It was rather too similar, the question, to his own central dilemma for him to be able to avoid thinking about it – nevertheless –: “You don't know who you are, Golden Bow, but you're going to... find out... in here.”

“Only my name/title... I'm afraid.” he seemed less sure of himself, less loquacious. And his voice... this place was not for words. – Not for speaking casually; not for speaking aloud. Saying anything, actually, beyond grunted – over theres, and behind yous; various snatched emergency communication. But why then had he wished to speak? Was he at home, here? In contrast to the... youth... was he... was he only at home/at rest in these places that were merely temporary respites from the ceaseless throbbing – in metronomic rhythm – pain that spiritlessly fucked him.

They moved forward in silence for some time. The Golden Youth in his gold, white and grey steel coloured cuirass, blonde hair, and the King in Grids and Mind that Operated Flesh in Repetition – momentarily seeing himself, he felt, strangely – in one brief, strange blink – in his black cuirass, muscles outlined; massive, built thick and wide; open black helm on his head, blood red beard. Battle-Axe on his back and he'd – he had a shield.

They moved forward in movement that didn't feel like movement, merely processing through.

In the corridor, they moved further inside.

Allowing his mind want it wanted, he let it sink into a/its familiar rhythm; a swarm of glowing red lamps unwound around a corner ahead, revealing there was a corner ahead, and simultaneously 18/36/72 glowing orb eyed freeze-dried demon corpses barked in claret cunt blood. But all barely visible beside those corpses beneath them.

All they could see was that swarm of eyes; red glowing orbs, in the night that –

By his side the youth pulled and loosed a golden thread through the air – arrow shattering the first skull at the apex of a prism of demons; soaring through the corridor at them.

Draw/loose; draw/loose; draw/loose – eight arrows followed each other through, each of them reaching their targets, each of them shattering skulls in theatrical explosions: gore/spinal-columns/attached viscera.

– The King in Grids and Mind that Operated Flesh in Repetition, instant shield in hand and axe in the other, buoyed up by a strength experienced as something outside and glanced across him, threw his axe haphazard with a strength that was catastrophic; wrecking the semi-hollow corpses of the fiends on the way to them –

– separating torsos from skulls and the limbs from torsos as it made its unstoppable route through.

Following behind his axe immediately to retrieve it from the arse of the barked blood demon in which it had ended its aerial passage; five more arrows passed his ears through the air flying glowing orbs through the back of skulls.

Eyeballs with their attached eye-innards dragged an eldritch light through the passages endlessly, in fact, forward until the Golden Youth called them, dragging that same bloody light back with them all the way to his quiver.

Grabbing them out the air, the Bow manually inserted them behind in his strangely phosphorescent quiver.

That was:

Inserted fetching first, this time, so that the orbs – former demon eyes – still attached to his golden arrows cast a sanguine glow over his shoulders, and from that cascade of strangely liquid light, lit the halls the colour of candlelight through bottles of sedimentary red.

Axe pulled from an arse, the King in Grids and Mind that Operated Flesh in Repetition swung his battle-axe, once more, in its customary arc, screaming as he did – a scream through the unfathomable silence of the halls. He couldn't – if it even existed, throwing limbs in the air around them pissing blood from open orifices/casting powders the same time in alternating sections of powdered plasma and liquid – exchanging weirdly in incomprehensible demonic physiology.

The King in Grids and Mind that Operated Flesh in Repetition swung; the King in Grids and Mind that Operated Flesh in Repetition slashed; the King in Grids and Mind that Operated Flesh in Repetition executed wantonly the scum infesting the geometric dreams of the compulsive reality passages of a currently fake-soul operated unreality seeing one-eyed fucking demon being/ fucking demon, Cyclops-Demon Being – cunt –

he screamed her

cunt!

Bulbous plasma light approached off the back of the youth along the hall; through which claret ombre arrows streaked at the mini-horde surrounding them. Demons; randomly slashing, never operating in cooperation, only the same kind of beings, only in the same vicinity, not together.

They waited turns, even, to attack, in queues, so that – back to back they fought; the golden youth employing his poignard as ably as the bow that was his title and perhaps indicative in some sense of his fundamental identity.

At the centre of the liquid light off the stored orbs out his quiver they – circling, systematically, worked their way through the corpses that surrounded them. The Golden Youth fought like a being who really understood the demonic sensibility – a weird perception that nevertheless he had – in the core of who he was.

They telegraphed their moves anyway, but even before this; he anticipated, he moved – he even nudged the King in Grids and Mind that Operated Flesh in Repetition, tactically, various positions; directing the fight himself; momentarily. – This despite the fact the King in Grids and Mind that Operated Flesh in Repetition was born, apparently, for this; to be this repetitious demonic killing contraption.

– This was all in fact that he was, his pain itself artificial, unreal, only the the thing that forced him to kill – it was fake and it did not exist, he lied to himself joyously fighting, joyously, sick beneath.

He was mentally desperately sick beneath these self-lies – uproariously hacking at corpses, harvesting demonic flesh, lying to himself joyously that it was only this; this was what he was – this was what he did; his pain, the source of it more directly, more specifically, this was – fake, only artificial motivation.

It was all so that he perform his life's gift, his life's – talent and dream which was hacking these foul scum-garglers into the trembling pieces that saturated the flat plane – the ground they stood on – hacking and slashing; circling – him and the youth; cooperative repetition.

