"Cronsuwhede..." Oscar spoke lowly to his breast pocket.

  "Cronsuwhede," the small likemind spoke wordlessly back.

  A week had passed since the Wandering Evil departed the Mardavatt system and Oscar had done his best to keep a healthy distance between the others on the Evil's bridge. Not for his sake, but rather that of his stowaway's.

  Tarrare and Domery had elected to remain behind with the Rys – to lie in wait should others return – leaving only Nalusa and her attendants in close proximity. Oscar had even kept the little apocryphus hidden from Nín, made easier by his brother's continued recovery.

  Nín's weeklong rest was progressing, but he would still benefit from a few more days. Oscar took that time to better get to know his unlikely companion.

  The likemind didn't speak, for it bore no mouth. It did not see, for it bore no mouth or fingers with which to feel. It was an exemplar of what a functional of the Will should be. And it was as eager to share in the knowledge that Oscar supplied in kind.

  There was desperation there, Oscar could see. Desperate to return home, and after so long... It was a prodigal child's return; a castaway on its final sojourn, and Oscar could be there to see it.

  "Feel that?" Nalusa said from her place at the bridge's helm, turning to him and eyeing Oscar down, forcing him to notice her.

  "Feel... what?" Oscar said, poorly hiding his distraction.

  "What is it with you lately? You've been... off since we departed the Rys– distracted." Nalusa said, her suspicions rippling through the Will. "Nín's awake."

  She was right; he had been distracted.

  Focusing for a moment, Oscar could feel his brother writhing around in bed as he navigated another nightmare, though far subdued from the terror storms he subjected on them before.

  "I better go check on him," Oscar said as she still stared through him. Oscar was indifferent however, being that the distrust was now mutual. Despite his likemind-granted revelations, he hadn't forgotten about the words she spoke to the human on the communication device, of the supposed trade she'd promised in the name of his father. Without a further thought to her own contentment, Oscar stepped away from the bridge.

  The corridors of the Evil were wide, empty, and sterile. The walls, normally lined with pods of hibernating attendants, were all long silent much like the hallowed dead halls of the Rys. Coming upon Nín's quarters, his brother's mind flew into a raucous delirium.

  "Brother, wake," he urged to Nín through the normally wordless quiet, now clamouring with colliding and competing thoughts. "Wake!"

  Nín sat bolt upright in bed, spilling his tattered sheets onto the floor.

  "It's coming!" Nín screamed in a panic.

  Turning to Oscar, the fear in his eyes began to fade, replaced with confusion.

  "What's coming?" Oscar asked.

  "Oh–?" Nín said, "I... I'm not sure."

  "You're delirious. Lay back, you've still time to recover."

  Laying back, Nín winced as his neck rested on his pillow.

  "Still hurts," he explained.

  "I'd be surprised if it didn't," said Oscar, "though you're past the worst of it. The attendants tell me you've healed well."

  "What about you– what about the others?" Nín asked, "did I hurt them?"

  Oscar shook his head. "Nothing a coffee couldn't fix."

  "Still, I'm sorry. I don't know what that was– is, that keeps happening. I see things; terrible things," Nín said, "things that confuse me. Things that scare me to my core."

  "Do you remember anything? Anything at all?" asked Oscar, "–about your visions, about your life before?"

  "Before..." Nín started to say, "I was a scientist wasn't I?"

  Oscar nodded.

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  "Those people, they were mine? The ones the soldier was cleaning up..."

  Oscar nodded again.

  Nín closed his eyes and sighed.

  "Why?"

  "I'm not certain," Oscar said. "Nalusa's forces are responsible but the reason why they were dispatched while you alone were extricated eludes me."

  "Disp–" Nín said, eyes now wide, as a rage stepped into the room, "dispatched! Those are my people that were slaughtered!"

  "Were your people," Oscar said, his tone calm and measured. "We are– I am your people now."

  "I'm not one of you, not if you can murder innocents like you do."

  To his own surprise, Oscar hadn't once before now considered them innocents. He would have to ponder the implications of that... and he caught himself wondering what the likemind thought of all of this.

  "What even am I if not one of you?" Nín said.

  "You may not see it now, but our father does much like I do, Nín. There's power in you, and in time you within the Will's embrace can do great things. To continue us down the path that leads to more lost lives is your choice to make."

  Nín turned to him with a grimace in his cheeks.

  "You would allow that? The Crown Paramount means to make it our choice after all," Nín questioned.

  "Our choice..." Oscar said wordlessly, "No, Nín. It might've been my greatest desire to sit the throne someday, or our father's dream to see us rule in concert, but I know now that ship bears no bottom."

  Nín didn't say anything, just stared back at him unmoving.

  "I felt it. I felt your raw influence over the Will back aboard the Rys. I've never encountered such a power outside of Ti Malis himself."

  "You expect me to take his seat, after... after this?" he said, gesturing around the room.

  "You were chosen to do so, and chosen wisely despite the circumstances," Oscar admitted.

  "You clearly want it more than I do. Why can't they just choose you and let me go?"

  "It can never be me," he explained, "Each of us normally comes from a population outside of the Will, taken in and shaped by it just like you have been. That's what the augurs hate so much about me– I was born within it. I am my own evolution away from the Will, and with that brings blasphemy."

  "Why take people? Why all the killing? What is it all for, Oscar?" Nín said, impatience rippling throughout the quiet. Oscar could feel the stowaway in his pocket grow uneasy.

  "We normally only cull target hosts en masse, those that will not be missed; we tread carefully to not disrupt the populations of our neighbours," Oscar said, "we take only those that we need."

