Page 3812

He could still feel the cage around him. The maze. It hadn’t gone anywhere. But it felt... farther away, somehow. Like he had more space to move. To navigate.

To think.

About what? That was question. About his predicament. About where he’d been. Where he’d come from. Where he was going. Where he wanted to be.

About who he was.

Anything besides the maze. Anything besides trying to find the way out.

Gragh. Confusion. That didn’t make sense. He’d been searching for that way out for longer than he could remember. And yet, he knew that there was none. The maze went on forever. That was its purpose. That was the cage. The nature of it. How it kept him in.

But he was only now realizing this? No. He’d known that all along, too. So why hadn’t he done anything about it? Why had he kept trudging through this endless labyrinth of the mind?

And this calm. So strange, yet so familiar. He’d been angry a moment ago. Mind-numbingly angry. That was still there, too, in fact. He felt it. But he’d gained distance from it. The anger was like a piece of clothing now. He could put it back on, if he wanted, but he didn’t have to.

This slowness. That was the culprit here. The reason for the shift, he realized. The cage’s hold on him was slackened now. It couldn’t account for the new speed of his thoughts. The world had slowed for him, but to the world, he will have sped up.

How fast, he wondered? Curious.

The labyrinth seemed so trivial now. As fragile as glass. He felt like it would shatter if he only reached out and touched it.

And he already intended to. Without even thinking on it any further, he knew that it was the correct course of action. That this cage was not his ally.

But he held a bit longer. Would this wonderful slowness disappear along with the cage? He didn’t think so, but if it did, then he should prepare now, while he could.

He needed to find answers to certain questions. Things that the cage had been trying to hide from him. They were clearer. He could find them. What was most important? What was the cage trying the hardest to conceal from him?

The Hunt.

Yes. Of course.

The Prime Hunt must continue. The numinous children had to be culled. Rent from their vessels. Brought to justice.

Nothing was more pressing than that. And nothing terrified the cage more.

He understood.