ENDOW {Madness Combat Auditor TFTG PMC}

A deep voice, crackling like an awry wire or a swarm of bugs, one she didn’t recognize. It buzzed in her ears, clearing vision slowly processing the deep red abyss that surrounded her on all sides.

Another voice. Deep, though it carried with it a hard-to-place gentleness, smooth and yet crunchy as if processed with a poor bitrate. It almost sounded like it was pitying her.

Yet another new voice. An expected deepness, though thick with contempt, dripping and hissing like a steam that stuck to her eardrums like condensation on glass. Her eyes fluttered, the edges of her mouth pulling themselves up in a wince. Egoist…?

Even with her black bangs partially obscuring her vision, she could tell that she was legitimately floating. A place unfamiliar, a place without any solid ground, a crimson sea without any water to explain her floating body or stray floating clothing and hair, her long, black hair splayed out in wild strands that she had difficulty cleaning up and keeping out of her vision. Shifting black blotches remained in her sight even with her hair cleared out to the best of her ability. They twisted unlike hair, warping into headache-inducing forms with unintelligible whispers, yet still staying separate from each other as they snaked around to look at her from all angles. Three forms, three voices, three unnatural entities that her groggy state had difficulty processing.

The first crackled strangely, reminding her of an arthropod swarm, the darkness making up its form somehow hanging behind it an electric blue glow. Its whispers grew distinct as it poked her with ethereal fingers and pulled her into floating more upright. It was the first voice. The second seemed to bizarrely emanate stark, unnaturally flat squares that she could only process as “broken 3D video game particle textures”, silhouetting a white glow, coiling in on itself and merely watching her intently. She recognized it as the second voice even as it kept its distance. How strange that such a calm, smooth voice came from something so physically crispy…

An unnatural magenta glow heralded the obvious ire of the third. She gagged in a new pain that pierced her chest and throat, hands shooting to her neck, eyes watering as if she was being drowned in water as the hazy, misty shadows melted into her clothes and gripped at her throat. The third, it-which-hissed her name bitterly, a wall of fog that stared her in the face without any eyes. An all-too-human rage radiated from an inhuman entity.

“Nine. Nine. Nine.”

Her throat burned in pain. A hand, an armless, four-fingered hand, quickly formed from the black mist, gripping her throat in the literal sense. She couldn’t speak, it wasn’t letting her. What it said made no sense to her. Nine nine nine…? What does that mean?

“Stygian.”

The second voice, the white, the pitying. Its voice was curt. The magenta entity’s grip loosened, quickly letting go and pulling itself away from her as the rest of its fuzzy shape congealed into a more person-like form. Black blotches remained and burned into her skin and clothing where it had attempted to choke her out. Its form, though upright and lacking any animal-like features, magenta eyes locked in a scowl on its “face”, still divorced itself from the human form and the laws of physics: Its head was too round and lacked any head features outside of its inhuman, pupil-lacking eyes, head hunched forward on a short neck attached to a uniform-shaped body reminiscent of a tube, torso lacking definition and shoulders and lacking arms to connect to four-fingered hands, feet seemingly wearing shoes and sitting right under its torso without any connecting leg lengths. It was pitch black, a blackness that consumed any physical details like looking at a shadow, mist rolling from its back and head like dry ice.

An awkward silence buzzed in the stagnant air before the other two entities decided to take similar forms, their forms still carrying their distinctions and colors similarly to Stygian, though the white one’s eyes did not furrow into a malice-filled scowl. Their forms were neutral and lacked any sexual characteristics. Ansz wheezed and caught her breath.

“Nine-”

“My apologies, Deliberator.” Stygian growled, interrupting Ansz’s attempted question. “My assertiveness appears to need some curbing in this situation.”

She couldn’t will herself into feeling annoyance, even she knew that these entities could obliterate her and are only keeping her alive for some nebulous reason she didn’t understand. Her voice was an awkward whimper in her burning throat.

“Nine-nine-nine?”

The three figures all turned their heads to face her. Her blackening throat locked up and her eyes widened. It was impossible to tell their emotional reaction or intent.

“Dead.” stated Deliberator, strangely calm and without a hint of aggression in its voice.

Ansz still yelped and flinched, turning her head away and instinctively putting her arms in front of her face, tumbling backwards in the anti-gravity void before the blue entity corrected her position. Dead? Death? These things mentioning death? Were they going to kill her?

Deliberator stared at her blankly before turning to the blue entity, the first voice.

“Conductor. Will you?”

The form of the blue figure, now known to be designated Conductor, buzzed and crackled, inky blackness corroding at her sleeve as it wrapped a tendril around her arm length, swatting her hands out of her face in an attempt to get her to face them. It stung her skin and the material buzzed like her arm was in a cloud of gnats.

“Nine hundred and ninety-nine dead.”

Conductor’s voice buzzed in her ears, reverberating almost like a melancholy cicada. It was strange, and its statement only barely comforted her but still clarified nothing. Her face relaxed from her fearful flinch and shifted into a tilted head and raised eyebrow in her persisting confusion.

“Nine hundred and ninety-nine dead what?” asked Ansz. “What’s dead? Killed by what?”

