And I am elsewhere.

I pause for a moment, but not to acclimate to the regaining of my senses. In fact, there is no acclimation at all. No change or transformation. In one moment I was falling limbless, senseless, dying as my life fled from my failing body. But then in the next, without any space between seconds, I was not.

I look down at my body, and see I am intact. My limbs, in their appropriate place. No pain. No fatigue.

My eyes are drawn to my clothing, pristine. My robes, soft and silken atop my skin, unfrayed and unweathered by my pilgrimage through the dust.

I test my hands. The sensation is real, but my mind cannot comprehend what has occurred. I stand in a moment of resolution, but without the preceding events, my mind flounders untethered by causality.

I am reminded of my arrival on the threshold when I first engaged the somatics. Is this a dying dream within a dream? Some final vision as I pass over the threshold into true unlife? Was I pulled back into the world of the real by someone who stumbled upon my unconscious form and now wake within some Orokin holding chamber, sterile and cold?

Possibilities fill my mind, but they are all as likely as they are not. My senses swim as the confusion overwhelms me.

I turn my head, and feel it burdened by a new weight. I reach upwards and find my signatory headpiece, the designation of my placement in the academy labs. I did not wear it when I embarked on this reckless endeavor.

I open my mouth to speak, if only to prove I am still able. "Wha-"

I hear shrieking laughter from behind me and my mind contracts, drawn inward by some instinctual tether to react.

I whirl around to find the source, shaken from my reverie into a ready response.

I see only myself.

The fractured body from the precipice above the city of stone. It perches above me in a casual pose, shoulders shuddering with halting laughter.

It looks different from when I first met it. No longer dull and gray, it now has splotchy coloration, as if painted in a child's hand with cosmetic pastels. Its frame, still twisted and scarred, but not to the grand extent as when it had broken itself before me.

It wears clothes now as well, though they are tattered and dyed crimson with blood. My blood. Stained when my body was shredded by the gentle decay of the shambling masses. Looted from my falling corpse and worn as a mockery.

Thick, viscous tears roll down its pale face, and flecks of coloration are washed away. Its mouth is pulled far too taut across its semblant skull, gums painted cartoonishly red as it points mockingly at me and continues to laugh.

"HAHAHA! Look at you! You're- AHAHA- ridiculous! I - AH- love it! What- AHAHA- WHAT A JOKE!"

My confusion and fear gives way to anger. I am being made the fool again. For the entirety of my journey I have been plaything. Prey. Whether this mockery of my self is the culprit or merely the mouthpiece, I care not. It serves as focus for my rage.

"What is this!?" I demand.

It grins back at me "That's all you can manage? So loquacious inside your thick little skull, but when it comes to speaking direct you're always so reserved!"

My fingernails dig into my palm as I clench my fists. "Are you mocking me? Am I only to suffer your childish torture? Speak plainly to me, imitation! Answer me now or by the Seven I'll open my throat upon this signet's edge and end your little game on my own terms!"

My doppleganger gives no indication that the threat resonated. It waves its hands dismissively and wipes away the inky globules of false tears that linger on its face.

"Oh come on, come on! We both know you aren't going to go that far. It's just a bit of fun." It says, voice dripping with saccharine bile.

Easing itself back onto its palms, it cocks its head to one side almost playfully.

"Go on then, go through your motions. Play out your little ritual and take a look around. Get a-"

It takes a deep, stuttering breath, then lets out the air with a choked wheeze through its half-broken neck.

"-Real good feel for the place." It gestures with its head, feet kicking in the air like a bored child atop its vantage.

I do as it suggests and examine my surroundings, but only for some method of access to its position, that I might crush its form back into the stone from whence it came.

I am surrounded by walls of white plaster and stone. Smooth. Featureless. They rise around me, but do not meet with some overhang or roof. The sky is open above us, though it churns with a myriad of colors that cast soft shadows from all angles. In its storm, I see the shifting unearthly tones projected by the creature of light. My vision blurs as the colors lull me in, and my senses are pulled apart by the blinding cast. I avoid lingering too long in the depths.

In the distance reaching above the walls, towers and structures of various size stand against the chaos as waypoints, though all as nondescript as the walls around me. From my limited perspective I discern further barriers beyond my current enclosure in varying height, width, and length. I look down a nearby corridor and see it terminates not in a wall, but into the swirling chaos of color.

A labyrinth? I turn once more to examine the paths I have available to take, and come to a concerning realization. I turn once more to where I had been facing moments before and my theory is confirmed.

At the edges of my vision the un-real color swims and threatens to overwhelm me, but when I turn to face it, it flits away and the labyrinth walls are rendered in its place. With each turn the walls shift.

