am expected. I walk up the aisle to the crossing, and regard the altar with apprehension. Upon it, behind the podium, stands a figure in a long black robe with a golden circle floating freely behind his head. His face is a skull without eye sockets, and his neck is a bundle of hay. The altar itself is an obsidian chunk with a wooden carving of a man pierced through the chest resting atop it. The man’s face is contorted in pain, and the implement piercing him appears to be a spear wrapped in thorns. I withdraw, and hear cracking as the sermon giver’s head turns to follow my movement. His jaw opens, and a sound like the rushing of wind is produced. Similar sounds rise from all over the knave, and I begin to run back up the aisle towards the main door. The gruesome tapestries bordering the door catch my eye and I glance over my shoulder to see the congregation has disappeared, including the priest. I shudder, and return my attention to the tapestries. I have clearly begun to succumb to stress.

On the left is an image of what I take the altar to be glorifying; a man spreads his arms out to a crowd under a blue sky, and is run through by the thorny spear from behind, by a strange figure wreathed in dark threading and signified with many silver and gold rings about their head, all before a metropolis of skyscrapers. On the right is an image of the same dark figure holding their hands up to the sky, where green clouds have gathered. All around, horrors rise from the ground. I recognize in the second tapestry a cluster of individuals standing off on either side of the border- one is the scientist called Tower; one is Pathogen, the porcelain queen; one is the tall machine that directed me onward. Others I do not recognize are with them, each with grisly countenances. Shepherding the clouds is a pair of creatures with red halos: white winged humanoids with white bodies lined with red, their faces sporting open mouths with sharp teeth. In their hands are long cruel scythes. The background is a series of bodies impaled over a field, their blood watering a familiar marshland.

Disturbed enough, I elect to no longer study the image, and instead pass through the double door. I find that I am standing at the end of a cobbled road, which leads through an otherwise impassable forest of rusted iron spikes, some of the barbs reaching well over the height of the chapel, which is set against a sheer cliff face on its left. A stout figure covered with a thready blanket and holding an iron staff hobbles eagerly toward me, and despite my repulsion, I allow her to come close enough for me to smell her rancid odor. A face like that of an elderly woman’s stretched over the skull of a farm animal leers out at me from under the blanket, and gnaws at its teeth, drooling heavily.

“Been waiting, I have. Tell you to go onward. Oh yes, oh yes.”

I look down the path to which she points, and grit my teeth. My left hand clicks and taps as I flex it into and out of a fist. The hag thing speaks again, shaking her staff vigorously.

“Hurry on now, hurry on! Pathogen has sent her angels, she has. They’ll not catch you in the forest, and they’ll let you be once you blend with the masses, but Tower, oh yes, he’ll send his snatchers for you, they’ll be on you right quick. Hurry on!”

Though I do not see him, or hear him, I look over my shoulder, expecting to see that surgeon standing nearby, holding some motorized tool and grunting. I begin to walk again, and leave the hag standing on the steps of the church, muttering to herself about royalty and hunting. The sky is black, but a yellow moon hangs overhead like the lure of some anglerfish fit to swallow a world. This celestial orb seems to me far too close, as though it is instead the hole in the roof of some great cavern, through which the sun is emanating. Small specks drift occasionally down in front of its luminous face as I walk, and I wonder if they are the angels which the hag mentioned. I recall the red-ringed toothy faces from the tapestry, and begin to jog.

Through the thick metal trunks of the spikes, I sometimes glimpse a surge of movement like small horizontal waves, the flank of some great serpent, I imagine. The road curves and snakes unpredictably through the forest, and a rain begins to fall, the air smelling of a foul chemical. At first, I hear only the spattering of the rain, but soon I begin to hear moaning and sobbing. It seems to come from above me, but when I look up, all I see are the tips of the spikes backdropped by that ponderous moon. I increase my pace further, beginning to trudge down a moderate hill. I imagine that I hear the grunts and pleasured groans of the surgeon amid the sobbing, but soon realize I am not imagining things. Ahead of me is a slow moving cluster of people in robes and blankets. Some are like the surgeon, lead spheres and ovals for heads with empty holes around the eye area with shoddy bleeding mouths; some are like the maids, porcelain and silicone threaded with blood-filled tubes; others are like the surface dweller in the city, assorted bits and pieces fitted together without rhyme or reason, with life-supporting machines strapped and wired to them, giving them an uneven gait. At the head of this group is a clergyman in a black robe with a silver disk behind his head held aloft by a golden collar at his neck. From behind he looks like a peculiar friar or perhaps a monk, but the front of his face is a sheer iron slab ending just above his lower jaw.

Recalling the hag’s instructions, I cling to this group, blending in well enough with my porcelain hand and red robe, though I know not how my face looks from the outside. We leave the forest behind for a sort of obelisk garden, with flat black stones rising haphazardly all around us, scenes of sacrifice and torment etched into their surfaces. It takes a moment, but I soon hear that our guide is murmuring in a low drone, speaking in the language I heard Julia speaking to her companion. With a start, I realize that I can understand it, as though coming this far has attuned me to the meaning of each syllable, each harsh hiss and clattering consonant. From time to time, members of the group chant in assent with a certain phrase.

