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Was the vision breaking down, Hector wondered? He sure hoped not, because he had no idea how to fix it. But hmm--Rasalased had mentioned something about a "retelling" being "strenuous" for the Forge, hadn't he? Was this what he'd meant?

Agh. So confusing.

The holes in the air kept growing. And distorting. Seemingly bending space--or the image of space, perhaps--around them.

Until at length, pitch black hands began reaching out of them.

And at that sight, Hector could only gape.

Inhuman figures emerged from their dark depths, crawling out like spiders with too-few limbs. They flopped onto the ground in mushy heaps, writhing there in apparent silence. Their forms were so strange that Hector's eyes had a hard time holding onto them. They seemed to have arms--kind of --but where were their heads? Or their torsos, even? In one moment, they looked vaguely humanoid, and in the next, they looked more like a pile of black sludge.

Not entirely unlike a worm of the Undercrust, he thought.

But not entirely like them, either. He could sometimes catch sight of horrified faces buried buried beneath their dark, slimy flesh, as if people were trapped inside their bodies, struggling to get out.

What in the fuck was happening here? How were these things involved with the wildfire?

The vision began to speed back up again, but only to real time. The inferno came alive in all its terrifying fury. Hector could feel the searing heat and smell the choking smoke as well as if he were actually there.

Agrian and the sprout were only a few steps away, and the illusion was so complete that he almost felt as if he might actually be able to go over and touch them. Maybe his hand wouldn't simply phase through the image this time--or at least, that was his what impulses were telling him.

He kept a solid grip on his faculties, though, trying to pay attention.