II-134 Claustrophobia

Greatest. The once Prince of Pride. I cannot call him an ally, but I will not declare him an enemy either. Ultimately, it is hard to say what is right and what is wrong after all I experienced in the Claimed Hells.

But I will say this, I would not have succeeded without that strange man. And he would not have reached where he got without me. There was more than meets the eye, far more, and I didn't see it at the time.

He distracted us with far too much about himself. The great illusion and the obvious plays of degeneracy. It split our awareness, yet. Deeper within, deeper than even his disgusting anal powers, was something else.

I was not the only one who sought revenge in the Claimed Hells. He had also been wounded, but he told no one. No one until far later.

-Wei An Wei the Realmbreaker

II-134

Claustrophobia

"Wait, that came from what?" Agnesia's expression contorted in absolute disgust as she regarded the submarine.

It was currently held within the special hangar, a hangar that resided in the Gray House's basement. Wei wondered how the Gray House had room for such a hangar, but he stopped thinking about it thereafter. It was hard to conceptualize the exact nature of the Gray House, but ultimately it served every purpose the trespassers needed: the purpose of having practically infinite amounts of room.

The submarine lay suspended in the air. Long cords held it to the ceiling, and hundreds of trespassers examined it from side to side. Some scrubbed at splotches Wei didn't much want to think about, while others began welding pieces of metal back upon the vehicle, or dismantling extensions, removing wires, or examining modules. The rest of Wei's inner sect stood around him, and they observed the submarine from atop a platform.

"Yes," Wei sighed. "You heard me correctly. This was pulled out of Greatest—the Prince of Pride's—behind." He closed his eyes as he finished those words. Sometimes, life felt like a horror show. Other moments seemed designed to mock him. Regardless, he had to deal with it, and he had to see the inside of this vessel, if it was going to span the vastness of the Fathoms and eventually sink down beneath the waves of Earth.

"It looks like some kind of tube-shaped tower," Ellena said, her expression flattening into curiosity.

"It kind of is like a tower," Bishop answered. "It's just got a lot of stuff inside it. You can pilot it around. Very simply, it's meant to go under the water."

"Under the water?" Ellena asked. "Why would it do such a thing?"

"For war, mostly, and scouting."

"War? Under the water?" Ellena blinked. "But people... why?"

"Because... Imagine this, right? You guys have ships?" 

Ellena nodded slowly. 

Bishop continued. "Well, imagine you could shoot from under the water, and blow that ship up, and sink it, and it couldn't hit you back."

And, suddenly, she understood. "That sounds horrible, and treacherous."

"Yeah, well, horrible and treacherous are the ways of the world," Bishop sighed. He noted how Ellena was staring at him, and he added a little more context. "It was the way of our world. Anyhow, we don't have Essence. There's no magic. Earth is a hard, cold place. And, at the same time, hell, at the same time, I miss it. It's not nearly as cruel as the Fathoms. People there were," he paused as he searched for the right word, "unloved. We just kind of existed, floating in the void for the longest time."

"You believed in no gods. There was no, you said there was no Essence to guide you. But what about the divine?" Agnesia asked.

"God," Bishop said. "If there is one, the motherfucker's quiet. I ain't seen no god. Not till I got to here. Not till the first time I died. But what you see right there," he pointed to the submarine, "that's what we made to echo a god. It's a weapon beyond the imagination of what most in the Fathoms could conceive, or what most here had to conceive. Because here, if you concentrated enough and gathered enough power, you could break worlds. Hell, the Claimed Hells has plenty of super powerful sinners. This submarine wouldn't seem like much to them. Of course, it would also kill them considering it's source-charged and made from earthbound materials."

"Like my gun?" Agnesia asked.

"Yeah, except it doesn't fire bullets, it fires torpedoes. A bit like bullets, but they come out and they... explode. Again, it was meant to take out ships. Stop thinking like a Sinner. Start thinking like a normal person."

Agnesia frowned in concentration, and then she winced. “That sounds dreadful. And I was never normal. I am a Scion of Ignium.”

"Right. So, picture this: you're just sailing on the ship, yeah?”

"Yeah." Agnesia blinked.

"And it bursts. You sink, you drown, or you get captured, or... something."

"Bishop," a Trespasser sailed through the air. Small glistening Elementals trailed behind him, and a sparkle of Essence formed a cape at his back. "We finished up the exterior examination. I expect that you're going to want to go inside?"