“People. Humans. And the number will increase.” Stygian snapped, voice a hiss like a metal pipe releasing pressure. “Because of you!”

Deliberator and Conductor turned to face Stygian as Ansz yelped and shrunk away.

“Stygian!” yelled Deliberator, crackling hand waving to summon a large hunk of grey rock for Ansz to finally plant her feet on. “Restrain yourself!”

Stygian scoffed and rolled their eyes. Ansz’s attempt at balancing on the provided rock was awkward and clumsy before it reached a form of stability, not even bothering to clean up the mess that her hair had gotten into.

Her voice was a strained, nervous creak, eyes still watering in pain from the stinging blackness crawling across her neck. “What the hell did I do?”

The silence was long, awkward, and deafening. Her voice didn’t echo in the endless expanse of the red abyss. Stygian was more than eager to snarl.

“Do you really think that sacrificing your kin to merely save your own squishy skin wouldn’t have greater consequences?”

Her head pounded, blackness melting into her veins and being carried through her cheeks, her eyes watering as monochromatic images flashed in her mind. Black and white, as was Deliberator’s curt voice, dripping with a noticeable impatience.

“Look familiar?”

Familiar. A girl. That nobody.

“Her?”

“Demes Pabddon.” Deliberator sighed, their own patience running thin.

“Have you no respect for the dead?” remarked Conductor, brow somehow furrowing deeper.

Ansz couldn’t help but scoff even as Conductor’s tendril gripped tighter, blackness burning into the skin and flesh of her arm like bleach, biting her lip in pain.

“What does she have to do with this? When did she get so important?”

“She…” Deliberator’s voice trailed off as they looked between Stygian and Conductor. “Has been reforged into the anchor of your realm’s ruin.”

She raised an eyebrow. It was obvious that she was confused by their… Unnecessary floweriness.

“She is long gone. Her form has been reforged, her mind overwritten as a channel of Phobos’s mind and soul.” Deliberator continued. “Though Phobos was, surprisingly, not the one to have originally pierced the veil between our realms, the presence of Demes’s converted form is allowing the mysterious rift to remain open, strong enough to allow Phobos’s forces to freely move their manpower and supplies between them with ease.”

“Phobos wants to take over both worlds-”

“Phobos wants to destroy both worlds.” interrupted Stygian as they shot a glare towards Conductor. “The old fool cares not for the apocalyptic aftermath of merging Gestalt with The Other Place.”

Stygian continued, gaze turning to Ansz. “You’re the one that allowed it. You could have allowed all of your human kin to evacuate long before Phobos’s forces arrived, starved him of any dimensional tethers before the rift closed and all of his forces were pulled back, but you refused, you merely bribed, you merely schemed, you-”

“We wish to give you the means of… repairing this.” stated Deliberator, calm voice still managing to overpower Stygian’s seething tones. “We cannot influence your world directly… Persistently, at least. We are going to need to channel our power through you.”

The tendril that held her arm slowly pulled away, though the stark blackness remained, her very clothing seeming to twitch in pain as the blackness ate away at it like fire at paper. Ate away at her flesh, bone like paper. The consuming darkness burned and bubbled like splashed bleach, an intensifying pain that Ansz couldn’t contain, releasing in a pained yowl. The light, the air around her, shimmered strangely as the blackness spread across, throughout, within, a distortion reminiscent of the hottest desert days as her clothing crumbled away into ashes that further dissolved into total nothingness. Stygian simply snickered.

“The irony of this may be lost on you at the moment.”

“‘I will be joining the rank of the Employers soon enough’ he always liked to brag!” laughed Conductor in a mocking tone. “His ancient status means nothing! He will never rise alongside us!”

Any flesh that was exposed by the dissolving of her clothing absorbed all light, detail being obscured in a blanket of pitch blackness that crept across the surface of her skin and visibly coursed like injections of ink through her veins. It was hard for her to fathom, to properly describe, a sensation that her body could only process as her insides being boiled from within. Her internal organs, including her sexual organs and structures, were entirely saturated and soon entirely melted into ethereal material that merged with her remaining flesh. Blackened blood dribbled from her nose and mouth before dissolving into the ether. Organs and bones are unnecessary.

“And yet you…” stated Deliberator, even their voice holding a tinge of amusement. “You. A human. The First Generations of our kind—those that didn’t kill each other, at least—were blessed with a biological immortality, allowing for an unfathomable amount of experience compared to… yours, that could only dream of not petering out in worthless frailty at sixty, let alone a measly one hundred years!”

She was barely listening through the crackling in her own ears, under her twisting nerves screaming at her. Her blackening form, almost seeming to degrade into a silhouette, distorted and flickered bizarrely, her shape growing fuzzy to perceive through the heat-shimmer that radiated from it. Heat: Her mind was understanding it as heat, a heat far beyond the limits of the regular mortal realm, a heat that entangled in her dissipating hair into wisps of black fire that extended from her back and the top of her head. Dissipating into wisps of flame, the lengths of her arms and legs were consumed to reveal her hands to float and her shoe-wearing feet being pulled right under her torso. Heat. Fire. Burning.