“Once the darkness was all, was less than any. And from the blessed dark came light, sickly and impure. Worlds did come then, and one of these was peopled by lowly worms that groveled in the dirt, and one was peopled by hungry lizards in deep cold, and one was peopled by beetles that scrounged and whimpered, and one was full of fish things in murk. We are but worms. We are but beetles. And the worlds and the peoples sought greatness, sought might, sought glory. So the worms fought. And the lizards, and the beetles fought. We are but lizards. We are but beetles. And the worms, and the lizards, and the beetles, and the fish things too, all fought, and sought glory. And then the wretched worms, remembering what they did not know, sought the blessed dark. Praise the dark, oh, praise the dark. From the dark they drew the less, and they gave the less form. The wretches touched the divinity, sought to soil it with their wants. But the mighty Least withstood their scrabbling, and won their nothing wars, and learned of the light the less had never known. And when the worms sought to return him to the dark, the Least brought the dark to them. Oh holy dark, oh magnificent Least. The Least then vowed unto the worms, the lizards, the fish things, and the beetles that he would make them again, and that he would make the light holy as the dark was. Oh blessed be we worms, blessed be we fish things, oh bless us, bless us all.”

So goes the sermon and the chant, and when he reaches the end, the pastor begins again.

The monument garden ends, and we begin shuffling into a town of hovels and leaning shacks, in which I can see all manner of strange creatures, some stitched together from many species, some little more than puddles with a trio of holes for a face. All seem to sport installations of metal or porcelain, or both, and others are completely transfigured into cybernetic organisms, looking like they have spent much time under the hands of the surgeons. Looking up, I see that barbed spires rise in all directions, atop each is a squirming, writhing thing, some looking nearly human, others masses of unrecognizable limbs, all pierced by the tip of the temple below them. And clinging to some of these spires are warped angels.

The tapestry did not do them justice. Their bodies are sleek in white steel armor, full breastplates and greaves and gauntlets. Red tabards hang from them, swaying in the wet wind, and most have four arms, two of which clutch long staves topped in cruelly spiked circles or cross spears. Their wings are equally majestic and unnatural, boasting spans longer than they are tall, with silvery feathers and sharp talons, folding as the wings of moths rather than birds. Their heads are shaped blocks of the white steel, which causes me to realize that their armor is embedded in their flesh. None have eyes set in their heads, only mouths, but all have glowing red halos, from which emits a radial shimmer suggesting great heat. Behind their sharp teeth slither long pointed tongues. Some have horns like rams boasting from their metal skulls, others have twisted pastorals engraved in the front. These malevolent shepherds watch over the growing crowd that I am a part of, approving of our collection towards what I assume to be the center of town. This assumption is based on the increasing density of the torturous spires, the mounting grisly spectacle.

We flow like water across the streets and down steps like the edge of a basin, until we are a mass at least a mile across in a tremendous square dominated by a cathedral with at least a dozen pinnacles, each decorated with a writhing figure pierced from behind. Atop this monument is a whole flock of the angelic creatures, chittering like dolphins and snapping at each other with aggression.

At uneven intervals in the crowd, taller monsters stand, broad chested flayed creatures with iron horns surrounding their faces, hooked swords in their hands. Many boast rusted protrusions of metal from their back and shoulders, and their four eyes glow orange like flame. Their mouths are crowded with tusk-like teeth, and their chests are decked with spiked piercings. I watch as one is pushed into by the crowd’s shoving, and he brutishly picks up the individual that was pushed into him. He laughs gutturally and squeezes the porcelain woman’s head till it shatters, then drops her to the ground where the masses swarm over her, to what purpose I cannot see, though I can hear screaming and giddy laughter.

Ahead, I see the doors of the chapel swing open with a thunderous groan, and from them emerges a towering cyborg with flaming eyes, whose face appears stretched thin over his skull. His hair is long and stringy, and his lips have been peeled away over his metal teeth. His body is swarmed with flies, and it seems what little flesh he still has is writhing with maggots. He seems familiar. Until now I was shuffling through the crowd to get closer to the church, but I stop short and watch as he wades in, every figure reaching up in supplication to him, chanting.

“Nect’rus, Nect’rus, Nect’rus…”

He stops but a few feet from me, and what remains of my sense of smell urges me to move the other way of the jostling, as the stench that rolls off him is fetid and rank. He holds out his arms over those around him and grins, or at least seems to. His voice is grating, a gravelly cough supported by synthesizers and organ pipes.

“Come! Come all you filth! Let go of your hope and fear!”

The masses shake and jump, and shout with raucous fervor, surging with the want to get closer to this cybernetic carcass. I move counter to them, inching my way towards the church, each body I pass eagerly using my passage to slink closer.

“Our glorious crusade nears! Word comes from below, through me, unto you! Another great battlefield, a world that revels in the stench of light!”

The jeering seems to increase tenfold, and many of the creatures raise crude weapons. I duck my head down to avoid being unintentionally stabbed or burnt by the improvised instruments of those nearest to me. I am so close to the open doors of the cathedral, I can see candlelight behind them, and hooded figures moving around within. I hesitate and look up to where one of the angels hangs above me, its hand clutching the head of a statue depicting a man being pierced by eleven spears. Other statues over the doors hold these spears, each recognizable to me as the important figures in the tapestry, including the tall form of the rotted thing that emerged from within the church. The man looks down in sorrow, and the rain seems to become his tears as it trails along his face. I feel that I recognize him, though I know not from where. The cyborg continues his message.

“The time comes soon, wretches. Whet your appetites, and offer yourselves wholly! Serve the dark as it will ever serve you!”

