Rykard lead the way down the corridor. At first, nothing appeared to be out of the ordinary. Another long walk through the winding pathways of the underwater temple and then… the cries started.

  They were distant and always stayed distant. It sounded like children pying in a vast cathedral. Shouts of amusement and excitement echoed off the venerated stone. They never got any more clear than that.

  Walls turned from artistic stone to barren chunks. Flesh pulsed over the surface like a network of slime moulds. It pulsed.

  “We may be in trouble,” Rykard said, his voice strained.

  Tess and Lyvia stared at him. Rykard took it as a compliment that his saying something like that caused btant horror to show on their faces. “What do you mean?” the champion of the Bond Raven wanted to know.

  “Do you trust me?” he posed a question of his own. They nodded. “Then take my hand, close your eyes, and do not, under any circumstances, open them. Focus only on my hands, your breath, and the next step. I’ll expin once we are through here. I promise.”

  Lyvia took his hand immediately. Tess hesitated for only a second longer. Blue eyes closed and Rykard continued onwards, effectively on his own. The network of flesh on the walls only got denser.

  Stone was a distant suggestion by the time Rykard reached the chamber. Scarred and ancient flesh grew in pilrs up the walls, covering everything in a membrane and grey veins. It almost looked like a forest, parted by the way forward. Rykard tried to concentrate on the path rather than the thing right in front of him.

  It was a creature without limits. An avatar of an undecred god. It was eyes and tendrils, with no rings to present boundaries to either. It was in the centre of the room and it was in every corner. A heap of flesh, writhing visibly and invisibly with eldritch power.

  It was.

  Rykard kept his steps as calm as possible. Unspeakable truths assailed his mind. They broke against his willpower. He refused to let them in. They were answers to questions he was not ready for. While he was mortal, this was not his fruit to taste. The forest of flesh unduted at his rebuttal yet kept its distance.

  ‘What is this thing doing down here?’ Rykard asked himself, then tasted iron and copper. Answers to the question unfolded between the wrinkles of his brain. Suddenly he was blind in the right eye.

  “Ry-”

  “Breathe!” he rebuked Tess before she could get a second sylble out. Yellow eyes focused on the gothic woman for only a moment, before forgetting she existed. They were halfway around it now.

  A nearby pile of writhing tentacles reached out. On its puss-drenched tip hung a key.

  Rykard could not resist.

  The key dangled bck and gold.

  He took it.

  The tendril pulled back into the mass. Bck parted into crooked, yellow teeth. A cyclopean eye opened above. Its goat-like pupil stared at Rykard with endless glee. Slowly, certainly, it drifted to the woman whose hand he had let go.

  “Rykard?” Tess asked and opened her eyes just a crack. “What - is —--?”

  The question was not even fully out of her mouth that she began to scream. A cacophony of caws filled the room, only to be drowned out by the ughter of the walls. Mouths opened within mouths. Tongues shed out as tendrils.

  “No!” Rykard shouted and reached for Tess’ wrist. She pulled it out of the way. She was clutching her head, trying to keep something inside. Shaking her head, she slowly backed away.

  “No… no, no, no, no…,” Tess muttered, in a panic. One of the tendrils wrapped around her stomach. She turned her head to behold the creature at the centre of the chamber. Hundreds of divine ravens were now filling the chamber, picking away at the forest. They only added more scars to the grey veins. A singur, guttural ughter escaped Tess before she was yanked back.

  “Lyvia stay as you are - do - not - anything!” Rykard ordered, before letting go of her hand. If nothing else, he could trust in her obedience.

  Tess was pulled into a maw. Tess was pulled through a door. Rykard dove into it behind her. The door of teeth closed behind them, enveloping them in true bck. This was no darkness, for darkness was the absence of something. The inside of the creature was a glut of everything. There was so much around them, so much potential.

  More. He could be so much more. Be beyond the limitations and the pleasures of the flesh. Flesh was just the beginning. The vessel. It should be expanded. More.

  She sat amidst friendly drones. Success. She had so much success. So much flesh had been sacrificed, but it had to be done. She wept for the biomes devoured. They could be restored. The knowledge was written into her new sequences.

  Like her. He could be like her - but more. Expand beyond memories in the genes. Inscribe self-evident thoughts into every double helix. Make them true.

  Rykard shook off the suggestions and managed to grab Tess before they sank any deeper. Through fire and muscle, he dragged the two of them back the way they came. He forced the bckness out of vastness into definitive flesh. Pulsing muscles tried to swallow them, to feast on their bodies if their minds were so unwilling.

