Cyril ended up sitting in the darksteel throne longer than he intended.

Visions played in his imagination, vivid yet possessing a dream-like quality, with the finer details disappearing into a nebulous blur. Mostly he thought of Behemoth, traipsing across the world, worshipped and feared by all living beings that witnessed its passage.

Perhaps in response to his desire to escape the Underdark and return home, vague memories rose to the surface. Behemoth had not remained completely divorced from the affairs of mortals. The Titan had no home itself, but to some, it had literally acted as a home.

Various human figures with blurred faces had attempted to commune with the Titan over the ages, though none managed to succeed. If they had, their minds and souls would have shattered under the pressure of Behemoth’s regard, and so the Titan never bothered to establish a connection. Its thoughts were too grand, too esoteric, to comfortably fit within the confines of the human psyche.

That did not mean that people avoided Behemoth altogether. No one below the Early World Stage was able to survive its sheer metaphysical presence. While such exalted beings were rare, they were also risk-takers, seeking opportunities that would help them break through bottlenecks in their cultivation. As long as they did not succumb to a fatal encounter, such individuals would live for centuries, perhaps even millennia.

And so, over time, a small community had gathered in one of the fissures on Behemoth’s left shoulder. They constructed a humble village, which grew into a town, and finally into a great city.

Entire clans had flourished within the stone of Behemoth’s being. Protective barriers transformed the city of Fissure into a sanctuary, where even children could survive the brutal gravity and reality-warping effects of the Titan’s existence. Each generation prospered, exposed to transcendent insights from the first moment they opened their eyes to witness the divine nature of their cradle.

Behemoth had spared no real thoughts for the community. It was like a scar upon its being, a minor annoyance that sometimes itched. Yet, it did not scratch them away. Once, when Behemoth stumbled and fell, its hand had instinctively moved to cover up the fissure upon its shoulder, protecting them from utter catastrophe.

Cyril sat upon his throne, attempting to piece together the significance of these vague memories. Random thoughts from Behemoth’s subconscious that leaked through their bond? Was it attempting to communicate in a tangential way without obliterating his soul?

He wondered what had happened to the city. Unless the Titans were an exception, spirits disappeared from the material realm after bonding with a partner. It was possible that the animated shell of Behemoth’s body continued to wander about without the spirit itself, but Cyril doubted it. Which meant the city no longer existed, either.

The knowledge of what had occurred, like his memories from his initial encounter and bonding with Behemoth, had been forgotten--or, more likely, sealed away. Which was only possible if one of them had forced the situation to arise.

In the back of his mind, Cyril noticed that his Dominion of Knowledge was ticking upward. Even better, the pure qi circulating throughout his body resonated with the memories. As it passed through his channels and back to his core in a continuous loop, the qi grew more refined, more concentrated.

Each revolution throughout his body compressed his overflowing qi tighter and tighter. While before, it had felt like water coursing through his body, it now had turned into sludge. In a strange way, the viscosity comforted him, like relaxing in a mud bath. Droplets of the dense qi splattered down into his core with every loop. Unlike the unrefined pure energy, it had taken on a strong earth aspect--the familiar dark brown, tinged with green. Once the refined qi filled his core to the brim, the transformation would be complete, and all future qi he produced would take the form of the dense earth energy.

Cyril wasn’t sure how long he sat there, reminiscing over ancient memories. Eventually, the process ended up condensing all but a wisp of his former energy. Most of it had been lost to entropy during the process, leaving his core only half-refined. A shame, but he could repeat the process and complete his ascension to Middle Condensation after his core refilled in thirty minutes or so. Unlike rising through the higher realms, the first spiritual step required no treasures or insight.

He almost ended his meditative trance before he noticed an influx of qi seeping into his body. It was compatible with his spiritual essence, but exuded no sense of comfort or strength; it whispered of lost hope and sharp misery.

Worry seized his heart---had he accidentally started absorbing Hunger-Made-Alive’s soul gem? But no, it remained on the floor in front of the dais where he had left it, inert.

He realized after a moment that he was instead absorbing the darksteel throne. Fragments of the right arm of the chair disappeared as if some spectral hand was chiseling away at it. The energy seeped into his prosthetic and up through his shattered channels; its passage renewed the agony until it felt like volcanic qi was flowing through them in reverse.

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Biting back a scream, Cyril almost cut the connection before he noticed an interesting transformation. When the darksteel qi brushed against his own, his signature energy consumed it and expanded slightly. The entropy loss was worse than his own unrefined qi, but that didn’t matter. He had no real use for the darksteel throne after already adding its material to his list of Transmute options.

The agony, however, was not worth saving himself thirty minutes. What made the agony worth it was how the darksteel qi reforged his broken channels, bridging the gaps between shattered channels and tying them back together into reinforced tunnels. Even the bronze prosthetic underwent a transformation, darkening into a lusterless alloy.

