I'm Actually Quite Selfish

[Tearen Wover]

Nealaphh walked through the garden beneath the thousand moons, its smooth black face devoid of the three green eyes that usually heralded the coming of its dread might. The round, blank canvas was marked only by a jagged, cracked seam that had once served the sole purpose of screaming, yet now, had sealed itself shut again. Despite once again having only its mind by which to speak, the sharp slice across its jaw was a stark reminder of the effect that human emotions could have on its body. It wasn't as if Nealaphh was blind; it had never really observed the world through those false viridian swatches in the first place. They had been an allegory; a maddeningly poignant reminder of what it once had been and what it had lost. The two eyes joined by a third below the right was the mark of the Order of the Enigma, Nealaphh's erstwhile adoptive family.

Now though, it didn't even have that ironic reminder to bind it back to his old self. Who was Nealaphh anyway? It no longer wanted to be a God, but the idea of being just a mundane tool in the machinery of Omni's universe still did not sit well with it. The middle path had never really suited Nealaphh; it was either fully dedicated or fully abstinent from a course of action or belief. The garden around it was sort of similar in that regard. The plants that had been carefully planted in the brimstone pots were either bursting with vibrant colors or twisted and black. The bleary, red-purple sky over head looked down dolefully on the scene, with the light of countless unnamed and lost orbital bodies lending only a begrudging light to the stillness of the scene.

Nealaphh had been in the Underverse for several hours now, and he had yet to encounter any sort of demon or spectre that wished to torture or disembowel him. Honestly, Nealaphh would have welcomed the reprieve from having to tackle its own thoughts and insecurities. Perhaps the hordes of Diablo aware that leaving it to itself was the greatest torture that could be invoked upon the god-mind.

Or, perhaps, they were just too busy trying to deal with the Arch Dragon Queen that Nealaphh had banished to this forsaken place, not minutes before arriving here itself. Neither possibility was comforting...

[Tearen Wover]

Nealaphh left the simultaneously burnt and vibrant arbors of the garden he had landed in behind, trudging ever onwards towards some conclusion that he himself was not aware of. The strange garden had given away to a desert of black volcanic sand that shifted and writhed uncomfortably, as if it were alive. It glittered malevolently under the pervasive glare of the Underverse's blighted sky. Every so often, a bone white outcropping of stone would jut out of the loping graphite landscape; the only breaks in the ceaseless monotony. It was odd; Nealaphh blended in almost perfectly with the black desert, being totally silent and devoid of any light. He absentmindedly reached up and touched the jagged scar that ran along his face, a fractured mockery of a mouth. Nealaphh still did not fully understand what had happened inside of him to cause this physical reaction, but then again, there was much about his body that he did not understand.

Indeed, Nealaphh's entire plight could be summarized by a lack of understanding of himself. Despite being forcefully reunited with the human emotions he had struggled to block out, he still could not fully connect with the memories of what he had been before becoming an Enigma. Tearen Wover...the name was familiar, but held no ontological value, despite once being the title he had gone by. He remembered when The Master had first come to him, inside that hospital room on Caprica. One Faustian pact later and he was standing side by side with other dissidents of humanity, eager to cast off their mortal shackles for the sheer promise of relevance. Nealaphh remembered his wife and daughter, and how he had given them up to become an entity purely of the mind, hidden and secret from the rest of reality, and at the same time, awakened and perceptive. Nealaphh didn't even remember if he had given up on his mortal life that easily or not. Being in a coma of awareness was pure hell; raw blackness without end, and only muted, half speech to guide his mind away from the swirling purple-red light of madness. How then, could the Underverse be worse than that?

...

"So woddya think, Klicka?"

Klicka didn't respond.

"Oi, Klicka. We got us a live'un."

The mound of sand that Klicka was buried under suddenly shifted, accompanied with a groan that indicated the demon had been sleeping. Well...Imp, anyway. They hadn't been promoted to full demon, despite having trudged alongside Diablo's hordes since the Lord of Horror had first summoned them up. Come to think of it, they probably deserved a lot better, but the Underverse wasn't really a place where one's hopes and dreams were fufilled.

"Wot're you jawin' on, mate?" Klicka grumbled, his glinting orange eyes shining out from the ruddy tarp that covered him.

"Jus' lookit." Usshot said, pointing a stubby, clawed finger at the wandering figure in the distance. The poor sod looked naked and black as pitch. Frankly Usshot wasn't entirely sure the lone figure wasn't one of Diablo's own horde...they all looked pretty different, and the trudging figure did sort of fit in to the general environment. Klicka's burning eyes flicked over to Usshot's quarry and back to his fellow imp.

"Well wotcha wan' do 'bout it?" the drowsy imp muttered.

"Not wunna ours, I fink. Looks like he came outta dat fancy garden place over dere." Usshot said, jerking his en robed, half buried head in the direction that Nealaphh had been traveling from.

"Nrngh. Could be wunna Lord Diablo's fancy ones." Klicka said, grinding his fangs together. The action created Klicka's trade mark click-clackaclack noise.

"I know it! But what if 'e's a Prime wot fell from good grace? He don't seem too put together as of the moment." Usshot hissed back. Klicka hesitated for a moment before finally responding.

"You wanna bash 'n dash 'im, or maul 'n haul 'im?"

Usshot grumbled in consternation for a moment.

"Fuggit."

With that, Usshot shot from his concealed position beneath the sand to reveal his true mass. Yes, he was only an Imp in rank, but physically, he was a hulking red bruiser with long, shaggy black hair, obsidian tusks and ridges of spines down his arms and back. He broke towards Nealaphh with a blood thirsty scream, with Klicka following soon after. Klicka was a bit of an odd sort: he, for all sakes and purposes, looked like a giant bipedal cockroach with a thousand glinting fangs. The stooped imp scuttled across the sand with a quick, four legged gait, a jagged spear clutched in his two forearms. Nealaphh turned towards the pair lazily before getting clotheslined by Usshot into the glinting sand. Klicka immediately pounced on top of Nealaphh, jabbing the point of the spear at where a face should have been.

"Oi! He looks even weirder up close!" Klicka said, slapping Nealaphh's head around with the flat of the spear's blade to get a better look at the featureless face.

"Gotta be a Prime den, right?" Usshot said, stomping back to their captured quarry. It was odd, the supine figure still hadn't made so much as a peep or yelp of protest.

"Eh then, bucko? Youz a Prime? Got yerself banished didja?" Klicka said, jabbing Nealaphh in the chest with the rusty, black iron spear. Glittering, ferrous blood began to leak out of the shallow wounds, but even still, the creature didn't respond. Usshot reached down and plucked the limp Nealaphh out of the sand and held him up by one arm.

"He ain't got ears nor mouth nor eyes! Wot good could 'e possibly be?" Usshot said, spitting a wad of viscous spittle onto Nealaphh's cracked visage. Klicka clicked his teeth again before chuckling mischievously.

"Well, lookit 'im. Looks 'alf starved too! Pah! No point in torturin' dems which can't scream. Blind, deaf and dumb...found yerself a real winner, Usshot." Klicka said, cackling loudly. Usshot muttered something about boiling lobsters. He dropped Nealaphh unceremoniously back in the sand before responding.

"Well, you know what Grooota sez."

Klicka paused for a moment.

"Uh...yer all a buncha idjits and it ain't yer job t'think?"

There was a long pause.

"Yeah. I guess we oughtta bring 'im back to da outpost."

A few minutes later, and the two Imps were on their way back to the Black Desert outpost of the underverse, their captured Prime in tow, even though they didn't know Nealaphh to be such. There was a dark cloud on the horizon; a gathering sandstorm, and they were walking straight into it. Nealaphh didn't care. The events of the physical world did not concern it at the moment...

[Tearen Wover]

The sandstorm was beyond fierce, and absolutely nothing was visible under the choking cloud of hell-driven sand particles. Nealaphh could see nothing, but its senses allowed it to keep track of the ones known as Usshot and Klicka, who had evidently taken him prisoner. They tugged him along in tow, a pair of heavy shackles around his wrists and ankles, limiting Nealaphh's movement to a solemn shuffle through the biting lead grit. The demons had covered themselves in heavy black shawls, most likely the same coverings they had used to conceal themselves in the sand dunes. Nealaphh had been well aware of their presence before they had rushed him, but hadn't bothered to react. There was little point, after all. Ultimately, his position was no different than when he had been wandering the desert on his own, only this time, there was a destination ahead.
 
The three of them were silent as they marched through the biting cloud, Nealaphh's hyper-perceptive mind registering each and every grain of blown sand that burnished the surface of its bleeding and cracked body. This body that it hated. It had known, from the moment that it had entered the Omniverse, that Omni had done something to its fleshy brain…given it some biological compulsion to experience existence from a mortal point of view. Until the Battle of Death Mountain, it had ignored the niggling thoughts and flickers of emotion in the back of its cosmic psyche, warning it of things to come. For all his foresight and worldly thought, however, Nealaphh rarely bothered to look inwards, at himself. Perhaps that was why he had become what he was in the first place; trying to escape the premise of having to confront his own iniquities.
 
The slaying of Volvagia, and the subsequent realization that it had wrought total destruction on an entire way of life, had blown that portal wide open. Everything had come out at once, all the terrors and horrors that it had committed over the span of an entire universe's existence. Things it would have never dreamed itself capable of doing, had it maintained a semblance, even a shred of human ethos. Omni had been so kind as to shove that expunged element back into its brain, and now, here it was, caught in the sordid results of its own temper tantrum.
 
They continued to march for an interminably long time. As much as Nealaphh hated to admit it, it felt like a span of time somewhere in the order of two days. This was another phenomenon that he had been trying to ignore for so long; feeling subjected to the human perception of the time stream. Regardless, whatever sustained these demons' bodies must be similar to its own. It had noticed, however, that the heat had actually been rising as time had gone on. A vorpal, orange glow began to permeate the swirling buffets of sand, like a cloudy night illuminated by the lights of a filthy metropolis.
 
All at once, however, the three emerged from the swirling vortex, and came to gaze upon an outcropping that overlooked exactly what Nealaphh had been thinking. It was a city, sprawling and grasping for territory in every direction. Rows upon rows of towering, bruise-colored smoke stacks, each emblazoned with an immense, molten numeral, belched smoke and fire into the dull red air. The charcoal black haze was drifting in the direction they had just been walking from, and it dawned on Nealaphh that what they had been walking through was not, in fact, a natural desert of some dark silicate. It was a vast, nearly endless field of ash and soot from the thousand factories that spat the grit high into the sky. How long and how fierce must these smokestacks have been burning to produce such a feature?
 
On top of that, there were pipes and superstructures that wound around low lying buildings that resembled the mutilated entrails of some beastly behemoth, all steaming and smoking with the life of industry. Molten shapes were ferried to and fro on singed, leathery conveyor belts, and power hubs crackled with a purple, sinister electrical current, which drove the entire operation. This entire facility, or city, rather, stretched on far into the distance, which wasn't actually that far on account of the thick smog that permeated the air. The noise was discordant, to say the least, with a choir of clanging and crashing machinery that really sounded more like something was perpetually breaking rather than simply running. Beneath that, a great, bass rumble deafened the deepest pits of Nealaphh's ears, and made it hard to even think straight.
 
"C'mon, no more dawdlin'." Usshot said with a harsh tug. The trio resumed their march once again, down out of the foothills of soot and into the living city. They passed along catwalks and rusted palisades that were stitched and patched together in a twisting, wiry fashion that reminded Nealaphh of a bone that had fused together incorrectly. Other demons and imps filed past, wearing heavy masks as they cut into the metallic flesh of the city with torches, fusing and severing its mechanical organs to an end that Nealaphh couldn't fathom. They paid Usshot and Klicka little attention as they tromped past on the vibrating, rickety walkways. After another span of marching, the group finally arrived at a large door, which really looked more like some sort of hideous sphincter. It ground and sucked itself open, unleashed a blast of scalding hot air.
 
Inside, the clanging and banging of the outer city was muted, and replaced with intermittent clicks and hisses, as if they were inside of an immense clock. Pistons and gears sullenly ground around and around, back and forth, performing operations that, again Nealaphh couldn't figure out. It was quite frustrating for someone whose mind worked on such a fundamentally logical level, and Nealaphh half suspected that a large portion of all this machinery was exponentially redundant. They came upon a large, spiral staircase, smooth and beveled in a more organic fashion than otherwise, and ascended higher and higher into a tower that Nealaphh hadn't even noticed. As they ascended, video screens began to adorn the rusted flesh walls, most of them abuzz with nothing but snowy static. Others showed various portions of the factory city, watching the worker demons closely, while others still displayed scrawls of symbols that didn't seem to be either schematics, or language, or a cipher.
 
Had Nealaphh been in its normal god-mind, it would have found all of this quite lovely. As things were, it was almost too much to take in.
 
Finally, Usshot, Klicka and Nealaphh arrived on a landing at the top of the tower. A circular dias hung suspended from five chains, cables and wires feeding in and out of it, making it resemble something akin to an upside-down jellyfish. The platform was about fifty yards in diameter, and the floor was scarred and pitted from a source Nealaphh couldn't identify. Around them, near the linking section of each chain, there was a large mound of electronics, quietly winking diodes and beeping in sinister fashion. Nealaphh could sense a mind within each one of them; were they the organic computers that kept this entire apparatus working? There was so much that was unknown. The far most mound of machinery, however, had a mind that was very much awake. Nealaphh looked closer at the entity seated in the throne of tubes and wires, illuminated only by golden diodes that winked in the metallic skulls that formed the armcaps of the rusted seat.
 
The being, grafted perhaps, into this throne looked more human than not, with sagging, aged facial features and a long, dark beard. Nealaphh did recognize, however, that what may have served as this being’s body was completely cybernetic, and of a configuration more like an octopus rather than a bipedal humanoid. In place of suckers, the gently pulsing tendrils had vents and buttons, most of which were rusted shut. Two large arms, with three joints each, branched from a torso that sat atop the molluscoid corpus, and were capped with dextrous, biological hands. Upon closer inspection, Nealaphh realized that what it had originally thought was a hairy beard and balding head, was actually a tangled network of tiny wires and cables that fed up into the fleshy, ancient face they adorned. The creature’s eyes were hidden behind individual, cylindrical caps that belied no way of perceiving the outside world.
 
The entity spoke. His voice was surprisingly soft and measured, and had a slightly modulated aspect to it. When he spoke however, the voice did not emanate from his mouth, but from what Nealaphh assumed were loudspeakers arrayed all around the chamber, which caused his words to reverberate deeply in the thunder-heavy air.
 
“And what have you dragged to me this time?” he asked in a bored tone, running a finger through the fine wires that made up his beard. Usshot and Klicka shifted uncomfortably; their nervousness was palpable.
 
“Well, we uh…dunno. Found him wandrin in da soot ‘n couldn’ figger out wot ‘e wuz.” Klicka said, clicking his despicable mandibles together with each gurgled word. The entity did not respond for some time, steepling his fingers in careful consideration. A large gout of steam blasted forth from some unseen aperture behind his body, causing the vapor to swirl around and veil his face for a moment. Nealaphh seemed to figure that this was the entity’s equivalent of sighing.
 
“Of course. And you didn’t just throw him into the slave pits because…?” the entity responded. Now it was Usshot’s turn to speak up.
 
“Well…it seems kinda…slow. Y’know. Can’t speak or hear or anyfin I reckonz, so I figger we bring ‘im to you, Master Grooota.” Usshot said, pushing Nealaphh forward with a harsh shove. His bare, mineral feet clanged loudly on the corroded metal of the platform. Usshot’s words confirmed that this being was who Nealaphh had suspected he was.
 
“Effectively useless. How wonderful. But curious, yes. Let us take a look.” Grooota said. With that, there came a great creaking, and a robotic arm descended from the darkness overhead, plucking Nealaphh off of the ground like a mewling kitten and hoisting him right over in front of Groota’s face. The cybernetic entity ran a clammy, fleshy finger down Nealaphh’s blank, featureless face and torso, wicking away a smear of his glinting iron blood. Grooota now did open his mouth, and a segmented tube, writhing with an uncanny life of its own, sucked the blood off of the cold finger, like a fly dabbing its proboscis on a succulent morsel.
 
“Hmmmmm…” Grooota said, his utterance bouncing up and down the walls in an electronic echo. Nealaphh could feel Klicka and Usshot tense in anticipation, and not a small amount of fear.
 
“…Prime.” Grooota said at last, unceremoniously dumping Nealaphh back onto the metallic floor, where he crumpled to the ground like a wet rag. By this point, being completely unresponsive had just become a habit for him. He just didn’t have the will to do anything for himself at this point; everything was still too confusing…too upsetting.
 
“Wot? Are you serious? That fing izza Prime?” Klicka shouted, taking a step forward. Grooota nodded slowly.
 
“No mistaking it. Omnilium flows in his blood, like flecks of gold through a river.” Grooota said. As his echoing words faded away, Usshot let out a low, ironic chuckle.
 
“Wot good izza Prime wot can’t even stand on ‘is own?” the brute asked, crossing his spined arms over one another, not appearing to care that he was severely lacerating his own flesh.
 
“Perhaps…” Grooota started, running another finger through his mechanical beard, “…he is still somewhat shellshocked upon having been banished. I think I may have a purpose to put him to, though.”
 
Klicka and Usshot looked at each other dubiously.
 
“Uh…like what?” Klicka asked, tapping one of his four feet on the platform impatiently. Grooota let out a long laugh, a hoarse chuckle that echoed and reverberated over itself, making it seem like an entire pantheon of trans-humans were laughing at the mentally stunted Imp.
 
“Well, I’m sure you’re aware of the little infestation problem we have in the Basement. Perhaps this Prime can clear them out.” Grooota said, picking Nealaphh up and placing him on his feet by using the large robotic arm he had called from the ceiling. Nealaphh’s head hung low, but he remained standing.
 
“Fugger couldn’t even put up a fight against us! Howya figger ‘e kin take on dem Weirdlings?”
 
Weirdlings. Nealaphh earmarked the word for later reference. Grooota let out another ghostly laugh.
 
“Maybe he just didn’t think you were enough of a threat to care.” the cyborg said with a completely unmasked overtone of mirth. Klicka and Usshot grumbled uncomfortably, and almost proceeded to object to this sentiment, but thought better of it. There was only so much back talk Grooota was willing to take. Besides, he was probably right, as usual.
 