I walk forward and the walls pull themselves to meet me. I hasten pace and blockades rise from nothing to write the passage I tread. The spires in the distance remain fixed. I look back and see the vantage from which my other watches me has changed shape, but not position. It smiles back at me and waves.

I begin to run, and light weaves into form as walls blossom from the nothing. The world moves, but I do not.

I stop to catch my breath. I realize the effort is pointless.

There is no path to chart. No escape but the one immediately manifest in front of me.

I hear my doppleganger cackle once again. It is my voice, but not my laugh. A cartoonish exaggeration. Forced. Unnatural.

I look and see that it now sits atop an even higher pillar, slapping its thigh in mock amusement.

"All centered?" It sneers. "Any precious anecdotes you'd like to recall?"

I grind my teeth in anger and reach to remove my headpiece, frustrated by its encumbrance.

A ridiculous designation. Mandated to serve as distinguishing features of our roles as much as it was used to humiliate and brand us for the Golden Lords. I always loathed its necessity, and would eagerly remove it when not at risk of scrutiny from the overseers.

Why am I wearing it now?

"Ah ah ah! You keep that on now! You're on the clock, so you have to look the part!" My other wags its finger at me as I move to unfasten the headpiece.

I open my mouth to speak frustration once more, but am stopped by something in the corner of my vision. Not the furtive manifest light. Something physical.

Below my doppleganger's perch, at the end of a short hallway, something peers from around a corner and then vanishes into the shadows as soon as I move my eyes to see.

My blood runs cold.

"Oops, looks like you brought in the locals!" My other follows my gaze to the corridor's end.

"What...what was that?" I ask.

My other shrugs. "Can't say."

Something rises to peer at me from over a nearby wall, I turn to face it, but it is gone.

"Can't, or won't?" I glare at my tormentor.

Its grin widens. "Can't." It hisses, placing extreme emphasis on the plosive. "I know WHY it is, but not WHAT it is. The WHAT is entirely up to you."

I see a moving darkness at the periphery of my vision. Vaguely humanoid hands reach around a wall and grip the edge. I focus, and it darts out of view once more.

I hear soft, deliberate footsteps from nearby. Far too near.

They pace in continuous path, unobstructed by the walls that form around me. Outside of my manifested vision the threat walks unhindered upon the raw chaos of light.

"Then tell me WHY it is, you insufferable bastard!" I shout.

The copy’s lips flex upwards and it bares its teeth. Dark eyes widen, and I see the flickering pinpricks of light glow brighter in their inky depths. The corners of its mouth pull beyond what any human face could muster, and the false skin splits. Murky fluid runs over its lips and down its chin.

"And WHY would I ruin the surprise, little man?"

My heart skips. Something very deep within me stirs. It rises and I see its shape beneath the waters of my mind, but before it can surface, it vanishes. Snatched away by something else in an instant.

My desperate rage is gone, replaced instantly with a vacuous dread.

"What...what did you just say?"

Nearby, the lurking predator screams. Not the howl of some Old Earth hunter, but a horrible, desperate cry. A dying animal filtered through unnatural distortion.

My other moans in mock disappointment "Awwwww, way to ruin things! Have a bit of self control!"

My doppleganger looks down on me, the lights in its empty eyes burning like dying stars. "Too late now, though."

Footsteps within my enclosure. Slow. A beast stalking its prey. I hear it pacing gently behind me, mere meters away, but I cannot bring myself to look.

I close my eyes and steady my breathing. I open my eyes and see a long, stretching path. Too long. I close my eyes once more.

I open and see a wall. I exhale. My other laughs softly from above me with a giddy, nervous energy. I close my eyes.

I need only a short pathway that leads into a sharp turn. Short enough that I may outrun my stalker around a blind corner and then manifest a wall in its path. Would I even be able to cross the distance in time? I do not know the beast's agility. Or its proximity.

I quiet the fears blossoming in my mind lest they stay my feet. I open my eyes. I see my egress.

I slowly bring myself to a starting position, tense my knees, and-

"Careful there lack-salt! Piss off Rodin and he'll force you into a drinking contest, and that man-"

-Drinks liquor like an Ultinoth drinks saltwater!

I stumble.

The voice was not of some monster, nor my doppleganger, nor of any soothing source that might lure me with a siren's call. It was of a man I met once. Only once. He had operated the diving vessel for the Martian subsea region of Olympus Atrial. He had spoken those words to me when I corrected his assistant on a scientific term, eager as I was to pointlessly flaunt my intellect in my youth.

