Lucille and Scytale walked down the infinite corridor, the dull echo of her footsteps and his scales their only companion. There was tension as both were waiting to see who spoke up first. Eventually, Scytale gave up.
“So, when were you going to tell me what all that was about or are you just going to act mysterious and secretive until the end of time?”
She smirked. “How much don’t you understand?”
He bared his fangs at her. “From the moment we stepped into the ballroom onwards.”
Lucille grinned but nodded her head. “Then I’ll explain. Simply put, none of the outcome was a result of either me or the spirit.”
He cocked his head. “None of it?”
“Absolutely none.”
“…..and so why did you think we could pass this trial?”
She smiled at him but didn’t answer his question right away. “It will take a bit of explaining before I get to that. You understand that all the trials have some sort of ‘theme’ or ‘story’ they must stick too, right?”
Scytale nodded, so Lucy continued. “When a User sets up a trial, they may tell the System what they want it to be about and select a few items and inheritances to be within it. It gives them a bit of good reputation when the new generations see their ‘impressive trial’, or for the weaker Factions, it’s a way of preserving themselves.” She told him. “You and I don’t feel much about the whole deal, as we weren’t part of any typical Factions in the past, but it has to do with building up ‘Influence’. It’s why the Heavenly Realm is obsessed with the ruins of ancient cultivators and soul beasts, as a realm with only spiritual energy to manipulate, they understand the importance of ‘Influence’ more than anybody else.”
“But the System’s ‘Influence’ is different though.”
She nodded in acknowledgement. “That’s true. But it is only a more refined version of the same thing. The System has just turned it into its own type of ‘resource’. It’s why stats and Statuses work for it, but nobody can recreate it for themselves. Anyway, to get us back on track, the System has very specific settings that it makes mandatory for each trial. The more freedom a User wants when designing their trial, the more restrictions they must allow the System to place once finished.”
Lucille continued explaining. “Every trial has three settings they must have, without fail. These are offering a treasure at Epic rarity or higher, having the trial follow a bit of history or ‘lore’ of the Faction, and having a clause that will shut down the trial when someone follows the correct procedures. In this case, it was when someone gained the item symbolising their inheritance of the entire Faction.”
Scytale bobbed his head in understanding so far, before pausing and turning to her as they walked (or slithered) down the hallway. “I’ve been meaning to ask. Are you sure it’s soulbound?”
She nodded. “Yes. While my spiritual field is inaccessible, I can still feel the bond with you and a much smaller strand of spiritual energy leading to the pocket watch. Anyway, these settings lead me to my next point. It is very rare to find a spirit in a trial.” Lucy said to him.
“As they are fully sentient living creatures, and Ashale’viaf had some control over the trial, the Founder must’ve sacrificed some freedom over the trial, so the System could take advantage of it. Such as there likely being a direct channel to the spirit in question, able to contact it and receive real-time information on the trial, and controlling the spirit’s actions to a certain extent. Spirits do have a closer connection to the System than most are aware.”
He halted his movement for a second. “Oh. That was why you asked the question about the third party, wasn’t it? When did you realise it was watching us?”
“When Ashale’viaf asked the question of whether the fulfilment of my objectives would be beneficial for the Tower. This Faction wouldn’t care about the Tower, their entire purpose is to chase benefits and money. It was not a question I would expect from this trial.”
“Okay…. So why did you get me to use the lie-detection dodging technique to lie about my reason for following you?”
Lucille smirked. “That was to test the System. By revealing to the spirit at the end the real reason, I was subtly checking with the System to see if it wanted to communicate with us more, which if it did, I would assume it wasn’t happy with how things are going so far and wanted to restrict us by making a deal. Because it didn’t take things further after you said that, I can now safely assume it is willing to take a more passive stance and see where we are headed with all this.”
He tilted his head for a second. “It knows our thoughts and memories. Why would it want to… wait.”
Scytale looked up at her and she grinned, understanding that he had gotten the idea.
“If the System knew everything, there was no need to communicate with the spirit, indirectly checking our character, choices and motives.”
She picked him up and put him around her neck, sensing his slower pace was annoying him. “That’s right. I believe the System cannot see my memories. The System port in our consciousness seals our memories so they can be perfectly preserved when resurrecting us or allow the System to re-upload our complete personality in case of soul damage. This becomes an issue when the System is only connected to my second port, and not the first, which contains my memories of the first timeline. It has access to my memories before the port was added because it needed to carefully select who would enter the Tower as forerunners, but that only contains memories up to the point I entered the Tower.” She explained.
