Seeker of the Gathering

Ossimar vomited. He vomited again, having to look down at the mess beneath his feet every time he did so. Every time he did it heightened the apex of the horror he had witnessed today, and caused him to be even more unsettled. Incredible as it was for a Seeker, he was capable of being shaken.

He stared at the heart in his hands. Every time he focused on it he was filled with jealous anger. This was the fruit of his nausea, in essence. The thought almost made him want to chuckle, but he realized the weight of the situation. He smiled with bits of half-digested food in his teeth, which was odd, because he hadn't eaten in days.

He had left home what seemed like an eternity ago, which was ironic, because it was literally an eternity ago. Before him lay a massive machine, lashed together using bone marrow and filled with blood. It had exploded shortly before, and still what lay before him was a billion times his size. He had witnessed some kind of gathering. Some nexus of disgust coming together to accomplish a foul end. He couldn't quite comprehend it, but he had the distinct feeling that whatever led him here had wanted exactly the opposite to happen.

He stood up and attempted to walk, but found he couldn't. He collapsed again, near the body of the old man holding a strange tool. Ah, the old man wasn't dead. For some undefinable reason, Ossimar could hear his low, uneven breathing.

Without giving him any time to breathe in between vomiting, the wall collapsed, and the machine cracked above him, splaying the cores all over the room. Water flooded into the chasm between him and the very center of the machine, causing the floor to cave in on that spot. It was made of flimsy stone and turned out to be some kind of shale covering over even more water.

He stood and bolted for the door, diving through just in time to hear the water stop in its tracks. As he turned to look, a great maw opened up, swallowing most of the room that he had previously been in. The heart in his hand pulsed, and the door shut behind him, blocking the flow of water.

He collapsed against the door, feeling the vibrations of whatever he had just seen smashing against the walls and floors of the room behind him.

He feinted, the heart beating once or twice, a slight hint of an intoxicating, jealous rage, amber and black and textured like a hurricane of boiling magma rushing through the veins in his hand and directly to his heart. The last image he saw before his vision blacked out was reality peeling away from the heart, which was beating rapidly and glowing like a dying lightbulb.