It gyrates with joy. Its squeals of delight are sickening.

I can't trust this thing. Maybe I could if I could put a leash on this crazy thing as I did with the other one by using [Thralldom], but it doesn't seem like skills work down here. In here? Over there?

It's unpredictable.

"I'm going to renovate my home! Give me about 2-20 minutes before coming back. I'll tell you what I know! I'm going to make a classroom. If you want to come in uniform, feel free! School girls."

The tar-like sludge of a being slithers through the ocean toward its nucleus. I thought I would feel lighter, but I felt no different.

What should I do while I wait? Maybe I could-

Involuntarily, I looked at the door that looked suspiciously like my lexicon. I thought I felt someone staring at me from just beyond my periphery. If the concept of Taboo is conscious, too, that is where it would live. Honestly, I wish this is all a hallucination or a metaphor for something because I don't want little people living inside my body rent-free.

I swim over, dodging the aimless floating chains.

I wonder what Taboo can do to me. How will it try to change me? I feel no ill effects as I inch closer. There is an almost freeing sensation, but it isn't strong enough to change me in any way. The door creaks open before my fingers can reach the handle.

I push the door open all the way and look inside. I can't see shit.

A film of energy, similar to the one my mansion skill uses, blocks my vision. It isn't the exact same. Privacy screen? Pocket plane? I stick a hand through and pull it back. My arm is still intact, and I didn't feel any pain. There was only a slight abnormal feeling, so I walked through the door.

It felt like walking through a bead curtain door. Lots of little sensations roll off my body as I push myself through. The interior of this nucleus is dapper, not what I expected.

Wall the ceiling bookshelves with titles that I find familiar. The walls are adorned with beautiful artwork. Rare flowers, an army fighting against a single beast, my grandfather for some reason. The hardwood floors have luxurious rugs that make it feel like I'm walking on a cloud.

It smells like an old book, a comforting smell of paper and ink. The air is neither heated nor cooled, and the humidity is perfect.

The atmosphere would be inviting and intoxicating, but the figure sitting in an armchair breaks any illusion of this being a welcoming place. A pair of scared hands with blackened flesh and cracked purple nails hold a book aloft.

Its tattoos shine compared to the rest of its body, which is on full display as this entity only wears a pair of leather pants. It is missing its head. Nothing is sitting above its neck, but it seems to read as if it has eyes situated there.

"Yo. The other guy implied he was the only one here, at least the only one with conversational skills."

Its neck and shoulders move like it turns its nonexistent head to look at me. It closes the book it was reading and looks over the cover before tossing it at me. I catch it and read the title.

[The Guide to Torture, Vol 1: Humans]. Ah. Good choice.

"Is this a metaphor or something? I hope it isn't a threat."

I open the book and skim it over. Nothing has changed except some words have been highlighted. Some of the more "descriptive" diagrams have been circled. I look up at the thing. Man? Entity?

It dismissively waves its hand towards the book it tossed over. I look it over again and notice that the highlighted words can be someone constructed into a sentence. I take every word and make a paragraph of text.

I sigh.

~

The headless man tells me a story constructed from many books and tomes from my "library." It takes a little work to understand what it means with different combinations of words, but I think I grasped what this thing is trying to tell me. Why he couldn't write it down himself is a question that wasn't answered.

[Humans? I've never heard of such a race before. The books provided by this place have answered my questions, but it's still a curious circumstance, regardless. Call me Taboo.]

That's what I think he was trying to tell me. What I read was.

[Human] [?] [Never heard] [Before...] [.] [Other books] [here] [informed] [Question] [.] [curious] [.] [I] [am] [Taboo] [.]

I took many liberties.

[I cannot explain in words what I am. I have no memories except preconceived notions of what should and shouldn't be. Elves, dragons, and gods are all things I can faintly recall that should exist. But beyond faint recollections, I am bare of knowledge.

Thanks to your library, however, I am not as ignorant as a newborn. I have a faint recollection that I require knowledge. Information. The more I learn, the better I can grasp the fleeting memories. Maybe it has something to do with my nature, but I digress. I can answer some questions in exchange.]

"Exchange for what."

[I haven't decided yet. I found this place and started squatting. Took it as my own. Apologies. I would be able to read anything recorded here, so exchanging information for information is a bad deal.]

"You are an attuned concept of [Taboo]. You have an ego for some reason. If you don't have my memories but actual memories from somewhere, that asks many new questions. You are not alone. I have information not recorded in these books."

[Noted. Explains the neighborhood. What exactly are the other attuned energies? Some of them are annoying.]

"Madness, Pain, Life, Death, Undeath, and Rock."

[I have theories on my being now.]

"I have a few as well, but I'm a little high right now, so I didn't want to gaslight myself into an answer that isn't true. I don't feel any adverse mental effects, but I'm technically not sober."

I and this headless thing conversed until we agreed on a theory. It's nice to have someone with a similar head space to talk to. I mean mentally, not physically. I can think for hours, asking questions and pondering the universe. I'm fucking doing it right now.

Back on the topic, our theory.