He saw, as if momentarily outside himself – when necessary – slashing and hacking even before they telegraphed their repetitive combat stratagems; in the repeated gestures of the demons. He saw outside himself, suddenly and when required – even as if from a higher observation on all of it –

seeing even –

He laughed; he could not control his laughter – he laughed bloody and bleeding himself in the halls – joyous in the belated rhythms of it; joyous in the lie that this was him and the pain that forced him to need this endlessly and in repetition, his hacking a billion demons into ashes/cadaverous gut piles, was all he was for.

A lie so complete it was luxurious.

– And it was a lie, and he knew that too: that the source of his pain did not exist; that the pain was only the part of him that kept him here; doing what he was made for; doing in fact who he was he – was The King in Grids and Mind that Operated Flesh in Repetition, for the purpose of killing demons.

He laughed. He laughed. Madly in the halls.

– He laughed in fact until they stood, just stood, breathing, finished, in yet another pile of corpses. The sanguinary glow from demon ocular passages from the youth's quiver – and crushed and haphazardly scattered on the floor – lit their faces drastically.

– The King in Grids and Mind that Operated Flesh in Repetition grinned madly, blood red, in the halls. He laughed; he grinned, he lied to himself in continuation and –

Still interior he was unconscious that he still hacked inanimate corpses into yet smaller bits until the youth – he pulled his arm back, said – “Enough.”

He had no idea he was still –

“Enough! King. Enough.”

The only thing they did now was breathe.

The redness that surrounded them in those black passages was light from biological orbs,

“Let's just get through this.”

“There is no through this.”

But the corner had gone. Out of which the swarm of demons, they had just despatched had rounded. And. This practical problem was a happy respite for both of them because – the King in Grids and Mind that Operated Flesh in Repetition sensed the youth's disapprobation, sensed his judgement in fact.

Maybe he knew that he was lying to himself – and that he knew it was a lie. That there was no pain – there was no source to it rather/even – that this lie was sustainable, in fact joyous, in fact righteous, only, in fact – as long as he remained in these halls.

The youth knew his soul had pledged never to leave these halls.

“It was here.” the youth cast around, the orbs off his back throwing bloody rays at walls.

They stood before another nondescript fake line of black-rock-indicated wall-panels. It had been here, he thought – this was the turning indicated by the swarm of demons. It was in fact from here that they had swarmed. Right here. This part. That they both stood in front of, enduring the change in atmosphere between them – the complete destruction of the easy trust that had characterised their meeting.

Beyond this it was the same corridor going straight, no alteration; it went on forever, he could see that. It never changed and it would never end. It would merely repeat;

repeating in joyous repetition, a fake infinity. He felt this, a fake infinity of the same thing over and over and over again, no variation, nothing new – nothing else – nothing changing. It was exactly what he wanted. “It's nothing. We go down here.”

“No.”

“Do as you wish, I am down here.”

The youth stared at him, agonised, “You know what's down there.”

“Yes.” He did not have to lie... about this. He had room in his heart for only one lie. That she – there was no source to his pain, no source in fact... that it did not exist. This was the lie his heart had chosen. He'd live it.

“Walk through the wall, King.”

“I'm down here. Goodbye, Bow... I'll miss your – arrows.” he turned and set off alone down the hall. He could feel the youth behind him; still standing there in front of that flat patch of wall that was somehow the way forward. As indicated by the swarm of demons. But he would not take the route past fake-infinity. Not, because... he was made for repetition.

He felt eyes on his back.

“King!”

He stopped. Take the hall, he said to himself; take the way forward – the circle – down the hall. – Take the way through countless demons, uncounted hells – take the way through fake infinity, to death. To massacring endlessly in repetition – to towers of corpses and standing atop them; laughing, madly, to –

He was to not exist because – he was repeated, he was repeated, it would never end.

He had his precious lie; that his heart had chosen: the pain that founded him was not real, and its source, for it had a source, that source – it did not have a source, because that was fake too. – It did not exist, It was not real. It was only... for this; the pain, it was only so that he do. This. Exactly what he had to. Kill. Forever.

“King!”

Maybe it wasn't him that made him do it. But he stopped. He turned. – He faced the youth.

Saying nothing, he merely observed.

In that instant a ten foot demon, massive glowing orb ripped out its bulbous forehead, seeing in beams that trailed off it, great sunken rivets in its cheeks; entire body eviscerated – all flesh in service to that orb tossing trailing beams around it as it flicked its skull sized Eye distorted off its bulbous forehead. This thing, this Eye wrought in consumed flesh, stepped out the flat panel wall behind the youth and saw his flesh paralysed out cascading planes in falling out images of corridors that fell from that all-seeing vision; paralysing the youth, paralysing him unmoving, dropping, collapsing into himself and even his armour; reducing the size and even – fullness of his flesh, he collapsed, lifted by the neck, he –

The Golden Bow collapsed and the Demon Duke caught him by the neck, and – just before he dragged him back through that permeable wall-panel, he flashed his vision on the King in Grids and Mind that Operated Flesh in Repetition, he saw:

He saw the beams in semi-contained corridors of falling away infinite planes, collapsed; miniaturised, confused, off his gaze and – in the instant before the youth was dragged back through the wall-panel – in that Eye, in that Eye that was all he could see in that passage, that was that passage and what everything was seen out; the source of these traversable fake-realities – he –

There was all in that gaze, including all he saw along – with it:

The –

An Eye that saw only death.