“Show him to the Basement. If he kills even a few of them before dying, it’ll be a load off my processors. After that, he’ll just pop up somewhere else. Someone else’s problem.” Grooota said. With that, the cyborg folded his arms and seemed to suddenly seize into a dormant state, the diodes on his body and integrated throne suddenly going dark. Nealaphh conjectured that the body in front of them was just a convenient avatar for the one known as Grooota. The being itself was probably the primary artificial intelligence that ran the city. In other words, Grooota was the factory city.
 
With that, Usshot hoisted Nealaphh back towards himself and Klicka, the heavy chain clanging loudly on the iron deck.
 
“Better get goin…” the larger Demon grumbled. Klicka muttered something in a language Nealaphh could not place and followed along.
 
The trip to the location known as The Basement was not as long as Nealaphh had been anticipating. Grooota being what he was, after all, it only made sense that the infrastructure of the city had some form of public transportation…even if that transportation was large, flat platforms grafted onto the backs of monstrous centipedes the size of a steam engine. By the time that the welded monstrosity scuttled to a halt, they were miles from their original location at the nexus of Grooota. A short walk later, and they were taking an elevator deep, deep into the bowels of the city. Unlike the fiery, molten surface of Grooota, this lower subsection was dark and clammy. Moisture clung to every surface like glimmering lichen, and there seemed to be some sort of milky, slimy runoff that flooded every corridor and passage of the basement. The only illumination was from intermittent, flickering neon lamps that offered a pallid, stark light.
 
For all intents and purposes, Nealaphh conflated The Basement with being in the deepest intestines of Grooota. It was a concept that would not have bothered it a few days ago, but now, it felt a sense of intuitive revulsion. Nealaphh was half-tempted to speak up for the first time since arriving in the Underverse, and ask what exactly the Weirdlings were, and why it was necessary to kill them. Luckily, the one known as Klicka seemed more than eager to dole out Nealaphh’s orders.
 
“Roit. Weirdlings. Named perfectly cuz dere da flesh ‘n metal experiments wot didn’t work out for Grooota ‘n Lord Diablo.”
 
“Always tryin’ to improve on whatz already perfectly fine.” Grumbled Usshot, kissing one of his needle covered biceps.
 
“Yeh. Just kill ‘em till you die. Or just die. Not our problem anymore.” Klicka grumbled, pushing Nealaphh off of the lift into the milky muck that rose up to his knees. Without further ceremony, the Imps boarded the lift they had come down on and pressed a button on the platform itself, causing it to loudly creak back up into the hellish warmth above. Nealaphh was not concerned about being trapped, on account of its vast capabilities to rescue itself from the situation, but now, curiosity had gripped his mind. It was a welcome distraction from the endless self-scrutiny and recollection that had been wracking his brain for the past few days.
 
With slow, but unhesitant strides, Nealaphh waded off into the pallid goo in search of these Weirdlings to kill…

[Tearen Wover]

Nealaphh wandered through the dank, tubular hallways of Grooota's Basement, once again blending in quite well with the scenery. His slow, measured strides pulled great strands of the damnable, sloshing ichor around his ankles, as if the Basement itself was trying to integrate him. Or maybe digest him. Nealaphh had been pondering on the nature of the Factory City, Grooota. Nealaphh had assumed that the incorporeal overlord of this iron realm was just a simple artificial intelligence, but the more he thought about it, the less sense it made. Though there few certain facts that Nealaphh knew about Diablo, he was aware that the Lord of Horror was an absolute tyrant. Artificial Intelligence, no matter how deep and complex, is always inherently fallible. More importantly, despite anyone's best attempts, artificial intelligence was capable of working against it operator. Nealaphh doubted that Diablo had the technical wherewithal to create such a being, so the more likely conclusion was that Grooota was neither a demon, nor an AI. Through whatever arcane means had been woven, Grooota was a disembodied spirit capable of integrating seamlessly with electronics and mechanics. It hearkened of a poltergeist; a spirit capable of causing disturbances both physical and electronic. The bigger question that this invoked was whether or not Grooota had lived in an organic body in the first place...

...though, as he was, Grooota most certainly could be described as 'living'. The entire Factory City was his body, and these winding halls only reinforced that, despite the metal and wires, Nealaphh was inside something's body. Something odd happened, that Nealaphh had not physically experienced in the span of relative infinity: a shiver ran down his spine. A purely psychosomatic reaction such as this was the kind of thing he hated about an organic, mortal body. Previously the latent humanity within this form had bothered Nealaphh, but now he felt like he was riding a wild steed, barely in control of where he was going.

Movement snapped Nealaphh out of his introspection. It was low to the ground, squatting in the pale muck, but just outside the acrid illumination of one of the nearby lanterns. He could barely make out an obese, almost child-like body, weighed down by an array of large guns and artillery on his back. Curious, Nealaphh reached out to try and tap the Weirdling's mind, but found almost nothing but the bare minimum instincts for survival. The moment he did this, however, the wretched squatter wheeled towards him without a single noise and took a lunging, shaky step forward. Nealaphh could see the being's face better now; bald headed, with black bags on pale flesh, hanging beneath eyeless sockets. With a voiceless roar, the Weirdling surged forwards, despite the ridiculous bulk on its back. Rather than actually fire the battery of five inch guns grafted onto its back, it used the barrel of the weapons like a battering ram, slamming into Nealaphh and sending him flying. There was a great splash of slime, and for a moment, the weirdling lost sight of Nealaphh. That was all he needed to be able to teleport directly behind the cyborg wretch. The confused gun-child stalked forward slowly, searching for the Prime, while Nealaphh himself was sublimating just a fraction of matter from his right index finger into raw energy. He scanned the structure of the guns slowly, trying to discern where the magazines might be stored, in an attempt to detonate the weirdling on the spot.

Nealaphh never got the chance, as he was suddenly seized by a fusillade of grimy hands, yanking and tugging at his naked, obsidian body like a drowning man clawing for life. He hadn't even noticed the new comers, having been focused on his aim, but the energy was still built up, and Nealaphh pointed his index finger behind him, into whatever mob was assailing him. The fiery flash illuminated the entire tube for a moment, revealing that Nealaphh was not, in fact, fighting against many, but against one weirdling with eight arms, arrayed around its torso in a circle. The beam drove itself directly through the forehead of this multi-limbed horror, and the mutant shuddered into the grime. Nealaphh heard rhythmic splashing in the direction of the other weirdling, and was soon greeted with a full-on tackle from the gun-child. Despite his actual body being diminutive, the weight of the guns on his back was more than enough to pin Nealaphh to the floor of the tube. It was a saving grace that he didn't require air to breathe as the weirdling runt pressed Nealaphh's head under the surface with all of his might.

It was at this point that Nealaphh did something that it though it would never do again in the span of its existence; it slammed a balled fist into the side of the gun-child's face. Such was the force of the blow that it fully snapped the child's neck with a crack that even Nealaphh could hear, submerged as he was. Apparently, however, unlike the spider-armed weirdling that Nealaphh had dispatched so easily, the broken spinal column did not seem to deter the gun-child from trying to drown him. The sheer impossibility of how this weirdling was put together vexed Nealaphh to the point of anger. The emotion compelled him to blast the child away from him with a concussive burst of telekinetic force. The gun child teetered backwards, losing its precarious balance in the slime and fell onto its back. Trapped like an upended tortoise, the gun-child mouthed more voiceless screams as it thrashed, trying to right itself despite the weight of the weapons on its back. Nealaphh slowly stood up from where it had been pinned and took tentative steps towards the animalistic weirdling. If snapping its neck hadn't done the mutant cyborg in, what would?

With grim purpose driving his actions, Nealaphh stepped up onto the gun battery and grabbed the child fully by its torso. With a mental grunt of effort, slowly, deliberately, he yanked the child free from his gunmetal mooring. As Nealaphh did so, an array of wires and tubes twanged and snapped in protest, as black, oily blood oozed from the expunged biological component. With an almost effortless heave, Nealaphh flung the now limp, organic body behind him and stared into the core of the mechanical half of the weirdling. Interior diodes seemed to wink and fizzle angrily. The structure of the guns themselves may have been resistant to the destructive force Nealaphh could produce, but the Underverse was still a three dimensional space. With a fleeting moment of mental strain, Nealaphh contracted the space inside of the gun deck before snapping it back with explosive force. The entire structure rumbled violently as the more delicate inner workings were shredded in an instant. One by one, the angry diodes blinked off, and Nealaphh knew that the weirdling was now truly dead.

So that was two. But how many of these failed amalgamations lurked in The Basement? Nealaphh sat down in a splash of goo and took rest for a few minutes, hanging its head low. He stared with dull focus into the occluding mire that filled the tubes, and it was after a dawning moment of realization that Nealaphh came noticed that the runoff was moving, with a current. Based on the movement of the slime, Nealaphh had been travelling upstream since entering The Basement. Nealaphh suspected that if it found the headwaters of this grime that it would also find many answers to his questions. He stood up without a sound, save for the dripping, slopping ichor that sloughed off of his onyxian body, and proceeded further up the stream...

[Tearen Wover]

Nealaphh walked slowly down the black-metal vein, extending its awareness as far as possible into the pitch darkness that surrounded it on all sides. The tubes that it moved through had branched several times now, but he just hope that as long as he moved against the current, it would deliver him to the proper destination. He had noted that the depth of the pale slime did not seem to change at all, which meant that, despite there being a moving current, there was no downhill slope to this network of metallic bowels. This indicated that a force other than gravity was moving the thick solutions. A pump of some kind, perhaps. Ideally this would be where the weirdlings would congregate, but he didn’t know for sure.

It had been some time since he’d encountered any of the hybrid beasts, which struck the Enigma as odd. According to Groota and his demon henchmen, these hallways were supposed to have been choked with them. It was possible that this was a relative assessment, based on how much inteference they caused, but as far as Nealaphh could tell, their presence here was mostly non-intrusive. There was no obvious damage to the abyssal environment, nor interference with whatever function this network served. Ultimately, however, it didn’t matter; Nealaphh would cooperate with the demon city. It was his best hopes of returning to the Omniverse proper.

It wasn’t as if he regretted having banished himself; having this sort of alone time to get back in touch with his lost humanity was soothing to his troubled spirit. Still, there were probably alternatives he could have taken. It had been an irrational decision, in a moment of extreme confusion. Ultimately, he would have to forgive himself for the transgression, but it was possible that the other members of the Institute would not be so quick to do so. Indeed, it was entirely possible that, by the time he escaped the Underverse, the Institute would no longer exist as he had left it. Getting even a few of the members to be present for the slaying of Volvagia had been like herding drunken cats. The likelihood that they would be able to function in his absence was laughable.

Would that be such a bad thing, though? Nealaphh had been thinking about his motives in the Omniverse for quite some time, now. He could feel his humanity returning with each step, bringing with it a bitter sense of penitent dismay over its infinite atrocities. Its dreams of deposing Omni and taking over the Omniverse in his stead now seemed so very quaint, and childish. In all those eons that he had been convinced that he was the pinnacle of mental existence, had he actually been at his cognitive nadir? The teachings of The Master dictated that to give up the shackles of mental mortality was to reach true enlightenment, but it had been at the cost of almost everything he loved…no, more than that. It had robbed him of his ability to love altogether.

What had caused him to accept that faustian bargain in the first place? He long remembered having been whisked off to the Nameless City against his will, but now that he forced himself to think back on that time in the hospital, is struck him that he had potentially been lying to himself. Something about it just hadn’t felt right…there was no guarantee that he wasn’t going to awaken from his comatose state. There was a very real chance he may have been able to resume life with his wife and daughter again. What could have caused him to go so quickly from being devastated over effectively losing them, to his total willingness to devote so much energy to ridding himself of his emotional attachments altogether?

There had to be some sort of latent anger, some sort of resentment that caused him to view his family as expendable. Or, at least anger to the point where he was willing to secretly lash out against them. Nealaphh tried to think back through his human memories, which were still hazy and indistinct. It was hard to pinpoint the source of the anger when he didn’t even specifically know what the emotion was about.

Nealaphh paused and rested his back against the clammy side of the tube he was currently traversing. With a slow grinding sound, he slid down the side of the hallway and rested his forearms on his knees, trying to catch a glimpse of his reflection in the grime. This form…he had long thought that it had been Omni that chose it for him, but Nealaphh was beginning to suspect it was a reflection of his own subconscious neurosis. A third eye, present, yet displaced. Though, now he had none to speak of. It was a simple, blank, black face that could not breathe, nor smile, nor frown, nor scream. He could feel anger welling up inside of him, and the metal walls around him began to rumble and shake, as his mind pulled haphazardly on the space in his vicinity. It was beginning to feel like he had brought this all upon himself. Not just his current circumstances, but becoming Nealaphh in the first place, his very body, his loss of his humanity. A long string of self-destructive mentality, deftly wrapped in a false sense of superiority, occluding his realization that he had made a grave error.

This was true insanity. No meaningless ranting or schizophrenic delusions. A self-indulgent thread of deception that had cost him everything he cared about, likely set in motion long before he would have had the wherewithal to realize what such behavior might lead to. A nearby lamp flickered and exploded as his mental rage lashed out at anything fragile. Damn it all. Damn the Institute. But most importantly, damn Nealaphh. He refused the mantle of Enigma. He didn’t want to be the pinnacle of mental perfection. He just wanted to see his baby again.

But he couldn’t even remember her name.

As if to mock him, it was only at this point that another Weirdling decided to show up. Nealaphh turned his head to look at the creature, like a cross between a wolf and a lawnmower. A large, circular saw whirled loudly where its mouth belonged, its emaciated upper skull mounted with a pair of gleaming red cameras. Immediately, now that his anger had a concrete target to focus on, the monstrosity was plucked out of the white sludge and unceremoniously crushed like a wad of waste paper, it’s own mechanical weapon nearly grinding it in half. Nealaphh felt a mix of emotions at the sudden, pointless death.

Part of him wanted to be disgusted at the wanton violence, another part didn’t even remotely care. Questions and more neuroses exploded across his consciousness like sickly fireworks, and further fueled by impotent rage, flung the now-seeping wreck of the weirdling dog far behind him. He couldn’t afford to get hung up on this kind of navel-gazing at the moment, lest he be doomed to wander these black halls for eternity. At some point, healing had to begin, and if that meant that he had to put a few dozen mutants out of their biological misery, then so be it.

With that, Nealaphh once again stood up from his place of rest, the ichor sloughing off of him in thick sheets. The sooner he could be done with this, the better. Perhaps, again, it would be decision he would come to regret. Hopefully this time he would at least have the wisdom not to try and intentionally forget the mistake.

It was time for true progress.

[Tearen Wover]

After a time, Nealaphh began to notice the downstream current that he was walking against begin to stiffen. As it grew in strength, he picked up on an echoing roar coming down the pipes, as if a great effluence of the stuff was crashing into a lake some distance ahead. The force of the sound was enough to set the entire tube vibrating, and in addition to that, Nealaphh could also detect a faint thrumming that pulsed in regular intervals. It was like a heartbeat, a comparison which he instantly regretted making.
 
Soon enough, the ex-Enigma emerged into a cavernous space, at the mouth of a single pipe that networked into what appeared to be an immense underground reservoir of this white slop. The room was immense, easily a mile deep and half as wide. Nealaphh craned his neck to search for a ceiling, but saw only a spiderweb network of black scaffolding stretching up into the abyss. Small electronic lights winked along the precipice of every twisted ledge and outcrop within the space, and he could tell that there was intelligence behind them. Even now as he waded forth into the deepening sludge, he was aware of shapes moving just below the surface of the fluid, causing long ripples to stretch along the otherwise calm lake.
 
Indeed, a massive waterfall of sorts was plummeting from untold heights down into this eggshell mire, but the thick fluid created no mist or clouds of vapor as it the torrent descended into the primary pool. This, in and of itself, may have been sufficient to create the slow current that Nealaphh had noticed this whole time, but that wasn’t the only thing. The primary waterfall fell into a smaller, elevated pool approximately one hundred meters in diameter, which then pumped the vile liquid into the primary holding tank that Nealaphh found himself in. The pump, however, was no mechanical edifice.
 
It was a heart, as he had feared, towering almost to thirty meters tall, and ghastly pale as the fluid that it used to keep itself sustained. The heart gave off a stark bright light, similar to the electronic lights that had so far illuminated Nealaphh’s path. Heavy metal components pierced and wound themselves around the organic monolith, as if forcing it to beat in a rhythm that it found unnatural. Embedded in the front atrium, looking outwards upon the great pale lake, was the upperhalf of a woman’s torso, bare breasted and corpulent, with a circuitry infused face. Long loops of thick flesh hung from her skull in a mockery of thick, silken locks, and her eyes held nothing but a remorseless metallic glare. It was if she had grown, tumorous, from the side of the beating goliath organ, and now surveyed the expanse of the lake as her personal royal court.
 
Much in the same way that Grooota, the sentient city, had spoken to Nealaphh, this being now also spoke, though in a way that Nealaphh had not been expecting. For this forsaken mockery of the female form also spoke directly into Nealaphh’s mind with the haunting chime of telepathy.
 
It comes to us. It comes from Grooota. It comes from the Grooota to slay us and our children. It comes, does it not? To serve this ghastly purpose? Does it not? Come from Grooota?
 
Nealaphh, initially taken aback by the fact that something had the mental strength to pierce his own psychic barriers, responded in kind. What was more haunting, however, was that the female’s tone was eerily matched to Nealaphh’s own, making it hard to distinguish which of them was speaking at a given time. It was a trick of telepathy that Nealaphh had used many times on those weaker minded than he. Now he knew full well the discomfort that such manipulation could cause.
 
I come from Grooota, yes. If you are a weirdling, then it is my job to slay you.
 
I come from Grooota as well, and I have tried to slay the weirdlings. There are many. Will you kill them all?
 
I will kill them all, as many as I can, before I myself am killed.
 
Why am I going to kill them?
 
No, I am going to kill them, unless you plan on assisting me.
 
Why would I assist you? I have no quarrel with the weirdlings.
 
Grooota demands it. That is reason enough.
 
I do not obey Grooota. His reason is not enough.
 
Neither do I, but I choose to do so, in the interest of my own continued survival.
 
So are there weirdlings here?
 
I thought there were weirdlings here. I do not see any.
 
