“Quite the predicament you’ve found yourself in. Oh what, oh what could be done, I wonder?” A voice whispered snidely.

Niven wanted to scold back, You could easily break me out. You could easily have ended everything before it even began - but he couldn’t reply at all.

His eyes had dulled as the tendrils crept further and further into him. Vision once blurred now wholly faded out. Hollow.

Nary a few moments ago, he could feel them run across his face and neck. The sense of touch that had become fainter and fainter until nothing could be perceived.

Then, a ringing in his mind. An echoing impact upon his psyche.

Now that his body had been controlled, it seemed the threads were transitioning into less physical bindings, encroaching upon his spirit as well.

Any longer and perhaps they would creep into his mind, subverting his thoughts, and he would be made equal to the villagers here.

Stilted and rigid.

As such, it could be said that death approached. Just as with the fight back in the Divide, Apollyon was unwilling to make the first step. It did not help those that had not first helped themselves. Niven knew this full well.

However, just as it was with that confrontation, he had a path to follow and wasn’t left to flail blindly at the wind.

But this lifeline given was too far removed from his usual skillset. At least then he knew the basics of fighting. This… this was something else entirely.

Telepathy. Soul-communion. Whatever the name.

Anything, any command would do it. Just a sliver of a thought directed towards Apollyon likely sufficed. A cruel teacher it may be, but it hadn’t thrown him into an unwinnable situation yet.

Therefore, Niven imagined that it would likely finish the job after only being given a gentle nudge, just as it had done before with the sandworm. This was just another demonstration. Another lesson. He only needed to prove that he was capable of shouldering the ‘karma’ of Albern’s death.

At some point, he seemed to hear Albern talk about something, but ultimately paid it no mind. Although it was the only thing he could hear, - save for Apollyon - perhaps transmitted by those very threads within him, their words were decidedly ranked last in importance and would only serve as a distraction from the delicate process of making contact with Apollyon.

Niven searched inward. Blind and sealed to the world around him.

All senses outside the self gone and faced with certain oblivion should he fail, perhaps this was the best time to make a breakthrough.

Hoping beyond hope that at this moment of crisis he could accomplish what he had failed to do countless times prior.

Then.

A light.

A tiny, almost imperceptible light that drifted along the vast emptiness that was his mind.

It was not surrounded by darkness, rather simply absence. Nothingness save for that speck so minuscule he would lose track should he even blink. Drawing his attention to the light, and surmising he had found what he had been looking for, he tried to focus on it.

And, upon receiving that focus, it bloomed. It erupted. And consumed.

It devoured all the nothingness, dying it a brilliant white.

Now, a white void with a singular thread. The lifeline. The path to Apollyon. He knew deep within that it led to it. How he knew was beyond his understanding.

Perhaps it was their link that had revealed it. Regardless, it wasn’t something he could comprehend no matter how much time was dedicated to it. He lacked the proper foundation, after all.

But a lack of knowledge did not stop him from acting.

Niven tried to follow that thread as best he could, as strange as that sounded. Here, his will was not as detached as it was in his lucid dreams. It seemed to manifest at a point that moved as he willed it in certain directions. Ethereal yet also fixed.

A simple ball of will that grew more and more concrete as he went along.

At some point, he had become vaguely humanoid, and with newfound arms, he dragged himself along the thread, seemingly hastening his progress.

He didn’t know how far he had gone; it was as though time had lost its meaning. At least, it should have, else it meant he’d already died. After all, based on his perception, Albern should have already transformed him into a puppet long ago.

Now, he looked about the same as he was outside. Or rather, he could not perceive a difference between his current psychic body and his corporeal one.

Eventually, he reached… something.

A storm. A storm akin to the occasional dust bowls that raged across the Divide. His company’s outpost had only chanced upon the very edges of one once, but what he was met with now could only be described as what he had imagined the centermost regions would be like. Vast and at a scale utterly incomprehensible to him.

A roiling, raging tempest with innumerable grains of sand.

As he neared, he saw what those grains truly were.

They were faces. So many wispy, pallid blue faces. So many unique faces.

Male, female, human, inhuman. Even those that did not even look like things Niven would call a face… yet he knew them to be faces nonetheless in a way he could not describe.

And they were all turned to him. Eyeless sockets that burned a piercing fire all trained on his position. Even as they drifted away, he saw that their attention never left him.

And they each spoke, though not in tandem.

It was chaotic to the point where Niven suspected they were fighting over which one could make the scene more distorted.

“This… This is our first true meeting. And. Perhaps the last, as well.” “Welcome.”

