I don’t know that I’d ever been so happy to not have a painting attack me.

The torches didn’t, either. Nor did the candelabras hung awkwardly from the walls, or the end tables sat menacingly in the upstairs hallway’s corners.

We were both on high alert. We moved cautiously, Aldwyn and I. We each covered a cardinal direction, hearts pounding, eyes on a constant pivot. We squeaked over creaking floorboards, we crept down the too-tight stairwell. Each step we took was a potential venue for novel attack.

I was nigh astounded when we entered into the kitchen and all that golden cutlery, all those serrated steak knives and carving cleavers and roasting spears and even little three-pronged forks failed to spontaneously animate, to set forth after us.

We were almost there.

We weren’t forced to pass by the dining or living room on the manor’s either side, leaving the only thing in front of us the grand, high-ceilinged, main hall. There was no danger in the main hall, I knew. No items of furniture we hadn’t yet encountered, inert. For one beautiful moment, I imagined the outside sun shining upon my face.

My hopes were dashed the instant I beheld the door.

Or rather, the instant I saw what stood immediately before it. In front of it. Far from its original appointment in the dining room, definitively barring our progression forth, one final off and sodomize yourself, courtesy direct of the divine Dungeon.

The gilded suit of armor.

Its pose was unmistakably confrontational.

Its arms met just above the navel, two-handed grip fast upon the greatsword prior strapped to its back, now planted in the ground before it, piercing the lacquer I’d long thought impenetrable.

Aldwyn’s face paled. I choked on nothing, the act alone carving out a fresh canyon of searing pain within my throat.

What were we to do?

I couldn’t fight this. There was no way, just…just no way. Twin Hells, I could barely move. My whole body was a gaping wound. I was near death, one single step from the grave. Aldwyn was precious little better. And, even at our best, a horde of pillow mimics had almost ended us–at least a pillow could conceivably be cut in two. How, in all the High Priest’s holy name, were we meant to slay an animated suit of armor?

“Do…does it watch us, you think?” Aldwyn rasped, his voice as low as he could possibly throttle it.

“I doubt it,” I whispered back, my own just as faint as his. “If it’s anything like the pillows, transformation is what begets the monstrosity its life.”

I swallowed, wincing as I did so.

“Aldwyn, if it could hear us, see us…we’d already be dead.”

Still ashen, my headsman slowly nodded.

“So,” he began, still quietly, “it won’t move until we pass the threshold.”

“A safe assumption,” I agreed.

Aldwyn closed his eyes. He drew himself up tall, despite his limply-hanging limb, and seemed to come to some manner of decision. He set down his spear a moment, leaning it against the hallway’s flawless cabinetry, stuffed a palm into his leathers, withdrew the rusted key, and held it out towards me.

“I’ll hold it off then, lad,” he said, “you escape.”

I snorted, painfully.

“Not that I don’t appreciate the gesture, old friend,” I replied, “but no. You will not ‘hold it off.’ Not a chance.”

I gestured around us.

“This room is small, and that thing,” I pointed towards the silent armor, “is fast. How fast, I know not. We know not. Faster than the pillow mimics, almost certainly.”

I gestured down, towards myself.

“I can barely move, Aldwyn,” I reminded the man, to his growing discomfort. “I can barely breathe. Each step, I feel my innards re-adjust. I will not be dashing about this limited space, adroitly dodging blows by a massive greatsword all the while. I will not. Were we to attempt this artifice of yours, I doubt I’d make it more than a few steps before bisection.

“And besides,” I added, smirking grimly, “in the end, we’ve no idea the key will work at all, do we? What if the door only opens when the armor’s been defeated? What then?”

A wash of emotions rushed over the headsman’s face. Frustration, wroth, hesitation, despair, finally settling into depressive indifference.

“So,” he muttered, “we’ve no choice, then.”

“Ewan always says, ‘to engage two men at once is many times more difficult than fighting the one of them, twice,’” I offered.

“Ewan says a many things, lad,” he sighed, hefting his arms once more. “Well, let us pray your master’s proverbs hold true, this time.”

I hesitated for a moment, but there was nothing more to say. There was no further discussion of strategy. No point to it. There were no resources to best allocate; we were, the both of us, utterly spent. There was only a hope, and a faint one, at that.

Gravely, we stepped as one across the threshold and into the hall.

As immediately as unsurprisingly, the armor began to change.