  ‘I will not be denied my destiny, not even by a shoggoth!’ Rykard pushed aside the question of how he knew what this thing was called and punched through the wall of teeth behind him and air.

  Desperately, he filled his lungs. Covered in disgustingly slimy fluids, he and Tess emerged. Ravens and crows flocked around them, concentrating their efforts on keeping the maw open and dragging their mistress to safety. One crow did little. A murder helped a lot.

  The shoggoth rumbled like a human clicking their tongue at a pesky insect. Tess was cackling. Her blue eyes swirled without focus. Rykard was still clutching that key. He dragged Tess over to where Lyvia was. Just when he was about to take the motionless admiral’s hand, another tendril presented to Rykard a box.

  The box had no definitive shape. It was big enough to fit in his hands. It had a keyhole. It had THE keyhole.

  Rykard reached for the box.

  The tendril pulled it back.

  “Oh come on,” Rykard hissed and reached and followed.

  He knocked into Lyvia.

  Obedient as the admiral may have been, she could not withstand all of her instincts. A single glimpse was all it took. “What are you covered in?” she asked.

  Rykard looked at himself, at the eyes that sprouted from the gunk that covered him head to toe. When he raised his head again, he found Lyvia staring at her hands.

  “The abyss is in my veins,” she muttered. Her breathing accelerated rapidly. “This abyss is in my veins!”

  Rykard felt implications unlock in the core of his mind, then shoved them aside. ‘Not - yet!’ he denied himself the knowledge. If he hadn’t, then his brain would have swollen until his cranium cracked. Something that Lyvia was simirly threatened by now.

  He swiped the chest off the tendril, then wrapped his arm around his monster girl. “Only me,” he told her. “Only me, Lyvia, focus only on me.”

  The hyperventition died down to a constant giggle. Hanging tendril-tongues curved. Still, there was a cacophony of caws and cackling. The crows swirled around the trio, picking at the tendrils that were trying to creep closer. It occurred to Rykard just how withheld all of this was. Whatever elder mind was projecting itself here, could it possibly have been limited? Was this just an accidental manifestation?

  ‘Do not ask yourself questions,’ Rykard hissed at himself and spat out the eyeball that had crawled into his mouth. He had the key and the box. He had already gotten way more than any sane man should. It was time to get out.

  Step by step, he dragged his maddened companions forward. Damage to their psyche would have to be assessed somewhere where it would not get further damaged. Step by step, he closed in on that gap in the walls. The forest of flesh whispered in a gentle breeze.

  “Coward.”

  The king stopped at the exit. His blood was pumping.

  “Coward.”

  The word repeated, spoken by a wind that was not there, blowing through a forest painted in scars on the walls.

  “You would lose.”

  Rykard had bigger priorities than the opinions of a blob of insanity and teeth. He had endangered the minds of both of his women. That alone was reason not to fall for any more temptations.

  He walked away.

  He did not look back.

  There was no more flesh on the walls.

  Carefully, he lowered both of the women aside. They were still giggling and stuttering words to themselves. ‘Catatonic,’ he thought, after trying to get their attention. He tried to recall what he had learned about events like this. Rykard had known there were elder minds beyond the Divine Realm. He had known that they were dangerous. He had learned this from somewhere. ‘From where…?’

  He struggled to remember.

  How odd, his memory was usually quite accurate.

  He focused a little more.

  The memory came to him lethargically. The old man from the desert, who had talked about bygone tzars. Descriptions of the book with the human face. The headaches…

  Rykard pushed that aside. He had no idea how he had forgotten his teacher on the matter of Conjuration. Then again, he had every idea of how he had forgotten at that moment. Forgetting was bliss when it came to information the flesh could not digest.

  Rykard had three options here. One was to sit there and help them recover on their own. This only worked for people of a strong mind. Tess and Lyvia were his women, of course, they had a strong mind.

  Secondly, he could attempt to use Restoration to help them along. It was not effective, but it could still work.

  Thirdly, he could use Manipution magic to cut the memory out. If he wanted to do that, he had to do it quickly. The more recent a memory, the easier this magic was to use.

  Rykard opted for the talking solution. He did not want to use magic when he could trust in their abilities. He sat down and started talking. He started talking about nothing in particur. When they answered to his voice in proper sentences, he was quick to encourage them.

