Being choked unconscious hurt.

It was difficult to describe with precision, but it was almost like this horrible, crushing pain alongside your neck, followed by an immense internal pressure that made you feel like your head was going to burst into a thousand tiny pieces. Blood was pounding away, throbbing through your veins with every heartbeat, right alongside the jolts of pain it carried with it.

Of course, if one was sloppy about it, it could cause even more pain than that.

He’d know. He had learned all about choking— being choked, really —from Inanna. The art of choking, according to the goddess, was all about employing minimal effort to bring about maximal effect. Amateurs always went for the windpipe, a process commonly known as strangulation.

Inanna had taught him better.

It turned out that the pressure required to occlude the carotid arteries was around six times less than to block the airway itself. Directly stopping blood flow caused unconsciousness six times faster than through restricting airflow into the lungs.

The monster coiled around him had strength in spades. But in the end, it was no choking expert, opting instead to just press all around him uniformly. Inanna could have gotten out of this chokehold with effortless grace. But Lukas was no Inanna. He lacked her strength. Her power. Her experience.

And he was about as subtle as a sledgehammer.

But sometimes, a sledgehammer to the head was a sledgehammer to the head.

His eyes flickered open, and Lukas felt his lifeforce singing inside him, desperate for a way out.

So he gave it one.

And the khorkhoi began to scream.

Inanna had to admit, her host had impeccable taste in monsters. His own history with the race aside, this one alone was an utter treasure, if one judged it solely on how capable it was of murder.

For one, it was a heteromorph. A… slime, as the mortal preferred to call it. It was a species born of semi-fluid tissue with an incredible capacity for lifeforce. And given how this particular specimen took to the ground like a fish to water, it spoke volumes about its ability to harden itself at a moment’s notice.

It possessed incredibly potent skills. Skills that would go a long way in ensuring the survival of her host.

Even its nature as a heteromorph was useful. The concept of creation that defined a heteromorph was change — or as she preferred to call it, evolution. Monsters like the naegelin earlier were likely more powerful, but the khorkhoi’s skill in shapeshifting would give the mortal a higher spiritual flexibility. Something that would further him in his path to power.

And still there was the Omphalos shard to consider.

Despite her having been the one to shape events ensuring her arrival upon this anomaly, even Inanna was surprised at how well everything had gone thus far. Supreme Queen of Heaven she may have been, but without her power, without her Truths, she was little more than a glorified shade of what once was. A relic. When the Catastrophe had hit the lost belt and its Omphalos had shattered, Inanna had attracted one of the shattered pieces towards herself.

Towards her pendant.

The mortal had been a very good… fishing hook. A creature of the lost belt, and as such, its offspring. It was only natural for him to serve as a lure for the broken shard, especially with her pendant enhancing his spiritual presence by several magnitudes.

Of course, in the end, he was but a mere mortal. He would be able to grasp the Shard, but it would almost immediately absorb his soul unto itself. But as he died in the process, with the meager time his life was able to buy, her own spell would be ready.

She would be ready.

She’d use the broken Shard, consume its energy, and use its origins to locate a Way across the In-Between. One that would lead her back to the Great Progenitor itself.

So she was certainly caught by surprise when instead of absorbing the mortal’s soul and exterminating him like the vermin he was, the Shard ended up fusing with him. A true Bond, an unbroken chain connecting progeny with progenitor.

And now, there was no Shard. The broken piece was still a fragment of the original, but unlike before, it was now on the verge of completion. Its ultimate amalgamation was merely put on hold because its partner was not up to the mark.

Yet this one instance had changed everything.

It was the nature of Omphaloi to mutate their surrounding environment. Whether it be land, water, or even air, an Omphalos would always, always, mutate its surroundings. Create an entirely new world around itself, one that would eventually become its own realm. Different from the Origin. One with its own rules.

Plus, the Omphalos in question was not from some ordinary anomaly. It was the Shard of a Lost Belt, and one of the largest and most developed Inanna herself had ever sensed.

Lukas Aguilar, from the moment he touched the Shard, had ceased being just a mortal.

He had become an anomaly.

After all her laundry list of accomplishments as the Supreme Queen of An and Ki, to think that an ordinary mortal would become the key to her freedom… Inanna had done the only sensible thing anyone would do in her situation.

She laughed.

Relentlessly and hysterically, she had laughed and laughed and laughed at the sheer mad irony, at the absurdity of it all. She had laughed until it had hurt, until tears escaped her usually stolid gaze. Laughed as the newly created miracle sought out a Way across the In-Between, creating a path for her to reach one of the subastras revolving around the Origin.

And then she had found herself here. Inside this underground crypt.

Cursed to remain a denizen of the Underworld even as a shade of her former self, Inanna wondered if Ereshkigal’s curse still held after all these millenia. Was it all a coincidence? Or had Ereshkigal assumed such Power that aeons later, on a different subastra, her curse still bound Her just as powerfully?