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

Why am I wasting time reminiscing on that now?

I am held fast by confusion.

I hear a jovial humming, resonating in a mechanical throat. A few uplifting notes in repeated sequence. I recognize it as the working tune of the custodial drones on a Jovian harvest platform. I had visited for a scant few hours as an Archimedean's aide when examining the storm cycles of Jupiter for charting platform courses.

I've heard hundreds of custodial drone chimes. Why this one? Why is this one so clear?

Understanding evades me.

I stand from my runner's position. Confusion and curiosity have overwhelmed any desire for me to run. I feel as if I am being gently coaxed by some invisible thread. I give in to the pull and turn to see the source of the sounds.

I do not know what I expected to see. Some sort of sleek, ambush predator perhaps, wearing a dissuading mask to lure in prey.

Instead I see a wretched beast, moving as a starved animal. Hunched, slowly approaching me from a newly became pathway, it lifts its pale head and grins at me with a humanoid face elongated into animalistic mock. Where eyes would glare back, there is instead only smooth membrane pulled over concave bone. Gnashing, jeering maws open along its elongated neck, howling like pained Kavats, nostrils flaring for breath as they struggle from beneath folds of wrinkled skin.

It walks upon all fours, gnarled limbs composed of wriggling digits, as if numerous hands had been woven together into flesh-form hooves. Dull curtains of loose skin hang from its gaunt frame, sagging and swaying as it approaches with slow, staggered steps. Its skeletal structure stands in stark detail along its body, ribcage heaving with each labored breath, and spine slowly undulating as it plods forward.

A trio of arms sprout from its midsection in haphazard arrangement, clutching tightly to its form and squeezing against the mouths upon its body to silence their cries. Though as it draws closer, the screams grow in volume and the cacophony can no longer be restrained.

Sweat pours from me and soaks through the cloth of my rebirth. My heart beats in my ears. Primal instinct has clawed its way from the depths to scream a single message into my conscious mind.

RUN

But my body is stuck. Not from fear, but confusion. That same paralyzing sensation I felt when I was reborn here in this labyrinth.

One of the mouths on the beast smiles softly and begins to sing. Warm plucking strings echo from within its chest.

"Oh won't you send us smiles from Juran? Won't you spare a prayer for the-"

"-brave and broken..." I mumble in response.

I laugh under my breath, fondly remembering when I had learned the song riding rail freight with an old Dax. A kind man, though of few words. Said more in the lyrics of his battle hymns than otherwise.

What was his name again?

"Aster." The beast speaks in a gentle, but strong masculine voice I do not recognize.

"The flower?" I reply.

The beast emits the same scream from before, spittle flies from the mouths as they gnaw and grind at nothing. The mouths grin, cracked lips splitting as the flesh pulls taut.

I hear my doppleganger chuckle from above me. "Not quite, little man. Not quite!"

I turn, incensed. "Little man? Are you patronizing me now?"

My other bursts into laughter, and the beast screams again. I realize it is laughing as well.

I turn back towards the beast, and it opens the palms of its dorsal arms to reveal delicate white flowers with curved petals and faintly glowing stamen. The same flowers sprout up from the stone beneath its feet, rise towards the sky, and then wither into dust.

Dragonlily. Alba Nocturna. Official flower of Terra Ulna. I read about the signatory floral designations of the Orokin City-States on a whim during my scholastic years, but never once put the information to any practical use.

Why is this beast showing me this?

I look up to see the beast, heaving and panting. Saliva runs from the mouths and slicks its wrinkled flesh. It crushes the bundles of plants and casts their petals skyward as soft snowfall. I watch the strange plants tumble and some pathway in my mind fails to connect. There is an idea there, but it is faint. Undefined.

The beast begins to snap rapidly with one of its tertiary hands. Eagerly. Anxiously. Something familiar falls over the surroundings like a shroud and for a moment I am no longer in the labyrinth but in the sterile labs of the academy.

I remember how one of my constituents would always do the same hand motions whenever he was searching for an idea. He would use it when trying to jog his memory or as pauses in his speech. I would often tease him for it, though he would quickly respond with his own jabs against my frequent moments of aphasia.

What was his name? Why can I not remember his name?

A mouth mumbles from deep within the beast's folds as it gesticulates with growing fervor. "Ah, ah, trying to remember...uh...something I, uh..."

I remember how I got here to begin with. Before the somatics, back to the very idea that inspired this venture. How I saw patterns in Albrecht's works not in the wordings, but in the spaces between the said. The idea in my mind struggles to be made manifest, but something halts it from attaining complete form.