All the energies helped contribute to the "egos" present. From what Taboo recollected about his "birth," we inferred that Life gave the ability for living things to form in this place. Wherever "this" is. Madness and Pain gave the things here the ability to create a consciousness.

We discussed philosophy for that. Pain is a part of the human experience. Pain is also an emotion. It's a tool for growth. A way to learn and become stronger. Etc. Etc. Madness is the mind in its primal state. What is considered ordinary and sane is naught but constructs of a concept that the beings that named said concept do not understand.

I'm not giving any of the personalities credit for this achievement, but the "concepts." I believe them to be separate. Beings created from concepts, showing their own characteristics and inhabiting my "space."

I refuse to believe that particular tar creature is in every insane person. Maybe it is, but I mean not that exact one.

The only way to confirm is to ask the thing now designated as Pain, but we also believe that they are "sleeping." Once Taboo picked an area, it couldn't leave. It could grow and spread on instinct, but the "physical" manifestation couldn't leave the island. Now it can.

It doesn't want to. But it could.

Maybe it has to do with the designations my system gave them. [Dormant.] [Stirring.] Perhaps the other energies aren't without ego but haven't realized that their front door is unlocked. It wasn't like I had gotten close enough to ring the doorbell.

Time to put the scientific method to the test. I ignore the appointment with the tar thing and head in a different direction.

I'll investigate the island of Pain. It's one of the "hostile" places I can tolerate. Or at least the place I can stomach the most. Ironic since I'm here because of the intense "Pain" I was in. The feeling of clashing energies was amplified by this concept. I think.

It gets more intense as I traverse the sea. Phantom wounds open on my body as I get closer to the source. It burns, hurts, It makes me queasy and weak, but it isn't the worst I have felt.

Worse things have happened, and most of them happened voluntarily. This is just one of those times. I wonder if I could use this for training if I was in my body. What is my actual bodily situation?

I got a headache from the island, or maybe from thinking. The island is a slowly pulsating mass of meat. It looks like the contents of a butcher shop exploded and then recombined. Customers included. A wall of fragmented bone shards makes a makeshift door with a perfectly average door handle sticking out of it.

I try the handle, and it's stuck. Jammed.

The handle has an archaic keyhole that would let me see inside without opening the door. I lean to look, but I move my head at the last moment as a finger tries to jab my eye.

I grab the finger and break it in the keyhole. It squelches, and the door crumbles away. The L-shaped finger is left on the ground... Never mind, it let out a scream and turned into goo.

Great.

"Hello. Anyone home?"

The response I got was a cacophony of screams straight from the depths of damnation. The shrieks of men, women, and children. The wails of people burning or being flayed alive. Screams of grief and torment. The loudest cries are the silent ones.

But the actual loudest scream sounds familiar. It's nothing special, nothing unique, but I've heard it before.

Was that voice mine? Was it somebody I knew? I don't recall.

What I do know is the entity making these sounds betrayed my expectations. I expected a mass of meat and mouths like the energy looked like during the attunement process. Mouths, yes. Meat... Not exactly.

It looks more humanoid than something that went through a meat grinder and reformed itself. It's hiding in a shadow, but the long sinewy form is jerking and moving erratically in its corner like it's constantly writhing in agony. Don't get me wrong, it is made of meat, but as much as I am. Its form is jagged. It hurts my eyes just looking at it.

It has no mouth where it should be and too many where it shouldn't. Between the uncontrolled motions, it cuts itself. Splitting the flesh down to the bone. The fresh wound doesn't stay like that. It writhes into another screaming mouth as another one permanently closes.

It's hard to tell, but the moment before the mouth formed brought solace to this tormented creature. It wasn't much, but the screams weren't so loud, and its movements weren't so erratic.

I step forward, but the creature seems blind to my presence. It wasn't screaming before I went in... Did I cause this to happen? Was it peacefully sleeping before my curiosity enflamed this torture? Its very essence is Pain.

It's so red. Its blood saturates the entity down to its very soul. It only has mouths as its nose seems gnawed off and its eyes freshly plucked. It doesn't seem to have anything to characterize it as one gender or another.

The only thing breaking the landscape of red and howling mouths are splotches of black tar. The most prominent mouth, taking up most of its back down along the spine, is drowning in this black tar.

"Hey. Where were you!? The 2-20 minute time period passed. Hey! You met Pain."

I turn to look at the slinking figure of black tar that waltzes in like they own this place. Pain is blind to its presence.

"You said you were the only one I could talk to. I know that you cannot be trusted."

"I SAID, reasoned with! Look at that thing. 'Can't get a good conversation out of it, now can you?! I forgive you for ditching me."

I shake my head and sidestep the tar's attempt to reattach itself onto me. I was referring to Taboo, but I'll let this madman get the wrong impression. Instead, it flings a viscous glob of blackness at the writhing creature in the corner. It latched on and stained the entity a little more.

"Wow. It's much easier with the door open! Thanks, ambiguous parental figure."

"Knock that off."

"But he likes it! He likes it a little too much. I'd rather you like it, though!"

Pain's actions haven't changed.