Paxolnaz had been stuck down in the depths, slaving for its Master, when it felt the Ripples. Ripples that it understood immediately.

  The Denizen had had its bodily form destroyed. Its Soul had been freed.

  There could only be one culprit. The fact this had happened in the moment where Paxolnaz was gone from the human was not, Paxolnaz believed, the result of dumb luck. It had come to suspect that the human was aware of the fact of the Unwinder’s call drawing Paxolnaz away, and had made use of that.

  It was infuriating.

  Paxolnaz moved through the Interior like a rogue comet hunting for an unlucky planet full up with oblivious lifeforms. As it emerged near to its target the furious waves preceding its arrival caused the entities gathered around the human’s mind to spring apart, making space. Paxolnaz slowed, circling around the human’s mind like a shark orbiting a diving cage. It felt hungrily at the human’s thoughts and it was not at all pleased by what it saw.

  You dare…

  Paxolnaz sneered at the mind. Every day the True Demon hated this creature more and more. Paxolnaz could feel the human’s confidence. Actual confidence and self-belief that it was going to win. The arrogance was staggering, but the worst part of all was that this arrogance was not unwarranted.

  Paxolnaz had never, in all its years, encountered a biological with such a strange mind. A mind that seemed made of many different, disparate parts, which shifted around into different configurations at will, and which now had formed into some peculiar and yet oddly seamless whole. The human was becoming increasingly alien to Paxolnaz. It reminded the True Demon of a time long, long ago, when in the depths of the Black Edge, it had encountered a Malocryph. This human almost felt like a fetal variant of those things.

  But regardless, progress is being made. Paxolnaz peered deeper into the human and what it saw made it smile. The mad human’s will was solid as metal, but that will was gradually being carved through with strings of darkness. The little cage the human had constructed was no longer capable of holding it all, not even close. Now at every moment its Black Gift—engorged and increasing corrupted by the influence of Paxolnaz’s subjugated entities—was throughout its body.

  This should have been a tipping point. Normally, once that occurred the Gifted one would begin to mutate. The human differed in that. Still—somehow—it was able to resist.

  But the Black Gift was not a quiet passenger. It flexed and squirmed, it demanded to be fed, it hungered for death and blood. A hunger that only grew, and grew, and all the while the False Demons reached into the human through it. Paxolnaz hoped that the human would continue to do as it was, to suppress its Gift and ignore it. If it did so, then quite soon the Black Gift would erupt and then the human would be finished.

  Alternatively, the human might opt to sate the Black Gift. This would buy it some more time, causing the Gift to relax rather than making a bid for control. But each time the human did so, the Gift would grow stronger from the feeding. The hunger would rise more and more rapidly, and demand more and more.

  No matter what, the human would fall.

  But Paxolnaz was not happy. Because this might still not be soon enough. It had one more use of the Blind Judge, but that was for emergencies. It might be able to add some extra consequence, maybe reinforce the Soul Rot. But it wanted to keep the final use back. The human was sneaky, crafty. It was obviously looking for a way around the first use. If it used the Blind Judge now, it would possibly be able to speed things up, but it would then be unable to take anymore decisive action. It would simply have to wait and hope that everything turned out as desired; hope that whatever plots the human had didn’t work.

  If it kept the Blind Judge back, it would be able to use the Symbiote when the human enacted the plan it was cooking up, circumventing it. Paxolnaz intended to monitor the human carefully. It was aware that the human was doing its best to simply not think on its plan at times where Paxolnaz was near. This was a method doomed to fail—eventually some hint of those plans would emerge, it was impossible for a fleshy being to entirely avoid thinking on matters of such import over a longer period. Once it knew the plan, the Blind Judge would work as a perfectly timed counter, sealing the human’s fate.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  In the meantime, it would simply put the pressure on when and where it could.

  Until now it hadn’t been certain the human knew about it. The human had clearly been working hard to conceal that knowledge, its thoughts on the matter vague whenever Paxolnaz was about. But this latest act proved it knew more than enough.