“This had the added side-effect of messing up my Origin Skill, which is supposed to be made of all the past experiences up until that point. I believe it can still see your memories, as your Status isn’t glitched, but how useful those are when it comes to a battle junkie like you is debatable.” She said, sending him a look.
Scytale sheepishly looked to the side. “Yeah… two-thirds of my life is probably just on battlefields, and I didn’t focus on my spiritual stats until later, so my eidetic memory doesn’t cover my earlier memories. I can understand why the System needs more details. But what about our thoughts?”
She slowed her pace for a bit. “It can definitely still see those. That is likely the only reason why it hasn’t locked us up to study us or killed us outright. It knows our plans don’t intend to harm its goals, but without my memories to analyse my personality, it cannot predict with accuracy how I will react when faced with certain situations, making me an uncontrollable variable. This is related to why I don’t believe we should involve ourselves that much with the Citadel of Fate. Their fate Thaumaturgy works with the System’s aid, so we’d either be their archnemesis or… never mind, I can’t think of anything else. They’d likely just want to kill us.” She said with a weird expression.
He hissed in agreement, before falling silent. Then he spoke up again. “There’s just one last thing I don’t understand.” He paused. “How did we… beat the trial, exactly?”
She smirked. “I used the System’s rules against itself. When I originally saw the answer to this trial I realised it was ridiculously simple but quite hard to do correctly when you can only enter once. The System’s involvement made it easier for us to beat it. If the spirit asks more than 10 questions, he has no choice but to let the challenger into the last room to do the final test.” She continued. “If they pick up on the fact that they aren’t allowed to select a ring, then they gain the inheritance item. Because the System involved itself in this trial, Ashale’viaf had no choice but to let us through to the final room as he went over the question count.”
Scytale’s eyes widened, and he stared at her. “But… why hasn’t anyone solved this trial sooner?!”
She shrugged. “The spirit has full control over what questions to ask, how many, and who to allow through. He can also likely see how we completed the first room of the trial because he knew we had used the violet gem. Remember I told you about the hidden room?”
He nodded. Lucy continued with her explanation. “People, normally the Faction’s young noble members, bring back news of the other rooms and how to access it to their families when their trial ends. Those who use this past knowledge for the trial are then labelled as ‘lazy’ or people who want to take shortcuts by the spirit. He uses the questions to check if he’s correct with his lie-detection magic, so if any attempt the challenge, he can force them to fail. I planned on staying on his good side with my answers, but the System involving itself meant I didn’t need to care too much about that, so I was less careful.”
Scytale sighed. “The Founder must’ve really trusted Ashale’viaf. I wonder what their relationship was?”
They walked in silence for a bit before Lucy spoke up with a grin on her face. “How would you like to be my trial’s guardian beast? Beat the Level 799 World-Ender to receive my inheritance, we’ll see how that goes.”
Scytale flapped his wings with excitement. “Oooh, I could use my illusions to make it seem like they’ll have to fight my lesser clones, all the way up till they fight me, but then when they eventually ‘die’, they’ll have their progress reset, so it seems they’re in a time loop, but I’ll add slight changes each time to my illusions to make it seem like they ARE making progress, but the next loop all the changes are gone, and they’ll feel like they’re slowly going insane. The dungeon of Scytale! Known to be the hardest among trials, it’s impossible to beat! That will get all the Glory Pantheon brats trying to fight me.”
They pretended to come up with ideas for their future ‘trial of horrors’ for a bit, before he eventually spoke, a bit puzzled. “Sooo… are we leaving or what? We’re just going to walk forever?”
Lucy grinned. “I assumed you might’ve forgotten. We need to do your trial too, remember?”
Scytale blinked, nonplussed, before rearing up on top of her head in realisation. “Oh yeah! Because I’m a bond, I don’t have a Tutorial, and as you hadn’t already used it by the time we bonded, your inheritance key can be used for my inheritance too, can’t it? Um… but how should I choose a trial?”
She gestured vaguely in the direction of the infinitely repeating series of doors. “Take your pick. This is yours, not mine, so I can’t use my spiritual energy to direct one to appear for us. Although, I do have a suggestion.”