A frenzy breaks out, and the crowd begins attacking each other at random, to the glee of the angels and monsters, who soon join the fray, gorging themselves on the easy prey below them. I manage to hide in the shadow of one of the saint statues on either side of the door, and watch as the crowd is nearly halved before the violence ceases. Those that have died are collected up by those around them, and dismantled. I fail to look away as arms are torn from the dead and added to the bodies of the living with no difficulty, returned to life as flesh knits itself unbidden. The angels and brutish things simply feast on their winnings. The goliaths seem to increase in size from this measure, and develop their horns further, sometimes sprouting additional arms. The Angels are granted more concentric halos, and their armor becomes more ornate.

Finding myself more than sated for sight, I slip into the cathedral, and pull up the hood of my robe to match the other denizens.

10: Substrate

As the red searchlight of the porcelain maid’s eyes sweep above my hiding place, I stare at my left hand, seeing my unbelieving face reflected in the sleek white surface. The places where the prosthetic has been attached are still raw and inflamed, but no pain accompanies them. I yearn to call this a dream, to rouse from sleep in my bed, a bed I still cannot clearly recall.

“Come out, come out now! We’ve hardly begun!”

Her voice is almost playful, but I cannot look past the stifling in it I now know comes from her vocal chords fighting their artificial environment, being dampened by the dry rubbers that surround them. My own flesh she would replace to be alike to her gleaming surfaces and false skin.

“Mother will be very sad to see you go, still so soft and imperfect…”

The thought of her mistress is enough to propel me from my hiding place through the open door in front of me, though it leads to an ornate bone staircase that spirals downward into what must be the cellar. Light here is sparing, but the eager footsteps following me mean the maid has heard my flight, mean she is keen on my scent. I rush towards a square opening in the wall, and clamber over the edge to find myself crouched at the top of a slick slope of ceramic leading down into darkness. Even now I can feel the “ichor” doing its work in my stomach, if I still have one, rather than a plastic bag or rubber bellows. I want to puke, but that facet of my bodily function has already been stolen from me. The sight of dismantled maids lining the closet still burns in the back of my mind, tunneling around the sight of a sparse few organs untouched by the converting process: A brain encased in glass, nerves and bones delicately spliced to flexible hydraulics. I even remember the welcoming expression on the face of one, frozen like a statue, facing me as though she could see me in her disassembled coma. Pausing to think what may have been done to me while I slept is paralyzing, and I reject it the moment I see a harsh red glow descending the stairway, as I glimpse the sleek white legs.

I chance the chute. I slide slowly at first but rapidly pick up speed, such that the friction begins to warm the red robe I now wear. With a start, I realize a faint red light follows my vision wherever I look. The chute goes from square to circular, and begins to slow my descent as the material transitions from white porcelain and ceramic to stainless steel and brass. Abruptly, I am dumped on a pile of discarded maids, many with cracked faces and dislocated limbs. I raise painfully and look about, seeing a broad and well ordered warehouse but for the tangled mass of bodies I have been cushioned by. I climb to my feet and begin extricating myself, when a glossy hand grabs my ankle, eliciting a sharp gasp. I lower my gaze and see the broken face of the doll-like woman, whose unfeeling smile only serves to unnerve me further. Half of her face is leaking bright red blood from cracks, in some places it misses whole chunks, revealing the sensor-gridded rubber beneath.

“C-c-c-come back-ack-ack-ack! We’ll miss-iss you-you-you-you-youuu…”

The lights around her bloodshot eyes flicker and dim erratically, and she spits lubricant when I yank myself free of her grasp. Charging through the neat aisles, I catch only glimpses of my new environment; cranes hang from the ceiling, and racks upon racks of unclear machinery sit on shelves and beside conveyor belts, evidently awaiting some call to use. Ahead is a door, and I breach through it without hesitation. Another catwalk. At this, I am willing to slow, as my pursuer’s pace is surely affected by her poor condition. Below me is a factory fit to span whole city blocks, with cranes, smelters, lifts, belts, and assembly decks reaching so far that fog begins to cloud the horizon. The catwalk system on which I stand is linked to a series of rails with dangling hooks, on which hang the vacant bodies of hundreds of robots, each boasting some strange instrument for its left hand, and a series of six dark eyes above its ventilated mouth. As I creep towards a sort of way station at the end of my catwalk, I study the lifeless frames, estimating them to be intended for combat by the look of their armored carapaces and the number of firearms that litter the construction lines below. Another rail that comes up and runs parallel with mine holds a different sort of machine, a body beset with a number of dark panels coated in some sort of clear polymer. Drawing closer to the waystation, I notice a tower of some sort just below it, a dark circular pillar with rows of blinking indicators and yawning ports. A small screen above the pillar sports a timer soon approaching zero. I gauge this to be of some importance, and am relieved to reach the waystation before it has ended, slipping within with urgency. The station is composed of four walls with viewports looking outwards, and a number of screens, with a hatch leading down and a ladder leading up. As I reflect on the prospect of the ladder, a condescending and masculine voice with a metallic rasp emits from an unseen speaker.

“Power cycle complete. Reboot in five. Four. Three. Two.”

All at once, the lights in the factory flicker on, and the production resumes where it left off. Rails carry their frames off towards unknown destinations, assembly lines resume crafting their weaponry and metal limbs. More importantly to me, however, the screens of the waystation blink on, and project images of various locations. I approach the wall through which I entered and regard its screens with disdain, recognizing the marshland, the ruined city, and the labyrinth of subterranean rooms through which I have already passed. I think to consult the other screens as perhaps warnings of future trials, but am pulled from my thoughts by a sharp klaxon as the broken maid pushes through the door to the warehouse.

