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‘Okay, well, there is also the Tale of the Eternal Mason. In that story, a man strives to become the greatest stonemason who ever lived. Ostensibly, he achieves his goal, but in so doing, he also turns his own body to stone.’

‘Not seeing much relevance in that story, either, Overra.’

‘I think it is intended to be a cautionary tale about the single-minded pursuit of greatness at the cost of one’s own life. Which, while true, is hardly worth its salt as a wise old story, if you ask me. How many people need that kind of advice? Honestly? In general, people are lazy, and much of civilization has been achieved off the labor of a hard working minority. Why, if human beings were naturally hard working, then surely, slavery would never have been invented.’

‘Fascinating.’

‘Why, thank you. I am glad you genuinely think so and are not being in any way sarcastic.’

‘Do you have anything to say that is of actual consequence or use?’

‘In that regard, everything I have ever said and will ever say should qualify, I think.’

‘Alright. I give up. I’m just going to dig around it.’

‘Dig around what? Oh, yes, the sludge. I had nearly forgotten it was there.’

‘Overra...’

‘I am only teasing. Lord, I never thought I would be considered the laid-back one in this relationship. Perhaps your wife is right about you being too uptight.’

Parson just sighed and knelt down to get to work. Digging in this harsh ground with his bare hands wasn’t going to be easy--unless he sacrificed some of his flesh to transfiguration, of course. He was reluctant to do so, but he supposed there was no getting around it and decided to start small. He sacrificed only the top layer of skin on his hands in order to create small, pressurized jets of oxygen at the tips of his fingers.

With careful strength, he pressed his hands into the earth and gathered up a pile of dirt around and beneath the pulsing sludge. He lifted it up, and then he had the sludge safely in his left hand.

It was more repulsive close up than he expected. There was a grotesque lumpiness to it that hadn’t been noticeable at a distance.

Surprisingly, it had no smell that he could discern. He’d been expecting a truly horrendous odor.

‘So are you going to touch it or not?’ said Overra.

A good question. The lack of a repulsive smell was making him consider it again. Maybe it was harmless.

A benign glimpse at Chaos itself, huh?

Parson had to wonder what that had meant. He wished now that he would have gotten some manner of clarification.

“Chaos itself” was a particularly interesting choice of words, he felt. Referring to chaos as a single, manifested thing instead of simply a concept--that was something that Parson had heard before.

In one of the doctrines of Abolish. Morgunov’s side, specifically.