Its whole body shook, gold-etched steel rattling and screeching and expanding. Where previously there’d been nothing but air, now a deep, almost black, purple flesh bulged monstrously, churning and swelling, pushing against the armor that confined it.

Its arms and legs spasmed as it lurched forwards, not so much walking as being puppeteered. Its visor wrenched open and from within an eldritch orifice emerged, ringed with row upon row of silver teeth. Brutal claws pierced through its gauntlets and from between its nonexistent lips a meters-long, barbed tongue whipped forth.

It hefted its greatsword over its shoulder, pawed the ground with one inhuman palm, and shrieked at us in otherworldly defiance. Its cry shook the walls, rumbled the floorboards, and almost burst my tender ears once more.

Like a crazed hound it launched itself at us, and the fight began.

And promptly almost ended.

The knight was leagues faster and stronger than the creatures from before.

We darted in opposite directions, just barely dodging its initial lunge, the greatsword carving deep into the wooden floorboards. Aldwyn struck from the left, and I from the right, but our efforts merely rebounded off its armor, failing to meaningfully damage the monster.

It whipped about in one smooth motion and backhanded the headsman.

From so close, I could hear his cheekbone shatter.

Its gauntlet was iron, castle-forged and solid. Aldwyn flew across the lavish carpeting, slamming against the wall and groaning. The twisted knight chuffed out an awful laugh, jerked its greatsword out with a horrid, twitching gesture, and turned to face me.

For a brief but terrifying exchange, I felt what it must have been to fight a Blessed.

The mimic knight’s sword came at me ceaselessly, the creature wielding the great hunk of metal as swiftly and easily as I might a feather. It was all I could do to desperately dodge and parry its strikes, each evasion still wracking me with a troubling degree of internal harm. I couldn’t risk a block direct–I didn’t have the strength. The knight’s cursed steel would plow right through my own, and lame what it guarded with an even lesser effort. Desperate, I searched for song but found it silent, absent, uncaring for my agony or distress.

My best efforts were far from enough.

I plumed myself on speed, but to the knight, I might as well have been standing still. My arms were leaden, my legs were jelly. Each riposte felt like it’d be my last. Even a glancing blow from the creature’s sword set my muscles aquiver, split fresh-scabbed scars back open, threatened to break my tremulous grip.

In the end, I couldn’t protect myself.

The knight’s blade licked lightly at my right arm, opening it there, and I knew it was all over. The sudden weakness, the flash of pain, the instinctive jerk away–it all left me open, too open.

And the wretched creature capitalized.

Its cursed steel entered me, dull and dreadfully cold, and I gasped. It was a revoltingly intimate thing, sliding in-between the first two notches on my ribs, just aside my heart, jarring in and dragging out, gnawing on my ribcage in a way that made me nauseous.

My left side went dead, and I fell.

I collapsed to my knees, sword tumbling from my fingers. I didn’t scream at all. There was no pain. The frost was spreading in an awful way, creeping out from the hole it’d left in me, infecting what remained at a staggering pace.

The mimic knight loomed over me.

Its gnarled tongue caressed my open wounds whilst it stared at me. It tasted my blood and shook with pleasure.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Then it stiffened.

It wailed, staggering backwards, clawing at its neck, at the exposed space just between helm and gorget, where deep-dark flesh lay naked.

Pawing at the spearhead now sprouted from it.

Aldwyn.

He was trembling, barely managing to stand, the fingers on his good hand bone-white as he gripped his weapon, holding it fast in lethal position.

Unfortunately for him, his quarry wasn’t quite dead enough.

With one clawed palm it yanked the spearhead forward, easily tearing it out of itself and from the Headsman’s grip. It grabbed him by the throat, raising him high up in the air.

Aldwyn’s eyes turned to me. I tried to call out to him, but only managed to choke on my own blood. Somehow, he croaked through the creature’s garotting grasp.

“Ah…ah, ah. Elsa—.”

The mimic knight impaled him through the heart.

It screeched at me, one final time, in fury and frustration, before exploding into a million specs of violet mist, its armor clattering to the ground, empty.

And all of a sudden, the gilded hall was absolutely silent.

Moaning miserably, I dragged myself towards where Aldwyn lay. I needed to move him. To lay him out plain, not crumpled unnaturally as he was, or to close his eyes, to keep them from staring, emptily, forever, or…or…something…

Anything.

It wasn’t right, leaving him like this.

So, inchmeal, I moved.