She walked up to one of the doors near them, although this one was slightly different to the ones around it. While those had a variety of different colouring decorating the front, the door they were in front of looked like it was made of a large cut of solid grey stone. There was no door handle, and any symbology on the front was barely visible and looked like it was roughly hewn out of the stone. She pointed at it.
“These types of doors are for fallen inheritances. They can become ‘fallen’ for a variety of reasons, but its normally because the trial within didn’t gain a User who could complete it within two thousand years, was made for an individual - which is illegal according to the System’s regulations for the trials, or has something within it that the System would prefer to not leak to the outside world. They don’t have any rooms except one, no tests or anything, and the room contains all the items that would normally be behind puzzles or monsters.”
“But these are locked by the System,” Scytale stated, confused. “You need a special author- oh. Hang on, your Authority works on physical places too?”
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
She grinned. “If this was set by the Mansion, then no, I couldn’t access it, but because the trials exist here due to the System… I suggest we test it out. I can sense you don’t want to do more puzzles and problem-solving.”
He hissed at that. “You’re right. I want to relax in my bath of money, not work for more of it. Okay, nice creepy non-Euclidean Mansion? Could you kindly please give me the perfect fallen inheritance that will enable me to complete my goals for the future? Very please, much thank you, put it ten doors down on the right. Muchas gracias.”
Lucy shook her head wryly but walked down. When they came to a stop in front of a stone door a head taller than Lucy was, with the barely visible detailing of a many-horned beast next to a sword, exactly ten doors down on the right, Scytale remained silent for a good thirty seconds, just staring at it, from his current position next to her on the floor. Eventually, he turned to Lucille for an explanation.
“How?!? Can the creepy Mansion hear me?! Is it sentient?...uh, sorry, you’re not that creepy…”
She smiled in amusement. “I highly doubt it’s sentient. Constructs formed out of conceptual elements can’t gain spiritual energy like magic items can, to become spirit items with souls, as they’re in a fixed state due to already being imbued with spiritual energy. No, it probably picked up on your residual spiritual energy. Either that or Marcus is watching us through invisible security cameras, manipulating everything for us.”
She waved to the dark roof. “Hi, Marcus!”
Scytale shook his head, watching her, before turning back to the door. “Well, guess it’s this one we do. Now, how do you open it?”
Lucy placed a palm on the cold surface of the door, closing her eyes and pushing a bit of spiritual energy into it. “Considering a stone door is not as intuitive as a Status screen connected to the soul, I’ll use a bit of verbal intonation to get the message across. Let me try… Query. Access Permissions of User Lucille Adrienne Goldcroft Sufficient to Download Information on Fallen Inheritance, Currently in Contact. Location: Malkisofret’s Primordial Construct: Mansion of Mystery, Floor 5. Requesting Current Title of Fallen Inheritance.”
Scytale winced as Lucille’s words reverberated through the air with a weird cadence, and he felt a section of his soul twitch in response. He presumed that was his connection to the System, although he couldn’t be certain. He saw Lucy frown slightly and watched her inspect the door with slightly more caution.
“Didn’t work?”
She shook her head, still frowning. “No, it worked, but… never mind. This fallen trial is the Trial of the Obsidian-borne Beast’s Forge. It does seem to be your trial, because it’s a trial left by a magical beast’s Faction, but… it seems the reason it fell was because the System deemed it unsafe for Users to bring out its items. Either they were too powerful… or they could be dangerous to the Users themselves.”
“A crafting beast Faction… those are rare. But why would the items be dangerous to the wielding Users?”
She shrugged, holding her chin in thought. “Many reasons. It could be that the items have bloodline requirements that when attempted to be wielded, inflict horrendous damage on the User who tried. I could understand if the bloodline died out that it would be dangerous for anybody else to try but…” Her eyes widened in realisation as she looked at the beast detail on the door again. “Oh no.” She abruptly turned to her bond.
“Do you remember those really early myths about the beginning of the Tower, when it was said that a specific group of beasts with over 50% primal beast bloodline purity still existed?”
Scytale was taken aback and hissed when he got her message. “You mean that terrifying draconic race known for their catastrophic dark element bloodline magic? I’m pretty sure only the current dragon race knows of them, and us because of our… experiences with the 7th realm. Wait, no way… WHY THE HELL IS THIS HERE?!?”