Have you seen any?
 
Yes, I encountered a few on my way here. I killed them.
 
Because I obey Grooota.
 
No, because I choose to obey Grooota. You do not, as you have stated. This attempt at confusing me will not succeed.
 
There was a pause, and all seemed still for a moment. The dull thumping of the she-heart and the roar of the slime-torrent produced such tremendous white noise that Nealaphh could barely recover from having this mental battle with the heart. He would have liked to conjecture that she served some specific purpose, but Nealaphh was certain, based on her efforts to persuade him against his chosen task, that she herself was one of the hybrid entities he had been tasked with slaying.
 
Suddenly, there was motion, and Nealaphh glanced around to see that the myriad dots of light which had been twinkling in the iron ramparts now began to descend along the vaulted walls like iridescent spiders. There came the sound of bursting water, as hundreds of vile amalgamations of demon and machine rose from the milky depths of the reservoir, eager to defend their queen. The heart-woman began to project more telepathic messages, but this time it was not words. It was music, a doleful, instrumental broadcast. Slowly, the weirdlings that surged towards Nealaphh from every corner began to softly sing in time with the psychic melody.
 
And then the Queen herself began to sing. Had Nealaphh possessed a mouth, he was sure that he too would have been compelled to join the weirdlings in this compulsive dirge. At first, he could not fathom the purpose of such a telepathic emanation, but then it became evident as the weirdlings launched their first attack.
 
It was synchronized beautifully, a fusillade of infernal gunfire and whirling blades that Nealaphh narrowly escaped from with a sudden surge upwards into the air. Without missing a beat, the orchestrated horde turned to follow him as he alighted on a low-hanging beam. It was only after a moment that Nealaphh realized that he too was being forced to move in time with the beat. Not only was it a way of coordinating the movements of a thousands otherwise mindless killers, its overpowering force allowed her to predict Nealaphh’s own movements. This was highlighted when, a moment later, the support rivets to the beam were shot out in perfect time with a small crescendo in the current stanza.
 
Nealaphh barely dodged in time as another barrage whizzed through the air where he had been crouching a moment prior. With a small flicker of mental power, Nealaphh sent the beam careening towards the group of misshapen skeletal cyborgs firing at him, but they dodged gracefully out of the way in keeping with the end of a verse. This was rapidly becoming a situation more dangerous than Nealaphh could have predicted, but the shadow was not without his own wiles.
 
As he plummeted back down into the mire, he took the momentary obfuscation to teleport directly behind the Heart Queen, and began to distort the space directly around where he sensed her head to be. Directly on cue, he felt himself being plucked into the air and tossed back into the crowd of scything monstrosities under the force of her own telekinetic prowess. The distraction caused the spatial tension to disperse harmlessly, but it gave Nealaphh the moment he needed to call his Aspects into existence. As he landed, a great gout of thick fluid gushed up into the air, and with it, more than two dozen small black prisms, who all immediately began to fire piercing blasts of energy into the encroaching weirdlings.
 
Nealaphh himself gathered up his mental power and caused the gravity in his immediate vicinity to fluctuate, pinning almost fifty of the variable scrapped weaponoids to their place in the white lake. One mental scream later, and they were sent flying through the air like rattling grey and black matchsticks, crunching horribly against the distant walls of the chamber.
 
Somehow, the utter cacophony of the energy blasts, gunfire and slime-fall still could not drown out the force of the Heart Queen’s haunting strains. Nealaphh felt his footing slipping somewhat, and was unsure if he had been snatched by an unseen foe, when he realized that the floor beneath his feet was moving. As he was hoisted into the air, Nealaphh realized that he was on the slimy back of a hunched over giant, whose hunched posture remained stiff. All at once, a dozen small hatches opened down the length of the twenty-foot monster’s back, and a fusillade of small missiles rocketed out into the darkness, their orange contrails lending a rare burst of color to the otherwise grayscale scene.
 
Nealaphh barely had a moment to try and telekinietically launch himself in an evasive maneuver before the supersonic warheads impacted him two, three, four times in progressively stronger explosions, blasting the ex-Enigma high into the air. It was at this point that he blacked out…

[Tearen Wover]

A small trickle of soft melody drew Nealaphh back to the realm of the waking. The first thing he realized was how warm he felt. The second thing he realized was that he was still alive, which was rather unexpected. The second before the world had gone dark, Nealaphh had been resigned to waking up somewhere else in this dreaded universe. At least, that was how he assumed things worked in the Underverse. The alternative was that it was just impossible to die, or, one ceased to exist completely. The final option was unlikely, since the Underverse was still Omni's domain, despite being cut off from the rest of the verses.

As Nealaphh first brought his awareness back to the visual level, he was slightly dazzled by the bright light that surrounded him. After a moment of adjustment, he realized that he was still in the primary reservoir of Grooota's bowels, and currently being held close to the soft, pulsating flesh of the queen weirdling. It was almost like he was being cradled up to suckle at her immense bosom, but there were many reasons why this wasn't the actual case. Still, the show of physical tenderness caught the shadow off-guard.

When she noticed him awake, the slimy monarch placed a pallid finger where his mouth would otherwise be, and smiled at him, her solid black eyes seeming to hold a genuine flicker of affection.

Shh, your brother will be here soon.

Brother? What do you-

There there, don't cry. Everything will be alright. Just trust Mother.

Impatient, Nealaphh tried to struggle free of the queen weirdling's stifling grasp, but found himself telekineticaly bound in place. He hadn't yet encountered a being in the Omniverse with more powerful psychic abilities than himself. The fact that he should encounter such an entity, here of all places, was a troubling omen. If this weirdling queen was the sort of biological experiment to be considered a failure, Nealaphh dreaded to learn what sort of living weapons hadn't been thrown in the gutter.

There came a faint, slurping, ripping sound from somewhere below Nealaphh and he was barely able to turn his head enough to see what was going on. Something was emerging from beneath the thick folds of halogen flesh that made up the bulk of the pulsating heart queen. The shadow did not wish to dwell on the implications of what was happening at the moment, and instead focused on the emerging figure itself. It was black and glistening, humanoid in form. As it finished crawling out from under the Queen's bulk, it stood up slowly, turning to look up at Nealaphh. Three burning green eyes stared keenly at Nealaphh, two in the normal place for a human, and one below the right.

It was a duplicate of his own body that had been spawned by the queen, and as the duplicate finished tearing a thick metal cord from its navel, the queen unceremoniously dropped Nealaphh to the corrugated metal floor far below. Still weakened, Nealaphh landed prone, creating a resounding bang, and raised his head to face the clone. The clone's three eyes narrowed, and suddenly Nealaphh felt himself picked up by sheer mental force before being flung far away from the black, metal plinth on which the queen and her clone-child resided.

Growing more cocient, Nealaphh caught himself mid air and slowed to a halt, roughly twenty feet above the surface of the white slime lake. Even from this distance, the acidic eyes of the copy seemed to burn into his mind. The duplicate spoke, via telepathy, in a voice exactly like his own.

Look at you, emaciated and broken like a whipped dog. The Master would surely die of laughter, if only he knew how far you had fallen.

Who are you? Nealaphh replied.

A pitiful question, and one you already know the answer to. The more pertinent question is; who are you?

Nealaphh maintained his position, hanging in the air, and crossed his arms in an outward display of confidence. Inside, however, he was in turmoil, and he had no doubt that the queen and the duplicate could feel it.

I am Nealaphh he said sternly. A mental chuckle resounded throughout the psychic medium, emanating from the mind of the green-eyed facsimile.

I beg to differ it crooned. Nealaphh is the name of the Premier Enigma, in service of the Master. The primordial caretaker of the universe. But you, trapped in your own head, stewing in self-doubt and existentialism...you are the human existence I endeavored to escape. I hesitate to even address you by name, Tearen Wover, for it is similar to the rooster giving a name to his eggshell.

Tearen’s mind flared at the implication, raging and screaming internally that it wasn’t true. He could not have regressed fully to his human state, not when he still had the fundamental forces of reality at his command. Yet, the fact remained that he had been rejecting his status as an Enigma right before entering this hallowed chamber. The clone, a fake or not, was correct; if he did not claim to be an Enigma, he should not be named as one. His identity crisis was punctuated further by Nealaphh’s chiding words.

But, I have The Mother to thank for finally ridding me of you. I no longer feel the polyp of your ego scratching at the back of my skull. A shame she could not keep me in my Prime body, but this can be easily rectified.

As Nealaphh said this, Tearen observed as the countless diode-eyes of the weirdlings once again began to descend from the lofty rafters of the reservoir. Nealaphh himself floated upwards from the Heart Queen’s platform, slowly approaching Tearen. Thinking fast, Tearen warped his body into the shape of a crow and surged up into the blackness, just as the first few strains of the Queen’s song beckoned a volley of gunfire. The avian form quickly and gracefully navigated the web of black support struts looming in the darkness, trying to find a place to hide.

Running away Tearen? After trying to take control for so long?

The fabric of space a few feet in front of Tearen bubbled inwards, and he was forced to mentally pull himself away from his flight path, just as the warp burst exploded. Heavy metal beams plummeted past him as he dove for the lake below. As his feathered body breached the surface of the goo, he shifted back into his humanoid body.

Despite your stunted mental capacity, surely you can calculate that you have no hope of winning.

It was true. Against this many opponents, Tearen most likely did not stand a chance. He did, however, have a hypothesis. Right on cue, the leviathan which had nearly blown him to smithereens once again rose from the depths of the main tank. Tearen balanced precariously on the black flesh, deflecting incoming gunfire with adroit ripples in spacetime. As the missile hatches on the black giant’s back opened again, he abruptly surged forward through the air, heading straight for the Heart Queen. As he did so, Tearen mimicked Nealaphh’s maneuver and blasted a heap of metal fragments from the ceiling, directly above the bloated mass of the weirdling queen. As expected, Tearen felt himself firmly caught mid air by the force of the Heart Queen’s own telekinesis. Nealaphh, in an effort to defend his newfound Mother, caught the falling, razor sharp beams of metal. The Enigma turned to face Tearen as he hung, helpless, in the air.

All or nothing attack. Typical human bravado, but I should thank you for saving me unnecessary effort. Nealaphh said, raising a brightly gleaming finger at Tearen’s body.

If you say so. Tearen replied. It was at that moment that the missile-laden giant fired his salvo at Tearen. But, unlike last time, Tearen knew what was coming, and quickly forced his body to become out of phase with the material world. The twelve or so explosive warheads cruised through his torso harmlessly, and did not have time to maneuver away from the overgrown, sentient heart on the other side. Tearen was quite sure he heard Nealaphh shriek in protest as the missiles struck home, sending wobbling chunks of white flesh flying in every direction. Nealaphh was knocked out of his concentration on the metal beams, and so the tangled mess of scrap proceeded to impale anything left of the psychic monarch. The entire reservoir went dark as the Heart Queen’s light was extinguished, the flickering eyes of the weirdlings making it appear as though a starry sky hung overhead.

There was a pause, and then untold cacophony as every single weirdling in the immense chamber began turning on one another. Amid the flashes of gunfire and explosions, Tearen saw Nealaphh stand up among the smoking remains of his Mother.

You humans are monsters… Nealaphh whispered, his psychic voice carrying the hiss of deep anger. You claim to have morals and yet...it is so easy for you to kill something so...pure.

Now it was Tearen’s turn to laugh, even as body parts and sparks flew around him, the white fluid frothing and spewing from the frenzied movement of a thousand misshapen mistakes.

You’re a joke, Nealaphh. First of all, just because something is a victim of evil, that doesn’t automatically mean that it must be something good.

As Tearen said this, he saw Nealaphh summon a flock of Aspects from the aether. The twirling polygons each shimmered with an internal light, ready to blast anything threatening their creator. Tearen summoned his own, in kind, and began to slowly float towards his doppleganger.

That...Mother of yours. She saw something in me, something she liked. She saw you. So she made you her baby, and so you revere her, while at the same time, espousing yourself to be in total control.

The first few blasts of raw energy ricocheted between them, each iteration of the same person bending the fabric of space on a whim to turn the flashes of light away, into the twinkling darkness. Tearen suddenly became aware of a large shape surging through the fluid towards him. He turned to face the threat, coming face to face with the humanoid leviathan that had tried twice now to kill him. The missile hatches on its back were open, but nothing launched. Instead, its entire head, which was a long, striated cone, split open vertically to reveal pulpy red flesh inset with a fusillade of gruesome fangs. The leviathan surged towards him, almost like a crocodile, to try and snap Tearen up in its jaws. The shadow flipped himself up into the air just in time to avoid the fanged fate, but in the moment of distraction, Nealaphh had teleported high above the seething carnage. Tearen felt the gravity beginning to surge beneath him as he hung in the air, and so he quickly created a warp surge directly on top of the Enigma. The telekinetic riposte failed to affect Nealaphh, who quickly dropped away from the blast zone, but it had also served the purpose of preventing Nealaphh from pulling shut the gravitic trap.

The thing is, Nealaphh, you’re still a part of me. I can’t erase who I was or what I did. But I can learn to accept and move on from it. That is something that a wind-up toy like you cannot do.

Nealaphh responded by sending an entire wave of piercing energy beams careening through the darkness. Tearen quickly grabbed a nearby weirdling with the force of his telekinesis and used the writhing thing as a living shield. The beams failed to bore all the way through its doomed flesh, and as such, the carcass became a convenient projectile to throw at his airborne nemesis. Nealaphh slapped the expired wretch away with his own mental blast before speaking again.

You betray The Master. You betray yourself. How can you put such safety at risk? All you accomplish with your emotions is vulnerability.

Tearen, in the meantime, had been closing rapidly on Nealaphh, and drove a hard fist directly into the green-eyed duplicate's face. Nealaphh did nothing to defend itself; its stilted inferences about how the world operated were it's downfall. It could not have predicted that Tearen would willingly attack with physical violence. Nealaphh reeled backwards in the air, but as Tearen rushed forwards for another, he felt Nealaphh hijack his temporal aspect and accelerate Tearen far past itself. Nonetheless, Tearen followed up on the attempted blow with a telepathic jab.

Allowing myself to feel emotions can make me vulnerable, yes. But it also connects me with the world. It keeps me grounded, instead of living in my head all the time, like you.

Tearen’s train of thought was brought to a crashing halt as a hail of gunfire ripped open the obsidian flesh on his back. The reservoir was still very much a war zone, and in those few moments, he had lost track of Nealaphh. After searching for a moment, Tearen spotted the Enigma in the middle of the fray, a dour light spilling forth from his three eyes. Tearen could feel the power welling up inside the duplicate's body, and he knew what was coming.

Just to save himself, Tearen began charging his own mental might, letting the will of the physical universe flow into his dark body. The cosmos sang it's own music, and just as Nealaphh finally collapsed into a black hole, so did Tearen. The twin singularities quickly began pulling weirdlings in by the dozens, their ultraviolet accretion jets vaporizing anything that wasn’t devoured. As the howling tears in spacetime grew, they drifted towards each-other, ripping apart countless demonic experiments as they vied for gravitational supremacy.

As their event horizons touched, a gravitational wave exploded outwards from the quantum conjunction, adding a final layer of decimation to the vast underground structure. Falling metal and scrap was also devoured by the new gestalt singularity, so that when the power of the black holes finally began to wane, there was a large crater of empty, damp rubble around the lone figure that emerged.

He fell to the ground, spent, and rolled over on to his back. Two green eyes stared up at the orange sky, now visible far, far up through the ravaged superstructure. There were few applicable thoughts he could apply to the situation, and simply lay there, dazed, for some time. If anything, one mantra repeated itself over and over, in a small voice in the back of his mind.

You are Tearen.

And you are doomed.

[Tearen Wover]

Tearen awoke with a start. Apparently he had dozed off, down there in the pits of Grooota City. He was currently underneath about six feet of the white, slimy goo that had once filled the edges of this cavernous reservoir to the brim. What had once been a torrent of the vile stuff now came down in a broken trickle. Apparently, his activity had been noticed, gauging by how intermittent bursts of electric light were filtered down through the semi-opaque mire. Most likely a flock of Grooota’s enslaved worker demons, cutting through the rent metal with acetylene torches. As Tearen lay there, oddly comfortable in the soupy abyss, he considered possibly using this opportunity to make his escape. In his crow form, there was very little that could catch him. Coupled with his ability to turn out of phase with the material world, it would be trivial to skirt past the notice of these indentured brutes.

Oh, but where would the fun in that be? Besides, despite having recovered his sense of humanity (or something very close to that), Tearen still had just as much ambition as he had posessed when he’d still been the Enigma. Most likely by this point, Grooota had written him off for dead. To stride back through the brazen doors of the city’s central tower, unhampered by a pair of dullard demon henchmen, would send a powerful statement to the demon metropolis. From there, Nealaphh could acquire all the information he needed to know.

Dedicated to this plan of action, the shadow surged up through the milky slop in a great, splashing burst. Tearen ascended meteorically through the darkness of the reservoir, feeling the eyes of the startled demon workmen following him. He could taste their awe in the depths of his mind, as well as confusion. These two emotions were the sweetest ingredients to concocting a comfortable feeling of superiority. As Tearen flew up through the aperture into the orange, smokey skies of Grooota, he took a look around, trying to spot the spire he had originally been examined in. It was hard to get a sense of direction in the Underverse, especially with the sky obscured by great clouds of ash. He did remember, though, that the ash is what had formed that immense, black desert he originally found himself in. If he flew in the direction of the drifting soot, he should at least eventually get close to his starting point.

In a little over a quarter of an hour, the doors to Grooota’s tower flung themselves open as Tearen strode boldly through. The few token guardians at the entrance had not been dispatched, they had simply been made to believe that Tearen was supposed to be there. Human or not, bending the minds of others would always have its uses, and just because he had recovered a basic sense of morality did not mean he was above pragmatism. The Central Spire was silent, save from the clicks and hisses from his last time here. The myriad television screens no longer showed a wall of snowy static, however. They all showed Tearen on their screens, tracking his movement through the scrap-metal citadel. A tittering, ethereal chuckle accompanied the shadow as he ascended the long steps to the uppermost platform where he had first met the demon avatar.