“C-co-co-come-come-come back-ack-ack-back, please-ease-ease…”

The masculine voice recurs from above.

“Acquisitions. Apprehend one- check- two faulty discards from Pathogen. Potential interference with productivity. Organics.”

The last word is projected with a degree of malevolence that speaks to hate, and prompted by the sight of two robots armed with rifle-like weapons jumping up to the catwalk from the floor, I begin to mount the ladder. I push through the hatch above as I hear an electric whine followed by porcelain shattering.

I have entered the latest of dimly lit hallways, and begin running towards a metal door with a blinking red light above it. A camera follows me as I get closer, and the voice comes again.

“Check, second subject is only partially processed, still 85% organic. 84.5%. Estimate process halt at 79%. Subject will maintain a strong sense of self. Requesting new orders.”

The sound of the hatch bursting open behind me does not cause me to look, though I am compelled. I slam into the door and pass through, closing it behind me and jamming a bar through the handle. I turn and make ready to run, only to stop dead as I come face to face with a towering robotic humanoid. Standing at seven feet tall, the chrome frame boasts efficient armor and intricate hands- one of which is extended almost gingerly towards my face. The voice now comes from his skull-like face, pronounced by a ribbed speaker set where the mouth might have been.

“Curious. Pathogen took a liking to you, then. And you managed to avoid all of Tower’s silly little hybrids?”

The machine leans back and lays its hand upon its chin as if considering me. The enforcers burst through the door, bending the bar, but their rifles are no longer raised in aggression, and I can see no other exit outside of the one through which I came. The machine man turns and faces a row of monitors through which streams of images flash faster than I can process. The gleaming ocular sensors within his dark sockets flick back and forth dizzyingly fast. He lifts his hand up and presses it to the side of his head as if nursing a headache. All the while, I study the sleek shell of his body, a wonder of engineering so perfect that the seams are only known when in motion. Finally, he turns to face me again, causing me to notice a bundle of wires that drape along his back and link to the floor.

“I see. You escaped the harvesters, the sleepers, the vivisurgeons, and even the indulgences. Perhaps there is a plan for you yet. No, there certainly is, else your progress would have stirred something already. Very well, I calculate a chance of one in nine to the four hundredth that you will pass unharmed to the core. Let us see if fate or her master so favors you to make it there. I imagine Pathogen and Tower both will have expectations. She in your favor, and he- well, no mystery there.”

He waves his hand in a motion highly dismissive of the importance of his words, and gestures with a lazy finger towards a panel in one of the walls.

“Carry on, then. I’ve no need to cleanse you, so long as you leave without further contaminating my plant.”

The panel pops open, and one of the enforcers shoves me towards it. I do not need further encouragement. I hurry over, and throw one last glance at the disinterested automaton that has thus far been the least involved in my struggle. He glances at me, and I sense a degree of contempt, or perhaps disgust in his stare.

“Hurry along. Do not mistake my impartiality for leniency. If you linger, I will add you to a biogenerator, and your end will be suitably messy and painful.”

I descend into the shaft, and the panel shuts above me.

8: Subservient

I wake with a jolt, and experience all over again the heavy sensation of disorientation and soreness. I look out from the thick patch of shiny brown grass and watch another herd of the brutes stomp their way into the palace. I now know I can never enter this place, not until I have been eaten against my will and made a part of this terrible ecosystem. The shadow of the birds trace dizzying patterns in the marsh grasses, and I am compelled to attempt plucking some of the grass, to see if it is edible. I select a long strand and pull at it, but find that it is rooted firmly, and pulls much of the surrounding ground up with it, bending and not breaking. I relent and stare out across the alien vista, ignoring the grumbling of my stomach and the throbbing in my head. Sleep beckons me again.

My dreams are violent and familiar, painted with the sounds and sights I’ve digested since waking in the ruined city. First I dream that I am again being pursued by the stalking spider machine, with its lurid, contorted face grinning at me through eyeless, lidless sockets. Then I am hiding in the locker again, but the surgeon opens my door this time, and places me on a hook. Suddenly it is Julia, cupping my face in her hands and smiling, as something churns in my stomach, buzzing like flies. She whispers to me, and I gag as something with many legs crawls up my throat.

“Welcome home.”

I gasp and retch as I wake again, and claw feverishly at the wet ground, my torn shirt damp with sweat. I look up and see someone standing over me, a woman wearing a red robe. I pull away in fear, but she stays still, simply watching me. Her face is white, white as can be, and her eyes are red. She has dull, dark black hair flowing over her shoulders, and her hand is outstretched as if offering help. Her voice is soft, and sounds muffled leaving her mouth, as though her throat is stuffed up with cotton.

“Come with me.”

I shake my head and breathe with great difficulty, my body beginning to shut down all but the most essential functions in rebellion against lack of food and water. She insists.

“Come with me, the sentinels will permit you, so long as I am accompanying you.”

I attempt to refuse further, but am too weak to resist as she draws near and lifts me by my shoulders to my feet, making me lean against her. Her hand is cold and hard, and I dimly grasp that it is so pale because it is within a porcelain gauntlet. Perhaps her face is, too. She leads me gently, and together we cross the bridge unassailed by the sentinels.