She scowled. “I have absolutely no clue. There is no reason why the System should have kept this. The dragon race wiped out everyone who knew of them for a reason. They should not have existed, and the fact that the System hasn’t erased this either means it doesn’t have anything to do with them, which is the best option for all the realms, or… there’s something in here it wants to keep but doesn’t know what to do with.”
They both turned to stare at the door, practically unblinking, almost like they were afraid it would move. Scytale swayed, nervous. “Should we open it after all? If the Mansion thinks this is going to be useful for my future, I’m not sure I want that future anymore.”
Lucy had a conflicted expression. “On one hand, they were a proper part of the Tower until that… breach happened. Not all their items would be related to their… nature, considering they were an entire fully functional beast enclave… but on the other hand, the System has some control over what trials to put near us, so… it might plan on dumping the ticking time bomb that could be within on us to destroy it along with us all when the time comes.”
Scytale groaned. “Why are we finding all this stuff out now, as weaklings, when we could’ve found a way to resolve it all at Rank-7… well, you could’ve, I don’t think I can beat up memories of secrets too well. Is there any reason we can’t just ignore everything within if it’s too risky and just exit the trial?”
She shook her head, face expressionless as she considered the merits of opening it compared to leaving it be. “Any faulty protections or dangerous tests would’ve been removed by the System as soon as the trial was designated as ‘fallen’, so just entering, and looking at the items is no issue. The real question is… whatever is being kept in there, is it worth knowing about, or not?”
They both fell silent, Lucy quickly calculating how it could impact them, and Scytale just letting her think. Eventually, she clenched her teeth and put her palm back on the rough, cool door. “Look, we already knew they existed, and what they were involved in, ever since we entered this new timeline. They can’t affect us, and I know enough to prevent any lingering remnants of that race from affecting us. Just, don’t touch anything, and let me use my shard to view everything. We’ll be safe for the next five years at the very least, so we can worry about it then.”
Scytale gave her a serious nod and she began to recite the System’s commands again, her voice sounding as if it was overlayed by a million copies of the same words. “Query. Access Permissions of User Lucille Adrienne Goldcroft Sufficient to Enter Fallen Inheritance: Obsidian-borne Beast’s Forge. Requesting Access with User’s Authority.”
Scytale could tell through their bond that beneath her fingers, she could feel the whirring of gears as the door was unsealed, texture returning and ebony black colouration appearing across the now wooden door, like a blot of paint bleeding into paper. They looked at the circular silver door knocker next to Lucy’s hand that appeared, its centrepiece shaped like an open dragon’s mouth. They both grimaced.
“That answers the question of if this was left by THAT race or not.”
She nodded, sighing, before grabbing the handle and knocking it against the black wood and stepping back as they waited. The carved horned beast and sword detailing light up, a red glow shining from its eye and the gem on the handle of the sword, before swinging inward with a loud creak. They looked at each other.
“Well, that wasn’t ominous at all,” Lucy grumbled, and with Scytale around her neck again, she slowly walked inside to see the dreaded room.
It was… well, it was a forge. It was a decaying, very old forge, with spiderwebs hanging from the corners, and broken weaponry haphazardly strewn about, but it was a forge, as the anvil in the left corner and the quenched furnace behind it showed. A pair of bellows could be seen resting on a workbench nearby, and several smith’s tools were anchored to the brick walls of the square room. The room itself was full of cracks on the ceiling and its walls, however, and the oil lamps used to light up the room were empty and cold. The darkness of the room made it appear monotone and colourless, the gloomy atmosphere of the clear signs of ageing not helping the sensation.
“This doesn’t quite feel cursed or dangerous or anything… more just sad. It’s clearly abandoned.”
She nodded, and paused as she was in the centre of the decrepit smithery to take in the scene. “I suppose they had a sad story, from a certain point of view. Most of their fall wasn’t their fault, although those present at the time would hold no sympathy for their plight. And… I think this place is more of a garbage pile than anything.” she said with a complicated expression. “These items aren’t carefully arrayed to protect them from damage, not like how a real smith would. Trials don’t normally age, so the System has left it to its devices so time will remove the traces. We can’t be too careful though. I’ll let you down so you can look but tell me if you feel anything off. I don’t have the instinctual ability to sense danger like you.”