A silver brooch in the shape of a rare Martian Olut bird falls from one of the beast's mouths. It is ornately crafted, intimately detailed, and set with pristine Zodian gemstones that glimmer in the shifting light. Delicate gold vine feathers flare outward along its breast in imitation of the living animal's striking plumage.

The beast shudders, and its main jaw unhinges with a sickening pop. Slowly, lovingly it speaks.

In my voice it says "And of course, I wasn't planning on coming back empty handed! I was in Upper Uxmal when I stumbled upon this wonderful little shop, and how could I forget you?"

Something snaps in my skull. Blood runs from my nose. The thought I had been holding slips from the fingers of my memory and is lost. I reach for it as it fades away, but I cannot grasp it. It eludes me and falls away into nothing.

Forget who?

I had failed to notice the beast's advance, lost as I was in nostalgia. In the moment between speech and thought, the beast closes the remaining distance between us and rears to its full height. The once sagging, plaster hue flesh pulls taut as its neck extends like a monstrous snake. Mouths hidden within the folds emerge, howling at me in ecstatic hunger.

Before I can react, the beast seizes me with its gnarled forelimbs. The flesh curves, jaw stretches wide, and in a flash teeth close around my neck.

I am in the darkness of the beast's maw, light-blind to the world beyond its clutches.

I linger on the memory just before it struck, watching the fading colors spiral away into a deepening darkness.

I see moments of joy, blurry watercolor paintings the hue of emotion moreso than the definition of it.

I struggle to add definition to the memories. I focus on remembering the sound, but hear only muffled tones.

Something in the darkness slithers from deep within the beast's throat.

My limbs do not even attempt to move against the beast's grip. I am paralyzed by some poison ingested not through skin nor mouth, but mind.

I force myself to think, to ignore the terror that assaults me. Something is happening to me that I must overcome.

Faint whispers become audible as something pushes up and around the curvature of the beast's neck and descends towards me.

I juggle half-thoughts and see the pattern in the lack, but do not recognize its shape. I trace the edge back to its source and see that this beast is not the origin point. It has been happening since I first embarked on this voyage. I am within the culmination of a long and slow assault on my deeper senses.

The slithering from the dark draws closer, I feel the warmth of breath graze my ear.

Slick-wet hands caress my cheek from within the beast's mouth. The whispers become louder, and I begin to discern meaning. I hear a voice deeply familiar, but I do not know how. It sings softly, a song I know but have never heard.

I think on the moments when this monster first presented itself to me fully. Further back, the words of mockery from my half-hewn doppleganger. Further still, the moments before encountering the other horrors in this hell. I connect the points between action and reaction.

Flashes of color come to the forefront of my mind, but I cannot hold them. I see a family I never knew. Remember sadness I never experienced. Taste both terrible and divine crosses my tongue and tumbles from my lips into the throat of the ravager that restricts me.

The surface of my memories are too slippery, ephemeral, and I fail to grasp even one. They rise from my subconscious into the mind's eye then fall away into the darkness that bleeds through me. They flit away like the beast as it lingered in the fringes of my vision.

I hear my other from beyond the walls of my prison.

The noise it makes no longer resembles a laugh, but a cry. A desperate, repetitive scream. "LITTLE MAN! LITTLE MAN! LITTLE MAN! AHAHAHAHA!"

Realization crashes upon me.

Pointless anecdotes. An adolescent's sobriquet. Simple moments taken subtly and used as catalyst.

Food.

Feeding these horrors. Granting them shape. Giving without knowing and having taken from me that which forms the fiber of my being.

And now this monster is the pinnacle of that process, no longer content to take those more vestigial foundations.

It seeks to rob me of my core.

Instinct overwhelms the poison of confusion and my body moves of its own accord.

I kick the beast with all my strength and my foot meets no resistance, sinking into gnarled flesh with ease. My fingers rake the creature’s neck and I feel my nails pull across lips and teeth. Tongues rise to meet me from the maws and caress my palms. I shudder in disgust.

The form within the darkness retreats, and with no further aggression the beast simply releases me as if I were nothing more than an empty glass, bled dry of its rich contents.

I fall to the floor, sodden with slick film that hangs in ropes from the grinning lips of the beast. No longer hunched and pathetic, its gaunt body stands tall and imposing. Shoulders set, neck stretched longer than the entirety of my body and slowly undulating, drooling mouths silent and grinning.

I struggle to reckon with the violation that has occurred.

I search my mind for any recollection, desperately seeking to understand the extent of the damage inflicted upon me, but I cannot even begin to fathom the levels of destruction it has wrought. Tattered fragments of memories float within my head like bits of flotsam caught in the tide. Definition, lost. Context, devoured.

