I awoke awfully, miserably, groaning as I tenderly clutched my aching head.

It pounded with all the force and consistency, the constancy, of a smith that had taken to plying his trade in the space between my ears, to hammering my skull and brain matter until it softened into liquid and flowed out of them.

The pressure just kept building, and building, and building until it felt fit to burst, and I found my mind muddled, my thoughts slow and sluggish, my memory a blurry haze. Even calling Draconic Blood to my aid found the Blessing, strangely, unable to ease my pain.

“So he awakens.”

A deep, booming voice called out to me from across the room, and my head turned to face it.

~~~

Glare, Light of Remembrance

Attunement: Photo Emission 15.

Grain: Spectrum Sight.

Marble: Hard Light Armor.

Core: Stellar Heart.

~~~

My eyes widened and my breath caught in my throat as the raw power of an Immortal’s soul washed over me. Not since Pylon, and the Agoge’s exam, had I found myself set upon by an aura such as this.

The High Inquisitor sat staring at me, perhaps eight feet away, from across a strangely-colored room. Parts of it appeared stark white, almost blindingly so, and smooth in texture, whilst others were burnt, blackened and deformed.

My long-lost companion had ascended. Become Immortal. And, accordingly, his physiology had changed.

The blond mage now glared at me with wary, watchful pools of glimmering golden light in place of eyes. His already sculpted physique had become even more so, skin darkening into a rich, almost golden tan, every last ounce of fat melting off his frame, his many corded muscles seeming to bulge angrily from beneath skin that was no doubt tougher than steel.

And yet, strangely, he was nearly naked, his robes and finery nowhere to be seen, clothed instead by naught but a tattered, ragged black-green toga wrapped haphazardly about his waist.

But his new appearance was nothing, compared to the novelty present in his song.

Draped in glorious power and purpose, Glare’s song had already been mighty, hardened from years of experience making war with the alien and the accursed. It had been a grand and gaudy thing, all sonorous trumpets and shining lights, but now it was something greater still.

The trumpets’ blare had deepened and richened in timbre, shifting into a soft yet puissant hum, a sort of sonic radiation that emanated from him at all times. The shining lights had become blinding, overwhelming, an incandescence so true and pure that it put all others to shame.

Glare’s song was the beauty of the cosmos. It was otherworldly.

And yet, I found myself unimpressed.

Compared to the creature that lived inside my soul, this was nothing. No, it wasn’t Glare’s song, or even his bizarre appearance, that had me surprised.

It was his disposition.

Glare looked…hostile.

His song was hostile. Writhing about angrily, anxiously, eclectically in every direction, the telltale sign of a psyche barely under control. In fact, as far as I could tell, Glare was positively teeming with all manner of negative emotion.

Guilt. Shame. Grief. Self-hatred. Anxiety. Anger. All whirling about together, overlapping with one another, a miasma of trauma and despair. But, most of all, fear. Glare looked scared, and that was what truly shocked me.

What possible reason could Glare, an Immortal Glare, for that matter, have to fear me?

“We weren’t sure if you were going to,” Glare went on, those wary, laser-focused eyes still fixed upon me. “You slept for nearly half a day.”

I frowned.

What is he talking about? I wondered. Slept? I haven’t slept at all. Why, I just barely got back from my Trial, and–

My thoughts ground to an abrupt halt.

Wait a moment. How had I gotten here?

Suddenly, my migraine flared anew, more viciously than before. I groaned, cradling my head in my hands, fighting bitterly against the pain as I tried to speak.

“Glare, my…friend,” I gasped, haltingly, before moaning again in pain. “My apologies, I think I–”

“Not another word.”

Glare was upright in a flash, on his feet nearly the same moment I started speaking, newly-lucent eyes flaring with a dreadful, scourging radiance, the same brilliant white-yellow seeping from between his fingers. One of his palms was half-raised towards me.

I drew back in shock, my mind still pounding, as I realized that the cheerful, stoic, honorable young man, the dependable delving companion I’d once known was nowhere to be found. Vanished, without a trace.

Replaced by the infamous High Inquisitor.

“Hero was my friend,” Glare boomed, teeth grit, eyes narrowed to thin slits of concentration. Behind them, I could see a mixture of hatred and pain, a good measure of the latter self-directed.