Arriving on the large, metallic plinthe, the large hulks of semi-conscious machinery now blinked actively, and the animatronic corpulence of Grooota’s terminal body seemed to be awake and moving. Its blank, metal eyes stared directly ahead as Tearen approached, his fingers steepled as the shadow approached. The trouble with machine consciousnesses such as Grooota was that Tearen could not sift through their surface thoughts for hidden motives or agendas. Additionally, he couldn’t speak directly to the machine with his telepathy, so he would have to do it via proxy. He would have to be very careful with how he handled this situation, since summoning his more vocal Aspects could be seen as a threat.

“So, you weren’t pulverized like we had all thought. Impressive.”

Tearen paused a moment before causing his dozen tetrahedrons to spontaneously manifest. The Grooota puppet made no immediate physical reaction, but Tearen did notice a faint thrumming sound begin to emanate from the electronic hulks that also encircled the platform. Some form of defense, most likely. That meant that they were important items in this room, not the spectacle of the half-octopoid geriatric that was enthroned before him. The Aspects all chimed in unison as Tearen broadcasted his thoughts through their resonant forms.

“I’ve no time for pleasantries, Grooota, only answers.” Tearen snapped back, crossing his obsidian arms. Another peal of hoarse chuckling rang throughout the chamber.

“Ohoh...have some fire back in us, have we?” Grooota replied, clearly bemused by Tearen’s show of bravado. The avatar may have also been referring to the glinting pair of green eyes which once again burned where a face should have been.

“Indeed. Though I do not presume to be in a position of power over you, I am in need of information. It would be preferable to me for us to cooperate.” Tearen said softly.

“How-”

Grooota began to say something with a sharp edge in his tone, but Tearen cut him off.

“Please spare me your tired rhetoric of ‘owing me nothing’ and how I am ‘mere scum to be incinerated on a whim.’ You’ve seen the damage I can do. You think I couldn’t obliterate this entire tower of yours if I so much as felt the need to?”

The words rang loudly through the chamber before Grooota ran a hand over his beard. The tone that came in response was more smug than Tearen had been expecting.

“What I was going to say…” Grooota said with a heavy pause, “...was ‘How may I be of assistance?’ I also have no patience for the ritualistic posturing between demons and their supplicants, so let us get to business.”

Damn. Tearen had lost some ground in that exchange. He had betrayed that he was not beyond making hasty conclusions about other people’s behavior based on this new environment. Already the effects of his renewed sense of humanity were showing through. It was a sign of his inexperience that would never be lived down, despite how subtle its effect might be. In a phrase, he had been one-upped. Still, he couldn’t allow his humiliation to show through; enough damage had already been done.

“In that case, explain the weirdling matriarch and her environs.” Tearen said in a straightforward tone, betraying no sense of shame nor embarrassment.

“Ah.” Grooota said, raising a whizzing, clicking arm and beckoning down several large display screens. Several of what Tearen assumed to be schematics began flashing across the screen, showing the biology of the Heart Queen and her inner mechanical capacity to create synthetic versions of anything she came into contact with. It didn’t necessarily display the power of her telepathic abilities, but Tearen got the concept altogether. Sort of a ‘Prime Weirdling’ she had the ability to intuitively integrate biological and mechanical workings together into singular forms.

“We called her Jezebel. Very promising, as I’m sure you may have surmised. She proved to be a tad too...egomaniacal. No control systems worked. Mechanically she was perfect.” Grooota said, his many fingered hands running down the length of his metal-wire beard. Small snaps of static could be heard across the breadth of the hanging dias. He seemed to linger on whatever thought Jezebel had conjured, and Tearen wondered if there was some hidden significance to the weirdling queen, beyond her functional potential. The pensive moment was banished as the echoing broadcast of Grooota’s voice continued.

“As for the fluid: Coolant. It takes a rather large volume of it to keep the ash-towers from melting into slag. Jezebel had been grafted onto Cistern Twelve-N for almost five years, it will be good to have it fully functional again.” Grooota said, a few panels flipping over to images of weld-demons going about their arduous work.

“So, that was not the only facility of that kind.” Tearen said, his green eyes flicking from one screen to another.

“Oh, no no. There are dozens of them throughout the city. Neither were those all of the weirdlings infesting the pump lines, but it certainly put dent in their numbers. You’re not quite like the other Primes that have passed through the Hellscape.” Grooota said, raising a very deliberate eyebrow at Tearen. The shadow had a bad feeling about where this was going, but he would play along for now. A wide, toothless grin spread across the bronze senior’s face, his tubular eyes failing to betray any indication of hidden motive. Tearen was starting to remember why he hated artificial intelligence so much. “I think you’ll do just fine, yes. Perhaps we can strike an accord. Tell me, have you heard of the colosseums?”

“I’m aware of the appeal of bloodsport in the Omniverse at large. I can only imagine the draw such competition has in this environment. I’m to be your new favored fighter, then?” Tearen asked, shifting his weight from one foot to another. It was these subtle human mannerisms that had been beyond his willingness to perform for quite sometime, but now that he was doing them again, Tearen was beginning to see just how obnoxiously they came across. Grooota’s grin only widened further, almost to the point that it was evocative of Omni.

“Always to the point with you. Excellent. Yes, I think you’ll be a fine addition to my long list of past competitors. My first Prime too. Exciting!” Grooota enthused, tapping the tips of his steepled fingers together.

“I don’t actually have a say in this, do I.” Tearen grumbled. Grooota let out a peal of echoing laughter and shook his head slowly. All at once, a great weaving of magical lines flared to life all along the hanging platform, tracing a great pentagram across the floor. Tearen found his feet bound to the floor, unable to move. Twin robotic arms descended from the pervasive steam overhead and wrenched his arms upwards, spreading the black-glass flesh of his back. A third robotic arm descended, an angry looking orange light burning at its tip. Tearen cringed forwards as a seething hot laser began to etch a complex series of designs into the mineral-esque flesh of his back. The whole process took about three minutes, a span of time which Tearen was certain had been purposefully extended. At the end of the branding, Tearen used one of his Aspects to inspect the still-glowing runes that had been burned upon him.

“Intricate.” Tearen said simply. Just play along. An opportunity would present itself eventually. Grooota stretched his brushed metal lips into a bemused smirk. Clearly there was very little that could phase this new Prime plaything of his. It would be to Grooota’s benefit within the coliseums, but would also be problematic if the need came for discipline.

“Thank you, yes. A formality really. With you marked in this manner, no other coliseum masters could just poach you on a whim.” Grooota said, waving a dismissive hand. Of course, yes, this also had something to do with making Tearen Grooota’s legal property, but the shadow really doubted that any legal efforts on Grooota’s part mattered that much outside the urban bloat of his city center.

“Where do I go now?” Tearen asked softly. He was determined to appear cooperative, not broken. He doubted that a demon entity such as Grooota, even being an artificial intelligence, would really be able to acknowledge the difference. A great cloud of steam whispered forth from the vents around the avatar’s throne, wisping around the digital monarch’s head.

“Well, you’ll have to start small. I’ll see to it that you’re entered for ranking in the nearest officiated colosseum tournament. I think it’s going to be a free-for-all. Should be right up your alley.” Grooota said in a chiding chuckle. Tearen wasn’t exactly sure what the cyber-monarch meant by that, but it was worth keeping his own thoughts to himself. The less insight Grooota had into his thought-process, the better...

[Tearen Wover]

The Colosseum was three days steady march from the outskirts of Grooota, a trip that Tearen had been hoping to make alone. Alas, it was not to be. Grooota had decreed that his two favorite demon underlings, Usshot and Klicka, accompany the shadow to his next destination. The land was completely devoid of light as the three enrobed figures trudged through the thick black sands of the central hellscape, a driving wind whipping the black silicate mass into an obfuscating cloud of darkness. Despite this, the two demon companions seemed to inherently know the way forward. Now that Tearen had the awareness to observe their bodies more closely, he could see that they had also been marked with the arcane, laser-etched brand that Grooota had imparted upon Tearen's own flesh. It was frustrating, more than anything else. Tearen understood that the branding signified him as property of Grooota, but beyond that, it didn't lend any real insight into the workings of the Underverse or the power figures within it. Hopefully getting involved in these tiresome bloodsports would reveal some new information.

When the trio finally arrived at the colosseum city, Tearen was taken aback by how different it was from Grooota. It was little more than an amalgamation of ramshackle slums clustered around a few, crumbling, monolithic structures. None of the mechanical life or vigor of the Machine City existed here; it was the inhabitants who gave this nameless convergence of diabolism its life. Myriad demons or otherwise filled the tight, winding streets, passing in and out of cloth-draped doorways, crossing small overhead bridges that spanned the unlit pathways, and clamoring all around the visitors from Grooota. Usshot and Klicka wasted no time in bringing Tearen to the spike-ridden ramparts of the town's local arena, keeping pawing hands and curious gropers away from the Prime. It was odd that they would be so protective of him, even after he had demonstrated his raw potential so recently.

Why defend me to this degree? I can handle myself if necessary. Tearen stated, sending the dour thoughts trickling into the two demons' brains. Usshot cringed and shot a glowing glare back at Tearen before turning to Klicka.

"Agh, I hate it when it talks inta our heads." the larger demon grumbled, grabbing Tearen and pushing him through a large portcullis which ground open with a terrible screech.

"Yah...too troo." Klicka responded, vibrating his insectoid jaw for good measure. Tearen's eyes narrowed into a scowl; it hadn't expected to be ignored in this manner, while simultaneously being paraded around like a damned show dog. It was hard to gauge what exactly the two demons thought of Tearen, but it was surely a negative outlook. As the two demons of Grooota went about submitting Tearen as property to fight on behalf of the Machine City, the shadow looked around the inky black environs at the other combatants that had been hauled here to kill one another. None of them impressed Tearen in particular, but he did take note of a rather interesting looking specter. Whispy lavender smoke seemed to swirl in and around a bone breastplate and horned helmet, with spiked gauntlets slowly turning the pages of a thick grimoire. The rest of these fighters seemed to rely on their brute strength or exotic weaponry. So far as Tearen could tell, this armored ghost was the only soon-to-be combatant who demonstrated any appreciable intelligence. Intrigued, Tearen went to take a step towards the spirit, but was quickly grabbed by the thick hands of Usshot.

"Oi. No gabbin' with the other meat. You'z here ta kill, not make friends." the large demon rumbled, his grip on Tearen's shoulder strengthening considerably. Tearen shot a green leer up into the towering dullard's face, but relented to his ironclad grasp.

And so it was that Tearen was forced to stand, silently in the dank shadow of the staging area. Over time, about a total of thirty individual combatants arrived, each almost completely unique in their own regard. When Grooota had said that Tearen's first arena fight would be a free-for-all, it had not been an understatement. The atmosphere almost reminded the shade of one of his rites of initiation into the Enigma state so very long ago. Perhaps the knowledge gained from that bloodbath would see him through what was surely to be the first of many long trials. After some time, and at the behest of some cue that Tearen could not discern, a large gate was cranked open, causing dull, red light to spill into this proverbial den of lions. The combatants were herded out onto the killing-floor, which was a large square fill with loamy soil and intermittent drainage grates. Offal from countless previous shows was littered and mixed into the damp dust, which would have surely been an overwhelmingly strong stench, had Tearen possessed any sense of smell.

Thousands of glinting demonic eyes winked in the dark stands that rose in a high sphere around the arena floor, with some of the demon spectators apparently hanging upside-down from the ceiling itself. The dull red light came from what Tearen assumed to be a ball of red, glowing blood that hovered ominously above the arena floor. The thronging crowds, ravenous for a spectacle of carnage, belted forth a cacophany of bloodlust, superceded only by the reverberating tones of an unseen supervisor, whose bestial voice roared out loudly in seemingly every direction.

"Welcome to The Tourney of Blood Letting!" it shouted, eliciting another wave of hoots and roars from the audience. Tearen attempted to keep his awareness open as the competitors circled each other inside of the arena, waiting for permission to tear one another's throats out. Had Tearen desired to be smart about this, he simply would have turned incorporeal and waited for a majority of the fiends to slay eachother before emerging to finish the fight. But this wasn't just about playing smart; this was about making a name for himself in the Underverse. These demons, so eager to see a litany of excessive violence, may have been single-minded, but that did not make them stupid. To survive in an environment such as this required a minimum level of savvy and ruthlessness that was long-forgotten in lands such as Coruscant or Camelot. Had Tearen still had the mind of an Enigma, he would have likely found the entire situation extremely pleasing to his sensibilities. He was shaken from his thoughts as the announcer continued.

"The Rules are simple! The last one standing is the victor! Prepare yourselves..." the growling voice boomed.

For blood? Tearen thought wryly to himself.

"FOR BLOOOOOOODD!"

At the screeching of this token command, the glowing red orb of blood overhead immediately burst into a spray of thick, hot effluence, splattering all of the contestants in shining crimson. Tearen was immediately knocked off of his feet as an immense claw of some kind swiped at him from the right. Tearen looked up just in time to see what appeared to be a vaguely humanoid, swirling mass of slime twisting in his direction. Its left arm bore three extremely oversized talons, that would have surely impaled Tearen's body to the ground had he not raised a hyperbolic shield right before the follow-up attack hit home. The second Tearen's shield dissipated, a heavy body fell on top of him, breathing its last breath, forcing him to phase through the heavy corpse. The mass of twisting slime was on top of Tearen in an instant, its acidic form engulfing the shadow in a single suffocating lunge. Tearen's eyes widened as the pain bore its way into his stalwart concentration, but refused to give in so quickly. A glimmer within the psychic medium showed him that this sopping abomination did indeed have a centralized brain of sorts, housed within a skinless, faceless lizard skull atop its glistening mass.

Charging power into a single digit on his right hand, Tearen sent a blast of clear, bright light lancing right through the ooze's brain casing, illuminating the entire battlefield in strobing brilliance for a bare instant. Whatever conscience had been holding the stinging slime together was instantly extinguished, causing the slime to fall away from Tearen's body like so much harmless water. The bone components of the monster remained, however, and it was these six foot long implements of death that Tearen telekinetically sent hurtling into the swirling red darkness all around him. The screams of the battle reached an enthralled fever pitch, and Tearen was once again nearly knocked off of his feet as a dueling pair of monstrous hulks wrestled their way towards him. The shadow's eyes flared white, and a gravity well opened up beneath them, pinning them to the spot, which gave a nearby pair of lizard-like humanoids a chance to turn their flamethrowers on the demonic brutes. Their teeth glistened in the light of the searing flame, and Tearen watched, unaware that he had been targeted by another, more subtle combatant.

A sudden clambering, a pinching of tiny claws raced up Tearen's back as something metallic and many-legged climbed up his black body. Tearen whipped around instinctively to try and find the source of the sensation, only to feel what seemed to be a razor sharp needle of some kind begin to try and probe at the base of Tearen's skull. Trying his best to avoid panic, Tearen sent a blast of force in all directions, knocking the burning hellion lizards to their feet, but the creature on Tearen's back clung tightly onto his body. All at once, the thing's piercing needle finally broke through Tearen's stony skin.

A series of images oozed through his mind's eye as whatever had attached itself to him began to try and take control of Tearen's body. Glistening , ruby eyes, ratcheting gears, and swirling darkness. Tearen lurched and thrashed, fully gripping the spikey monstrosity on his body and trying to wrench it free, but his arms could not find the strength. In a battle of pure mental contest, nothing could best his mind, but this creature had completely intersected the connection between Tearen's body and his brain. He watched as his shining black form greedily ran forwards, straight into the path of the renewed flashing of the flamethrowers. Pitiless fire raked across his body for several agonizing moments as the ghastly hissing of the lizard-creatures mocked his pain. Whatever had hijacked his body was trying to get him killed, and having an easy time of it.

What the brain-jacker had not counted on, however, was the fact that Tearen's primary capabilities were not physical in nature. Though his body was not currently under control, his thoughts were. Even amidst the frenzy of fire, blood and screams that surrounded him, Tearen could was able to isolate the mind of the hideous insect that had burrowed its snout into his neck. A primitive mind, but sentient nontheless. Tearen sent the knowledge of a thousand stars funneling into this would-be parasite's pathetic head. The shadow felt as the skittering beast's proboscis slid sickeningly out of his brain. Tearen turned around to look upon the thrashing body of the creature; a brown, metallic looking spider of some kind, with a very unnecessary number of spiked legs. Tearen plucked it out of the blood-soaked dirt with a mental tug and flung it at the face of one of the fire-loving reptiles before they could renew their assault. On a whim, Tearen ducked low to the ground, just as a large, scything talon swept over his bend back, cutting the two burning hellions in twain.

Tearen paused for a moment. Ever since coming to the Omniverse, he hadn't been able to peer forwards into the flow of time. But what had just happened, it was almost a reflexive action based on an intuitive guess at what might happen. Was there something about having a more human mind that gave him access to mental processes that had been lost before? Perhaps what might be called instinct? Tearen had no time to think about it as a spear of shining purple death exploded in the dirt before him. The force of the explosion sent his spindly body skywards, which was fortuitious, really. Seizing control of the flow of time for a moment, Tearen quickly surveyed the battlefield from his aerial position. Tracing the line of destruction back to its source, Tearen saw that the armored ghost he had been so fascinated by earlier was the source of the attack.

More importantly, Tearen noted that another combatant was currently in the process of trying to cleave the apparition's arm off, but being incorporeal as it was, the mundane attack was ineffective. He allowed the flow of time to resume its normal pace, and alighted softly back in the gizzard-strewn mud. Despite the fact that the horned armor lacked any sort of eyes, Tearen knew that they had locked their gazes. No more kid gloves. On a whim, the shadow's Aspects all whirled into existence around him, and without hesitation, each sent a thin blast of destructive light towards the marauding specter. With a slashing movement, the ghost called an orange rift to appear in mid air. The gloaming tear in space seemed to swallow the blasts with little ceremony. Once again, instinct took over as Tearen summoned a hyperbolic shield behind himself. It was not a moment too soon, as another orange rift opened to Tearen's rear, sending his own blasts of fusion back at him. The thin beams of destructive energy were, of course, deflected in all directions, no doubt killing more than a few of the remaining combatants.

Tearen and the armored ghost circled around one another, now that there was space opening on the battlefield. A few remaining creatures were finishing their fights on the outskirts of the arena, but as far as Tearen was concerned, this spirit was the only enemy that remained. How then, to injure an enemy that was both already dead, and immune to physical damage?