Cyril lost himself in the pain. Catharsis and punishment. Time and time again, his mind insisted that he was mad, that he had suffered enough. But the universal truth of body tempering was that it was never a pleasant experience. Embracing the opportunity now would spare him far more pain in the future if he sought to repair the arm back to its full potential.

He had already suffered through the pain before. If he could survive it for one second, he could survive it for another. He repeated the mantra to himself, over and over again, until the last drop of refined qi finally filled his core.

The pain vanished. Gasping in relief, Cyril stood and flung himself away from the throne. It had melted down to slag, little more than an elaborately-deformed stool.

He held his alloyed prosthetic before him, rotated it to examine the transformation. It still looked rough due to his amateur sculpting abilities, but the metal had an exotic, ferocious quality about it. Though his channels were far from fully repaired, a single branch connected the prosthetic to the rest of his body. The surrounding network was twisted and shunted with bits of darksteel qi. It was a start, even if it wasn’t perfect, just like his attempts to heal the gardener-djinn.

Smiling, Cyril read his soul and confirmed his advancement to Middle Condensation. Besides his arm, the energy from the darksteel throne had been successfully transformed into his own personal qi. Any worries about having tainted his core vanished after a brief inspection. Behemoth incorporated all concepts of Earth within itself; it would have no trouble integrating lesser forms of energy.

The sight of an ivy tendril approaching his face broke Cyril out of his reverie. Behind it, the gardener-djinn stood as still as a statue. He hadn’t even noticed its approach.

“Hello,” Cyril said to the gardener-djinn, trying to hide the annoyance from his voice.

The ivy tendril coiled and whipped about a few inches from his face. Then it pointed down at his prosthetic arm and back toward itself.

Cyril leaned away, hoping the mad spirit would take the hint. “Still can’t speak?”

The ivy tendril pointed at his face once more, then itself, impatient.

“Let me guess,” he said. “You saw that I managed to partially heal my arm, and you’re feeling left out? Want some more of my qi? How shameless.”

The tendril drooped, retracted back into the gardener-djinn. Like an ashamed child, the spirit suddenly pivoted and rushed away, fleeing the throne room.

Cyril stared after it, blinking. “I was joking,” he called out.

He grabbed his spear and followed. Inside the atrium, the spirit wandered back and forth, tending to the once-empty plots of the botanical garden. While he had been sleeping and meditating, the djinn had been hard at work.

Monster corpses had been arranged in neat rows, and from their bodies bloomed twisted assortments of bloodflowers. One of the humanoids was rooted in a standing position, clusters of tiny scarlet flowers sprouting from its hollow eye sockets. Beside it, a sandwyrm was skewered upon a sturdy, blood-red sapling, which looked like it had grown up and out through it.

Cyril frowned at the disturbing totems. They served as an important reminder that, while spirits influenced their bond-partners, the bond-partners influenced them in return. As long as the brutality wasn’t turned on him, he wasn’t too concerned. The gardener-djinn was trying to fulfill its basic functions, using what limited materials it had.

Still, Cyril couldn’t suppress his distaste. He was tempted to burn the profane effigies, especially after watching the gardener-djinn at work, adjusting their position slightly with its vines before moving on to the next.

After observing for a few minutes, Cyril shook his head and left to wander the rest of the palace. He summoned his Mind Scroll Cantrip. The process was slightly different than usual--instead of converting pure energy into Knowledge, he had to start with earth-aspected qi. The transition no longer felt as natural, but the efficiency had more than tripled.

After a moment’s delay, a papyrus scroll blinked into existence. He flipped through it until he came across an old map of the palace he had acquired from the Library. Despite falling into ruin, the layout had not changed. His feet carried him through the desolate chambers until he came across his destination. A quick glance at his Cantrip confirmed he was standing right in front of the burial chamber where High Priestess Anadei had been entombed.

The thick iron door was sealed shut. After muttering a quick prayer for forgiveness, Cyril blasted it off its hinges with a quick Pressure Cantrip and stepped inside.

The room was smaller than he expected. Faded murals had been painted onto the stone walls, too fragmentary to make sense of. A marble sarcophagus in the center dominated most of the area. It was carved in the perfect likeness of the woman he had seen in the memory shard--the ill-fated bride, slain on the night of her wedding. The figure’s hands were clasped across her lap, and she stared up at the ceiling with the distant calm of a saintess.

Cyril swallowed as he approached. The lid of the sarcophagus had been shifted off to the side, leaving a dark crevice of the interior exposed.

As much as he disliked disturbing the dead, he floated his Flicker Cantrip closer. The pale orb of light shrank until it was no larger than a candle flame. It slipped through the crack in the sarcophagus, illuminating the interior.

It was completely empty.