I try to remember my youth, and find I never had one.

I seek to remember the faces of my family, my loved ones, and am met only by monochrome mannequins staring silently back.

I collect my triumphs, and my hands gather naught but dust.

In its cruelty, my aggressor has left me with the understanding that I am filled with ruin.

Tears flow as I lament the moments taken. My shoulders heave as I devolve into sobs. I scream in despair as I recognize I have been made hollow like everything else in this place of madness.

Desperate, I turn to face my other. Cackling atop its perch, its hollow eyes burn no longer with the dimness of faded stars, but brilliant white flame.

I seek to muster rage but find I have none left.

Between sobs I beg instead.

"Please...Please tell me....this is all just a dream? None of this is real?"

My other continues to laugh. Eyes bulge in its copied sockets, brackish tears flowing down its painted face.

The beast responds instead.

"You ARE dreaming." It says in my voice. "But in the only way that matters. The way that feeds then, and eats now."

All I can do is stare helplessly at the predator before me.

"And that's why I am. But you asked WHAT I am. Another man looked into the deep still waters and saw chaos in my smile. He wrote the shape of my name and saw a form of erasure brought up before him. It screamed unmaking into the sky and pulled the edges of the universe closer together."

The tumult of my mind subsides and I see faint glimmers of light beneath the wreckage of my memories. Bits and pieces still unsundered.

Vulnerable.

"He mouthed the sound, the onomatopoeia of my voice, and called it Fass."

Slowly, my body responds. I must protect what I still am. I blink away tears and see a narrow path beyond the beast, curving away out of sight. I rise to my feet.

"He was right, but also wrong. He saw my form in one perspective, one very different from yours. A single angle of a shape with infinite faces. A shape that is only a minor aspect of an endless whole."

My eyes sting as I force them to remain open. I tense my legs.

"He called me chaos, but the name is reductive. I wear chaos as a cloak, move beneath its cacophony, and write the fullness of my name upon the surface that I walk."

I slide into a runner's pose.

The beast mirrors me.

"I am more than just the sound he tried to silence."

All of its mouths move in unison.

"I am entropy."

The beast lunges for me and its neck telescopes to cross the distance in a flash, but I am ready.

I leap beneath the whip of teeth and drive forward with everything I have.

Behind me the beast howls not with anger but glee, eager for the hunt.

Following the path still manifest, eyes dry and stinging, I head desperately towards its endpoint.

The beast thunders behind me. I feel its breath upon my neck.

I near the corner and whirl around to spring my trap, but for a brief moment see the beast in a different shape. Like the color that borders my vision, I see its uncollapsed outline before it is narrowed back into a predator's form.

For a brief moment I see what had crawled from the depths of its throat to whisper in the darkness.

It is unspeakable.

I shut my eyes, but not with my original intent. My skin is set aflame and every cell in my body vibrates in resonance with a silent tone beyond anything mortal minds could comprehend. Though it briefly bulges through the cracks that open upon my mind, my sanity holds, spared by the blessed animalistic response to this irreconcilable threat.

The world is unmade with my vision.

Silence follows.

I open my eyes and am met with a simple wall, smooth and pale.

Slowly I back away, and as I move, I see the color recede from vision's edge. Tentatively, I shift my gaze away from the surface between myself and the beast, and see the walls do not fall into place or rise from nothing.

The world is static.

The beast is gone.

I collapse again, but this time in relief. Desperately, I search for those dying embers in my mind, certain that the beast somehow managed to rob me of them as well.

I see a moment of pride, bolstered by modest applause.

I feel a hand entwine fingers with my own and offer warmth and love.

I taste sorrow in the wake of death, close and painful.

I hear a gentle melody across empty space, its detail lost to the distance between myself and the source.

I smell salt and rot carried by frigid wind, and the sensation does not warrant disgust but excitement.

I gather these frail aspects and hold them close to my heart. I weep, though this time with joy.

I have not been completely broken.

"What a SHOW!" I hear from behind me.

I scramble away like a startled insect, arms in defensive posture to protect what precious little remains of myself.

I see my copy above me, mouth frozen in its familiar grin. It wears pristine robes that lie neatly upon its now smooth and flesh toned form.

"So much emotion! So much resolve! I was almost worried there for a moment, but I knew you could do it, little man. I was rooting for us the whole time!"

It points skyward.

"But you can't stop now, little man, not yet! It's almost time! It's almost time!"

My eyes are pulled by its gesture to the roiling skies above.

FASS [https://i.imgur.com/Ieezrvk.png]