Still, Inanna was not one to shy away from dire circumstances. Despite being trapped, the miracle that was Lukas Aguilar was now hers to shape. Hers to mold. Hers to wield.

The mortal would not know what hit him.

First, she needed to test him. To find him worthy of her ambitions. To see if there was anything redeemable about Lukas Aguilar, beyond being the result of dumb luck.

She had not been disappointed.

The mortal, admittedly, had fortitude. There were moments when he needlessly lapsed into thoughtlessness, but there was a potential to improve. Even falling into the throes of death, his mind remained a razor’s edge. She had borne witness to all kinds of beings— great and tiny, demigod and monster alike —bowing down to before her feet, pawing for attention. Whatever caught her fancy, they offered it to her with trembling hands and anticipation in their gaze.

Not Lukas Aguilar.

He was defiant, ill-mannered, temperamental. He would remain rational for as long as his mortal mind could hold out, and then he no longer was. For most of their interactions, he was willing to allow her to dictate his actions. But when pushed against a wall, he never yielded.

He broke the wall.

As she once had.

He had the mental faculty to accept her help graciously when he needed it, and still toed the line between his desires and his rigid moral beliefs— a line that was now slowly thinning from her presence, but a line nonetheless. His thirst for power reminded her of herself, though the utter lack of deception and treachery in his countenance gave her pause. His uncaring, honest, cheerful, defiant attitude was a breath of fresh air.

All in all, Lukas Aguilar would do.

Finely.

It was why she had given him a much-needed gift to enhance his developing arsenal. A tool that utilized the potential of his untrained Third Eye in this upcoming fight.

And if Inanna was not mistaken— which she never was —he was just about ready to use it.

Empathy.

It was a Skill that utilized the power of the Third Eye to project raw, primal emotions and hurl it towards his opponents. But unlike Burst, his trusty ejection of lifeforce, this was purely mental— a psychic assault that targeted the victim’s mind.

A crude application of one’s will, manifested through the effects of lifeforce.

When Inanna had thrown her own Empathy towards him during one of their sessions, Lukas found himself laid out on the floor, gasping like a fish out of water. He’d expected headaches, migraines, even bloodcurdling agony. But never did he expect pure emotion to carry with it the throttling force of a hundred anvils. No matter how much he’d struggled, his body no longer responded to his own will. No matter how much lifeforce churned within him, his fingers didn’t so much as twitch.

All Lukas could do was helplessly throw his own meager defiance and stubbornness back at his opponent, which was how he found himself contending with the Will of Inanna— Supreme Queen of the Sky. Empress of the Gods. Ereshkigal’s sister. Butcher of Gods and Beasts alike. The weight of Inanna’s thoughts, her emotions, her will… It forcibly held him down, leaving him with as much control over his body as an insect had underneath the shadow of a boot.

The irony that she was but a reflection of the real goddess was not lost on him.

And now, it was his turn.

He really didn’t understand the nature of all this Third Eye business, but he couldn’t complain. His mind felt lighter than ever. He could think faster, now able to make deductions with a far greater ease. It had even opened new possibilities to him— Tachypsychia, Empathy, and likely many more down the line.

Lukas gulped, wincing at the discomfort of feeling his saliva travel upwards. His body was hung upside down, and his right leg was bound, as was his neck. Trying to use his hands and legs would get him killed faster than he could say ‘oops’. Besides, the khorkhoi was a creature of rapid generation, coupled with intensive lifeforce capabilities. Using Shatterfist— another skill he’d recently acquired —would only get him killed faster.

Empathy, on the other hand, would hit out of nowhere.

Lukas glared at the monster. His pain slowly abated. His lust for battle abated. His fear of succumbing to death abated. There was no longer any worry of right versus wrong. No quibbles. No doubts. It was an emotion of the irrational.

He felt powerful.

He felt comforted.

He felt serene.

There was a reason, after all, why psionics was frowned upon. It allowed the practitioner the choice to feel or not feel certain emotions. Emotions reflected one’s response to the world, bringing with it changes that wouldn’t otherwise have been present.

It had been emotion that gathered people of all ages together and gave birth to wars of independence.

It had been emotion— fortitude, will, determination — that had kept Lukas from pawning himself off to a goddess of an unknown world.

And what better, greater emotion to overwhelm the monster with than the ones he felt through the so-called eyes of Inanna herself. Lukas could still remember the incomprehensible impressions he had felt, the removal of a thick pad over his senses. Maddening energies and powers and forces and visions and emotions overwhelming his feeble, mortal mind as he observed his own world being destroyed.

Lukas couldn’t handle such an influx of information. And he doubted the khorkhoi could either.

He let the memory of what he saw gather in his mind like a thunderstorm. Despite the impressions affecting him badly the first time he’d taken the brunt of it, it was now nothing more than a tickle with the power of psionics. He couldn’t feel, let alone understand, what was currently in his own mind. But then again, he didn’t need to. He just needed to numb himself to it, let it fester, then push it towards his enemy.