I would have your name, ghost. Tearen asked, watching the movements of his opponent's hands carefully. Unlike himself, it was clear that somatic components were crucial to the manifestation of its abilities. An echoing, somber voice came in reply.

"I am Shadow Moon, the Cursed Shade." it whispered, pressing a gauntlet against its breastplate. "There was talk that a Prime was among these bloodthirsty souls. Could it be you, I wonder?" the ghost asked, raising a gauntlet towards Tearen with an accusing, pointed finger. Tearen smirked inwardly. Apparently this Shadow Moon had gotten the impression that Tearen had wanted to have a conversation in the middle of a gladiatorial death match. The truth was far from that, however. What Tearen had been after was some sort of indicator of whether or not the ghost considered the armor to be a part of itself or not. Had this been a normal, physical opponent, such details as pressing a hand against one's chest would have been useless, but when it came to ghosts and spirits, psychology was everything.

The sparse armor that the ghost 'wore' left wide open gaps where its smokey, purple essence swirled and twisted. Normally someone would see these areas as weak spots, but in reality, those were where Shadow Moon's strongest defenses lay. Tearen could not be certain, but he was guessing that a direct attack against the armor itself would be the quickest way to dispatch this seemingly unkillable foe. On a whim, Tearen sent his Aspects to swarm around Shadow Moon, the glistening tetrahedrons orbiting in erratic paths and patterns. A full frontal attack was obviously futile, so at the behest of a mental command, the Aspects began to ripple fire their fusion beams at the floating sections of haunted armor.

Ornate baubles and gildings were seared and damaged, but individual blasts from the Aspects weren't sufficient to bore through solid metal like this. Tearen underestimated the ghost, however, as Shadow Moon seemed unfazed by the attempt to distract it from the warp burst that Tearen suddenly attempted to manifest inside the armor itself. The quick-thinking ghost quickly drifted to the right before summoning a surge of fire around its hazy body. The flash of intense orange incinerated Tearen's aspects instantly, and even Tearen's instincts couldn't foresee the ghost's sudden sprint towards him. The shadow was taken aback by the apparent solidity of the blazing sphere, and had to catch itself in mid-air before surging right back towards the spirit.

Now it was Shadow Moon's turn to be surprised as Tearen took full hold of the ghost's breastplate, using a sharp acceleration of time to propel him faster than the spirit could react. The shadow's eyes scrunched in seething anger as he slowly began to press inwards on the chest piece, the seemingly superficial damage caused by the Aspects now causing large, splintering cracks to appear in the frame of the solid metal. The panic in Shadow Moon's mind was palpable, since, try though it might, it could cast no spells to defend itself. Tearen was currently holding on to both of its gauntlets with a telekinetic grasp fueled by rage. Objects. Objects. They were nothing but objects for Tearen to puppet as he pleased. White, pure light began to spill from his eyes as the armor finally began to give out, seams popping as individual rivets fell to the floor of the arena. Shadow Moon's tortured howling filled all of Tearen's senses, fueling his dark reverie. He would be victorious! He would revel in this bloodshed! This was the depth of his humanity!

With a final squeeze, the haunted armor finally gave out, shattering into several large, razor sharp fragments, several of which embedded themselves in Tearen's hands and lower arms. He scarcely registered the pain, however, as he watched the lavender smoke of Shadow Moon's body writhe and dissipate with a shuddering scream. It was almost disappointing really; Tearen had expected all of this to be more of a challenge. Looking up, Tearen scanned the arena for any remaining combatants. He spotted a dueling pair of warriors in one of the far corners of the killing floor, their blood-spattered bodies highlighted by the flickering red ichor. With all the ceremony of stepping on a cockroach, Tearen snapped their necks from fifty yards away in a succession of two distant cracks.

Everything was eerily silent.

[Tearen Wover]

After a prolonged silence, underscored by the hushed whispering of a thousand-strong infernal host, the over-eager announcer that had started this whole episode let out a loud growl.

"Victory goes to the newcomer; the Slave of Grooota!"

A cascade of booing and hissing fell across Tearen like a wave of black wasps, grating and aggressive. He had the feeling that this sort of reception to victory was far from uncommon. These dogs of Diablo had come to see weaklings crushed under the heels of their peers, not to see a scrawny slave such as himself claw their way to the top of the pile. The raucous outrage began to ebb, and the ringmaster of this carnal circus let his mighty voice shake the theatre once again.

"Your prize...is a most succulent DEATH." he spat, following the condemnation up with a brutish roar for good measure. Tearen blinked, nonplussed. Clearly news hadn't spread that he was a Prime; otherwise they would know better than to threaten him with such inconveniences. The crowd began to chant something that Tearen couldn't quite make out at first, but as they fell into their collective rhythm, the repeated invocation became clear.

"RI-PPER! RI-PPER! RI-PPER!" they screeched, their frenzied cries filling the black and red air. The blood-slick stone of the Colosseum began to shake in intermittent rumbles, heralding the approach of a creature that caught even the seasoned experience of the ex-enigma off guard. The horror was being unleashed from a slowly rising stone wall, which ground heavily from its mooring in the muck ridden substrate. Like a jungle cat, it slunk out from its enclosure. The only noise it made the heavy thumps of its footfalls and the occasional cracking of ancient, arthritic joints. Though its form was scarcely decipherable in the wan, crimson light, Tearen could discern that its entire, skinless body was of a blackened and purple hue. What may have started as an immense humanoid form had either grown or had six more glistening, clawed arms grafted onto its hulking muscular corpus. An elongated spine seemed to extend out from its back at an improper angle, forming what could arguably be called a tail. Two unshod, immense human feet tipped the ends of a pair spindly legs. Tearen could not begin to fathom the face of the creature, for it was covered by a bone-white mask with seven circles carved out of the jawless facade.

"RI-PPER! RI-PPER! RI-PPER!" the crowd continued, acting as the voice for the abomination. All at once, the towering amalgamation of emaciated muscle lunged towards Tearen with great loping strides. Size be damned, it was all he could do to dive out of the way of the monstrosity before its razor talons cleaved great gashes out of the bloody loam where Tearen had just been standing. Alas, it was for naught, because whatever preternatural instincts drove this 'Ripper', one of its superfluous arms snatched the would-be gladiator as he tried to roll out of the dodge.

Though he squirmed, Tearen could not free himself of the beast's iron grip, and shuddered as he felt another cold, giant hand close around his upper half. With relish, the Ripper started to squeeze, twist and pull the ex-enigma in twain. Tearen's gleaming green eyes flared as the pain wracked his constricted body. Acting on instinct, Tearen focused through the agony and condensed his body into the diminutive form of a crow. Though deadly, the fumbling giant was momentarily caught off guard, allowing Tearen's feathered body to quickly flit away to a safe distance.

The hooting and jeering of the crowd egged him on, however. No, he would not run from this Ripper beast. He would not give these meaningless figments of hatred the satisfaction of either his death or retreat. Still, there was the matter of how to assault the monster. Clearly, getting within its reach was a terrible idea. Tearen adroitly shifted back into the shape of a black, stone hewn humanoid and immediately focused his power into the tip of a finger, pointing it directly at the approaching Ripper's mask. A flash of brilliant light briefly illuminated the entire arena as a thread of destruction wove a straight path through the Ripper's skull.

No reaction. The monstrosity continued its noiseless charge inhindered by neither pain nor injury. With a surge of adrenaline, Tearen dashed straight at the Ripper, sliding beneath its rampaging body. The tactic confused the single-minded beast for the span of one frantic breath, but all to soon, its whipping spinal tail had slapped Tearen across the span of the arena floor like a matchstick. He took only a moment to shake off the pain before pushing off of the stone wall with all of his might, narrowly dodging yet another sudden death as the beast careened headlong into the solid black encirclement.

Clearly, catastrophic structural damage was the only way to obtain victory over the Ripper, but Tearen was not sure he had any sort of firepower that could inflict such direct injury against a foe. Aside from the fission-ray he had already tried, there was not much else he had to offer.

Well, that wasn't true.

He may not have been a Godmind any more, but that didn't mean he no longer possessed a brain capable of distorting even the darkened reality of the Underverse. He could certainly figure out a way to defeat this beast, but first, some tests were in order. With a quick, two-step windup, Tearen launched himself into the black air above the killing floor, watching as the Ripper's black eyes followed him. With a loud crack, the beast hunkered down for a moment before launching itself high into the air, single arm stretched outwards to try and grip the prey it so desperately craved. Right at the zenith of its great leap, Tearen took the liberty of slowing the Ripper's temporal progression to the point of near freezing. With the monster's perception momentarily halted, the ex-enigma quickly floated down beneath the Ripper before releasing the monster from its prison in time.

The creature's confusion was evident as it began to thrash around madly in mid-air, searching desperately for its target. By the time it began to descend, Tearen was already on the ground, staring up at it. The Ripper reached out with its greedy arms again, ready for the kill. A low rumbling pervaded the arena as the ex-enigma raised a hyperbolic shield of space around itself, so that when the Ripper tried to grasp the seemingly hapless prey, its hand 'slipped' on the distorted fabric of space and cracked loudly into the ground next to Tearen.

Again, the Ripper made no noise of its own, but the shrieks and cries of denial from the infernal crowd served as the ghastly monster's voice as the beast reared in pain. It clutched at its now thoroughly broken forearm; a moment of imbalance that Tearen capitalized on by causing space to lens inwards next to the Ripper's right hip. The ensuing, dull explosion sent mounds of blood-soaked mud flying in all directions as the beast toppled onto its back like a stricken crab. A satisfying blow, but Tearen could tell that this fight was far from finished. After all, the Ripper still had seven perfectly serviceable arms with which to deliver swift death to the impudent whelp that was Tearen Wover...

[Tearen Wover]

Tearen watched the Ripper clamber silently back to its feet, its remaining arms spreading wide in anticipation of brewing rage. Despite the creature's fleeting consciousness, he could still make out the flickering of a mind steeped in potent anger. This was good. Tearen could use that anger to his advantage. The Ripper had already proven to be single minded in its pursuit of prey, but with the lust for vindication clouding its mind, it would be easier to trick the beast into more costly mistakes.

Standing on spry, bouncing toes, Tearen waited for the Ripper to regain its composure. His viridian eyes gleamed keenly in the heavy darkness; a defiant speck of green among a wash of luminescent red putrescence. With a new surge of vigor, the Ripper rushed forwards again, bestial and undeniable. Then, in a maneuver of fiendish ingenuity, the multi-limbed marauder tore its broken appendage free from a dry, rubbery socket and flung the entire arm at Tearen. To say that the ex-enigma was caught off guard was more than an understatement. Everything went black as the solid mass of bony flesh bashed him into the wall once more. This time, there came a sharp chunking sound as the talons from the discarded arm embedded themselves in the wall behind him. In one fell swoop, the Ripper had pinned Tearen to the wall, and was closing fast. A fusillade of giant, grasping hands all surged forwards to rip Tearen asunder, and just one of them would be sufficient to end his winning streak in the Underverse.

There was nothing for it. Tearen reached deep into his mental core and summoned the power that his old Master had imbued within him. The ex-enigma threw his head back in a piercing telepathic wail that elicited a startled shower of screams from the entire arena. Even the Ripper had to pause for a moment, staggering backwards as the overpowering shriek drowned out its senses. This was followed by a sharp blast of destructive telekinetic power, blasting the entombing limb away and sending the Ripper reeling. A blind swipe from the beast caught Tearen smartly on his left flank, and he could feel the cold ebb of life as a gout of black blood was torn from his body.

His vision blurred and wavered as he writhed in the black muck, trying to block out the pain. Distantly, he could feel the heavy thumps as the Ripper closed the distance between them. He needed time, but the strength to slow the temporal river was beyond his reach in this weakened state. With a last gasp of desperation, Tearen summoned as many Aspects as he could, a dozen of the shimmering black prisms winking into existence above his body. Immediately they set about swarming around the Ripper like a cloud of artisinal flies, blasting it with lances of destructive light. The feckless giant shuddered and swiped wildly as the needle thin rays poked its otherwise unassailable body with a hundred holes.

In the confusion, Tearen staggered to his feet and weakly trod towards the large stone gate that hung above the pen where the Ripper had been kept. The sea of demonic patrons booed and hissed at the perceived escape, but in reality, Tearen was ensuring they would have their dose of satisfying carnage. With a mental whisper, Tearen called the Aspects away from their assault of the Ripper, gathering them by his side as he stood beneath the obsidian threshold. Instantly the Ripper was upon him, no longer distracted by a futile but enraging attack. Tearen stood firm as all seven of the Rippers hands closed around him, their crushing claminess threatening to wring free his remaining life. Gazing through the eyes of his Aspects, Tearen targeted the locking pins keeping the gate aloft, and had his faithful servants fire searing blasts of fusion at the mechanism.

With a great crashing thud, the immensely heavy gate came crashing back into its mooring. It was all Tearen could do to render his body into a spectral form, allowing the solid matter to pin and crush the Ripper's beloved hands into oblivion. With calm strides, Tearen walked forth from inside the smothering darkness of the stone gate, looking up at the Ripper's masked face as it thrashed madly. The shade of Nealaphh glanced over towards the center of the arena floor, where the Ripper's discarded arm lay. Tugging on it with his telekinetic strength, Tearen carefully guided the newly animated limb through the air over to the Ripper. With dextrous skill, he willed the arm to snatch the exposed vertebrae of the Ripper's neck. The honed, sharpened talons of the Ripper's own arm cutting through its undead flesh with grim efficiency.

The demonic chorus of spectators reached a new fever pitch as Tearen slowly, decadently tore the Ripper's spinal column away. Yes...he had ripped the Ripper. The loathsome monster collapsed in an unceremonious heap at Tearen's feet. For good measure, the ex-enigma stalked forwards and callously snatched the Ripper's mask off of its face, holding the bone-bleached souvenir high above his head. A refrain of damnation and hatred rained down on the newcomer, and Tearen reveled in the hatred. For within their hatred lied fear. Here was proof positive that Tearen was stronger than any of them. Satisfied with his victory, the shadow of Nealaphh slowly sat down on the Colosseum floor and blacked out.

[Tearen Wover]

When Tearen came to, the first thing that came into his head was a loud, steady thumping noise. No...the Ripper couldn't still be alive could it? Slowly his vision flickered in and out, and the world began to come into focus. He was currently laying, of all things, on what could passably be called a bed in what appeared to be a bunk room of some kind. Twisted and half-rusted medical implements lay on a table nearby, and as Tearen ran a hand over his smooth black chest, he felt long straps of filthy fabric sopping up his black metallic blood. Cringing, Tearen propped himself up on his right elbow and blinked, trying to get a better sense of where he was.

No one else was currently in this sleeping quarters, but Tearen could feel an abundance of mental activity nearby. The muted thumping appeared to be music of some of a rather electronic nature. It was odd, though. Tearen had been certain that his wounds would be fatal under the circumstances he had been in. Yet as he gingerly prodded the skin beneath the sodden bandages, the damage the Ripper had wrought on him was nearly unnoticeable. Had some demonic practitioner of medicine used dark healing magics of some kind? It didn't seem likely, given the treatment he'd received so far. It was, however, a curiosity for another time. For now, Tearen eased himself out of bed and slowly stepped towards a doorway at the far end of the bunk-lined room.

As Tearen pried open the door, the first thing that assaulted him was and abundance of light and noise. Strobing patterns of luminescence and flashing patterns on the wall chuffed and swirled in time with the overbearing cannon-fire that was apparently club music. Tearen was standing at a small balcony ringed by a wrought-iron railing. A staircase descended down to the main floor on his left, giving him access to the larger facility which seemed to be roughly the size of a small chapel. Black metal cages with exotic dancers hung from the ceiling, and ensconced torches blazed a wild red, turning the entire place into a veritable oven.

A few of the dancers and revelers in the large hall shot him looks as he walked past; some impressed, some disgusted. A passive sense of dérive guided him towards what appeared to be a VIP section of the demonic bar. It was a small, semi-circular dias which sat elevated a few steps above the floor, surrounded by gilded banisters and what appeared to be superheated spikes. On a large plinth in the middle of this VIP section, a lone dancer was writhing their way around on a large metal pole. The shameless gyrations and physical vulgarities of the dance may have been somewhat alluring to Tearen if it hadn't been for the fact that the dancer's head was missing.

Still, never one to shy away from the bizarre, Tearen stepped up onto the platform, unhindered by the brusque looking demon bouncers who stood astride the steps leading up to the platform. Sitting around the dancer's plinth were a few well-dressed demons, some more infernal looking than others, who all raised a glass to the approaching warrior. Tearen took special note of one in particular, who had the same pattern that Grooota had etched on his back carved into his own forehead. This demon, a tad on the corpulent side, beckoned Tearen to sit next to him.

"Hail the conquering hero." the demon said, passing a glass of some foul looking black ichor to the ex-enigma. Tearen took the glass out of appreciation, but simply placed it on the table next to him. This demon of Grooota appeared, for the most part, like a bald, red-skinned human with black horns; a sort of quintessential devilish figure. The differences emerged in what appeared to be a pair of electronic eyes and an apparently mechanized neck, constantly hissing and clicking as its gyros swiveled.

And you are...? Tearen asked in a droll tone. The cyborg demon chuckled.

"Just another one of Grooota's eyes and ears beyond the city limits. Ilthiax is my name. I don't believe Grooota ever got yours." the demonic charmer said, a pleasantly calm smile plastered on his face. Tearen glanced around at the other apparent bigshots in the VIP section. They all sat, attention rapt, looking at the pair that served Grooota, but made no comment.

My name is... Tearen started. He hesitated, wondering if it would be more to his benefit to use the name of his Enigma identity. It was a larger conundrum than he had first anticipated. On one hand, he wanted to move past that phase in his life, and using his first name here would allow him to establish a new identity both here and in the proper Omniverse. On the other hand, the name Nealaphh certainly would have at least a little weight, even in this blasted hellscape. Actually...the latter thought was actually an assumption.

...Tearen.

"Tearen?" Ilthiax asked with what seemed to be an unnecessary amount of enthusiasm. "Quite the unique name. I wonder what your story was before you were brought to the Omniverse? Ah yes, Grooota told me that you were a Prime. I suppose that's far beyond questioning at this point." the smug demon continued, taking a decadent sip of the black slop filling his glass.

Where are the other two demons from Grooota? Usshot and Klicka?

