[hider=Last one] [right][url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyJwmaykObA]Venetian Snares- Suffocate[/url][/right] Over the life of the project, Heartworm had accumulated many samples. It stored them here. Not so long ago, when the Emaciator lived in a holy mangle of eyes and tongues, it had kept its slumbering prizes close. Even now, having given up such an ungainly vessel, it stayed on guard. None of the Sculptors could access the tubes. They stood, glowing pillars in white tinted with green and pink, humming slightly, aligned according to what they contained. Humanoids, rovaick and hain, and all the rest of Galbar's sapient species. Heraktati in all their lithe, wild glory. Things from the Deepwood, things from the Flowerbed, and drops from the last puddles left by the now absent Venomweald Writhe. Nocti, gaia and imagen, the kingdoms of Lex. Demons dissected. Djinni of the four elements. Clay from Chronos. Three ribbons of skin from the Arks. And beyond this, the most precious specimen of all: Vakarlon. The final mechanism occupied a room all its own, and no small one. Like a pipe organ, hundreds of perfectly vertical pipes in tight formation rose from the device, increasing in height towards the center, forming a mountain-shape. Every single fluted mouth displayed an identical readout of coloured pixels, the only touch of hue in a damp grey hall. Where a keyboard might have rested, there was only a cavity of hollow knives, inwards-facing, leading into a nest of tubes. Just large enough for a child. [color=red]"Promise me that you will not cease to administer painkillers to them when I am gone."[/color] Vakarlon hadn't turned. His black curls still faced the specimen vault behind. He was looking into the bed of nails that awaited him. [color=f6989d]"Done."[/color] There was no point in going through the effort of removing the infrastructure he had insisted on anyway. [color=f6989d]"Are you ready?"[/color] Such mundane words, coming from anyone but Heartworm, spoken any time but now. [colour=red]"If you do encounter Keriss,"[/colour] continued the trickster, [colour=red]"Tell her to learn always, as her mother did. To remember the right side of the fight. I will be forever with her in any way I am able."[/colour] Careful, final words. [colour=red]"A binding oath, please. And for the tanks as well."[/colour] So he had learned something about Heartworm. Somewhere between their plans, his short-lived attempts to joke, Vakarlon had realised what he was dealing with. Too late to back out now. Heartworm tapped a slender proboscis to its head. [color=f6989d]"Adjudicator as witness."[/color] The young man nodded, and at last turned to catch the avatar in a mismatched stare that betrayed no fear. [colour=red]"Then I am indeed ready."[/colour] Vakarlon stepped down into the cavity, and his shirt vanished. His executioner obligingly skimmed over, and began to flay his back into strips, stretching each one and piercing them on one of the hooked knives. There was some flinching. The god was deliberately holding himself into a visceral form, and despite the pain that fleshly fragility brought, it did not waver as Vakarlon's blood dripped into the machine. No analgesics were strong enough for a god, and Ilunabar's draughts were far away. He spoke to focus his concentration. [colour=red]"If Serandor does awaken, leave this place. I still have enough in me for one last mental battle."[/colour] [colour=f6989d]"If Serandor wakes up, I'll be gone in the blink of an eye,"[/colour] reminded the coward, slowly grafting him deeper into the Arksynth device one shred at a time. This was a delicate work, an art, and Vakarlon's acceptance was a gift. A few more peels exposed the back of his ribs. Heartworm fell into the rhythm of levering them out of the spine one by one and plugging wires into the gaps, sensing the huge metal organ thrum with energy as it fed. The illusion broke. Everything was dark, and had been so for some time. The light nodes had come apart from the walls, leaving only the red of the tube readouts, each one flickering its failure spasmodically, too dim to illuminate anything. Vakarlon's dissected cadaver had melted all over the knives and long since dripped from his wired skeleton to a pool on the floor. No hum of life from the arcane machinery and its tilted, fallen pipes. Alone, Heartworm stared into the silence. Something cast a shadow. A sinuous tongue of flame, all too real, snaked its way over the floor from the corner of vision. Followed lazily by another. More shadows began to splay across the walls as the room heated. Heartworm slipped to the ground and began silently spewing a glistening black river of spindly limbs. They sprawled like a fungus, pushing it back against the side of the machine. [colour=darkgray]"Hiding from me? Come now, Heartworm. You knew very well that you would find me here. Whatever happened to 'I'll be gone in the blink of an eye'?"[/colour] Latching on to the toppled pipes, the black river forced its source further up the device, the only place it could hide from the fire that crawled below. The brightest streams were forcing a shadow up the wall, indistinct but singular. A human figure. [colour=darkgray]"Of course, you have never been much for talk. An admirable attitude. Shall we cut to the chase, then?"[/colour] The shadow crouched and leapt, and the seething mass of arms hurled itself from the top of the organ as something unseen collided with it and flung it down into the roaring inferno- The illusion broke, and there was no blaze, only a vast charcoal lion that stood over Heartworm and snarled its iron grin. Serandor roared, igniting a crimson mane that lit the hall, and he pounced, and his claws gouged apart the pipes as the hairlike stream of tendrils fled and left behind cut limbs writhing like worms. And the Vengeful One laughed, and faced its cornered prey, and it leapt, and the mass of arms tensed and swung down into Serandor like a wave, grabbing, biting, fighting, rending- The illusion broke. Everything was dark, and had been so for some time. Heartworm lay on the ground in a forest of its own distended tongues, and gagged as it swallowed them. The red strips of the tube readouts were still flickering in toppled disarray. One of the pipes slipped from its precarious balance and clanged onto a power conduit. A light snapped on, a single whiteness echoing in the ruin. There was no sign of Serandor's claws on the machine, nor of fire, nor the limbs Heartworm knew it was missing. Vakarlon's body had vanished without a chip of bone or drop of blood remaining. Nothing more than a mirage, as it had always been. Heartworm skimmed over to the toppled tube, its monitor still glowing a faint, dead red. Liquefied by the shock of the fall, the puddle of arksynth had reacted to the current between two damaged nodes and coagulated into a limp conductive cable. Just a stroke of luck. The grace of the glitch, capricious and undeserved. A trick of the light, when light was needed most. Just a chance. [/hider]