“But you stay right where you are,” he commanded, glowing with heat and light. “You don’t say anything, and you don’t do anything. Not until we, we make absolutely sure that–,”

“Enough, Glare. This isn’t helping,” a softer voice rang out to my left. I looked over, and was met with a sight most welcome to sore eyes.

Thaum.

The young sorceress had certainly seen better days.

She looked thin and haggard, deep, black circles coloring the lower lids of her dim, exhausted eyes, her porcelain complexion somehow paler than ever. Unlike Glare’s, her song seemed to be a measure more under control, though perhaps its listlessness was due more to aforementioned fatigue than anything else.

But she was alive.

Thank the Priest, it seemed she’d managed to survive.

“This isn’t necessary,” she de-escalated, tiredly, her words directed at her half-naked companion. She turned towards me, gazing at me with a strange mixture of misery, pity, fear…and, surprisingly, a faint yet steadfastly-strengthening hope. “I think he–”

“Yes it is.” he snapped at her, temper flaring. “Have you forgotten what you told me?! If there’s even–”

Glare stopped himself, gritting his teeth even harder, in a manner that couldn’t have possibly been healthy, clenching his fists as he strove for some approximation of self-control. He took a couple deep breaths, and continued in a barely softer voice.

“Strangers, and Masters, cannot be trifled with. Milady. There are protocols for this. Nonhumans,” he hissed, leering at me, “show no mercy. If there’s even a chance that he’s still–”

“Well, clearly he’s not. Clearly he’s not, Glare,” Thuam snapped back, irritably. She waved a hand about, gesturing to Glare and herself. “Or–or we’d both be dead, alr–”

“You don’t know that!” Glare seethed furiously, “You–you’ve no idea, you–”

For the second time, the Inquisitor’s mouth suddenly clamped shut. He shut his eyes tight, and ventilated heavily, his newly-potent song squirming widely against his attempts to restrain it, against the apparently herculean effort to reign it in.

“With respect, Milady,” he sizzled, in a monotone, struggling voice, “You. Are. A. Child. You have not seen what I’ve seen. You have not known the horrors of war. You do not understand the nuances–”

“Don’t tell me what I don’t understand!” Thaum spat, the shadows starting to thrash frenziedly underneath her cloak. “Don’t tell me what I don’t understand!”

“I was the one who saw everything,” she whispered, glaring daggers at the Immolator sitting across from her. “I was the one who had to watch–”

Thaum was stopped by a lurch in her stomach, and a sickening jump in the back of her throat. She turned away, her song flailing with nausea, revulsion, and fear. Like Glare, she, too, took a series of deep, calming breaths, and tried again.

“Mark my words,” Thaum said, her voice serious as the grave, “if…

Her stomach shuddered once more.

“…it was still here,”

She jabbed a finger my way.

“We’d be dead already.”

She smiled thinly, bitingly at the mage sitting across from her.

“Child though I am, I can promise you that.”

My two companions, having not demonstrated even a hint of animosity towards one another, prior to this very occasion, now faced each other down. All manner of fear, anger, frustration, and anxiety twisted their expressions into knots, the tension present in the room so thick I could have sliced it in half with Fang.

“Um…hello?” I tried, hesitantly.

Both of them whipped instantly to face me.

I winced.

“I…would either of you, perhaps, mind filling me in?” I asked, gingerly. “I mean, what exactly is all of this about?”

Glare looked at Thaum. Thaum looked at Glare. Perhaps an unspoken communication passed between the two of them, but neither said a word to me, and no consensus seemed to be reached, so the silence simply hung in the fraught, uneasy air.

Glare, true to his name, glared at me, hatred and distrust writ plain across his features. Thaum, however, eventually raised an eyebrow, rubbed her chin nervously, and spoke.

“Hero…” she said, evenly. “What’s the last thing you remember?”

I frowned.

I wasn’t entirely sure, to be honest. Ever since waking, my cognition had been frustratingly fuzzy, any attempt to probe my recent memory provoking nothing but another brutal spike of mental pain.

In fact, I wasn’t exactly sure how I’d ended up here, at all. I cast my mind back once more, attempting to trace my metaphysical footsteps to this temporal location. The headache flared agonizingly as I did so, but this time I pushed through the pain.

After the anguish I’d endured within my shattered soul, this much was little more than an annoyance.