And so he did.

Immediately, the khorkhoi whipped its frame about, letting out a shriek of pain that put modern-day jet engines to shame. Lukas could hear the anguish, the confusion, the agony of being subject to Inanna’s level of higher senses without the mental acuity necessary to process it all. For a moment, he almost felt sympathy for the monster. Almost.

A moment later, the monster began to shudder and the coils around his neck and legs loosened. Lukas quickly capitalized on the moment, sending out a burst of lifeforce to drop to the floor and regain his footing.

“That's— that’s right,” he panted, a strange satisfaction rising within him. “You'd better be afraid!”

The khorkhoi screeched in rage and pain, its countless teeth clacking and grinding against each other. Lukas spotted the still-embedded dagger in its side, and flipped the other dagger into his left hand. With a burst of speed, he dodged the tails that were still thrashing about and swiftly sprinted closer to the beast.

When he was just in front of it, Lukas grabbed his dagger in a straight grip and altered his stance into that of a Pammachon fighter.

Most of one’s force came from the ground. Inanna had drilled that concept into him during their spars. Using lifeforce to accelerate that momentum and as a supportive thrust for a new burst of lifeforce ended up compounding the next effect. One that was greater than the sum of its parts.

It was the concept that Shatterfist was based on.

Cracks spreading across the ground, Lukas pressed his legs downward. Only, instead of propelling his lifeforce downwards to crush whatever lay underneath, he allowed it to push himself ahead. His muscles screamed as the additional thrust threatened to tear through his tendons, and his eyes watered as the pain began to blind him.

But he wasn’t done. He needed to do one more thing. To coordinate the previous momentum into the second burst of lifeforce, he needed to know the finer details of the lifeforce traversing through his form. A skill that required nearly impossible self-awareness, if not for a Skill he already possessed.

Tachypsychia.

Thump!

After weeks of tirelessly honing this one Skill, Lukas was no longer a stranger to the effects of accelerated perception. However, he had only ever used it to keep up with his own body’s greater motion under the added power of Burst. Using it to analyze the flow of lifeforce inside his body— that was something Inanna had made him learn.

Thump!

After the second heartbeat, Neural Suppression activated, sedating his pain. As Lukas reached the crescendo of the third beat, he could feel the surge of lifeforce in his lower limbs, propelling him forward. With a quick, jerky motion, he pushed his right elbow out, redirecting the entire thrust into his arm while simultaneously propelling it with as much lifeforce as he could muster in a split second.

SNAPPPP!

And just like that, the monster broke.

Torn in two.

The many-tailed, serpentine creature let out a final screech of agony as it dropped down to the ground, its body rended apart by the dagger. The entire experience had taken four seconds, maybe five.

First, the Hunt. Then, the Kill. Now, it was time for the most important step.

The Feast.

His lips twisted into an unnatural smile as warmth flooded through him. It was almost like lifeforce, but entirely different. More.

Grabbing his dagger, he began to hack into the fallen body, snapping and tearing and ripping through the chitinous scales with reckless abandon. His mind felt like it was splitting at the seams, consumed by the darkest, deepest pits of Hell itself as he let his instincts take control of his body.

“Die! Die! DIE! DIE! DIE!DIE!DIE!DIE!DIE!DIE!DIE!DIE!!DIE!!DIE!!!”

It was like ambrosia. The more he hacked away, the better he felt. The more blue that oozed out from the creature’s mangled membrane, the more… something that luxuriated inside of him. A gleam of insanity shone in his eyes as he continued madly slashing away, utterly falling prey to his ecstasy like a hedonist on a pleasure trip.

“Mortal,” he heard her speak. “Stop this.”

Lukas scoffed at her. He grabbed a fallen scale from the ground and tore it apart. The blood painted his hands a warm blue. Something hot and sweet swelled in his guts, and he couldn’t help but bare his teeth. He felt sick, hollow, strong.

“Should you let the monster take control, you shall lose yourself forever.”

“FUCK OFF!” he snarled. Distantly, he heard a bone snap into two. He didn’t care. The sound felt like music to his ears.

“Very well, mortal. I will not ask again.”

Her words disturbed the purity of his hatred. Of his battle lust. How dare she, a mere reflection residing in some pendant, someone whose wishes were resting upon his ability to survive, ask him to put away his dagger when she herself held the moniker of Goddess of Murder? Lukas had finally gotten to taste victory over a creature that had once tormented him, put him in a position of weakness, and now this harlot was trying to put an end to his taste of flesh and blood. How dare—

His world became pain.

There was no warning. One moment, he was raging and relishing in his own victory. The very next, his power melted like ice in the afternoon sun. Every injury, every bruise, every splintered bone and torn muscle, scratch and strain— it all came crashing into him at once. He staggered forward, his limbs giving up as he bonelessly dropped to the floor.

Like dead weight.

And then, Lukas moved no more.