"Ah, those two. Don't worry about them, they're far beneath our notice at this point." Ilthiax crooned. Tearen noted that this demon was already making himself an apparent advocate.

I presume you're going to be an agent of some kind for my future death matches. Tearen said, keeping his tone level. Ilthiax barked out a sharp, electronic sounding laugh and jabbed a thumb in Tearen's direction.

"This one! He's a sharp one! Vashuna will have to watch his step, right?" Ilthiax said, beaming at the other demon VIPs assembled. A few of them chuckled lowly. Tearen earmarked the name Vashuna for later research. Ilthiax finished his current glass and turned it upside down on the table between himself and the Shadow. "Yes indeed. Grooota and I are both excited to be working with such a fine talent, I must say. These other gentle-souls are equally as invested in our success." Ilthiax said, draping one heavy metal arm around Tearen's shoulder while gesturing at the seated demons with the other.

I don't suppose I'll be benefiting from any of this.

Ilthiax took this opportunity to look sincerely wounded, and ran a metal-clawed finger from his right eye down his cheek.

"Aw now, don't say that. Top-billing gladiators are treated like their own kind of royalty! All you have to do is keep on not dying! It's really very simple for everyone."

Tearen refrained from pointing out all the ways in which battles to the death were anything but simple, but decided to humor Ilthiax's sleezeball act for the time being.

I'm surprised Grooota is so invested in this. It doesn't seem to me that he is wanting for any material gain.

"Astute once again, my dear Tearen. No, what Grooota stands to gain is respect and prestige. After all, any good gladiator has someone that they represent! Your victories are Grooota's, and that just gives him one more reason to gloat to the likes of Jones, or Immortan or Belial or whoever you please." Ilthiax said, twisting his hand around in the air, as if dismissing the notion that any of those names were truly important. Tearen squinted hard at the cyborg for a moment. It was difficult to take this demon seriously, but Tearen had to trust that he was better off cooperating with someone more experienced with the Underverse's gladiatorial rings than himself. Evidently, however, Tearen's body was still working on recovering from the battle against the Ripper, and the light and heat of this raunchy club were beginning to wear him down. Best to just get to the point.

Very well then. Where do I fight next?

"I am just so fucking glad you asked." Ilthiax said, clapping his taloned hands together. When he pulled them apart, a web of sickly green lines showed crude map of what Tearen presumed to be the central Underverse. Their current location was marked by Groota's insignia, and a path showing the way to the next arena wove along the green light-webbing. From the looks of it, it would be another small, out of the way venue much like this one had been. Tearen wondered why they didn't send him somewhere more widely publicized, seeing as they were apparently so enamored with his abilities. Ilthiax seemed to pick up on this confusion when he continued with,

"Don't worry, if your opponent turns out to be a nobody, we'll send you somewhere else. Can't have you start building a legend on week foundations now can we?" Ilthiax asked, offering Tearen an uncomfortably friendly grin. Even the demon's teeth were metallic and presumably had several extraneous functions to match. At this point, all Tearen really wanted was to get back to napping.

I'll depart for this other town...Azgradurg...as soon as I have made a more stable recovery. Tearen said, standing up slowly. Ilthiax and the others stood up with him and smiled as he floated directly up into the air, back towards the bunk room. The Shadow had been prepared for endless suffering and discomfort upon coming to the Underverse. Finding these level of accommodations and services was continuing to be a stark surprise...though Tearen could hazard a guess that there were just as many places in the Underverse that were completely wild and untamed. He would have to make a point of visiting these more dangerous climes, at some point. For now, it was time to lay down and gather his thoughts once more...

[Tearen Wover]

Upon starting their travels and leaving the black sands of the lands around Grooota behind, Tearen was starting to get a better appreciation for just how varied and deadly the landscape of the Underverse was. Far from the fire and brimstone hell of certain tales, the Underverse was more akin to some sort of twisted steppeland. Jagged, imposing shafts of dark stone defiled the horizon with their impossible bulk, and the terrain that stretched before them was choked with long-dead foliage and moldering fields of ancient carnage.

That wasn't to say that there were no volcanoes at all; certainly not. In fact the banded, scarred appearance of the ground made it seem as if the entire span of the central hellscape was the freshly cooled remains of some volcanic cataclysm. Unlike the magma lakes of the Ashen Steppes, which attracted greedy prospectors and lava farmers, the molten pots of stone that speckled this land were infested with large blocks of prisons, dumping grounds, and torture chambers. Tearen could always tell when they were approaching one such feature when the screams started to drift along the constant, bitter wind.

Ilthiax and Tearen rode on a pair of identical Weirdlings; evidently one of the products of Grooota that actually performed to spec. The beasts were akin to immense earwigs, but instead of a hard exoskeleton, their flesh was pale and pulpy. Triangular hoods enclosed their faces, and their limbs seemed to be infused with bionic hydraulics to supplement their lifting capacity.

After what seemed like a few days of travel, Ilthiax and Tearen arrived at their next venue. Azgradurg wasn't much different from the previous city that Tearen had fought in, save for the fact that it was much larger and had an actual name. The sprawling demonic slum town was nestled inside the yawning span of an immense skull that was half buried in the grey, burned out stone of the central hellscape. At Ilthiax's behest, Tearen had summoned a simple set of robes to cover his weak-looking body. The larger demon claimed it was simply for Tearen's own benefit. The colosseums were all about spectacle and appearance, after all. Despite his considerable actual strength, a frail appearance would make it difficult for Tearen to make headway in the tangled politics of the Underverse fighting rings. Riding their arthropod weirdlings into the crumbling shanty-town, Ilthiax and Tearen discussed the nature of the upcoming event.

"Now, I don't want you to get the wrong idea. This next event is still considered a small-time gig. Come out on top in this tourney though, and we'll have a shot at getting you into some real serious matches." Ilthiax said, looking up and down the street for a place to stow their mounts. Tearen kept his emerald gaze straight ahead, peering out from the deeply obfuscating folds of the sack-cloth hood that covered his head. With the immense skull blocking out the admittedly wan light of the Underverse sky, the inner streets of Azgradurg were almost pitch dark. A few stalwart torches marked the intersections of the winding streets, but aside from that, Tearen had to rely on his other keen senses. Ilthiax continued his lecture.

"Things here are a little bit more structured than the all-out brawl we just came from. There will be a qualifying round to get you into the brackets, and then you'll be facing off directly against other small-time gladiators. They're just as desperate to make a name for themselves as you, so keep your wits about you on and off the killing floor." Ilthiax droned. Tearen simply offered a small nod. Internally he chaffed against the tacit implication that he was at all interested in becoming a renowned gladiator within the Underverse, but as with everything else so far, he decided to play along.

How many other contenders are there? Tearen asked softly as they rounded the corner into the arena district. Unlike the ramshackle bowl that the previous fight had taken place in, it appeared as though this structure was purposely built to serve as a venue for bloodsports. Great, ragged banners flapped from the eaves of the monolithic structures, and the howls of distant beasts punctuated the otherwise soft drone of city life. The pair dismounted before Ilthiax answered Tearen's question.

"Well, that entirely depends on how many survive the qualifying round. Usually we can predict anywhere from four to six survivors out of twenty or so. Though, I hear that the qualifying matches this season are going to be particularly...trying." Ilthiax said, guiding their weirdlings over to the dank stables. Bizarre beasts of burden crowded the humid barn room, ranging from immense wolves with skinless faces to what appeared to simply be mounds of flesh with legs haphazardly grafted on. Tearen was growing tired of Ilthiax's tendency to for vague overtones. It was bad enough that he was looked as chattel for the entertainment of others, but then for his handler to try and patronize him with softened language was simply tiresome.

You should consider being more direct with me, Ilthiax. Remember, I follow this path because I choose to. There's scarcely anything you or Grooota could do to force me to stay. These attempts at pacifying the peril I place myself in chafe my patience. Tearen said in a sharp, hissing tone. Ilthiax's face screwed into a barely contained fit of rage. It was the first time that Tearen had really shown any sort of push-back against his handler. With an angered snarl, Ilthiax pulled what appeared to be a small, black pendant from his coat pocket and squeezed it firmly. Agony, sharp and all-consuming immediately forced Tearen to crumple to the ground. His back felt as if it was on fire; even more so than when Grooota's insignia had been laser etched into his flesh. He should have known there was more to this marking than a simple branding. Still, Tearen refused to be cowed by such a trivial thing as simple pain. Green eyes gleaming wide, Tearen turned his head to look Ilthiax in the eyes. The fat, cyborg demon held a look of delighted sadism as their eyes met. But then, in a flash of pure white brilliance, Tearen sent a burst of overwhelming thoughts funneling into the greedy miser's brain.

Ilthiax dropped the pendant to the ground and staggered back against the door to a stall, bellowing pathetically. With some effort, Tearen forced himself to his feet, despite the echoing pain that ricocheted up and down his back. Tearen grabbed Ilthiax fully by the neck and slammed it hard into the wall behind them. Gagging, Ilthiax looked down at Tearen with all the fear of a cornered rat.

I may be a veritable nobody in the grand hierarchy of the Underverse, but do not mistake me for some mewling whelp, Ilthiax. I am like no being you have ever encountered before, and I cannot be controlled by simple gimmicks. Remember this, and you may still be of use to me. Tearen spat, lifting the black pendant to their eye level with his mind. He let it hover before Ilthiax's face for a moment before shattering the abyssal trinket with an effortless thought. Another moment passed before the Shadow released the immense cyborg and began stalking off into the false night of Azgradurg.

"Y-you..." Ilthiax choked, leering at Tearen as he strode away, "Where do you think you're going?! Hey!"

See to it that the entrance arrangements are made. Don't fret, Ilthiax. I'll be ready to fight when the time comes. Tearen cooed, before slamming the door behind him with a mental tug. This narrative of indentured servitude to the ruling classes of the Underverse was already becoming tedious to the ex-enigma. Perhaps fear and pain would work on other, more powerless Primes than himself, but the vast powers that he had at his disposal set him far apart from the normal, fleshy stock that came raining in from the Omniverse above.

In time, Tearen would see to it that the entire Underverse learned this lesson. Thoroughly.

[Tearen Wover]

As Tearen stalked down the dark streets of Azgradurg, he tucked his hood low over his obsidian face to avoid drawing undo attention to himself. Granted, having a pair of brightly glowing eyes was not exactly an oddity in the Underverse. Despite this, demons that he seemed to walk past still stared at him with some suspicion. Perhaps it was the fact he was wearing colors other than black, or perhaps it was because he lacked the hunched, almost crippled gait of many of the demons who hobbled around them. Indeed, it seemed as though nearly all of these nameless wretches had some form of disfigurement or another. There were so many questions that swirled around in Tearen's head that he found it hard to focus on where he was going. It wasn't as though he had set out with a specific destination in mind, but the haphazard layout of this infernal city made it hard to keep track of a path he could retrace.

It didn't help that none of the buildings had any sort of signage or identifiers to distinguish them. Each ramshackle structure seemed to be constructed half out of ancient stone and half out of dark, corroded scrap metal that was simply bolted onto the walls and windows. How was this society structured, after all? Were there families living in these dank abodes? Did these demons have jobs they did? As far as Tearen could tell they simply went about their lives scuttling from shadow to shadow, with only the matches in the arena to break the monotony. It was almost as if they had been created as an afterthought; as if some great Prime had summoned the whole of Azgradurg without remembering to give it an actual purpose. Given what he'd seen of Grooota, the Shadow was sure that some Demon Lord or another claimed this city as theirs. Allegedly, certain nefarious Primes had been banished here for a great time, and had risen to heights of distinguishing power. Yet, Tearen had heard no specific mention of them either in the babbling thoughts of the demonic chattel or in the passing talk of Colosseum officiators. It led him to believe that these Prime sergeants may not be as closely associated with Diablo as the rumors of the Omniverse may have suggested.

All at once, Tearen felt a great presence, in and around him. It was heavy and hot, like drowning in a pit of tar. Tearen clutched at his head and staggered up against a crumbling stone wall, bracing himself with a weak hand. Fire and blood consumed this thoughts. Fire and blood pouring from an eye that never blinked, and a mind so preoccupied with destruction, violation and domination it almost overcame Tearen's significant mental barriers. It was all the Prime could do to fend of the oppressive scrutiny, at least saving his most secret and sensitive thoughts from being observed. As for the rest of his mind, well, there was no telling how much this other presence had seen or taken. The blanketing sensation persisted for another few agonizing minutes before gradually receding from his mind.

Tearen, with wobbly movements, rose back to his full height and shook his head slowly, trying to disperse the last tendrils of intrigue that tugged at his ego. It occurred to him that his entire body was heated to the point that gentle wisps of smoke drifted up from his outstretched fingers. Gradually the burning ebbed into the cool blackness of Azgradurg's golgothan night.

What...in all of the Infinities...had that been?

A deep sense of violation still caused Tearen to shudder as he swiftly began trudging back towards the relative brightness of the Colosseum district. His spine was stiff, and despite lacking an oral orifice, it felt as if his whole hypothetical mouth was dry. Steady pacing became a light job, which further progressed into a frantic dash. Tearen couldn't completely rationalize the piercing fear that now enveloped him, save for the fact that he had briefly been reminded by someone what the power of a true deity could do. By the time Tearen broke back into the gloaming torchlight of the arena's gothic bulk, he sank to the cracked and dusty flagstones underfoot. It felt as if his body craved oxygen, but he had no means to take it in. A moment of desperation seized the Shadow, and in the span of a few seconds, had summoned a shard of barely shaped metal into his smooth hand. Grabbing hold of the fractured region on his face, Tearen proceeded to chisel and weave the razor into his flesh.

His memories of that moment before he had banished himself flooded his mind's eye. He had managed to tear open some form of mouth once before, why not do it again? Air! He needed air! Thick ropes of sticky black blood oozed from the fresh wound, but Tearen continued, unimpeded by the pain. Before long, the wound in his face was deep enough that he was able to grip both of his hands inside the improvised orifice and tear it open. In all the insanity of the Omniverse, there was apparently a fully functioning mouth and jaw inside of his face. Had it been there this whole time? Tearen swallowed great lung-fulls of air (did he have lungs now too?), sputtering intermittently, spitting shards of his own glassy black skin out of his mouth. There Tearen knelt in a slick pool of his own blood and tilted his head back, simply focusing on the sensation of breathing. Such a simple function, and yet for some reason it dominated all memories of sensation that had filled him when he was at the peak of his power.

Did he have a voice too?

Wheezing, Tearen ventured a small note, trying to remember what it felt like to speak. Nothing came but adroit chuffing and gasping. Was there some aspect he was forgetting? He forced more air out through this new mouth, but again, no humming resonance came from within his neck. Feeling a sense of defeat, for whatever reason, Tearen let out a sigh and attempted to gather his sensibilities. These things should be of no concern to him. Out of all the problems he was currently presented with, a lack of a voice box hardly managed to make a rank. As his mind became more settled, and the fear and desperation ceded, the Shadow became more aware of the minds around him. Feeling vulnerable, the ex-enigma rocketed upright from his kneeling position and soared into the ebon sky overhead. There, he took his place among the grotesque gargoyles that leered down on Azgradurg, sitting on a cold ledge.

Maybe this wasn't going to be as easy as he had anticipated.

[Tearen Wover]

The sound of splashing water ricocheted lightly around the confines of the tiny bathroom. Tearen knelt at the edge of the tub, the sleeves of his Officer's jacket rolled up to the elbows. His hair had been loosened from the tight, braided ponytail that was required for public ceremonies for the Legion. Now it simply fell in long, wavy sheets around his face as he smiled down at the slippery toddler smacking her hands into the foamy bathwater.

Cradling her chin gently, Tearen let a cascade of warm water wash down her scalp, taking a sluice of foaming bubbles with it. The white soapy froth contrasted starkly against the deep, deep brown color of the child's skin (though she too had shock white hair like her father). As he went to fill the small rinsing basin from the spigot once more, the giggling child gleefully grabbed hold of the shampoo bottle that Tearen thought had been out of reach. With a delighted shriek, she hugged the bottle to her bare chest and grinned mischievously up at Tearen, knowing she had done wrong.

"No no, you know better." the pilot said gently, prying the shampoo away from her slippery grasp. The young girl maintained her adorable grin, and folded her arms down into her lap with another happy shout. It was a piercing noise, especially considering the cramped environs, but the joy within the keening brought solace to Tearen nonetheless.

The sound of the bathroom door opening caused Tearen to turn his head briefly, looking up at his wife as she walked in. Tearen squinted against the bright lights overhead; they made it hard to make out the exact details of her face.

"How's it going?" she asked, her voice distant. Tearen turned back with the bathtub with a smile, only to blink and recoil in shock. The child was gone.

"W...Where's...?" Tearen stuttered incoherently. The bath seemed to be deepening, stretching away from him as if it were an infinitely deep well, leading only to pitch blackness. Where was she? The girl. His daughter. Her name was...

"Where's who?" came the voice from behind him. Tearen shook his head and plunged an arm into the depths of the bathtub, flight jacket and all, swishing it around in desperation, searching for the girl. What was her name?

"You know who. The...our..." Tearen turned back to look at his wife, but she was gone. Only the blinding white lights of the bathroom greeted him, causing him to shield his eyes. This didn't make sense. He needed to find her. Them. Tearen removed his jacket and plunged deep into the blackened depths of the bathtub, but rather than swimming down through the water, he found himself in free fall, tumbling through the air uncontrolled. Too shocked to shout, Tearen tried to assess which way was up and flexed his core muscles, hoping to right himself in the air...


Tearen sat up with a lurch, his voiceless mouth taking in a hissing gasp of air. Still disoriented within the blackness, Tearen clawed aimlessly around him, and felt the cool stone beneath his body. Sucking in some more sharp breaths. Sensibility flooded in as disorientation left, allowing Tearen to slow his breathing as he looked around from his vantage on top of the Colosseum. A dream. How pedestrian. A long-forgotten physical impulse compelled Tearen to try and yawn, but the Prime winced as sharp pains rippled across his mouth. Running a smooth finger across the cracked orifice, Tearen found that it had been busy sealing itself shut while he had slept. An astonishing rate of healing...perhaps that was what had allowed him to recover from the fight with the Ripper so quickly. There was nothing for it; he was going to have to keep trimming at the flesh around his mouth to keep it open. At least this time the tissue was far more pliant and thin, though that didn't reduce the pain at all.