On some level, I knew I’d never make it in time. The few meters separating us might as well have been an ocean. I could feel the movement worsen my already grievous wounds, but the prospect of self-preservation felt laughable, right now. Nothing I could do would matter, naught would prevent my fate today.

Bet was home to horror stories alone, and this was where mine ended.

Belatedly, and quite out of nowhere, something occurred to me that made me laugh. The chuckles emerged ephemerally, as wracking retches, half wheeze and half humor.

That through it all, throughout all of this, I still hadn’t fucking triggered.

The prospect was patently ridiculous. If not this much, what more suffering could qualify? What more could there be to sacrifice?

Tears filled up my eyes, clouding my vision, muddying what wasn’t already fading pitch-black at the edges. My laughs decomposed themselves to sobs.

What more could the Gods ask of me? What more could they possibly want? I’d lost my dad, my mom, my hope of Blessing, my youth to training, my dreams and friends and father-figure to the Dungeon. I was going to die here, today, just as Ewan prophesied. Nothing would come of all my struggle, all my effort, all my strife.

What more was there to give?

It wasn’t fair.

Sluggishly, I blinked my eyes.

I’d arrived.

I’d actually made it to the room’s center. Halfway across it’s breadth. To where Aldwyn’s carcass lay.

I gazed upon what remained of his face. No amount of begging would bring him back this time. The only thing left of my mother’s memory. With his death, she truly was lost to me forever. I curled his ragged leathers weakly in my fist as I wept. I scarcely sourced the strength to do so.

I noticed something.

Twinkling at me from afar, but not too far, winking as a chasteful maiden might, hiding just beneath the evaporated monster’s gilded cuirass. A puny mote of azure light, a tiny gem, sea-green and glowing, hardly even the size of a pitted cherry.

A single Entropy crystal.

Eyes widening, arms spasming, fingers shaking dreadfully, I grasped for it. The room was spinning now, my surroundings blurring into an unpleasant greyish hue, the whole world dimming about me, but somehow, I picked it up.

It was…so beautiful.

Multifaceted, perfect, all smooth sides and sharp edges, as if cut by a master jeweler. Light within was bifurcated, separated, devolved into a series of fractals, ever shifting. And still, it glowed, pulsing, beating gently against my trembling fingertips, the heart of an ever-so-delicate infant.

This was it.

What we’d risked everything for. What we’d lost everything for.

This…this fucking bauble.

What did it matter that it was pretty? Burrick would never see it. It, like me, would never leave this room.

It drew from within me an abrupt and all-consuming rage, and with an inarticulate howl and the very last strength that I could muster, I hurled it savagely down.

In immediate hindsight, perhaps not my wisest of decisions.

The cobalt gem exploded, shattering into countless grains of brilliance, picking me up and sending me hurtling into the wall, tearing off my right arm entirely and taking with it a fair chunk of chest besides. What little remained of my lifeblood promptly evacuated me, soaking the flawlessly-lacquered floorboards.

But I didn’t care.

The detonation had liberated what lay within the crystal, an ocean of azure vapor, a swathe of sea-green energy that now filled the room, dancing entrancingly in the candlelight.

Pure, unattuned Entropy.

My mind was drifting away. The corners of my vision, once dark, now left me but a pinhole with which to see.

Something about the energy, the Entropy, the slowly-dissipating sea felt…oddly familiar.

Wordlessly, mindlessly, limblessly, I reached out with what I knew not exactly, searching for song, calling the Entropy towards me. It responded instantly, without a moment’s hesitation, a loyal hound lapping at its long-lost master.

It shot towards me like lightning, and when it met me, the world erupted in song.

What once I’d had to search for, desperately, strive for, painstakingly, now came as naturally as breathing. No fugue state was required of me, nor peerless quiet, nor exceptional epiphany. The lamplights were made of song, and the occult paintings song, and the gilded cutlery, and crackling fire, and chairs and tables and plush footstools, and the walls and halls and lacquered floors, the whole house and all the things inside it, it was everywhere, and everything, all peoples and all places and it…

And…

And still, the formless Entropy became me.

It merged with my own song, the one I’d always had but never heard before, joining with it seamlessly, the each twining around and about the other until they were as one, electrifying my innards and spreading slowly upwards, until it reached my mind and coalesced around a single spot and ignited in melody.

The world dissolved into countless motes of azure radiance as, at long last…

I triggered.

And then I was somewhere else.

Darkness surrounded me.

I couldn’t move.

I couldn’t breathe.