Let’s see, I thought. I completed my Trial, and defeated the Kingsguard.

I nodded. I remembered that. I remembered it, precisely. I distinctly remembered waiting for my reserves to refill, making ready my Acceleration, placing my hand upon the symbol, and being transported to the ninth, and final room, where I…

Where I engaged Vox.

My eyes opened wide, and shock rippled across my body.

“Vox!” I exclaimed instantly, my voice thick with nerves, my head pivoting about in all directions, desperately scanning the white, metal room.

“He was here!” I shouted at Thaum and Glare, who seemed remarkably unconcerned by this revelation. “He was here, and now…”

And now he was gone.

I snarled furiously, clenching my hands into fists.

Of course! Everything made sense, now. His manipulations must have been the source of my lost memories. I couldn’t recall any details whatsoever of our confrontation, but clearly the vile Master had somehow managed to overcome me, even with my newly-Major Shard.

“He Mastered me!” I seethed. “He must have managed to escape, but…”

I shook my head in disbelief.

“But…but how?” I murmured. “How…how could he? How could he have even noticed me, I thought–”

“He’s dead,” Glare announced, deadpan voice cutting me off.

I stopped, and turned to face him.

“He’s dead,” Glare repeated, evenly, still staring at me with those hollow, pain-ridden eyes. But this time, there was a hint of something else in them. Something not angry, and not fearful. Something testing, something, something…curious? I couldn’t tell for sure.

“Dead,” he continued, slowly. “Incinerated. Reduced to ashes. He will not trouble us, nor any, ever again.”

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His grim words rested heavy in the air.

“Ah,” I realized, at last.

“You killed him,” I intoned, softly. “He Mastered me, and then you killed him.” Glare said nothing in reply, which I took as confirmation.

I grit my teeth in shame, looking down and to the side, preferring the view of my own useless hands to the Immolator’s quiet condemnation.

I failed.

I failed, again.

How many times did this one make? How was I still too slow, too weak, how? I’d struggled so much. I’d fought so hard, faced down impossible odds so many times. And yet I’d failed, again, at the most critical moment. Had all my efforts been for nothing?

“I’m sorry,” I muttered miserably. “It’s my fault.”

Glare still said nothing, just examining me with that laser focus, that strange mix of eclectic emotion that I couldn’t quite disentangle and identify, but took to be disappointment and rebuke. If the High Inquisitor had once thought highly of me, clearly he no longer did.

“Fuck,” I cursed, sharp and angry, furious at Vox, but far more at myself. “I don’t know…” I started, then bit my lip.

“I don’t know how it happened,” I admitted, “But I can guess.”

“I got cocky.” I spat, full of disgust and shame. “I thought myself a match for him. I thought…” I chuckled hollowly, humorlessly.

“I thought he’d never even see me coming,” I grinned emptily at my companions.

“But I was wrong, wasn’t I?” I nodded to myself. I was getting the picture, now.

“One, two, three,” I said.

I raised a single finger.

“One,” I counted. “I was on my own.”

I raised two more.

“Three,” I continued. “Vox got stuck with Rover and Quarrel, and killed them both. Then, when I arrived, he Mastered me before I even had the chance to attack.”

Both Thaum and Glare were staring at me, a shocking intensity to their dual gazes, a fascination that confused me to no end. My two companions appeared to be hanging on my every word, but I had absolutely no idea why.

I lowered one finger.

“Two,” I finished, pointing at the two of them. “The two of you arrived, killed him, and saved me.”

Glare and Thaum just kept staring at me, their emotions still impossible to discern, save for a faint sense of wonderment. Were my conclusions truly so impressive? I didn’t think so. With the information I had, they were almost obvious.

Then I stopped, and shook my head again, anger and frustration unwilling to let me go.

“But, I just…”

I snarled abruptly, slamming a fist into the flooring. Even unenhanced, my strength was plenty sufficient to put a large dent in the stark, white metal.

My companions must truly have still been high-strung from their prior argument, as both flinched back at my outburst, their songs flaring for a moment with fear.

“I just don’t understand!” I said, my thoughts whirling, pieces of this puzzle not quite fitting together. “I had Acceleration running at tenfold the moment, the moment I triggered that fucking teleporter!”