“Greetings.” “Ah, finally a meeting in earnest.” “Be not afraid.” “You have found me.” “You have found us.”

They spoke in the cacophonous voice he had heard back when Apollyon first contacted him.

The overlapping timbre of countless distinct souls in unison that each paid no heed to the coherence of their words as they overlapped. As they melded together.

Niven had trouble processing so many different sentences at once. It seemed that here, there was no filter for Apollyon’s thoughts. It paid no particular mind to making sure it was intelligible.

Is this what a god is like?

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Apollyon had denied it when he had asked if it was a god, but this was as close to the image of a god as Niven could think of. If not divine, then perhaps something diametrically opposed to it. At least far, far away from the ground he stood. If not above, then below. Or far, far beyond. It was otherworldly, after all. Anyways, it was far removed from the realm of mortality he was experienced with.

Mustering up the courage to speak, Niven asked, “Where is this?”

Having received a question, Apollyon seemed to become less distorted. The parts of it spoke as one, giving only a singular, united answer, “This is your soul. Or, my interpretation of it, at least.”

“Yours?” He supposed it made sense. None of this came even close to what he once thought a soul would be like. Granted, he wasn’t too learned about this subject either.

Was that why prior to grasping the lifeline, his mind had only seen nothingness?

He had no distinct picture of what a soul even was? Could that be why he found communicating with Apollyon without words so difficult?

Apollyon snapped him out of his reverie and answered, “Of course. Everyone has their own way of visualizing it, influenced by many things: the society they live in, their path, their past lives, and much, much more.”

It paused, giving Niven time to understand, then continued, “From the moment you grasped the chain linking our souls and crossed the threshold, your consciousness has used my portion as the processor. To put it in a simpler manner, you are borrowing my brain to think.”

“Thus, you need not worry about running out of time. Over the course of this whole ordeal… less than a second has passed for that imbecile outside. What we see as time… depends on how fast our minds think. It is not experienced equally.”

Niven knew what it was saying at this point. Looking at the sheer number of faces above him, he could make a guess at its proficiency in being a platform for the thoughts of others.

But… he wasn’t particularly interested in the mechanics of the scene before him. The important thing was getting out of his current bind.

Therefore, he asked, “How can we stop Albern?”

“However you want,” it replied quickly.

Niven closed his mouth in frustration. It was being difficult, again. Since it wanted to play like that… he commanded, “Show me what’s going on outside.”

“Now we’re getting somewhere. But… you were rather vague with your conditions. I had hoped you would calm down at this point. I’ll be gentle this time, seeing as this is a stressful situation. A real-time stream from a single point of view at the resolution of your eyes is what will be presented.” It chastised, “Remember the values I taught you when we interacted with the System. Not imposing limits allows for you to be screwed over in an equally unlimited amount of ways.”

A panel similar in size to his status popped up in front of him. It showed Albern grasping tightly onto his right hand, seemingly trying to either study what Apollyon was or to pull it off of him. Perhaps it was because he believed he no longer had an audience, or simply due to frustration, the priest’s expression wasn’t quite as calm as when he was talking to Niven.

Yet, there was something Niven noticed about what he was presented with that he found incongruous. Despite being real-time, it looked like a still image. But as he stared longer, he could see minuscule differences - so small that he would have dismissed them as faults in memory if he were not trying to look for them.

Was this how it perceived the world? We don’t even exist in the same time frame. It was something he knew. It’s obvious, really. He couldn’t expect something like Apollyon to live like him. It wasn’t even remotely close to human. Yet, to see such a stark difference…

They simply lived in different wavelengths.

“I must seem painfully slow to you, don’t I?” Niven asked sullenly.

“Of course not. This is a special case. I normally don’t dedicate so much processing power to such mundane tasks. The portion that converses with you and interfaces with the outside world is synced and will only increase capacity when necessary,” it explained.

“The vast majority of myself is toiling away at my other projects. How else am I supposed to relieve our current situation? Do you think suppressing my curse is easy?”

Is this why transcendents don’t interact much with normal people?

Apollyon continued, “The world from another person’s eyes is vastly different. Soon enough, you would probably not find even the most beautiful person you remember attractive.”

“Why’s that?” Niven humored this tangent. The danger outside seemed to have ceased to be a problem. In fact, his heart was as calm as a stagnant pond despite the obvious danger. By all accounts, he was fully in the hands of an enemy, and they were on the cusp of disarming him. But… disarming him required Apollyon’s consent.

And, at least based on the scene shown in the screen, so long as they formulated a plan of attack, Albern was as good as dead. Their struggle was like a joke. A fated outcome should one so insignificant cross paths with something so transcendent.

