Path of Exile Talent Competition

Sirus floated, suspended at the edge of reality. The vestigial essence of the Elder, ravaged by the gravitational pull of Zana’s Arcana, dissipated around him, vanishing into the inky black void. Stars flickered around him, a thousand eyes of a demon indignant at his intrusion. Sirus felt himself draw their gaze, but there was nought he could do but shut his eyes against their oppressive glare.

Each breath came harder than the last as his lungs filled with the turgid miasma of the void, the lapping of their waves a distant whisper in his ears. He was an insignificant speck drifting in an abyss, being crushed by the pressure of the deep surrounding him. The passage of time was indiscernible, and Sirus’ thoughts a confused scattering of images. The formation of coherent thought was impossible in a dimension that lacked cohesion.

A high-pitched keening interrupted his frenzied thoughts, reverberating through the abyss, shaking Sirus to his core. He watched in terror as the sky above him tore, scattering the stars in the distance. A jet black form poured through the rift, blacker than the void. It shifted and undulated around him, swallowing the stars as it began to coalesce into a giant shape.

The figure shifted, solidifying itself. And then it opened its eyes, illuminating itself and the void.

Two cold opalescent eyes burning with a bright blue flame adorned a giant twisted, humanoid figure. Armoured in a serrated white shell-like carapace, the grey skin of its exposed arms and skull torn with jags of crystalline bone, it breathed in the essence of the void with ease. Shreds of the torn sky clung to the behemoth like a cloak, pieces of which drifted away, ripples in the sky from an unseen wind. Its cold light threw the void into sharp contrast, revealing an endless expanse of stars and turgid, heavy waters, featureless and bleak.

The Unraveller’s void falls silent, and a being firmly rooted in reality strays too far beyond the bounds of its realm. Intruder, what business do you seek to conduct here, where the boundaries between reality and dreams fray?

The voice reverberated around him, multilayered and surreal, from seemingly both near and far, far away. Sirus strained to speak, but the presence of the being only suppressed him further.

There is a scent of memories upon the wind, Intruder. Perhaps it shall answer.

It breathed in deeply, absorbing the miasma surrounding Sirus. It stood still and unblinking as it drank of the abyss.

It is clear. How unseemly of the Child of Decay, to be torn asunder by a pack of insignificant beings, barely capable of higher thought. Its gluttonous feast of memories, its utter dedication to the propagation of inevitable entropy no more, cut short by those who do not understand their cosmic role.

Reality is only a perspective, Insignificant One, and you are completely and utterly blind to what lies beyond.

You have transgressed, for the consequences of your actions grate against my and my brethren’s ears. The Unraveller’s void screams silently in its absence, Intruder, and the silence is deafening.

You may feel the taste of victory, of having surpassed insurmountable odds against an eldritch being with powers far beyond what you can perceive.

I shall disillusion you.

The Unraveller was but a child, a fledgeling, new to the joys of entropy and decay. It had only just begun to understand its role among the stars, Intruder, and you have cut that short. It filled the stars with the song of its joy, and now there is only silence.

And for that, you must be punished, Insignificant one.

For if there is only one constant across reality, across dreams, one lone ship in the seas of change, it is this- actions have consequences.

It raised a jagged claw. A single spine of crystal began to elongate, closing the Infinitesimal distance between them.

Here, where the rivers of reality and dreams meet, you are an insignificant pebble, Intruder, and you will be ground to dust.

The spine pierced Sirus, and he erupted into cold blue flames. He froze to the core, burning in pain as he felt himself unravel. Fraying threads of his sanity danced at the edges of his vision, like shadows around a fire. The miasma around him froze solid, encasing him in glass.

I shall gift you with sight, to perceive what you could not, unworthy as you are, and you shall forever walk with knowledge of what lies beyond. It will show you the endless depths of insignificance you and your kind occupy. I shall send you back to that playground you call the Atlas, and you shall forever walk its dreams burdened with an Absence, Intruder.

An Absence of Meaning and Value.

And in an eternity, or a blink of an eye, it was all over.


**********


Oriath burned, eroded by Sirus’ storms to its bones, and Zana wept. She knelt over the disintegrating remains of Sirus, fallen to the Godslayer. His own destructive energies, now lacking direction fed upon Sirus himself. She gently grasped his hand as he took in his final shallow breaths.

“I'm sorry... Sirus... This was all my fault. I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry.”

Sirus gazed at the red-haired figure that he had once adored, somewhere in a long-forgotten memory. And with his final breath, he rasped as his lungs turned to dust.

“Beyond… there is only horror…”