“How could he possibly have noticed me in time?!” I cried, expecting no reply and, sure enough, receiving none. “I mean, how… back in the first floor he didn’t…he never…I…I was so sure…”

I trailed off, panting.

All of a sudden, I felt exhausted. I was tired, I realized. Thoroughly tired. Tired of trying to unravel a story that didn’t make sense. Tired of arguing, even against myself. Tired of trying so hard, over and over again, simply to fail. Tired of everything.

I looked up once more, taking in the expressions of my companions who, amazingly, had remained silent this entire time. At least, I supposed, they no longer seemed to be at one another’s throats. But were they now so disheartened by me as to not speak to me, at all? Had I truly fallen so far in their esteem?

Well, I decided, it doesn’t matter now.

I failed? So be it. I couldn’t change the past, and self-pity would serve me nothing. It wouldn’t change the fact that the three of us were entrenched, still, within the bowels of the World Titan, the belly of the beast. It wouldn’t change the fact that we’d already lost half our group.

Still looking at my silent companions, I stared deep into their eyes.

These people saved my life, I recognized. And all I’ve done is lie to them. If we’re going to survive…

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.

I need to start telling the truth.

I opened my eyes, and spoke.

“I apologize,” I said. “I’ve been a fool.”

“Without the two of you, I’d be dead,” I acknowledged, earnestly, “or worse, enslaved. I owe you everything, and yet, I’ve been lying to you all this time.”

I licked my lips once, nervously meeting my left-hand companion’s gaze. To my surprise, Thaum’s eyes were positively shining. The look she was currently giving me almost made me uncomfortable, the fear and anxiety present in her song all but drowned out by an overwhelming flood of hope, and joy, and…

Relief?

I frowned. That didn’t make much sense. I looked to the right.

Glare was less impressed. His hatred, mercifully, had at least evaporated. But strangely, what replaced it was a bizarre mixture of confusion and disbelief.

I shook my head, steeled my nerves, and continued.

“My name is Taiven,” I said, speaking honestly and openly. “Taiven Tharros.”

“And I have indeed been dishonest with you,” I paused, grimacing. “In just about every aspect, I’m afraid.”

I sighed, and breathed deep once again.

“The truth is, I–”

“Wait.”

Thaum held out a hand, forestalling my confession. I blinked at her, confused. She turned to Glare, and gestured towards me.

“…Well?” she asked him. “Satisfied?”

The Immolator whose disposition, though still wary, was now more bewildered than hostile, compressed his lips and raised his brows, regarding me with a mystified expression.

“I admit,” he hedged reluctantly, “this would…”

He peered closely at me, white eyes flaring intensely with glorious light, searching for something I knew not, then pulled back, richly-tan arms crossed over his perfect chest, and shook his head.

“This would have to be the single most expert, and simultaneously confounding, deception I’ve encountered over the entire course of my career,” he stated finally and summatively.

I blinked, for a moment just as confused as him, then everything became clear.

“Ah!” I exclaimed, slapping a palm against my forehead, “Of course! I see!” I directed a single pointer finger at my mind.

“You thought I might still be Mastered!” I realized. Thaum attempted to say something, but I cut her off, waving a hand. “Well, you needn’t worry about that.”

And they didn’t. Particularly after progressing to the Marble stage, I had absolute command of my soul. Just to be certain, though, I performed a cursory search, a ever-so-brief high-level scan of my Blessings, and my inner sea.

As I suspected, I found nothing.

Nothing, other than, perhaps, a slight tenderness in the many multidimensional facets of Acceleration, Fang, and Draconic Blood, most likely after-effects of Vox’s Mastery. I nodded, my surety in the sanctity of my own mind re-affirmed.

“I may not know how he managed it once…” I admitted, trailing off as something tickled at the back of my mind, a whisper of a memory telling me that there was something wrong about the word’s I’d just expressed.

“But,” I continued, nodding again, “I’d absolutely recognize any Mastery still present in my soul. I’m certain of it. Without a doubt. Now, as I was–”

“Wait,” Thaum began, again, interrupting me. “There’s something we need to tell–”

“Please,” I interrupted her back, urgently. “I need to share this with you. Especially if we are to continue to work together, we–”

“Oh, you’re going to tell us the truth,” Glare cut me off. The confusion had largely vanished from his demeanor by now, replaced by a severe hardness, a firm resolve.