  "Need– need for what?"

  "The augurs aren't only advisors, warriors, or holymen of the Will. They wield the Transformative Power to serve the Will with another more fundamental function– reproduction."

  Oscar turned toward the bridge, sensing something. Nalusa felt his wandering mind and answered back. They would be arriving in the home system in moments.

  "Reproduction?" Nín asked, "you mean to tell me the Will uses people to create Nalusa, the augurs, the attendants?"

  Oscar nodded.

  "Come, brother. Stand with me," Oscar insisted, ushering Nín over to a concealed wallscreen that spanned the breadth of one wall of his quarters. With a thought, the screen flickered on to see a roving starfield, chaotic and muddied as they looked out at the void within riftspace.

  Just then, the Wandering Evil exited a rift and came to rest in orbit above Ghede, the glistening home world of their namesake people. From down on the planet, epicentred on his father's throne, a powerful force reached out to welcome them.

  The world beneath was a jewel of rolling bands of clouds while vast and verdant marshlands and algal rafts that wrapped every surface of the planet just as the Will wrapped them in warm embrace. The lands far below were dappled with shifting forms as beasts roamed in unending herds across boundless plains. The beloved treasure that was Ghede, a shining beacon of clinquant gold in the bosom of a loving void.

  The Crown Paramount immediately felt the apprehension and confusion within his sons. Though he was gladdened to see their safe return, he was made sad by their pain. He and Oscar knew the time had come to allow a glimpse past the Golden Lie– to see past the half-truth that Oscar was born into seeing both sides of.

  Were he in the very room with them, Ti Malis, Crown Paramount and sole wielder of the Will and all of its people, despite his fading form, spoke out across the distance with a singular, careful, frightening intensity.

  "Show him."

  And with that, Oscar pulled back the curtain, revealing the Golden Lie for what it was.

  Where seconds before there was a jewel amidst the black, now only a forlorn horror remained.

  Storms roiled in the skies above a sodden mat of unyielding black that spread the entirety of the world's surface. Broken only by the Palace grounds and by the foot-beats of the massive hordes of functionals as they migrated about in practiced subservience, the viscous body of the Will writhed with the singular joy of control over a world dominated and made one.

  Even the shining tower of the Palace far below was no longer a beacon to behold in wonder, but a diffident corpuscle bordered on all sides by putrescent blight.

  Nín stepped back, unsure what to do. There was horror there behind his eyes, Oscar was sure of it. But there was also something else that woke deep within him.

  Intrigued and unwavered by any sights that it knew to be home, the stowaway likemind reached out to touch the mind of the Crown Paramount and the rest of the Will.

  In concert, each became aware of the likemind's existence. From Nalusa on the bridge, to the admirals in orbit, to Nín, to the augurs that encircled the throne and palace grounds and the black-suited soldiers that lay in wait in the fleets that orbited the homeworld, all looked to Oscar in the moment.

  The likemind's visions were in an instant made communal, revelation that then spread at the speed of wordless quiet, followed by the watchful eye deep in the void.

  Whether by the power of the revelation or by his ailing form, the contact with the likemind however brief could not be sustained. Through sheer resolve, the Crown Paramount severed the connection to the likemind, saving the host of the Will on the planet's abhorrently inky surface as the voice of the stowaway fell silent.

  Just as the likemind who had yearned to return home was made sad to find they would come so close only to be denied, the Crown Paramount smiled to his sons in sad silence as his voice too fell silent as life left him behind.

  Action?Horror

  Progression

  Infinity / Unlimited Flow

  Grimdark

  The Tartarus Trials [A Grimdark Infinity Serial]

  Wits buy powers in a cycle of flesh?ripping missions.

  Waylen is a warehouse worker used to gritting his teeth through miserable shifts, making do with whatever crumbs management throws him. That grit is pushed to the breaking point when he wakes up in a clinically white room with five strangers, no phone signal, and a message on the wall: complete the mission in two hours or die.

  Then the walls explode.

  Trapped in a shifting mansion with no way out and something else locked in with them, Waylen hears its laughter as it bites off a head and rips out another throat. As the timer ticks down, mysteries stack up and bodies fall. What is this place? Who dragged them here? What happens when the timer hits zero—and what kind of “reward” justifies surviving?

  To live, Waylen will have to outlast, outthink, and outplay a homicidal nightmare, turning terror into leverage and blood into bargaining chips. But escaping the mansion may only be the first trial… and the price of freedom could be infinitely worse.

  [Mission Log: Initial Deployment]

  "The pop?up on the wall didn’t blink. It didn’t explain. It just ticked down, second by second, while five strangers screamed accusations across a room with no doors. Waylen had spent years breaking his back for pennies. Now the universe wanted to see how much grit that bought him… with something in the dark laughing every time they argued."

  ? Fast?Paced Action?Horror?Thriller: Missions on a timer; no filler.

  ? Progression After Mission One: Infinity / Unlimited Flow flavor.

  ? Smart, Earned Growth: Waylen climbs from Normal to Strong through grit and craftiness.

  ? Buy Your Powers: Magic and sci?fi abilities/items can be purchased as the Trials unfold.

  ? Dark, Gritty Survival: Victories are won second by second, wound by wound.

  ? Myriad Missions: New threats, new rules, escalating terror each round.

  Content Warning: Grimdark themes, graphic violence, and profanity. Reader discretion advised.

  Schedule: 3 chapters a week – Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday (by 1:00 PM EDT / GMT?4).

  ENTER THE TRIALS ?