After a few minutes, he was finished with the grisly chore. Standing tall, Tearen looked down at the square of Azgradurg, far below. Quite a crowd now thronged there, the echoing murmur of their collective anticipation wafting up to his perch like a perfumed smoke. Perhaps it was best to find Ilthiax now...hopefully he hadn't slept through the qualifying rounds. In the interest of discretion, Tearen shifted his form into that of a mundane crow and glided down towards the ground. His black feathers concealed him perfectly against the obsidian vault overhead, and with deft wingbeats, the crow fluttered into the main entrance.

Picking Ilthiax's corpulent mind out amid the morass of demonic rabble was not entirely difficult. The cyborg demon's thoughts raged and stormed around the thoughts of Grooota, Tearen, and the money to be gained. It was odd, as Tearen thought on it. Ilthiax had told Tearen that Grooota's primary motivation in this was a gain of prestige. Was Ilthiax putting himself in a position of monetary gain somehow? Tearen tucked the mental flag away for later use as he alighted on the ground right behind the corpulent cyborg. Ilthiax was arguing with what appeared to be a Colosseum official who stood behind a small barred window.

"Look you fat simpleton. We're far past the scheduled start to the qualifying rounds. Your fighter isn't here, so unless you plan on entering yourself, get the fuck out of my sight." the wiry imp said, drumming clawed talons on the granite countertop. Ilthix let out a low, mechanical growl and ran a hand back over his horned head. Even as he did this, a small puff of wind caused him to wheel around on the spot, only to be met with Tearen's seething green eyes, gleaming out from under a burlap hood.

"Where in all that is Unholy have you fucking been?!" Ilthiax shouted, sizzling spittle spattering against the lapels of Tearen's simple tunic. The Shadow narrowed its eyes.

"I went for a walk."

"A..."

Ilthiax's eyes bulged as he grabbed his forehead with both hands, pulling at hair that was no longer there.

"...WALK?!"

Tearen nodded.

"You...USELESS...DO YOU EVEN KN-" Ilthiax paused for a moment, then cocked his head as if Tearen had just grown arms from his ears.

"Since when can you talk?" he hissed. Tearen just blinked slowly.

"This peon won't let me fight?" the Prime asked, gesturing at the Colosseum clerk with a small gesture. Ilthiax's face screwed into a foul expression.

"No thanks to YYOOUU-"

Ilthiax was silenced as Tearen brushed past the overweight cyborg, staring the black, skinny imp-clerk in the eyes.

"Oh, what. What are you gonna do?" the Imp sneered. His confidence only lasted for the length of time it took Tearen to phase through the bars to the official's office. Wide-eyed, the clerk took a few harried steps back, pressing himself into the far, dank wall. Tearen silently turned his gaze from the clerk and looked at the ledger, listing the order in which the combatants were being qualified. Almost all of the names either had an 'X' or a check next to them, but luckily it appeared as though there were a handful of warriors still waiting for their turns. With a delicate touch, Tearen touched his hand to one of the names and closed his eyes, focusing on the ink that the name was etched with.

A rainbow of color flashed and sparked within the cramped officiates hall as Tearen absorbed the Omnillium composing the black pigment, leaving the space blank and fresh. The Shadow pushed the heavy ledger under the opening in the bars to a stunned Ilthiax.

"Write my name there." the Prime whispered. Ilthiax grabbed the pen from the countertop tentatively and glanced at Tearen with a genuinely fearful look.

"What about the imp...?" he blubbered. Again, Tearen said nothing, but turned away from Ilthiax as a pure white light began to spill from his eyes.

Hopefully the ensuing screams weren't audible over the fervor of the spectating crowds.

...

"Our next entry...Tearen Wover!" the announcer said haltingly. The eruption of noise that followed was an affront to Tearen as he tried to maintain his concentration. This arena was much different than the one he had fought in a few days ago. It was well-lit (by Underverse standards), carrion did not litter the battlefield, and there was much, much more room to move around. In addition to that, the floor was tiled instead of being bare dirt. It ultimately did not matter, however. The primary determining factor would be the supposed immense strength of Tearen's opponents. As the din of the crowd's cheers died down, there came a sharp, echoing wail. It was so shrill that Tearen was brought back to the shrieks of the girl from his dream. This, however, was much more animal in nature, much more bloody.

With great loping strides, the monstrous...thing, easily as tall as five men, lurched out into the battlefield. The Beast was misshapen, to say the least. One of its arms scraped along the ground as it dashed forth, covered in long, matted ropes of grey and black hair. It looked muscular in its arms and legs, but its torso was emaciated terribly. It had the face of some kind of amalgamation between a wolf and elk, but the face was peeled back to reveal only raw bone and weeping muscles. No eyes filled its ravening sockets.

There were so, SO many ways that Tearen could dispatch a beast such as this without risking unnecessary harm to himself, but that was not the point of this arena. These demon-folk wanted a show, and for that, it was befitting for him to have a weapon to slay this creature with. Reaching back into his memories, the Shadow called forth an old weapon that had traveled the span of galaxies with him. A polearm he had named Enigma, ten feet long and deadly at both ends, was summoned into existence with a shimmering glow. By the time the halberd was called into existence, the Beast was upon him, slamming a huge paw into the ground.

Far from intimidated, Tearen stepped inside the gap between the Beast and its arm, and jabbed the sharp pommel of the halberd into the Beast's thigh. The beast reacted with a sharp shriek, and hopped away from Tearen, causing the arena floor to rumble from the landing. It was clear that this monstrosity was more nimble than its hobbled appearance let on. Tearen slipped into a faster stream of time and accelerated himself past the Beast, appearing only as a muddy blur for a moment. The Beast whipped its larger claw around behind it in response, smacking Tearen off balance. Tearen leaned into the direction of his wobbling spin and pirouetted in place, before hurling Enigma at the creature's lingering hand with all of his might. The jagged head burrowed into the hairy flesh, and the Beast slammed its fist into the spot Tearen had been just a moment prior.

Enigma rattled out on to the tiled floor in a spurt of blood. Tearen, who was currently hovering directly behind the Beast, called the halberd to his hand with a telekinetic mandate. Much to Tearen's surprise, the Beast snatched Enigma out of the air as it flew to the Shadow's hand, and proceeded to wield the halberd with its smaller arm like a tiny hatchet. Swallowing the humiliation of his hubris, the ex-enigma breathed deeply and once again slipped into a higher relative flow of time. The entire world took on a blue hue as the movements of the Beast slowed. Every fleck of spittle, every jitter of its mangy coat began moving sluggishly, giving Tearen the time he needed to assess the situation. He was disarmed, but as far as he could tell, Enigma had barely been hurting this creature.

The shadow's eyes ran over the beast's body, looking for something to exploit, when suddenly it began to unleash yet another horrid scream. The blood-curdling noise was even more insufferable in the realm of accelerated perception, and Tearen cursed the mouth that bore it. It did, however, give the Shadow an idea.

He focused his thoughts around the space between the Beast's jaws, and let his power flow freely into the fabric of the Underverse therein. Breathing deeply, Tearen summoned another...then another contraction of time and space. A great, rippling field of imminent destruction glimmered all around the Beast's head as Tearen pulled on the fabric until it could be pulled no more. Releasing everything at once, there came a thunderous blast as the Beast's lower jaw was immediately separated from the rest of its head. In shock, the now warbling wretch clutched at its hemorrhaging face weakly with its small hand, releasing Enigma in the process. Finally reclaiming the halberd as it sped through the air, Tearen sneered down at the Beast and approached it slowly.

Was this really the best they could do?

[Tearen Wover]

Despite having its lower jaw blown clear off, the Beast appeared no less determined to grind Tearen into glassy mince. The Shadow slowly circled the towering monstrosity, keeping his own green eyes locked on the empty sockets in the half-skinned skull. If anything, the only thing that the detonation had achieved was to make the creature's hateful shrieks all the more aggravating. The ex-enigma wondered just how long the Beast could stay standing, considering the amount of blood that was currently cascading from its cavernous mouth. Maybe it didn't even matter. With a halting scream, the blood-soaked horror took a lazy, pawing swipe at Tearen, who side stepped it with little effort.

Then the unexpected happened.

A caustic set of claws clove straight through the robes on Tearen's back, causing a burst of glittering black blood to spray out onto the cracked tile. Acting on instinct, the Shadow skirted off to the left and half leaped, half floated into the air as another claw scythed just inches below his feet. He twisted around in mid air and came face to face...well...face to face would be a bit of a misnomer. This second creature's facial features were obscured by a dangling sheet of flayed skin that seemed to have been torn off of its own back. Fully on alert now, Tearen executed an adroit loop as the first Beast's smaller claw made a grab for him. Was this normal? Did all combatants have to face off against two of these wrecked abominations?

There was no time to consider it as the smaller, hunched creature made a frog-like leap to try and snatch Tearen out of the air. Before its toes could depart the ground, however, the ex-enigma summoned a well of intense gravity beneath it, causing the flayed monster to crash hard into the cold floor. Tearen hissed an irritated breath as the first Beast snatched him fully during his moment of concentration. The Prime's eyes narrowed into slits as the jawless giant brought him close to its reeking, dripping face. Yet another one of those dreadful howls was screamed directly into Tearen's ears, and for the first time, the Prime became legitimately angry. Both monsters released short barks of frustration as the Shadow melted into an inky mist that sank slowly to the floor, free from the tall Beast's clutches.

"I've had enough of this." Tearen whispered to himself. With a wipe of his hands, five Aspects were called to his side. Each one winked with an individual color as their facets glimmered in the clean torchlight of the Azgradurg Colosseum. The ex-enigma pointed two fingers at the jawless beast, and the black tetrahedrons flew into a frenzy of flashing fiery light. As it thrashed haplessly at the Aspects, the flayed Beast that crawled on all fours made a loping dash for the Shadow. Space bubbled in front of the Shadow for a moment, and the squat monster found itself crashing into an unseen barrier of hyperbaric space. During the time it took the flayed Beast to recover, Tearen summoned a veil of telekinetic power around himself and lowered into a defensive stance.

The flurry of primal swipes that came from the creature shortly thereafter were each deflected by a disciplined slap or jab from one of the Prime's mentally armored limbs. Once this passed, the monster roared in fury before rearing up on its hind legs, threatening to crush Tearen beneath its two taloned forepaws. The ex-enigma shunted the full force of its telekinetic armor into his left palm and smashed the empowered extremity into the flayed Beast's obscured face just as its claws began to fall. The force of the blow knocked the frog monster onto its back with a startled yelp, and not another instant passed before Tearen was upon its mold-speckled chest, Enigma poised high in the air. When the halberd found a new home embedded in the flayed monster's chest, the Shadow was allowed the briefest moment of celebration before a choking cloud of noxious vapors spilled out of the fatal wound.

Even as the skinned frog went limp, Tearen staggered off of its clammy corpse, hacking and wheezing as the green miasma violated his newfound lungs. The effects were, frankly, startling in their potency. It was all Tearen could do to remain standing, Enigma bearing his weight as he leaned on the trusted halberd. Distantly, Tearen could hear the chortling choir of demonic onlookers mocking him. Insult was added to injury when his first opponent, the Beast sans-jaw, pinned the ex-enigma under one hairy foot. It ground its full, immense weight into Tearen's body, shrieking in mad glee at finally having the upper hand on its Prime opponent. From his place face down in the concrete, Tearen could hear the Aspects still firing their potent blasts into the tall monster's hide, but it appeared to be past the point of caring. Phase! He needed to phase again! The Master be damned, he couldn't even breathe let alone phase!

Being a simple-minded thing, the Beast finally took its smothering weight off of the Prime's body. Tearen could sense the monstrosity raising its primary claw for a killing blow. Taking in a raggedy breath, Tearen summoned everything he had to offer, and demanded the flow of time around him to cease. A deep silence settled in the area around him, and the Prime weakly turned over to see the towering Beast frozen in place, blasts from the Aspects in the middle of slicing their way through its chest cavity. What was keeping this horrid thing moving?! Gripping Enigma like a headsman's axe, the Shadow channeled the full extent of his cosmic fury into a swift, sweeping blow. In a shattering instant, Time resumed its normal flow.

There was silent awe from the crowd as the towering Beast flopped onto the ground, still thrashing and screaming in denial of its fate. The bottom halves of its legs remained standing; the previous blow from Enigma had been so clean and swift that they remained perfectly balanced. Tearen knocked them over out of spite. With hoarse breaths, the Prime watched its stalwart opponent claw and flip its way around, trying to come to terms with its new life without legs.

"Kill it." Tearen whispered.

The Aspects obliged, swarming like a crown of hornets around the jawless Beast's head. Each one took a turn blasting the dying creature's skull with a lance of light. Each time, the Beast let out a fresh, keening shout. Tearen's patience finally gave out. With a whispered screech of his own, the Prime leaped high into the air and clove the head of Enigma into the Beast's face.

"WILL. YOU. STOP. SCREAAMINGG!" Tearen hoarsely roared, slamming the axehead into the monster over and over. He wasn't exactly sure at what point the thing actually died, but he didn't stop until he was personally satisfied. It took a while.

...

By the time that Tearen finally staggered out of the arena, he was covered in both his own and the blood of two other creatures. A trail of dripping gore followed him as he weakly stalked back into the shadows of the staging area. Enigma stayed at his side, helping him stand. The halberd had always been a bit of a pet object to Tearen. It was good that he had felt inspired enough to call the trusty weapon back to his side. The sweetness of the reunion was soon soured by the stench of Ilthiax's fevered mind. Tearen could taste the cyborg demon's giddiness from a dozen yards away, and in his current state, it caused the Prime to lurch into powerful dry heaves. When Ilthiax started slapping him heartily on the back, it didn't help.

"Job! Well! Done!" Ilthiax said with a grin. Tearen couldn't see the demon's face, but his tone of voice made it evident that the hellspawn was wearing an entirely self-indulgent smile. The jubilation was hastily discouraged when the Prime drove a swift elbow into the cyborg's corpulent gut. Ilthiax stumbled back with a fat-sounding 'Hooof!' and reached into his overcoat for another one of Grooota's. This course of action was discouraged when Tearen simply turned his head and shot the demon a silent, threatening glare.

"Fine, fine. Be your sullen self, plebian." Ilthiax grumbled. Tearen fantasized about telekinetically tearing the fat from the demon's bones. The gory thought brought a grim comfort as the agent went into detail about the next round. It wasn't as if the Shadow actually didn't care, but he was convinced to give the appearance of disdain as he shuffled to a nearby bench and sat heavily upon it. After a few gurgling breaths, the fattened agent gathered his composure and took his own seat, a foul looking drink close at hand.

"Well you passed the qualifiers! Fancy that. I have to admit I was worried when they threw the second beastie curveball at you, but you seemed to handle the situation...just fine." Ilthiax cooed with a greasy grin. Curveball? Was that what changing the rules was called in Azgradurg? Tearen supposed he shouldn't have been so indignant. After all, he himself had cheated to just be a participant in this farce. It should come as no surprise that this kind of underhanded nonsense was the norm. It was clear that Ilthiax was growing accustomed to Tearen's unresponsive nature as the old demon kept babbling away.

"I've managed to grease some palms and find out who your opponent for the second round will be. He's an old soldier from Diablo's army named Gamil, the Knight of Hatred. I've seen him fight before and I think it will be a good match up. I could tell you about him if you're interested..." Ilthiax said, his yellow eyes sliding in their sockets to look at Tearen. It was a ploy to get the Prime to show interest in what Ilthiax was saying. Indeed, Tearen was interested, but he had ways of getting the information himself. As the two maintained their eye contact, the ex-enigma began to subtly induce chemicals in the demon's brain to ooze free of their moorings, and Ilthiax's eyes began to droop.

"Iss...Snrk...Wha's..." the demon groaned, clumsily looking at the drink next to him with suspicion. Not a bad conclusion, but it was too late for Ilthiax to actually figure out the source of the sleep. The cyborg let out buzzing sigh as he slumped over into unconsciousness. A minute passed as Tearen waited to confirm he was actually slumbering before the Prime quietly stood up and walked slowly over to Ilthiax. With an outstretched hand, the Shadow delved into the demon's ember-ridden thoughts. Visions of fire and sadism washed over Tearen like hot coals, trying to push the Prime out of the demonic mind. The cyborg provided more resistance to Tearen that he had been expecting, but after some deeper concentration, Tearen finally found the information on this Gamil individual that he was looking for.

He did not like what he saw.

[Tearen Wover]

Cold.

Cold and shadow.

A lone figure, hulking over the bodies of his slain comrades. A snowy battlefield gripped in an eternal night. The suns light blotted out by the grieving plume of a distant volcano. A thousand screams from the earth itself as it was torn asunder. Here stood that lone figure; Gamil. At this point in time he was just a lowly man-at-arms. He cast his gaze back towards an immense keep to the west, and then down at Tearen. No...not Tearen. This was one of Ilthiax's memories. Did the cyborg demon and Gamil know each other from some distant world?

Searching. Clawing. Sift through the refuse for the next link. Ilthiax's mind was like someone had disassembled a car and shaken the box of parts. Steam and fire. Listless piping from beyond the star. Dammit, that wasn't one of the demon's thoughts, that was one of Tearen's own. Stay focused. There, beneath a layer of mental steel. A flicker of a face named Gamil.

It was older now. Wizened and pitted by the harsh winds of the Underverse. This thought was distinguished from the rest. Both Gamil and Ilthiax had been re summoned by Diablo when the Underverse had been created. All those years ago, Ilthiax was still whole, not an amalgamation of steel and infernal flesh like he was now. Yet, there Gamil stood, an ancient human covered in bony armor. It didn't make sense. To who didn't it make sense? Focus. Trace the emotions. Yes, Gamil had originally been Ilthiax's enemy, back on that snowy plain under the shadow of the mountain. Mount...Arreat. Apocryphal. Return to the start.

Two secondaries standing, overlooking an ocean of boggy trees. A repeated mantra; Fouling of the Moors. Ah, so these two were there. Ilthiax looking up at the immense human as a figure of comfort amidst the hordes of Diablo. Why this feeling of attachment? That memory from the Battlefields of Arreat...find the thread. The common thread. Pity. Mercy. Yes. Gamil had shown Ilthiax the Demon mercy. Was it out of a sense of justice, Tearen wondered? Apparently Ilthiax himself had never received that answer, but it had left enough of an impression that the portly hellspawn had bonded intensely with the human.