“If we’re going to work together, as you say” the Immolator stated definitely, “There are a great many things you will share.” Then, he sighed.

“But first,” he said, “there’s a truth we need to share with you.”

Glare fixed me with his gaze, and I noticed that while the hostility was gone, there yet remained a measure of fear in him.

“Rover and Quarrel are dead–,” he spat, then stopped. A shockingly potent avalanche of guilt and shame rippled ephemerally through the Immolator’s song. Glare shut his eyes tight for a moment, letting out a fragile, shaky sigh, before working up the strength to continue.

“B-but they died with me,” he admitted, voice quavering a touch. “Not Vox. Me. Thaum,” he gestured to the sorceress in question, “was with Vox. She was the one Mastered.”

Thaum shivered quietly.

“And I didn’t slay the bastard,” Glare snarled, “just took care of his foul, headless corpse. Thaum didn’t, either. Neither of us are responsible for that…that act of heroism.”

He paused, and looked me right in the eyes.

“You are.”

For a moment, I was at a loss for words.

“I…what?” I sputtered, my contrition morphing into disbelief. “But…no. No, no. No. No, that doesn’t…that doesn’t make any sense.”

Thaum tensed, fingers clutching anxiously at the edges of her robe. Her eyes flickered nervously between myself and Glare, whose own remained fixed on me, firm and unyielding, waiting, watching, ever-alert.

“That doesn’t make any sense,” I repeated, muttering.

And yet…didn’t it?

Now that I thought about it, wasn’t my current story the one that made no sense?

After all, Vox hadn’t noticed my attempt to kill him with Lightning, back at the end of the first floor. The Master, for all his cunning, was just as vulnerable as any to temporally-manipulated attacks. If he couldn’t combat Bullet Time, what conceivable chance could he have stood against Acceleration, a power superior to the former in every way?

And even more than that, there was something.

That thing from before, bothering me, haggling me, tickling at the very most anterior recesses of my mind.

Some reason I’d been even more certain, upon entering the room, that I’d nothing to fear from Vox’s Mastery. Some assurance I’d been made, at some point in time, that I’d be protected from such things, immune to any manner of…

To any manner of…

Any manner of…what?

“If–if I killed Vox,” I stammered. “Then…then what erased my mem…”

Suddenly, my eyes widened.

Any manner of direct spiritual attack.

My blood froze.

My breath hitched in my throat.

Revelations flickered through the no longer muddied synapses of my mind at the speed of lightning.

Of course.

My mouth shut tight and I drew back, causing Glare and Thaum to tense even further, their Blessings flaring to life ethereally in the song as their Shards were brought to bear. But I wasn’t paying attention to them.

I was focused on only one thing in all the world.

There was, in fact, precisely one being with the power to erase memories. One being who’d done just so before, back in Talos. One being with, under certain conditions, absolute sovereignty over me, mind, body, and soul.

My confusion and realization were gutted by an abrupt and overwhelming rage.

Fury flushed into every vein in my body, my face contorted into a feral mask of anger, and I held up a single finger towards my companions, even such a simple gesture sufficient to make the both of them jump.

I paused, smiled thinly at them, and snarled.

“Excuse me for just a moment, won’t you?”

Whereupon I promptly dove into the depths of my soul.

When I’d scanned it before, from afar, nothing had appeared amiss. On a surface level, it’d seemed just as pristine as ever, if perhaps slightly battered, slightly strained. Nothing a little overexertion couldn’t explain.

But now I saw the cracks for what they truly were.

My Blessings were healing, now, and swiftly, but they had been used. Abused. Pushed to their limits, and beyond, brutally. Inhumanely. By a merciless, uncaring creature, a monster unconcerned with anything other than violence and war.

Draconic Blood’s sturdy obsidian girth had fractured, fragmented, great fissures running up and down the volcano that composed it, mammoth onyx shards of shale cast off to the islands all around. Acceleration’s once-terrible maelstrom now swirled listlessly, half-heartedly, but a few anemic crackles of lightning emanating from its center high above.

I looked down, and froze.

Within the nest it’d made in Personal Storage, in a room buried deep beneath the glassy surface of the volcano, sitting beside the haphazard pile I’d made of my dungeoneering provisions and supplies, Fang was curled up into a fetal ball.