Niven and Albern were similar, in that they both fell under the gaze of Apollyon. Yet their conclusion to this scene cannot be any more different.

Apollyon eventually answered, “Because you will perceive them in their entirety. Things once unseen are thrust into the forefront—every mite crawling on their skin, every hidden flaw. Their pores, their blemishes, their lies and dreams. Movements become slow and predictable; thoughts calculable with ease.”

“But, with time, you might see past those surface level imperfections and find solace in their very presence. Though at that point, what is the difference between a lover and a pet?”

“Love between those who cannot keep pace with their partner’s growth is a recipe for disaster. As one’s existence sublimates ever higher, as they walk further down into their path, the gap inevitably widens. What was once mutual becomes one-sided, strained.”

Niven mulled over this perspective. He’d always wanted to have a family of his own and have a child that could experience what he never had. Was that destined to be impossible?

However, this was only the mindset of a single person. Or multiple? He honestly couldn’t tell with Apollyon when faced with so many… faces before him. He had always thought of it as a singular entity, but everything about it has become nebulous. Though perhaps it would be more apt to say it had always been nebulous, and that he had simply assumed in his ignorance.

Regardless, who could say for certain what he felt later? Apollyon was not him. Nor was it possible for his future to be exactly as it had described.

The gulf Apollyon depicted was too far removed from his situation. He found it unlikely for him to grow that fast. It seemed more like the difference between people and gods, and Niven had never entertained the idea of becoming a god, even with Apollyon’s backing.

Apollyon’s philosophy of pursuing [Detachment] by any means was not what Niven aspired towards. In fact, he would be content with living a good life, instead. It’s just that he hadn’t found what a ‘good life’ meant to him right now.

He turned his attention back onto the screen and looked intently at it, thinking about what could be done. Nothing of significance has changed from when he last saw it. After a while, he fell back on the old reliable.

He pitched his idea to Apollyon, “Since his hands are already on you, why don’t you extend into him and then burst out?”

It was simple, but it had worked easily enough with the threats he had faced in the past. Albern was still distinctly human, and even if he were a monster, could he still live when pierced from the inside by a thousand spears? However…

A few faces chuckled as they whizzed by.

“How can you be sure that destroying his body is enough?” It asked.

Puzzled, Niven touched his chin and replied, “It’s not?” Perhaps he had underestimated the survival skills of those in higher tiers. He himself hadn’t obtained anything that bolstered his ability to escape danger, but he was only Tier 1.

“Of course not. Puppeteers are always rather annoying folk to deal with. They can often transfer damage onto their dependents or simply revive within them.”

They can do that?

The world of transcendents was more convoluted than he thought. But that was perhaps to be expected. The enemy was Tier 3, just one below the supplicant, who was capable of leveling an entire outpost with ease. The same outpost that took a Niven nearly an hour to run around the perimeter. To think that Albern would fall easily was rather naive on his part.

Humans were an entirely different beast to fight compared to actual beasts like those sandworms. A bias towards intelligence, pre-combat preparation, and self preservation lent well towards surviving even the most desperate of situations. People generally tended towards defensive skills. At least, Niven thought so.

Back to the drawing board, Niven looked around for inspiration... and he quickly found it. Wasn’t he inside the soul right now? Souls are attached to the body but are not necessarily bound by it. The body is a shell, and perhaps Apollyon could pierce the shell and strike the soul within.

He would be the first to declare bullshit if Apollyon stated it didn’t have the means to damage it.

“Can you pierce his soul?” Since physical means were not guaranteed, surely metaphysical ones would work.

“I can do one better and follow the network cable and rupture all of his puppets as well,” It affirmed.

“Why did you need me to ask all this?” Niven wasn’t amused.

“There’s no time to waste here, no? You are borrowing my brain to complain to me. Now isn’t that rude?” It remarked. Indeed, he was on borrowed time. But being reminded of that put a question in Niven’s mind that he was a little unsettled about. One that he wasn’t sure if he should voice out.

Do you even have a brain? Wait… if I’m thinking through you… can you hear my thoughts?

After he thought that, the faces smiled. That alone was answer enough. Maybe it was better to have not received a confirmation. Otherwise, he would have been more comfortable taking advantage of this unique opportunity where time stood still.

Taking a deep breath - even though he knew he didn’t have to breathe here - he was determined to end this farce. The sooner the better, as he was unnerved by this new revelation - even if it likely wasn’t particularly impactful.

Niven declared solemnly, “Let’s get on with it, then.”