Inside now, I feel weaker than ever, and barely notice as we cross carpets and pass monochromatic paintings. I feel myself being laid upon a bed with my chest upright, and a vessel is pushed to my lips. I attempt to object, but warm savory liquid passes my lips, and I must swallow it so as not to choke. Almost immediately my vision clears, and the throbbing in my skull fades. I look about me and see half a dozen porcelain women in red robes and dresses, each staring inquisitively at me, as though I am a strange specimen in a jar. The one who came and found me leans back, holding an empty bowl stained red.

“Now rest, and Mother will see you when you are ready.”

As though hypnotized, I feel myself sink down into the soft warm bed, and descend into dreams once more.

Gone are the nightmares, and replacing them are strange sensations with few accompanying images, as though I am first being carried aloft on many hands, then smothered in paint. I feel a sharp pinch, and am suddenly wide awake once more, with another red-stained bowl being pulled away from my lips.

“Enough ichor, or you may become worse.”

Holding the bowl and speaking with a familiar voice is a woman made of ceramic and something like silicone, with hair that flows in an invisible wind. She is wreathed in a red light, and her eyes glow crimson as she looks almost fondly at me. I look around the room, and gather that I am in the guest chamber of some wealthy castle. Paintings of inhuman battles and bizarre congregations adorn every wall, and a window bordered by purple curtains looks out into the marsh. The bed itself is central to the room, and hosts enough pillows to bury me. The woman sits in a chair to one side and sets the bowl down on a nearby table.

“I worried that we might lose you. You stank of Tower’s territory when you first arrived, so I expected to find some of your organs missing or worse- but it seems you were only dehydrated and starving. Both of which, the ichor has remedied.”

Looking at her, I begin to remember, and finally place her as the individual I saw from the catwalk after my brush with the surgeon. Her smile is calm, a work of curiosity allowed by the careful interplay of her flexible and inflexible sections. Much of her arms and legs are porcelain, as is most of her face, with silicone and black rubber providing the flexibility required of joints. Her torso is wrapped up in red cloth that forms a sort of draping skirt longer at the back, but what I can see of her body appears to be black silicone and rubber, as with her joints. Here and there I see tubing like IV lines carrying an opaque, metallic golden fluid throughout her body. She watches me as I watch her, then sits back and looks out through the window.

“Julia told me you would be coming, but until one of the couriers depicted you following it, I never suspected you’d come all this way by yourself.”

Hearing Julia’s name, I sit up and look about, remembering how I had left her at the mercy of another again. Seeing my agitation, the woman presses her hand to my chest and firmly makes me lay back down.

“Stay put. While I cannot harbor you here forever, you must rest a while longer. Your body has yet to finish intaking the ichor. Be assured, none of the vivisurgeons or scavengers dare enter my territory. Your pursuers have given up on you.”

7: Subsistence

I find that I have entered a room made mostly of iron and stone. What unnerves me, however, is the webbing of red arteries that clings to every surface, pulsing with the flow of liquid within. The growths end in small tips that connect with the walls, ceiling, and floor, and seem to carry their fluid cargo to these spots. The room itself has three openings, the first of which is the shut gate of the elevator behind me. The second is an iron gate that might typically present the entrance to a property outdoors, juxtaposed against the doorway it occupies, through which I can see a long corridor that seems to become more fleshy as it continues into darkness.

I approach this gate reluctantly, and press it lightly, finding that it swings open readily. I look back at the third opening to the room; A staircase descends down into an area that is better lit by a light like incandescent bulbs gathered in great quantity. I turn forward again and shudder, pulling the gate closed and making my choice. I make for the stairs, avoiding stepping on any of the vessels.

I have entered a broad open space that is lit from around the corners of gaps in the walls too narrow for ingress. Raised platforms make up tables over which translucent sheets are laid, to cover whatever might be laid upon them. As my eyes adjust to the welcome light, I pick out etched writing along the bottom of each platform, in a sharp language that I do not recognize. As I continue deeper, I feel a faint sense of pressure at the back of my head, and there is a dissonant ringing in my ears, as though someone is singing a dirge.

The music does not remain in my head, but moments later is confirmed by the sound of shouting, screaming. All around me, from beneath the sheets, hands stretch up and claw desperately at the air, prevented by the white material, supplemented by the pained shouts of the owners. I am stuck in place, transfixed by the overlapping screaming of men and women alike. More and more hands strain upward, more than should be possible from bodies within the platforms. I begin to run, again. There are stairs further down at the back of the room. I am discomforted by the etchings in the walls there, but most anywhere seems preferable to this cacophony of agony. Light and heat streams up at me from below, but I gladly continue to descend as the voices become more distant.

As I slow to a more sustainable pace, I rest my hand on the wall, and look back. The wall feels porous, rough. Though I feel the urge to submit, to roll over and die, rising in my gut, I force it down. I cannot yet. This hell cannot be where I end. I swallow dryly, so very dryly, and press on.

The stairs continue for what feels like hours, and at times I pause to give my aching feet a rest. At last, I come to an alcove to the side of the continuing steps, and lean my head in. A faint odor of sweat emanates from this chamber, and I hear soft voices. Though I recall no friendly encounters, no person who is not sadist or victim, I press in, hoping against hope that I have found a clutch of survivors like myself. The hall is squat and wide, and seems laid together from prodigious stone bricks. My hair brushes against the ceiling. The voices become clearer, and I make out what seems to be an exchange between two women, one who seems close to crying, and the other who comforts her in a language I do not know. There are many harsh consonants, and short vowels.

