Holding each other; a ceremony was invoked between planes, down here, between columns; holding fast - pushing forward through a onslaught of wind whipping them that was alive, and terrifying.

He merely followed, moving forward, tracing those patterns; Tenns muttering beneath her breath a language he had never heard and yet - there was something uniquely and strangely familiar in the snatches beneath the tempest -

faaaaaaaaaster bucking them/holding fast to each other between the columns -

a red line traced behind their backs in the sand, glowing more fiercely every circle, with every turning, every reinforcement of the pattern that shattered them outside in a -

The Old Dark Weird Religion, centred around a figure that -

He heard the night hymns breaking their own rhythms; he heard the violence inherent in the wind, and the mad great circles, and the passions of those beings that -

An entirely new plane, but only the same place in inverted colours: Cyclops bound to columns, bleeding from expertly cut wounds; trickling constantly from necks and armpits, under genitals, legs; men, two women, all one-eyed, all bleeding, and superimposed upon this too in the circles and the chants, Pry saw - was it even him?

Art?

He saw the last ceremony, even recognising the Sly conducted, at the centre. It was the room: the room of ceremony, centred between these columns, seen across shadow-layers of night in the centre.

A world that went far beyond in the infinite ripples out, that contained, in their traversing, and in the ancient muttered language of Tenns, outside the ring of – but he was dead, it was the ceremony, she was showing it to him and the events beside. - There was something, and the great final evocation and – Shar-Pren; he knew him - 3 months past he'd been reinitiated, and -

he'd -

The real final prayer in the official old tongue, its rhythms were entirely foreign to that muttered by Tenns beneath all this; he said the final words – shortly for Pry to re-enunciate – he it said again: stuck in his throat, forced the words out -

he was Shar-Pren; he was him, stuck in his throat, he couldn't; he couldn't say it -

the familiar phrase restudied; worked into the very code of his flesh - it stuck in his throat so that he forced, and with the forcing, an upturned bucket of rocketing guts from out his throat, his eyes, his mouth, his arse, all orifices, erupted in a -

Shar-Pren burst in the shitty organ fragments/ruined intestines/bile out that

In himself, Pry felt, it was him

- torn flesh already burned; him/consciousness/corpse - erupted physical matter and genitals/and glands that

A flying whip: an entity still above them - still through/around – but them - in the columns, it consumed the very soul out the flying matter of

Shar-Pren and Pry-himself in that instant, screamed the terror out his soul/an intimate coupling

Shar-Pren produced the

The final vision of a reality that death, and his soul -

He screamed in the final terror of the death that consumed him.

Pry did.

Pry.

Pry.

Pry.

Pry.

Pry.

Pry.

Pry.

Pry.

Pry.

Pry.

Pry.

Pry.

Pry.

Pry.

Pry.

Pry.

Pry.

Pry.

Pry.

Pry.

Pry.

Pry.

Pry.

Pry.

Pry.

Pry.

Pry.

Pry.

Pry.

Pry.

Pry.

Pry.

Pry.

Pry.

Pry.

Pry.

Pry did, Pry did, Pry the Sly

Pry the Sly

Pry the Sly

Pry the Sly

he did and he -

Pry the lie.

He existed, wrenched above in that entity, he pulled himself, a will that he didn't know, that was merely, that couldn't, that in no sense could be ascribed to merely -

Him.

Pry

Tenns.

They.

Screaming, she held him, around at where he was, Pry saw that - the rest didn't matter he saw that he still in this instant was a alive - that he, despite being consumed, still existed,

He still existed.

Pry.

Pry.

Pry.

Pry.

Pry.

Pry.

Pry.

Pry.

Pry.

Pry the Sly.

Pry

It was her saying it.

He still existed.

“Breathe -”

He did because

he existed.

“Pry?!”

Still screaming, he realised - he was still screaming, it was him screaming - he stopped now; he stopped.

On his knees she held him and he stopped.

His soul inside his flesh he stopped.

He breathed.

And he stopped.

“ - You had to see it – You had to feel it – it had to happen to you.”

“What?”

Just saying words to assure himself he was still real; he was still alive, he was still a person here and that - was alive. - And he was that.

That was who he was; he was -

“Pry, I'm saying your name again, Pry-Boak [cL^YoP], so you know. That was unpleasant - but you understand now that -”

“I understand nothing -”

“That's not true. I see you. I see you as you are. I can't - I impose nothing that isn't there, that isn't true; nothing in response to a fake reality. That isn't already in front of me. - That I am in relationship to. That's who you are. -” Then:

“You are the thing that I am in relationship to.

“You are Pry.”

Looking up at her, still on his knees, he saw there, in her eyes, some definitive reality. He knew it was true. And this new... thing... it was -

He got up, and looked around at in actuality where he was.

It was the ceremony room. No columns. No inverted palace. None of that vast existence above him in the wind, that was – malevolent? - That was gone.

It was just the two of them, and no other Cyclops, or strung up Cyclops behind.

“Who were they?”

“You don't know? But you do know.” Some of her usual amusement in response to him had returned, and whatever it was that had been in her eyes, momentarily, it wasn't gone, by any means, but the fact of its being muted, the fact of its being even maybe diluted, for an instant, it hurt him.

“Who?”

“It's you, Pry. It's you. You're all like that.” That space that had always been so vast and imposing was nothing now, without the backdrop of the Old Dark Weird Religion she'd transported him through.