They separated to search the small room. Lucy went to check the larger items, and the ones more likely to be functioning, while Scytale went to see if there was anything hidden amongst the largest pile of broken items on the main workbench. Most of it was non-functioning. There were shards of glass, a few pendants with dull gemstones - likely once-was mana-stones - rusted swords, and tarnished jewellery.
There was armour as well, but the leather straps for them had turned to dust as soon as the breeze of Scytale’s movement touched them, and the armour was just as rusted as the weapons. Some strange-looking black objects on top of the smith’s anvil seemed to be functioning, but something warned Scytale against touching those, and he trusted his instincts when it came to things like that.
He inspected some of the lamps on the benches. The oil was dark brown and grungy, the lamps themselves turned to grey glass by the grime caked on them. Not wishing to get his scales dirty, he avoided getting closer and checked inside the furnace behind him to see if there was anything in it. All that was there were thick layers of grey ash, and a few pieces of broken metal, likely belonging to some of the smithery’s tools.
He looked across the room to see Lucy kneeling, several large piles of items around her as she seemed to be searching through large rusty chests of some kind, half her height, and there was a dingy shovel next to her, so he assumed she was opening them with the use of it somehow. He turned back to search again and continued for about a quarter of an hour like that.
Suddenly, he felt the wave of scalding hot anger swelling up from Lucy and flowing down the bond, and he turned his head almost fast enough to get whiplash, to see Lucy standing up, a dark expression on her face as she held her mask in her left hand, and another hand pressed against a workbench he had searched earlier, staring down at something on the table. A trickle of dark blood was running down her right cheek and dripping onto her black shirt, staining it, but she didn’t move to get rid of it, either unaware of it or uncaring. As he watched, her expression grew darker, and she growled loudly enough that Scytale wouldn’t be surprised if he turned to find another beast in the room. He moved over as fast as he could to see what the issue was because his bond with Lucille told him she was fine but incredibly angry.
He arrived next to her and had to bump her leg to get her to notice him. It was rare she wasn’t paying attention to her surroundings, especially without her perception radius active. She jolted, and looked down, before noticing it was him and sighing. She picked him up, clearing a spot on the bench for him with her left hand, and placed him down. She also put a finger to her cheek, and when she noticed it came away bloody, she closed her golden eye and pulled a face towel out of her dimensional pack, rubbing herself against it. She eventually put it down and closed her eyes, rubbing her forehead with one hand while grimacing.
“Sooo… what was that about?” Scytale asked after a few minutes.
She looked down at the table with a frown, and she tapped a long finger on the black metal case next to him. He leaned down to inspect it curiously.
“I believe I’ve found what the System doesn’t want to destroy.”
The case was around the length of Lucy’s arm, and it was open. The outside was covered in a glossy black paint, and the corners had ornamental metal edging, while the inside was coated in red velvet, and two indents could be found within the soft inside. The case was very well preserved, and Scytale thought he could sense mana still swirling about it, indicating it was a magic item. But what was interesting was what was inside the indents.
Two small-sized blades were within, parallel to each other, along the length of the box. Both were curved and placed opposite to each other in a way that the tip of one blade was level with the handle of the other. The fascinating thing about these blades, however, was that one was a blinding reflective white, and the other was pitch black. And neither of these blades had any decoration whatsoever. Their handles, pommels and blades were all perfectly melded in such a way that they appeared like the entire form of the weapons’ were forged at once. The white one was so clean that he could see his own eyes in it, and the black one was so dark it seemed to absorb the light directed at it. He turned to Lucy.
“So, they’re daggers. Nice looking, and a bit weird in style, but daggers. Why the big reaction? Some dastardly ability of some sort inside them?” He asked in confusion.
She scowled. “Technically, they’re not daggers, however, that’s beside the point. This one is a spirit weapon,” she said, pointing at the white dagger, “and this one is a demonic weapon.” She added, pointing now at the black one. “But here’s the thing: they’re both sentient.”
Scytale paused for a moment as he registered what she said. Then he sent across his impression of a torrent of anger, frustration, and confusion through the bond.
“Both sentient… but didn’t you say the System left this trial here to rot?!? Why are these in here too!?”
“That’s not all either. They’re unnamed.”