I come to the end of the hallway and turn the corner into a broad chamber with many translucent fabrics draped from ceiling to floor, tainting the light of many candles into a pink glow. The strange fabrics form a maze that I traverse slowly, my hands brushing the drapery. It feels warm to the touch. I hear the women sighing and huffing as though frustrated or bereft of someone dear to them. The walls and floor are of a pale, ivory wood, with unusual grains woven across boards that narrow and widen strangely as I cross them.

I find myself passing the last few layers, and am greeted with the sight of two people kneeling upon a bed, their smoky outlines in the fabric portraying a strangely languid scene. I draw closer, and one calls out, facing me. She rises from the bed and presses herself to one of the curtains between us, clearly painting the image of her body. I hesitate, her voice is familiar. I at last round the final curtain, and am greeted with the lurid sight of two naked women staring at me, their faces pulled into smiles, their hands extended in welcome. I hear my heartbeat in my ears as the one that rose earlier comes closer, and I immediately recognize her as Julia.

“You’ve made it. Welcome, come, lay with us.”

I take a step back, as I remember, ruefully, the last I saw of her, lying unconscious upon the table of the man on the surface, whose words haunt me now more than ever. I can see on her no traces of the trials we endured, not even puncture wounds upon her arm where he grabbed her. She frowns, and pulls away to sit invitingly beside her companion, who strokes her hair affectionately.

“Won’t you join us? It’s better here, no lunatic surgeons or monsters, or collectors. Only sensations.”

My feet seem to ache more at this offer, and I consider sitting with them. My clothes itch, my body shakes with exhaustion, my eyelids droop and my throat stings. But as I look in disbelief at Julia, I notice a smudge of red on her thighs. She seems to notice my confusion, and pats the spot as if calling me to it.

“Not to worry. Please, come and stay. There’s nowhere ahead better than here. You can stay forever.”

A twinge of distrust brings my senses back to full alert, and I watch in terror as her companion leans in as if to kiss her, but pulls her head back and drives a thick bony needle from where her tongue should be into Julia’s throat. Julia moans in something that might be pain or pleasure, even as I see her blood pour violently down her chest in striking waterfalls. The woman pushes her down onto her back, and crouches over Julia, her spinal column strikingly sharp under her skin. I now notice other details about both of them, like the hairline seams in their skin around their joints, and the unnatural length of their fingers.

I begin to flee, running back through the curtains, tearing some as I pass. I am revolted as I notice arteries and nerve clusters in them being shredded, driving sharp moans from the things behind me. I race desperately through the hallway back to the stairs, and am so eager to continue downwards that I trip, and begin to fall.

I wake at the bottom of the steps, bruised and bloodied, but alive. I rise to my feet and grip myself with shuddering horror, and glance about myself. Behind me is a long and narrow obelisk through which the stairs must run, leading unfathomably high up into the sky until it fades into the noxious green clouds. The ground beneath me is soft and wet, and seems rife with brownish narrow grasses. The sky is bright and gray, and speckled with the forms of solitary birds. I watch a pair of these meet and begin fighting, until one eventually drops like a stone, and the other swoops down for the spoils. In all directions are clumps of lumbering four legged creatures like gorillas, easily ten feet tall. They are faceless masses of sinew, bone, and muscle, and pay me no mind as they march about, though their bony hooves worry me.

Directly to my left I see a structure that rivals the monolith from which I have emerged. An immense castle of soft pinks and yellowed whites, with banners stretching from each pinnacle to the outer wall, stands resolute on the horizon. This, I decide, will be my destination, once I overcome the shaking and weakness in my limbs.

Many of the terrible beasts are heading in the same direction as I am now, and I entertain the possibility of sparing my legs by seeing if one will allow me to climb onto its back. I cross over the marshy plain to come up alongside one, and contemplate its hideousness. All red and slick, its front is shored up with what is surely bone and keratin. A chitinous substance protects much of its legs and back, and bone spurs jut from many of its joints. I prepare to grasp one of these in an effort to climb it, when I notice that its face has turned back towards me as it marches. A single seam runs from top to bottom of the ovalloid head, and I detect breath whistling and snorting from this crease, soon surmising it to be a mouth. I resolve not to ride the beast after all, and am grateful to have reached the decision when I did; The mouth opens to two rows of thick molars as large as my hands, and the beast makes a noise that could be the whinnying of a deranged horse crossed with the roar of a grizzly.

Thankfully, it loses interest in me, as a bird thing has swooped down closer, and I now see that the flying thing is closer to a four-winged bat, with a face like an insect, with hundreds of human eyes glistening on the sides of its horrid head. The flier shrieks through a beakish mouth, and the beast makes its uncanny howl again. The bird-thing swoops down and rakes its four clawed feet across the back of the beast I nearly attempted to mount. I begin to retreat in weak terror. The beast swipes its forelegs at the attacker, which is made wary by this defense, and seems to turn its many eyes on me. My heart feels set to burst with dread as it drops in to grab me with its talons, which I now see well enough to call true claws, at the end of almost canine limbs. As I fall to my backend, the monster suddenly halts, and is yanked backwards with an ear splitting shriek of protest.

The lumbering beast has the bird-thing by its long sinewy tail, its front hooves now revealed to be a pair of opposable fingers pressed into a cloven knuckle. The beast stands on its hindlegs with difficulty, but pulls the bird, which now seems frail by comparison for all its thrashing, close enough that the beast can bite around the horrible head of the thing, and crush it with a mighty display of muscle. The victim goes limp, and the winner sits back to feast noisily on its prize. I am stricken senseless, this only the latest in a series of trials.