  Therefore, it was time to abandoned subtlety entirely. Rather than waiting for an opportune moment, it would simply strike whenever it could.

  Paxolnaz reached out, the spark of True Warp within it flaring, and it grasped at all the pathetic, cowering creatures around it. It seized them roughly, jolted them with fear and pain, and it enforced its will.

  Do what you do, it hissed at them, whipping them like the slaves they were, shoving them toward the human’s mind. And do it better. Even as it did this, it felt the human’s readiness, felt it firming its will and its Soul, preparing, and it knew that this would not be easy, that this was just the continuation of a frustratingly slow process.

  ###

  The temperature in his room had abruptly plummeted, which told Nicolai everything he needed to know. His will and Soul were already tight around the ramshackle cage when he felt the hole within it seething, energies squeezing out and feeding into the dark bottled up inside, seeking to stir it up into a mad rage.

  He felt a stirring, and the world shimmered around him. He saw his shadow, cast upon the wall, but it was twisting and squirming. It separated from the wall and took a slow step towards him, and it was him but it was not him, it was something different.

  It took another step and within himself Nicolai felt that dark moving in mirror, rising.

  There was no point trying to run from this shadow, he knew that. It was a representation, something that happened inside of him.

  Even as the shadow drew closer and closer, Nicolai closed his eyes and sat there, meditational, and he focused. Even as he felt it right before him, inches from him, he remained calm, and instead the heat of danger and the pressure of it all condensed his mind and focus. Like a great weight, a centrifuge applied to molten metals, forming the pure into one. Approaching the Zero-Twelve state.

  In this state of mind he was able to suppress the dark more easily than before. Another change was that he was beginning to be able to differentiate the true dark, as he thought of it—the original, the part that was actually his—and the additional parts of it that had grown from the strange energies being fed into him.

  Nicolai opened his eyes and he saw the shadow, right in front of him, reaching for him. He raised a hand, pressed and pulled within.

  His hand touched that of the shadow, fingers intertwining, and the shadow was gone. The Darkness Module restricted and under his control.

  Nicolai looked it over carefully. If he kept track of it, he could see how it was a strange merging. With an effort of will he had the two portions to separate a little, pulling them apart wherever they joined, within him, and the shadow mirrored this as it began to pull in two directions. The original dark still stirred, but less so. Once it was held apart enough, it almost seemed to aid him. It despised the attempt to control him, even more than it despised how he suppressed it. Knowing that much of this was due to an alien being attempting to seize control of him also gave him significantly more desire and motivation to fight back, than when he had thought it all a part of himself.

  The trouble was that he knew this would not be stopping anytime soon.

  His time was running out, and now he would have to live under this constant pressure. He wouldn’t always be able to keep the dark suppressed; it required significant attention and the focus of his Soul, not to mention the issue of the Soul Rot, which seemed to make everything slightly more difficult.

  Nicolai raised his hands and saw how his skin seemed to writhe, spiritual claws attempting to emerge from within. He saw how his shadow reached for him, and how it was sharp and twisted and hungry. And he knew that if he let it merge, that his Soul would become something truly dangerous. He knew these things could help him in battle, and weaponising his Soul was certainly appealing.

  But only under his terms. Only because he controlled it.

  The cold grew and he suffered another attack as his shadow reached for him. But Nicolai rose and he held it off. So long as he was ready it wasn’t of too much risk.

  Once more, he endured. And to his surprise, the cold soon dissipated. He waited but no more attacks came.

  Based on what he understood, from what the Angel had told him, this should be some kind of indirect attack. The Demon was using other beings against him.

  If the attack had ended, then that meant these beings had a limit. They needed time to recover. That was good, it meant he wouldn’t have to endure this continuously, and he knew how to to resist.

  He smiled. The Demon could do what it might. He knew how to deal with these attacks.