  By the end of it, his mouth was dry. He must have been talking for hours. Their minds went through several waves of consolidation and splintering. Lyvia recovered fully first, and Tess shortly thereafter.

  “Ass!” Tess shouted and kicked him in the chest.

  Rykard had been squatting and fell over backwards. He rubbed his chest where her boot had hit him. “I do deserve that,” he admitted. “You could have kept your eyes closed though.”

  Tess let the crows caw out her annoyance and turned her gaze to the box. She rubbed her forehead. “That could have gone wrong in so many ways,” she hissed.

  “I strongly recommend against taking such actions in the future,” Lyvia sternly stated. “That being said… I believe I have learned from this?”

  Tess reluctantly nodded. “I feel like I understand how the world works on a deeper level,” she muttered. “In a way that doesn’t make me want to bite my tongue off. Courtesy of you and your sweet talk.”

  “I am quite the apt diplomat,” Rykard boasted.

  Tess groaned, Lyvia kept massaging the base of her horns. Neither woman was in a good mood. They would forgive him though. The recollection of their minds had gone smoothly and they had ultimately, somehow, benefited from the experience. Throughout the entirety of their talking, they had come to an epiphany that Rykard could not quite follow.

  Now the ultimate question was if he could put a cherry on top.

  “Should we see if it was worth it?” he suggested and gestured at the box.

  The intrigue of treasure had Tess hooked. She squatted down and waited for him to crawl over. Ceremoniously, he lifted the key and slowly inserted it into the box. He turned it, ready to deal with whatever mystery was in there. The lid of the box opened. Box and key disappeared as if they had never been there.

  Left behind was a stack of papers, held together only by golden string. As impressive as the string was, the papers were aged and yellow. The ink on the cover spelt out four words: ‘The King in Yellow’.

  Rykard flipped through the pages without really reading anything. The structure of the text made it obvious what it was. “It’s a py?” he said, confused, then closed it. He wanted to think about this before reading it.

  Crossing his arms, Rykard put the py aside and closed his eyes for a moment. He was tired. This was still the same day that he had fought Marik. Between the shoggoth and talking the sanity back into his companions, he understandably was running low on energy. Certainly too low to mess with eldritch texts.

  The tiniest of displeased shuffles was the only warning Rykard got. Without opening his eyes, he put a finger on the top of the cover of the yellowy pages. “What do you think you are getting up to?” he asked and opened an eye slightly.

  The py had sprouted a myriad of legs, like a centipede, all of which were treading in pce. The attempt to get away from Rykard was futile. Several letters on the cover parted into eyes, beholding the king with mild annoyance.

  “Just because I am not going to read you doesn’t mean you get to leave,” Rykard said. “I earned you fair and square.” The O in yellow rolled its iris. ‘Never been sassed by a book before,’ he thought and watched as the letters turned into swirling segments of print and calligraphy. Only the word ‘Yellow’ remained in pce.

  When it was done, the cover advertised a different py. ‘The Princess of Yellow’ it said instead. An immediately more appealing title to Rykard.

  “You are reconsidering,” Tess commented dryly.

  “The daughter of an elder mind would be an accomplishment to add to my harem,” the king admitted readily. “You knew what I was when you threw your lot in with me.”

  “I approve,” Lyvia said.

  Rykard raised his eyebrow at that. He had expected obedience from the admiral, not outspoken agreement at an idea he was, for now, considering mostly jokingly. “Expin.”

  “We are from them - monster girls, I mean.” The leviathan dy looked at her hand as if she could stare into the abyss in her veins again. “I understand that now. Before us, there was only mankind. The outer minds gave us alchemy. Man used alchemy to change themselves, to unleash themselves from the shackles of the material.”

  “You know that?” Rykard asked with deep interest.

  Lyvia nodded. “As clearly as my ancestry.”

  “I suppose that confirms the One True Origin theory of the theologians then,” Rykard said and stretched. “Certainly aligns with all sapient species being compatible on some level. Any historical revetion you got, Tess?”

  “Merely insights into the nature of the divine,” Tess answered drily. “Nothing important.”

  “Nothing important indeed,” Rykard said and gave the book in his hand a reprimanding shake. It had been poking his wrist with its little legs like an annoyed pet spider demanding attention. The king knew the new title was aimed at pulling him in specifically. The py wanted to be read and since he was refusing to let it find a poor, curious soul, it wanted to entice him.

  It was trying to bait Rykard.