Once the bone-brute has had its fill, it returns to all fours, and plods along once more, and I am possessed of the urge to stay nearby, as this thing has cemented itself in my mind as worthy protection. Our journey is a long one, and we are soon joined by more brutes, each sporting slight physiological differences. I notice that mine has begun developing a pair of human sized arms in its chest- limbs incredibly alike to the talons of the bird that attacked us- that it occasionally leans its head down to for an almost dog-like scratching. Other brutes boast similar trophies that I surmise have come from other prey; one sports a set of horns on its head, another has spikes all along its back, and another still has a tremendous pair of leathery wings folded at its shoulder. I feel a sort of fortune that my chosen brute seems to be on the larger side, as one of the more typical ones approaches with the apparent intent to make a meal of me, and add something of me to itself, but my chosen beast snaps territorially at it, shooing it away.

As the herd and I come close to the castle, I become aware of two things- firstly, that the castle itself is made of a white brick that seems carved from bone, and secondly, that a pair of tremendous creatures stand watch at the bridge over a suspicious red moat. These are nearly humanoid, with long arms ending in chitinous shears, four legs much like those of a hairless lion, and tails curled up and ending in a suspiciously sharp tip. Their faces, like the brutes’, are featureless, but host a single eye where the mouth might belong. Both seem to spot me immediately, and raise their arms with an intent I care not to learn.

The brutes pass by unharried, and I am soon left standing alone, unwilling to proceed forward and risk the giants’ Ire.

3: Subversion

I need to catch my breath. I crouch and gasp for air, again feeling the dryness that informs me that I have not had an answer to my thirst since waking. I look about, and see that I am in a room lined with dented and disused metal lockers. Benches rise from the floor between each row, and I surmise that I have reached a dressing area of sorts. I look up, and am greeted with the discouraging sight of rusted hooks hanging from the ceiling, swaying subtly with the wind of my arrival. I resolve to move, and journey a bit further before coming upon a room with many shower heads, separated from the first by a chest-high wall. I feel a glimmer of hope ignite in my chest, and approach one of the fixtures, laying my hand upon what promises to be the knob to call forth cold water, a salve to my aching. I turn the knob, and wince as it squeaks with resounding noise, but indeed blesses me with liquid.

The water is warm, but I drink regardless, finding it unfailingly sweet upon my tongue. The patting of every drop against my clothes is a comfort I have unknowingly longed for. But I hear, over the spray and splatter, a sound that fills me with renewed dread, the uneven step of something heavy and eager, drawn by the noise I have made in my haste. Pulling away from the water is agony, but I mount the wall and shove myself into one of the lockers, closing it as gently as I can, ignoring the stiff protest of my shoulders to be forced into awkward angles against the metal. The gait draws nearer, and I can picture the lumbering thing that makes them without seeing it, but none of my predictions prepare me properly for what rounds into view through the rhomboid holes of my shelter.

The monster is a thing of skin and flesh, but also the same plastic and metal that has made up the other things that have pursued me up to now. It moans softly through its scratched lips and sways its head from side to side as it enters the shower area in vexation. Its head is like an apron of skin pulled tight over a cracked lead sphere, with only a pair of lengthy thick sections to act as the borders to its mouth full of oxidized teeth jutting from bloody gums. A throat of rubbery tubes interwoven with bloated arteries and frayed muscles hoist the uncanny organ above a body of similar design, with tendons and fractured bones clutching at ribbed and misshapen mechanisms perilously connected to real viscera. Three arms- which seem to share only enough flesh for two, supplemented by steel and warped iron- clutch at the air until one gently settles on the knob of the still-running shower and silences its hiss. The creature raises one of its six-taloned hands and caresses its smooth head, grinding its teeth in a hideous grin. The intestinal tract that drapes over its pelvic area only partially conceals the stuttering movements of the insectoid, mechanical legs that drag it back towards the first room, unpleasantly close to where I hide. It opens one of the lockers and hacks a foul sound from its throat, the grating of metal an additional displeasure in its labor. It pulls something from the locker it has opened, and closes it almost gingerly, tossing what I now recognize as a limp body over its shoulder and stalking out of sight. I listen in revulsion as I wait to hear it recede, but am troubled when it seems to stop short. The next sound is that of something being lifted, then the rattling of a chain as great weight is placed upon it.

The cyborg beast makes a series of short guttural coughs, then opens another locker. I hear it lift something out, then the high-pitched whine of a small motor being tested. My skin crawling, I hear the motor begin in earnest, then deepen slightly in pitch as its implement- a blade or drill- is made to bite into a soft surface. This sound is joined by the groaning of the monster, and rapidly by the stifled, muffled shouting of the man he carried. Anguish fills the air, and I shudder unwillingly as the motor again becomes labored, having found something harder beneath the soft substance. The man’s shouting has become agonized shrieking. I close my eyes and grit my teeth as I hear the beast gurgle and squeal as if delighted by the results of its merciless actions. The motor stops a moment later, and I hear through the pained calls of the man that the monster has set aside its implement. It grasps something new, and the man’s screams become more desperate. There is a sudden squelch, and the voice is silenced. I open my eyes again, and look around the locker as more wet noises come from behind me, ever serenaded by drunken grunts from the laborer. There is nothing to comfort my sight as I hear a new tool turn on, and identify the sound of something being affixed by screws that bite into soft, then harder material.

