The neck and shoulder sections had been reduced down enough in the organ acid bath that he could move forward now. He'd watched them bubbling and reducing for a while. Allowing that emptiness, praying it would continue, of his mind, to operate through – just feeling that pain; in continuation; that he could identify – that dreadful soul agony. He recognised, the only thing worse than, was knowing –

was possessing the knowledge of the – what – the thing that had produced it.

What –

Who

This was not something he would permit in the words through him; even to attempt to digest it, theorise upon it. – He let the pain inside him breathe as he didn't, recuperating himself and his organs. – Merely existing, feeling the pulsing, of that pain, and the other biological rhythms; feeling them, their rhythms; his breath now match that of the intermittent pulsing across the grid.

Breathing, breathing now in repetition, his respite; all he had. This repetition. He'd move forward, after a bit; after a rest. He'd move forward into this grid, seeking merely battle, and blood, and repetition; seeking merely the patterns that repeated through him, assuaging if only momentarily that pain that was him.

And too, from the goal, his soul sought, because he would not allow himself to seek... anything. He would merely repeat. He would merely kill. He would merely move toward... in who he was or even physically, no goal that could elucidate that –

That source –

That pain

That source –

That pain

The King set himself forward still exhausted, still breathing, still recuperating, and still forcing whatever physical respite into himself. If he stayed, the words would play through him again; they'd surge – through. And all they were –

was that source, and that pain – and wanting that pain. Needing to know.

Needing to know in terms of the solution to his being completely alone and separate here. That –

No.

No.

He set out before the mania, and pain, in words began their surging course through him.

– At the end of the corridor grid – it was called this – suddenly; and indeed in this instance, like something that might save him, even momentarily, from his own mind – he saw –

It was someone. It was actually someone. It was obviously and completely a someone who was unmistakably, even more than he was, not a demon. He set out. Toward. That.

Person.