"Yeah," Bishop replied. He looked over his shoulder, and further back, Moonscar stared blankly at Greatest, who was articulating with his hands, muttering about which prince and princess they needed to keep track of in the coming days. More than that, though, he repeatedly mentioned the term trespasser over and over again. Apparently, he was trying to convince her to begin evacuations immediately.

"He really doesn't like your kind," said Bishop. He looked Greatest up and down, and the Trespasser almost sneered. Almost. But then he shook his head. "Yeah, well, I don't fully blame him. We didn't exactly do the best while we were here."

"Isn't that the motherfucking truth?" William said. He eyed Greatest only briefly, but Wei noticed something interesting between his father and the Prince of Pride. As William looked over, the Prince looked away, as if he refused to acknowledge William's existence. With most people, Greatest either approached them nonchalantly or with a joyful aggression that belied his status and power.

There's history here, Wei realized. William was watching him.

"It's complicated," William said.

"Is this going to be a problem?" Wei asked.

"Probably not," William replied. But at that, Greatest stared at William, and Wei sensed an expression of hurt on his face. But he pulled away before the young master could get any more details.

Just then, a bridge extended forth from the submarine, connecting to their platform. The railing slid forward, crashing hard against the bridge, and a doorway opened on the side of the sub.

"Welcome, welcome to the RECTUS-ONE,” Greatest shouted.

"We're not calling it that," Bishop said, glaring at Greatest.

"Why not?" Greatest asked. "It's a good name, a strong name."

At that, Bishop began stomping forward. "All right, everyone on the sub! We'll show you the insides, we're gonna make sure this piece of shit works, and then we're gonna get out, and we're gonna figure the rest of this bullshit out, before I either have an aneurysm or Greatest finally convinces us to take a trip down into his ass!"

"You will take that trip," Greatest held out a hand.

Agnesia looked away from him, her face pale. "Are we sure he's the Prince of Pride?"

"I asked myself that same question several times," Wei said, walking beside her. She chanced a brief glance, and he saw Greatest wiggle his fingers at her.

"Don't worry, it stretches, even for a large girl like you."

Wei clenched his fist tight, trying not to react to that.

"Is... is he... could he be being euphemistic?"

"I'm afraid not," Wei muttered sullenly.

"But just so you know, that submarine, if you weren't sure, it was up..." Greatest's words were cut off as Wei boarded the submarine.

The first thing he realized about its design was how cramped it was. It had narrow hallways, so tight that it forced Agnesia to shrink her form back to the size she initially possessed. Wei briefly eyed her, and she smirked.

"Why aren't you always this big?" Wei said, staring down at her.

Because," she reached up and pinched him by the cheek. "You're funny when you're frustrated, sweet Knight."

Wei let out a tired groan but couldn't resist a smile of his own. As he continued through the narrow hallways of the sub, he ran his hand along the walls, and he frowned. There were grooves there, chips of material missing. His Omniscience spread across the entire submarine, and he sensed more patches of damage. This vessel was not fully repaired.

"Yeah," Bishop replied from ahead. His eyes were glowing violet with psionic power. "There was also a mutiny aboard."

"A mutiny?" Wei asked.

"Part of the crew got into a fight."

"And how do you know this?"

"Because there's a lot of psionic residue in the air. Good amount of hate, a lot of desperation, and a bit too much starvation."

"Starvation?" Wei asked.

"That was what the fight was about, who got to eat the remaining food."

Wei winced. He didn't want to think about that too much. It was one thing to fall in battle, to give one's all and be cut down. There was potentially shame in that, but it was all there was. Just shame, followed by whatever came thereafter. To fight your own comrades for the last scraps of a meal. To feel your body betraying you. Wei had heard tales of that, and now he stood within a ship that suffered the degradation of humanity driven to the brink.

Bishop continued leading them forward, and at the very rear was Rafael, gawking and muttering to himself as if he was a tourist.

"Rafael, why are you making so much noise?" Wei asked.

"Because this, this is a submarine from the ancient days, from the old empire!"

"It's not that old," Bishop replied. "It's barely a few decades ago. They didn't fall that long, Rafael."

"Hush! We stand in a mausoleum of communism."

"Yeah, sure, that's what it is," Bishop snorted. "I don't think they centrally planned to get lost in the Fathoms or die in whatever way they did."

"Perhaps not, but even so, you cannot deny that the history here is exciting."

"Yeah, exciting, just like cannibalism's exciting." Bishop looked away from one of the walls, and Wei saw a splash of dried blood there, running down.