Scytale groaned. If it was just the fact that the System left two sentient weapons here, which, while atrocious, was not the worst it could’ve done, he and Lucy wouldn’t have had such a big reaction, thinking the sacrifice for keeping the trial secret was worth it. The fact that these weapons were unnamed meant the smith created them and immediately discarded them, uncaring for the new souls within, and one of the worst feelings known to weapon spirit, armour spirit, or any other type of created soul, was the sensation of being unnamed.
It left them incomplete and caused them literal pain when it lasted for longer than a year, as their new souls slowly began disintegrating. The fact that they were kept in here meant their souls had been slowly shrinking, shredding themselves just by existing, without having any way of controlling it.
It also reduced their intelligence level when the soul got too small, meaning they could only exist in constant pain, unaware of what they were, and unable to fix it. Because a weapon or armour spirit had the choice to detach themselves from their physical body to go to the spirit realm when they got strong enough, everybody in the Tower acknowledged them as fully thinking beings on their own, especially as spirit guardians, former mortal races, often decided to become a weapon or armour spirit in their lives. These were new souls, however, created at the time of the weapons’ formation.
“What are we going to do with them?”
Lucy ran her fingers through her fringe in frustration, before reaching into her brown drawstring dimensional bag.
“First, I’m going to soulbind them. The spiritual energy from the bond should be enough to stabilise their souls, and I can give them more energy if they need it once I check their conditions. Then we’ll discuss it further.”
Using her bronze knife again, she drew blood from her left and right hand’s index fingers and dripped some onto the black and white daggers at the same time. Then, after removing the weapons from their case and putting them on the bench, she placed her palms flat against them both and frowned in concentration. Scytale knew she was summoning her spiritual energy and sending it through her limbs internally as she couldn’t bind them with her spiritual energy threads which required her spiritual perception field to be open. Unlike the pocket watch and with him, this had to be done manually without System aid to force the bond.
Eventually, she withdrew her hands, and the two daggers lifted themselves from the bench a few centimetres, vibrating slightly as they stayed there in mid-air. She put her mask on, and Scytale turned to her again.
“So, how are they?”
“I think their souls had about a year left in them before they would die. They barely had the self-awareness of an ant, which is not very high in the first place, so they’re going to take at least half an hour to recover to the minimum level of sentience that would keep them safe.”
Lucille sighed again, tapping her pale fingers against the workbench to some unknown rhythm, while rubbing the back of her neck. Eventually, she shook her head to clear her thoughts and looked at her snake bond.
“These weapons have a synergy ability. They are powerful individually but can only show their real abilities when their wielder has bonded to both. I think they have the basic function to enhance their abilities by a factor of x5 when within a kilometre of each other. But yes, the white one is a spirit weapon, so it has a spirit’s soul inside, but the black one is a demonic weapon, and has the soul of a demon. I think they were both meant to be spirit weapons though.”
Scytale tilted his head as he watched the daggers hover over the bench, absorbing spiritual energy from their bond with Lucy.
“Then why is it a demonic weapon?”
“Well, this was definitely a forge of a member of ‘that race’, and the crafter could create souls during their preliminary formation instead of using a spirit guardian, so they were extremely talented. However, if the smith was of that race, then when they ‘turned’ during that event, their nature might’ve infected the second weapon somehow. If they ‘turned’ during that time, then they obviously wouldn’t care about the ‘failure’ of a weapon, and probably discarded them both, having no emotional attachment or care for their lives.”
“But… that race wasn’t demonic. Demon dragons are an entirely different thing.”
She grimaced. “I believe they didn’t fully infect the weapon with their nature. They only sent its spiritual energy into disarray, so the weapon adapted and adopted the next closest thing. Spirits and spirit weapons can fall and become demons or demonic weapons, but it’s rare. I suppose its young age allowed it to become accustomed to the chaotic energies. One thing I do know is this: they are incredibly powerful for their rarity.”
Scytale stopped staring at the daggers, which were slowly rising into the air, to look at her.
“How so?”
“Enough to gain one of the alternative rarities when named.”
Her bond pulled back, heavily surprised.
“Are they a nascent Wonder, Forbidden or Heretic?”
“The spirit weapon is probably a nascent Wonder, but the second is something like a nascent Forbidden demonic weapon with energies so chaotic it practically borders on Heretic.”