An affirming belch comes from the creature, and the process begins again, but this time the man makes no complaint as the primary tool settles into its work. Exhaustion lays itself over my body from the strain of deciphering the distressing work being conducted out of my view. I slump in the uncomfortable position I have taken. The process continues, and repeats, with new facets being added in each cycle, sometimes with the return of the man’s pained, begging screams, only to return to silence at the presentation of a repeated squelching sound, something I decide must be an injection of a sedative or paralytic. The latter strikes me as more likely, somehow.

After what I judge to be multiple painful hours of this, The work comes to a close with the shutting of a locker door, and the receding dragging steps of the surgeon, gurgling his satisfaction as he goes. I do not wish to leave my hiding place, and the stiffness of my limbs assents with the preference. But as I contemplate the option, I consider that the surgeon may return, may open my locker in search of a place to stow a new patient, and find in me yet another. I strain, and shift my pressure-numbed limbs, fighting the comparably easy pain of pins and needles, and slowly, shakily open my door.

The metallic taste of blood in the air washes over me, having been previously masked by my own sweat. Swaying with nausea, I find my adrenaline pushing me around the corner and into the front of the room, where I am visually attacked by the result of the surgeon’s labors.

The man can hardly be called as such any longer; he more resembles his torturer than himself. In places his skin has been peeled away and replaced with plastic through which his organs can be seen, pulsing with the flow of his blood. His face has been complicated with a series of tubes that lead into his mouth and wrap around to a device that has been affixed to his ribs on his back. His fingers have been augmented with uneven iron claws, and one of his legs has been severed and replaced with a pair of many-segmented limbs ending in spurred spikes. I retch, and cover my mouth as bile seeks to climb my throat at the realization that I can see a handful of blinking lights sticking out of a rubber bag that has taken the place of his stomach. His head shudders slightly, and one of his eyes opens; the other has been instead mounted with a trio of black lenses. He strains his throat as though intending to declare his agony or beg my aid, but all that comes from his mouth is white foam.

I flee. I do not take the passage that would lead back to where I first came from, but instead turn down a corridor that suggests a gentle slope into the ground. Anywhere is better than where I have come from. I pass through doorways, take turns, and unquestioningly take a ladder up to a catwalk when I am presented the option of it or a door that proves to be locked when I attempt it.

I stagger across the catwalk and fall to my knees, heaving breath, fighting the outrage of my stomach that demands to be emptied in protest. It is empty already. I shiver, and place my hands on the metal, and try again to grasp my surroundings. It is dark, and I can see a number of chemical lamps beneath me, casting their diseased light over rows upon rows of sleek capsules of metal. I close my mouth against my gasping breaths, and rise to my feet, leaning on a railing for support. I begin to hear again after the deafening sound of my own panic has subsided in my ears, and I detect only the hum of electricity. I have not been followed. My nose for once declares that the air is tolerable, containing only the smothering presence of oil. I resume moving forward, now cautious of the possibility the catwalk presents for making heavy footfalls resound with great calamity. Below, a door opens, and I slow my pace further as I watch a trio of humanoid forms stalk calmly into the vast chamber. With so much space, their voices echo loudly to reach me, but I am struck by their qualities. The first is a woman’s voice, smooth and devoid of apparent aberration, certain in itself.

“I care little for your experiments, Tower.”

The next is a man’s voice, increased artificially with static and digital noise.

“So you say, but you know very well that my children are effective. Even their defective progeny produce results.”

The third figure does not speak, but seems to follow the woman with solemnity, as though it awaits instruction from her always. Its head bears curved horns. She turns and lays a hand with long fingers upon one of the capsules, causing it to light up within. The metal clears in an oval radiating from where it is touched, revealing a person’s body submerged in fluid within. Wires and tubes sustain the body, and various protrusions indicate that it has been grafted with a multitude of mechanical parts.

“A disgusting mutt. Even Fortress understands the beauty of totality. You claim efficiency, and yet you offer me sculptures with lopsided and uneven bodies, that on occasion make a mess of their surroundings with their excretions.”

The man, who she addresses as ‘Tower’, bows his head, and rasps a sigh in displeasure. The woman, whose hair seems to sway in slow motion as she moves, withdraws from the capsule, and folds her arms. As my eyes adjust to the low light, I detect a faint red glow about her, that follows lines in her body, and concentrates around where I estimate her eyes to be. The yellow light of the lamps paints her sickly and pale. The machine-tainted voice raises again.

“Fortress would do away with everything you love if he could. He hates his task as surely as he hates you.”

The third figure suddenly lashes out, and grabs the stunted figure of the man, who coughs violently in response to being raised. The woman unfolds her arms and turns away. I check my progress, and see that I am almost to the edge of the room.

“Fortress is obedient. He is clean and decisive, and for these reasons he has my love.”

The man chokes out his words with great difficulty.

“He would… overthrow you at a moment- moment’s notice… if he thought he… had the chance!”

The enforcer drops the man, and leaves him to sputter on his hands and knees as the other two recede towards the door. The woman pauses at the exit, and seems to laugh under her breath before replying to the statement.

“As would any of you. That’s why I don’t give you the chance.”

The door slams shut, leaving Tower to gather himself. I find that I wish to leave, make it to the end of the catwalk, and slowly push through a door of my own, casting one last glance to the scientist affectionately petting his experiment capsule. I close the door, careful not to make a sound.