This was all well and good, but what was Gamil capable of?

Rapid marching through the Moors, under the mist-soaked trees. A golden sky hung overhead, traced with veins of dark power. It was the mark of Diablo; a hell-storm. Irrelevant. Fighting now. Fighting the people of Darkshire, back when the town was clean and new. Gamil sat back in the chaos, watching his warriors die. Odd. The man wielded an odd weapon, like a giant, skinny plow. Tactically useless in a duel, but it had a strange power. Yes. The human dug the blade into the earth and channeled some sort of energy through the dying bodies. No, not through them. Into them. Gamil was a necromancer then? Indeed. The places where the fresh bodies lay blossomed with blue-green power, and their phantom silhouettes leaped into the fray.

A sudden rush of adrenaline. A blast of heavenly light sliced through the hordes of Diablo. Ilthiax's last vision of this moment were the shadow of holy wings standing over him. A hooded warrior. El'druin. Tyrael. So, this was the great and legendary warrior that had ended the war against Diablo. Ilthiax and Gamil, half dead, hanging in a great cavernous space. Grooota. Omnilium recycling. Did that make Ilthiax and Gamil weirdlings, then? The memories jumped around great gulfs in time. More sifting was necessary. There had to be more to Gamil than this. Fresh memories were easier to put in order.

Gamil had been one of Grooota's primary gladiators before Tearen had come to the Underverse. There was pain here. Betrayal. Gamil had...abandoned Grooota. Abandoned his friend. Was Ilthiax actually Gamil's friend, though? Did the ancient human actually care for the demon, or had the seedy cyborg simply decided to cling to Gamil's heels like a fat flea? From the demon's perspective, he certainly thought highly of Gamil. Perhaps there was a way to exploit this. Focus. It was bad practice to begin plotting while in someone else's head; there was a chance Ilthiax might skim some of these thoughts, even subconsciously.

Excitement. Anticipation. Tearen saw himself through Ilthiax's eyes; battered and bandaged after his fight with The Ripper. Opportunity. A chance to track down Gamil. The Traitor. The Knight of Hatred. It seemed odd that a human that had been perceived as benevolent by even a demon had been given this title. Ilthiax had known that Gamil might be entering himself in a tournament in the Azgradurg area. Was Tearen to be Ilthiax's indirect weapon of revenge, then? Indeed, there was more to this than-

Tearen jerked back from Ilthiax's slumped body with a gasp, withdrawing his mind from the cyborg demon's conscience. Some sort of mechanism installed in the fat hellspawn's body was capable of automatically rousing the demon from slumber. Tearen shuffled, still half-dazed, back over to where he had been sitting previously. By the time that Ilthiax came around, the ex-enigma was slumped in his seat exactly as he had been previously. Ilthiax yawned loudly, the gears in his respirator grinding steadily. Eventually his beady eyes came to rest on the Shadow's expectant form, and a look of suspicion crawled across his features.

"You...what did you do?" Ilthiax hissed. Tearen offered no response. He still had the appearance of aloofness to maintain. A cold moment passed between agent and gladiator before Ilthiax growled sullenly and smacked his drink off of the table next to him. Pale light filtered through the bars of the waiting area, tracing long blocks along the filthy floor. In relief against the illumination, Ilthiax's augmented bulk seemed to appear larger than normal. It was possible that tracing the contours of the demon's mind had led Tearen to begin perceiving the cyborg more how he wished to be seen. It was a risk that came with the territory of telepathy, but it was something that Tearen couldn't worry about right now.

"Fine...well, let me go over the details of your opponent." Ilthiax grumbled, adjusting his fat mass. The bench he sat on groaned in protest but held fast as the demon proceeded to tell Tearen things that the Shadow now already knew...

[Tearen Wover]

It wasn't long before Tearen was once again standing on the cracked and pitted granite tiles of the arena floor. The carnage from the fights earlier in the day had been swept away quite gruesomely by what Tearen could only describe as a heard of giant fleas. A few had even become so frenzied by the feast of blood that they had sprung all the way up into the stands, where audience members milled around between matches. Even these errant displays of carnage were enough to elicit cries of encouragement from the enraptured masses. Honestly, Tearen was getting rather tired of feeling the waves of their bloodlust wash over his mind. It was distracting, and he had been trying to harness the new powers of regeneration evident in his body.

While the gently glowing wounds on his body had indeed repaired themselves to an appreciable extent, using the ability left the Shadow drained and wanting of sustenance of some kind. For some reason, however, he couldn't find the palette to consider trying some of Azgradurg's concessions, no matter how much Ilthiax espoused their succulence. Instead, the ex-enigma had to content himself with using his reserves of Omnilium to sustain the needs of this ailing body. Hopefully after Gamil was vanquished there would be time for an adequate amount of rest.

The echoing warhorn of Azgradurg sounded, calling spectators and warriors alike back to their seats. Tearen remained perfectly still on the battlefield, but had already summoned Enigma to his side. Though the wound had healed, the painful memory of surprise from the previous qualifying round still stung badly. The Shadow would not allow himself to be caught off guard again.

...and yet it happened anyway.

At the opposite end of the arena, Gamil strode forth. His immense bulk stood ten feet tall, and that was with a hunched posture. The ancient human barely had any skin left worth mentioning, and what little of it was visible was only around his toothy mouth. The rest of his face and body was obscured by heavy, pale plates of what appeared to be bone. It rattled and clunked loudly as he stepped into the arena, showered by a hail of demonic praise. Though the helm did not have any eyeholes visible, Tearen could feel the Knight of Hatred's gaze upon him. Gamil's inverse sickle weapon dragged listlessly along the ground, digging up small jets of sparks with each step. Overall, he seemed slow and clumsy. This wasn't what caught Tearen off guard, however.

Once Gamil reached his starting position, a loud voice blared over the roaring crowd. It was a harsh, mechanical voice, and one that Tearen recognized. Ilthiax.

"A notification to Gamil, the Knight of Hatred and Tearen Wover of Grooota. Let our fine combatants be advised that there had been a slight...amendment to the rules of this match."

Tearen scowled up at the viewing box, where he could just make out Ilthiax's bulging red corpulence presiding on a skull encrusted balcony. Of course. Last round there had been a surprise attack, and this round there would be a last minute change to the rules. It wasn't entirely unexpected, but what shocked Tearen most was that Ilthiax of all people was the one to impose it. The fat cyborg must have known that doing so was effectively signing his own death sentence, should the Shadow ever get a hold of the fat coward in the future. 

"For the duration of this particular match, any abilities that grant flight or levitation of any kind will result in immediate disqualification."

A murmur of disapproval ran through the crowd. Curious, Tearen reached out with a filament of telepathic intent and tasted the emotions of the collected demons. A fair number of them had been looking forward to the ex-enigma's graceful aerial tactics. Could it be that he was starting to gain fans, of all things? Tearen had experienced many things during his tenure as a God-Mind, but he never in all of infinity had ever been able to claim that he had fans. It felt...nice.

"Begin."

Tearen lifted Engima to a rear guard position and advanced towards Gamil with patient strides. The towering opponent did the same, and whipped his great sickle around so that its hook faced forwards. The Shadow had to resist the immediate urge to float forwards in a flying advance. This was going to be trickier than he thought. On top of that, Gamil didn't appear to have any sort of flight capabilities whatsoever, so the last minute addendum was clearly meant only to impose on Tearen. Wonderful.

The Knight of Hatred opened with a wild, heavy swing that was easily sidestepped. The Knight wheezed loudly as he ripped the sickle's point out of the ground where it had embedded itself and tried to backhand Tearen with his weapon hand as he did so. The Shadow held Engima vertically and braced against the halberd. The eldritch metals held fast, but the force of the blow shoved Tearen several feet to his left. The rasping sound of his feet sliding through the dust was matched in pitch by Gamil's uncertain breathing. The bone-plated knight's mouth tended to twitch and tremble, his jaw snapping every so often. The fact that such a geriatric soul was able to even consider combat to the death was astonishing.

"Heard a bit about you, old boy." Gamil said, his voice musty and flat. Tearen tilted his head, but made a quick lunging attack to Gamil's flank while keeping the blade of the sickle bound with the halberd's axe-head. The strength of Gamil was such that he simply wrenched the inverted sickle free, causing Tearen to almost lose his grasp on Engima. Tearen followed through on the momentum, however, and swiped at Gamil's midsection. The two-handed blow simply glanced off of the thick bone plating with a dull clang.

"Heard you were persistent. Had lots of good tricks up your sleeve." Gamil continued, readjusting his grip as Tearen tried to thrust the spear head between Gamil's plates. The Knight of Hatred simply slapped the blow aside with a gauntleted hand in a movement that seemed almost effortless. Another withering blow was brought down on Tearen's head as Gamil made a clumsy, vertical chop. The Shadow was able to block with a bubble of distorted space just before being cloven in two. The immaterial nature of the shield caused the blade of the sickle to glance off awkwardly, and Gamil stumbled to his right. Seeing as cutting force simply wasn't doing the job, Tearen stepped inside Gamil's range of attack and delivered a sharp blow to the armored hulk's center of mass. The telekinetic thrust caused Gamil to thunder backwards for a few strides before catching his balance, but in the end, it still had no real effect. 

The distance between them did give Tearen a moment to breathe, however.

"I've seen your tricks too. Pity there are no bodies on the field for your necromancy. I require no such...baggage...to remain potent." Tearen taunted, switching his lead hand with the halberd to his right. Gamil let out a long, raspy laugh as a blue light began to gather in his distorted sickle.

"Necromancer? Is that what you think?" the Knight of Hatred wheezed...

[Tearen Wover]

The Knight of Hatred raised his mighty sickle above his head as the blue glow permeated the entirety of the ancient weapon. Tearen took a few precautionary steps backward as Gamil swiped the oddly-bent sickle in front of him in a wide, lazy arc. Naturally, Tearen raised a hyperbolic shield in front of himself, just as a wave of crackling azure energy washed over the battlefield. It made no physical noise, but Tearen realized that the shrill whine he was hearing was in his mind.

He’s a psion!

The Shadow’s realization came too late as a veritable horde of shimmering blue phantasms bloomed into existence, rising from the cracked ground like geysers. Many of them had hazy and indistinct forms, but each had a pair of gleaming, golden, pinpoint eyes that rebuked Tearen’s gaze with a scathing level of intensity. The ex-enigma took a deep breath and focused all of his attention on the space around him as the blows began to shower in. Tearen’s arms moved in blur as he warded off slash after deadly slash from the massing apparitions, but he could not sustain such a flawless defense indefinitely.

His first instinct was to launch himself skywards, leaving the swarm of mental constructs behind, but the match rules forbade it. Tearen swiped Enigma in a wide arc, seamlessly transitioning from defense to offense, and felt a sense of satisfaction as the eldritch metal of the halberd clove through the psychic constructs with little effort. An indignant scream accompanied the dispersing of each wavering, turquoise ghost, but it was a sound that only occurred in the psychic medium. All around him, Tearen could feel a tangle of frenetic, enraged thoughts seething and clashing like water in a rocky tidal pool. Indeed, these constructs were not necessarily spirits, but memories. Amalgamations of pain, fear, loathing and anger that Gamil could stitch together with his dread sickle. Banishing these frankensteined, residual thoughts to nothingness was trivial enough, but there must be thousands upon thousands of hateful memories lingering in this arena. This hypothesis was confirmed when Gamil made another lazy arc with the reversed sickle, immediately replenishing the constructs Tearen had just destroyed. The Knight of Hatred, indeed.

It begged the question though...what part did the sickle play in this ability? The ex-enigma saw no reason why someone capable of coalescing ontological memories into animistic force-constructs should need something as crude as a material focus. The level of complexity that Gamil’s strategy utilized was the sort of thing that only truly great psions could attempt. Perhaps Gamil himself was not the one with the power. A smart blow on the back of his head was a sharp reminder that Tearen could not afford to get distracted at the moment.

The ghostly constructs encroached from all sides, grabbing and slashing at Tearen’s body. As soon as the shadow pulled himself free from the fizzling clutches of one dreg, three more latched onto him, their semisolid talons tearing cracked gashes in his obsidian flesh. In the ruckus, Tearen even dropped his halberd, a fact that only registered when he heard it clatter to the ground. Growing frustrated, the Shadow went catatonic for a moment, suffering the indignity of a feral lynching briefly before unleashing a telepathic and telekinetic tantrum. The psychic screech echoed across the arena in the minds of combatant and onlooker alike, and obliterated nearly the entire sum of Gamil’s improvised horde. The psychic attack had been so effective that the Knight of Hatred was visibly perturbed, his head rearing back slightly. Panting, his body and garments shredded, Tearen commanded Enigma to fly back to his grasp before shooting a glare at Gamil. Impressed, the towering husk chuffed a hoarse laugh before addressing the Shadow in an almost amiable tone.

“Not a bad showing, old chap...but...I’m afraid I’m growing weary of this paltry contest.” the Knight wheezed, raising the reverse-sickle above his crusty helm once more. Instead of sending power outwards, however, long streams of blue energy flowed inwards towards the weapon. The bands of hateful memories wrapped around and siphoned into the sickle like a spectral vortex. Tearen cautiously went into a defensive stance as he saw that blue bands of power were being pulled from his own body as well. There was only one possibility; Gamil was draining Tearen’s own hatred and ire to power himself, along with residual memories in the arena.

This may have been a threatening fact to have deduced, but...suddenly, Tearen didn’t very much feel like fighting anymore...

[Tearen Wover]

The towering mass of bone-plated might that was Gamil lumbered towards Tearen, blue fire explosively punctuating every footfall. His entire body was enwreathed in scintillating psionic power, drawn from every last crevice of the coliseum. Tearen stood sheepishly before the Knight of Hatred, his halberd hanging listlessly in his left hand. While the shadow was aware of what was happening on some level, everything at the moment seemed distant. With a lack of hatred and anger in his heart, Tearen had little reason to do anything in the Underverse, or indeed, the Omniverse. The ex-enigma inhaled a deep breath, and allowed time to slow to a crawl. His burning green eyes flicked over the full extent of Gamil’s form as he pondered his situation.

So much of his existence in this isolated reality had been based around the pursuit of vengeance, for a perceived slight against him. Despite having thought himself free of the influence of emotions, as Nealaphh he had been fueled almost entirely by anger. A desire to see Omni thrown down, beaten, and humiliated. To see himself vindicated as ruler of the Omniverse and its reality reshaped in his vision. Really, it was a rather selfish goal; he could see that now.

The reverse sickle gleamed with blue hatred as it crawled down through the air. Flecks of spittle rained from Ilthiax’s maw as the demon handler screamed at Tearen to move out of the way.

Time continued its ponderous progression.

But, now, having had his anger and hatred removed, what did he have to motivate himself? Ambition could not exist for its own sake. There had to be a driving force behind it. Guilt? After all, he was certainly one of the strongest Primes in the Omniverse. It would be wasteful to become apathetic at this point in his new existence. But then again, he didn’t really care what other people thought of him. Curiosity? This had more potential as a motivator; there were many mysteries to the Omniverse that Tearen desired to solve...but...to what end? This was, after all, a finite reality. What would he do with himself once every crevice had been sniffed out and catalogued?

Tearen looked up at the gleaming edge of the ancient sickle, still bearing down on his head. The Shadow wondered at the connection between Gamil and the Sickle, and to that extent, Gamil and Ilthiax. The demon handler’s memories had been almost completely devoid of anger or resentment towards the Knight of Hatred. Had Gamil consumed Ilthiax’s ire in the same way he had done to Tearen? It was an interesting feeling, knowing that a part of him had been removed in such a manner. The Shadow was beginning to feel that Gamil had done him a favor, in that regard.

Surely in a land of demons and monsters, a lack of hatred and anger could be seen as a crippling weakness. Tearen, however, had something that demons did not. As a human, or at least something very close, he also had a capacity for compassion. Empathy.

Love.

Love was as strong a motivator as hatred, surely. After all, the two emotions were not opposites, strictly speaking. Both required an investment of emotion, obsession and energy. Both inspired passion and direction. There was really only two people that Tearen had ever really felt love for, however, and as far as he knew, they were totally beyond his reach. He wasn’t sure he could ever bring himself to find a new wife, but the ex-enigma did have a daughter in the Omniverse, from a certain point of view.

Rebecca.

The mutated child had possessed such an unmitigated love for him, even as the twisted creature that was Nealaphh. Sure, her brain had been programmed to perceive him as such, but that didn’t make the elation she felt any less real. Tearen’s heart suddenly plummeted below the cracked tile of the arena floor. He had sent her along with Jade Harley like baggage to be passed around. Disposable. A tool. It wasn’t right. Rebecca deserved better. Tearen glanced again at the looming sickle blade, now just a foot from his face. He needed to get back to her as soon as possible and fix this ghastly mistake. The Shadow had full confidence that Jade had kept her safe, but that wasn’t enough. After all, Jade herself was barely more than a child; she couldn’t be expected to shoulder the burden of Rebecca indefinitely, no matter how delightful the Little Sister may have been.

It was decided. Tearen was done with the Underverse. It was time to leave. No quests of glory, no need to prove himself master of all others. Right now he had one obligation.

Still...he could not lose the advantage of his extreme foresight. Though it may be perfectly possible to simply forfeit this match and fly off into the artificial night of Azgradurg, that was not necessarily the best option. There was no doubt that the demons would fly into pursuit of him, and he would be much easier to track that way. After all, Ilthiax, and by dint of association, Grooota, saw Tearen as valuable to their interests. If, however, Tearen simply let Gamil’s sickle cleave him in twain, the Prime would have the advantage of reincarnating at a discreet, unknown location. On top of that, any interest in his prowess as a gladiator would be greatly tarnished, if not obliterated. Yes, this was the best course of action.

Tearen released the flow of time, and there was a great crash of metal against glassy flesh. A surge of demonic roars echoed through the arena as Tearen’s body sloughed off of Gamil’s flaming sickle. Ilthiax just about vomited with surprise, and even the Knight of Hatred seemed in shock that his trump card had been so overwhelmingly effective.

But that in and of itself was not what had rattled Gamils ancient bones the most. In the scant milliseconds before the sickle had hit home, a single, smug whisper had drifted through his mind.

I win.