The insides of the submarine grew ever more cramped as they stepped through a series of doors. It was also getting hotter as well. The heat here was the kind Wei's constitution couldn't easily resist. It was a heat that settled underneath his skin and wouldn't come out. There was a weight to this heat, and he felt ever more like a trespasser than any time before.

"How long do people stay aboard this vessel?" Elena asked. She looked about as well, but her expression was constantly switching between bewilderment and worry.

"Months?" Bishop grunted.

"Long goddamn stretches of time," William added.

"How do they maintain their sanity? I don't know if I could endure without the outdoors."

The sun. Wei felt similar. He handled this place better than she did, for he suspected she had a sense of claustrophobia to handle as well. But there was also another matter. There was what they were used to. He grew up on a wide world open with fields, with lakes, with ponds and rivers. But more than anything, life. The Claimed Hells was a nightmarish place, filled with monsters of human nature and beyond. But it was filled also with life. Demons moved about the skies. The city crawled like an insect hive. So many lives were snuffed out, but so much more came to replace them. It constantly pulsated with animation and vitality.

The insides of an... there were screens here, jutting squares that stuck out from the walls and a table at the center, or some kind of table. There looked to be a map upon the table and a series of magnifying glasses above it. Dust swirled through the air and Bishop coughed, waving his hands to clear out the space.

"Shit," Bishop hissed. He leaned down suddenly and pressed his thumb against a missing part of the table. Wei's Omniscience followed Bishop down, and he found the clump of human brain matter lodged deep. "Fight got here as well. The mutiny was almost a success."

"It might have been a success," Bishop replied. "Of course, that's when one of their submarine torpedoes went off. And that took them all out of our world and placed them in the Fathoms. It dropped them right in between places though, drowning them in source. Submarine adapted, but the people, well, they didn't do so good. They were likely already starving beforehand."

"Wait," Wei said, "they were already starving before they arrived?"

Bishop stared at him and nodded slowly. "They had to blow up for a reason, son. They were sunk, going deeper and deeper. They managed to secure the rest of the sub, but they weren't surfacing."

Elena gasped at that. She clutched at her chest, and Agnesia held her mother. "Are you well? Are you all right?"

"Aye, aye," Elena hyperventilated.

Wei placed a hand on her shoulder. She met his eyes, and he nodded slowly. "I understand." He saw her wish to leave. She took him by the wrist, and he understood what she wanted. He pulled her along, and they continued.

Bishop stared at Wei for a moment, and then a strange expression crawled over his face. "You know something, kid?"

"What is it, Master Bishop?" Wei said tiredly.

"Between all that fucked up shit you do sometimes, I remember that you're not a bad guy. You're not a bad boy. It's just a bad life that's been forced on you. Just a bad circumstance that got forced on these people, too."

As they moved through the control room, a door on the far side opened, and a trespasser stepped through. They wore a set of spectacles, and they offered Bishop a brief nod. Then they noticed Wei as well, and their jaw dropped open. "Don't tell me you're starting it up now."

"Not yet, but we're gonna have to show the kid around first. He's gonna be powering it up and probably flying it."

"Flying it?" Wei asked.

"Source changed the sub. Everything's the ocean to it now. So Greatest claims. But it needs Source to trigger. And that is why we're going to the reactor room right after this."

The reactor brought claustrophobia to a whole new level. As they descended into the submarine's depths, jagged clumps of machinery stuck out, poking against Wei's armor. He shimmied down, and as he looked up, he saw the exhausted terror in Elena's eyes once more.

"Lady Ellena," Wei said, "Stay there for now. I will be back soon." She nodded slowly, and Agnesia called out to Wei thereafter.

"I'll be here with her. Don't get lost."

"I don't think that's possible," Wei muttered under his breath. "But I don't think I enjoy this place any more than you two do."

The reactor room brought the heat to a whole new level. But there was something else. An oscillation of white and black. A concentration of source he had to deal with. It pulsed against him, flooded his system with excess weight. And as it swirled, he felt his shell materialize right behind him. The shell clipped into the matter of the submarine. Its head vanished through the ceiling, and it shook.

"Shell," Wei asked, "what's wrong?"

"I feel..." and the submarine groaned. A chorus of voices sounded from within. "...I don't feel so good."

Bishop halted mid-step. "Did someone say some shit?"

Wei blinked. Rafael was shuddering.

"Yes," Rafael said, "the submarine."

The psionic trespasser sighed. "God damn it. That prince motherfucker sold us a haunted sub that he hid up his ass. 

Greatest called from the outside. “I was going to use it as a dil—”