Burning.

“We entrust you with much, Ansz.” Deliberator spoke, turning to Stygian with a chuckle. “I know you’ve been wanting to look upon it again, Stygian…”

Stygian’s finger twitched. Materializing within their hand from a golden light that strained her eyes formed a simple, large, yellow ring, almost like a hoop. Even her burning form strained from the heat of its radiance. Her movements were shaky as she attempted to shield her eyes with her trembling, morphing hands, the middle two digits of each merging together and her pinkies growing slightly to compensate for the fewer digits and the widening of her palms, hands being left four-fingered.

“We snagged this from Phobos when he was preoccupied with sending his forces to your world. I have the feeling…” Stygian thrust the strange hoop into the air above him, consumed by giddy laughter for a moment before he was able to resume his original thought. “...that he doesn’t even know that it’s gone!”

Her entire torso, from her neck all the way down across her hips, twisted and remolded itself into a more uniform, tube-like shape, among other alterations. Her lack of bones meant that cracking did not accompany the changes any longer. With the compressing of her hips, dissipating of her shoulder definition, flattening of her breasts, and her waist filling out all into a matching width, her body structure lacked any specific gendered traits and matched her insides having become physically sexless. Her neck shortened and thickened to a similar size as the rest of her torso and restructured to force her head into hunching more forward, her throat burning and her voice cracking awkwardly in her yelps of pain before her voice fully converted into a masculine baritone, deep and heavy, crackling and rolling with a presence even in her current unprofessional state. Attempts to move her face became difficult, soon entirely vain as her mouth and nose melted away into nothingness, as did her ears and what hair remained as her head was forced into a wholly round shape and pulled itself taller into an oval.

“Some call it the Nexus Artifact, others call it the Keystone Fragment, others… simply the Halo.” spoke Stygian as they slowly approached her writhing, twitching body, steadily moving to place the seemingly-eager Halo over her head. “No matter the designation, its power remains the same. Even our bodies are overcome by it…”

Her head pounded, thoughts swimming in a painful haze. Her eyes would have watered if her body had any fluids at all. The Halo vacillated between brilliant yellow and synthetic red light, humming loudly as if attuning to her body’s resonance, floating above her head and shaking like it was being subjected to increasing pressure. Despite radiating such immense power, it seemed to be threatening to completely shatter.

Though her mind was scattered and her form completely distorted, both of her hands shot up to grab the Halo. The flashing ring crackled with electricity that lashed out at her hands and coiled throughout her destabilizing body as she burst into a wild mass of black fire, her still managing to keep a hold of the halo with tendrils in her, his raw true state. A mouth was not necessary for speech, or in this case, vicious cursing. Disjointed thoughts rippled through his mind like the red glow that now radiated from his blackened essence: Phobos, Project Nexus, Gestalt, the Employers, Dissonance, S3LF, the Improbability Drives, that goddamn clown…

His voice was a deep, booming roar as his amorphous essence snapped itself back into the bizarre-anatomied humanoid form, metal spikes and hooked chains lashing from his abyssal shape for a few moments before pulling themselves back, his eyes revealing themselves in a perpetual scowl as they had become large and entirely red. Black flames scattered in a boom that even the rest of the Employers were taken aback by. He yanked the Halo, which had settled back into its original yellow color, from the top of his head, shaking it in frustration and growling, almost as if chastising it.

“IIIIIIIIII NEED YOU IN ONE PIECE!”

An intense silence hung in the air. Deliberator’s white eyes simply stared at him intently, eager to break the silence.

“You will be the Employer of this ‘Earth’ plane for the time being. It seems to be…” they stated with an awkward, forced laugh. “...full of surprises.”

Awkward, stilted chuckles bounced between Deliberator, Conductor, and Stygian, Ansz raising an eyebrow as he looked between the three.

“Deliberator, Conductor, Stygian, and…?”

The trio all turned to face him. He held the Halo in one hand, aimlessly gesturing with the other in an attempt to emphasize his question.

“And I’m…?”

“You are…” slowly spoke Conductor, trailing off into a thrumming buzz as they looked between Deliberator and Stygian.

Deliberator looked between Stygian and Ansz as they spoke. “You shall be known as-”

“The Auditor.”

Conductor and Deliberator both looked like they were going to snap at Stygian for interrupting again, though their attention was drawn by Ansz, the Auditor, raising his hand. He was silent for a few moments, interrupted by a wince as red text flickered across various areas of his vision, like code that he had access to, much of it mentioning “Auditor” such as “WRLD(AUDITOR[HELL])” and various “Auditor” permissions. It… seemed correct.

“...Thank you.”

The other three Employers looked between each other before returning to all look to the Auditor. Stygian’s statement was curt as the three slowly dissipated.

“Do not fail us.”

The Auditor found himself entirely alone. He could not do much outside of return to the main Earth plane and attempt to fulfill his primary directive, now: Stopping Phobos and severing the link that Phobos was using between the two dimensions. Doing this alone would be impossible, he needs assistance, he needs Christoff and his knowledge on Project Nexus, he needs others…

And to satiate his sweet tooth.