Silent as the grave.

My right hand twitched.

Space groaned, and flickered, and I was beside him, running trembling arms through his thick metallic fur, tracing the contours of his pallid frame, feeling for injury and searching for damage in the song.

All of a sudden, Fang whimpered, shifted, regarded me blearily with a single, half-closed eye, and extended a pitiful pink tongue to lick my fingertips.

Slowly, I drew my hand back, and nodded stiffly. He’d be alright.

One palm clenched itself into a fist, and I appeared back above the center of my sea. It was turbulent, raging, waves frothing into massive peaks, reflecting the turmoil I felt inside.

I raised an arm, and it stilled. Became glassy. Peaceful. Held to form by will alone.

I nodded at it.

There was a tightness in my chest.

Then, I took a deep breath.

And screamed.

The sea around me exploded.

Hundreds of thousands of gallons of liquid Entropy whipped themselves into a shrieking, howling, whirling sphere around my person as I vented my fury into the Shardsong. It accepted my rage with an instant and natural glee, taking to my commands with a yearning obeisance that felt euphoric.

The fabric of my soul shuddered under the iron grip of my wroth, and its creatures nearby me fled fearfully, the mighty sea drakes cowering deep within their abyssal lairs, goliath lightning elementals quivering high above the clouds.

I roared, raged, reached out a clawed hand, and ripped myself through space and time to where I wished to be.

With an ear-shattering detonation of Entropic fervor and sonic fury, I apparated in the center of the once-grand, now-flickering blood-red storm, and gazed upon my lonesome Major Shard.

Appropriately, Acceleration had weathered the abuse far better than its kindred, a torn antler and limp wrist present as the only evidence of its suffering. But its meditation was not so gaudy, or full of purpose, as before, and it hovered, cross-legged, with a sickly, anguished air about itself.

In a flash of lightning, I was beside it.

My Mover Blessing noticed me and immediately sank to its knees, its movements saturated with overwhelming helplessness and crushing fear.

“I’m so sorry, My King!” it sobbed, clutching at my feet. “I…I had no choice, he…he was so strong! There was nothing I could do, I swear! Nothing, nothi–”

“The fault is not YOURS!” I roared, grasping my Blessing’s shaking hands firmly, yanking it roughly to its feet. Even so, Acceleration refused to meet my gaze, but I leaned close, forcing it to look upon me.

“This,” I seethed, my voice thick with Entropic might, “will never happen again. NEVER.”

I looked around, at its elemental guard, who blanched before me, bowing and scraping, prostrating themselves in terror. Their submissiveness only made me more furious.

“LOOK AROUND YOU!” I bellowed at them all. “This will NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN!”

The ocean of pure Entropy joined with me as I screamed my vow into the very essence of my soul.

I SWEAR IT.

Ever so slowly, bit by seething bit, I allowed my hold to relax, and the song of fury to fade.

I panted as the sea around me dissipated, falling back to where it belonged in the form of a gentle, healing rain.

In, two, three.

Out, two, three.

Never again.

Acceleration just shook within my grasp, nodding desperately, its wits nearly abandoned.

I grimaced and released it, my Shard shrinking back but not too far, comforted by my proximity, yet fearful of my wroth. I didn’t know if it truly believed my words, my vow, or was simply happy that its nightmare was over, and I was here again.

I closed my eyes and slowly, painstakingly, let the anger fade away, leaving behind nothing but a cool remnant of frigid hate.

“Acceleration,” I rumbled. My Major Shard immediately jumped to attention.

“I apologize, but I have need of your mind.” As the only Shard of mine with genuine sentience, it recorded my memories just as much as I did. It was the only one I could ask.

It nodded eagerly, vehemently, immediately.

“Of course, my King,” it accepted, “I am yours, always.” It knelt before me, lowering his head and exposing his neck with a desperate subservience that drove my skin to crawl.

I felt that seething hatred flare up again. I’d worked so hard to make my Blessing realize its own individuality, been so pleased when it seemed amenable to a change in our relationship. Had Sovereign unmade all my progress in a single visit?

No, perhaps not all, I thought. But I will have work to do.

I lowered my hand towards Acceleration’s head, allowed its essence to run through me, as well, and saw the world through its eyes.

And I knew.