Taken Horizon Origin, volume 2, Descension

Episode 24 : golden insanity

***
Looking up at Strife as he hanged by the chains, he greeted us with the most pained smile imaginable as he awoke. "Deep within this drowning dream. Gazing upon myself." The past of the homunculus was something we had no right to see, but something that i could not help but feel sorry for. "I laugh at my despair."

Strife's voice held utter loathing to himself, yet he somehow sounded so calm in his mentally broken state. The tired but crazed gaze of his silver eyes conveyed the age he had been hiding beneath his worry free exterior. Now we could see the true soul of the kralscell of Sentience.

A simple child that wished for answer's to an unknowable question.

Embedded in the side of the brazier you could see the same scintilla that the man 'Tatsuo' had once worn. The purple flames the brazier emitted were warm and harmless as they wrapped around Strife. The final remnant of his dead friend was being used to keep Strife sane.

"Let's get you out of here, Strife." Raptor spoke up to break the silence as he dug his nails into the back of his neck. Too afraid of speaking the wrongs words in fear of Strife slipping into the insane version of himself we saw combatting the samurai named Ghum like he already was. And that was when Strife was still a novice with aether. "Surely you want to return back to the real world, right?"

"My past is nothing but tragedy... one betrayal after after another, I died." silver and orange mist began to gather around Strife's body. "Those I chased after abandoned me, failed me, killed me."

Unsure of what Strife meant by this Raptor and I readied to fight if we had to. Some sweat ran down my forehead fearful of if I could even win.

The once silver horizon we entered this prison inside Strife's mind from flashed into a golden-yellow color. "Only the repeated failure of remorse can wake me from this drowning dream." Strife's once silver eyes were now bloodshot with madness, glowing golden in colour as i could see Strife's mind become unhinged by the ambient aether whilst he smiled insanely

[skill: chain's of sentience, attempt's to secure sanity!]

The chains that wrapped around Strife's arm's rattled violently in the darkness of the empty space. Strife's eyes twitched showing an effect was taking place from the chains but not a strong one.

The brazier of purple flames vanished from sight as i blinked and the dark expanse inside Strife's mind cracked apart like a glass mirror as aether invaded to infect Strife's mentality even further.

"Thorn, any suggestions?" Raptor asked and in a puff of black smoke the black raven with horn's appeared between us.

"Run." Stretching out his wings Thorn blasted a flurry of silver flames towards Strife as he broke free from the chains.

Strife flew forwards crashing through the flames as orange thunder covered his body. Thorn slapped his wings together and now a wave of pale flames flushed out of his feathers to try and stop his now mad master.

The force was so powerful as the thunder and fire collided that Raptor and myself were thrown straight out of Strife's mindscape and back into our proper bodies inside Invoker's lab.

Choking as we sucked in air to fill our lungs Raptor and i immediately stood up from the mist our bodies rested in and scampered off the floor to start running for the elevator.

"Your awake?-" grabbing Invoker's collar as he spoke i jumped straight out of the lab forgoing the elevator pulling the blank faced homunculus out just in time as a discharge of amber lightning bolts shattered the glass walls of the lab and scorched the white metal ceiling and floor.

"Ahhhh!" Screaming Durvin fell along with Raptor before rolling across the smooth stone floor in the underground chasm. "What happened? What did you two do in there?!" Exclaiming loudly Durvin immediately used his aether to construct a rifle out of the bracelet of hanging metal he had.