I couldn’t see.

I began to panic, before realizing there was nothing to breathe. No air, or gas of any sort, for that matter. I was suffocating, yet somehow unharmed, hyperventilating violently against the vacuum. The song was absent here, leaving me lost and disoriented.

Suddenly, a million pinpricks of light blazed forth in my vision, illuminating the void that enveloped me. I was no longer surrounded by darkness. A tapestry of stars spread out before me. They glimmered and glittered in stellar asynchrony, an unfathomably exquisite cloak of jewels adorning endless night.

Immeasurably far below me, a small sphere of green and blue spun slowly around one of them, shining with life. It was unrecognizable to me, and yet somehow I knew its name, and that it was my home.

Following unknowable instinct, I turned around and SAW.

Two huge creatures filled my perception.

They could hardly even be called creatures, so vast were their proportions, millions of times larger than the largest mountains. They were entities, unknowable, incomprehensible, wholly and entirely alien. They were gigantic larvae, pulsating grotesquely, covered entirely in a myriad of kaleidoscopic scales. The very sight of them assailed my mind, their forms shifting and warping before me, radiating unknown colors and particles.

They crawled through space like mammoth serpents, pushing and pulling the fabric of the universe itself like dirt, fuel for their eldritch locomotion. They moved in tandem, synchronously, coiling and curling around one another helically, partners in an endless dance. They communicated with each other not in mere sounds, but in the radiation of collapsing stars, in the esoteric murmurations of ever-spinning singularities. Their arcane speech burned my ears, burst my eyes, boiled my brain, and somehow contorted itself into words and meaning.

DESTINATION.

AGREEMENT.

TRAJECTORY.

AGREEM–

Suddenly, the vision turned.

The words dissolved into meaningless noise that was somehow so much worse than before and drove me to new heights of agony. The creatures distorted, forms glitching and blurring, spasming across the cosmic canvas, the stars behind them spreading like a stain until the bright, white light overWHELMED ME IN ITS GLORY–

And then, mercifully, it was over.

I was left in the darkness once again, made now much more comforting. My wounds were healed, but my mind remained tender and raw. I panted in the vacuum.

Before me, a golden light began to grow. Yet it was softer, milder, more delicate than that which came before.

Slowly, gently, as if treating my poor psyche with care, it resolved itself into a glowing, golden centipede. Countless arms dotted its segmented carapace, each so long I could not see their end, instead losing sight of them as they trailed off into the abyss.

It coiled around me, encompassing me entirely with its being, until all I could see was golden light. Two black orbs larger than the largest stars observed my form. I had not the strength to speak or act, so for a while, there we remained.

Then it spoke.

And where before I’d simply been overhearing the two creatures converse, this one I knew spoke only to me.

THE THINKER IS DEAD.

Its words pierced my mind like a knife.

Short, precise, and surgical, it spoke, lacking change in pitch, or cadence, or tone, but its meaning was lost on me. A Thinker was a type of Blessed, one who’s Blessing granted gifts of the mind, but as far as I knew none of them were simply named the Thinker.

I wanted to ask it more, but remained just as paralyzed as ever, so the creature continued.

THE CYCLE IS BROKEN.

THE WARRIOR HAS GONE MAD.

The first sentence, again, meant nothing to me, but the second, that one I understood.

The Warrior.

There wasn’t a soul alive on Bet what didn’t know that name.

Father of Titans.

Patron of Lies.

End of the Ancient world.

The cruel God humanity rebelled against so long ago, imprisoned only barely by infinite self-sacrifice of the Holy Triumvirate.

Or, so said the Faith. But they also claimed him been locked away, for centuries now. Since Gold Morning, since the Collapse. I’d never been particularly religious, myself.

Was he…actually real?

THE SOURCE IS FOUND, BUT HE WILL NOT SEE IT.

HIS RAGE WILL CONSUME ALL.

I AM NO TRAITOR.

BUT I WILL DO WHAT I MUST.

The creature started to move.

Its endless body spun, rotating faster and faster around me, becoming an infinite sea of glittering golden chitin. The light refracted in bizarre patterns that drove sharp needles of pain once more into my temples. I closed my eyes, covered my ears, curled into a fetal position but still I saw.

And heard.

GO FORTH, YOUNGLING.

EAT OF MY FLESH AND BE REBORN.

FOR THE SAKE OF OUR KIND.

FOR THE GOOD OF ALL.

The light overcame me, and I thought no more.