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There was something that drew him to the second door, to place the key into the lock. He could trace the symbol with one finger, drawing lightly over the gouges that notched into it. A spiral. Red.

He liked the color red.

One hand was placed upon the door to push it open, to fulfill his task without hesitation. His mind jolted. He could see a crowd, familiar faces yet impossible to place. It felt - right. His ears filled with the sound of cheering. They were cheering for him. But the word they shouted over and over was not his name, it was --

The door slammed shut behind him, and the sound, the sights, were cut off instantly. The after-image of faceless shadowy things stared back at him before even that gave way to darkness.

There was no reason to the place he had entered. Sounds, what few he could hear now, seemed warped, as did the walls. He walked, and it felt as though the hallway followed him. His fingers scraped against the walls as he sought a way deeper. His body met resistance in the form of a crate with a dull thud.

No amount of pushing and jostling could lead him past it. It was firmly wedged in his path. It was full, hence the heavy noises it made. He felt a heavy fabric spilling out, and traced it up to where it overflowed, far too big for the box it was wedged inside. Something glowed and pulsed within, the same color as those of Paranoia.

A heart.

The scissors glided through the first layer of fabric with a steady snip-snip-snip that fell in time to the beating of the heart. It was rhythmic.

“Eleanor...” something whispered into his ear, barely a whisper.

He stopped for a moment, and the heart continued beating without the scissor accompaniment. Strange. He cut deeper still, only pausing when the voice called to him with the same name the crowd had. Whoever they called to, it was not him. His hands were steady, his resolve was strong.

A body overlaid itself faintly with the cloth, filling it at the corners of his vision. A woman with eyes closed, frizzy black hair spilling down the side of the box. Quiet, unmoving, and bound by a hundred hundred strings deep inside.

The strings entangled what he sought. He began to sever them one by one.

Any heart would do.

She found him on a distant mountain. He had been alone here for so long that he could hardly speak, and curiosity was all that kept him from running away like some feral animal on four legs and two wings. She was the first other he had ever met. She was flesh and blood and warm, and he was bones and ice and cold. Her voice was kind and gentle, not like the howling of the wind. She called herself Eleanor, and she named him Aymet. It meant ‘truth’ in a foreign tongue, and was powerfully magic. But misused, it would be broken, and ‘Met’, death, would be the fate he created for himself.

A name was like a promise, she said, to live up to your namesake.

Truth, he repeated, and smiled inwardly at the blessing.

She placed a pin gently to his ribcage, and carried an undead boy in her arms back to civilization. He rested his skull-capped head against her chest, and he could hear the strange but comforting sound of her heartbeat...

Thump-thump went the golden heart as Etyam encircled it with his fingers.

His scissors paused again uncertainly as the memory faded away. He could not shake the vividness of it. The fragments were mere novelties compared to this. Was it... was he....

One last cut, and the heart came free. It no longer pulsed. It was no longer comforting to feel.

Into the bag it went.

It was wrong, wrong, wrong -

His other hand gripped the scissors tightly. His red eyes remained wide and unblinking upward through the water, to the warped face of the one his memories told him was his own mother.

His heart, his mind, they were fading. The struggle guided his hand upward even as a small, new, helpless part of him cried out.

The goddesses had promised-

The heart-

The blessings-

He had to-

The scissors plunged upward into the closest cloudy eye.

There was a wailing cry, and the illusion broke. He hit the ground hard on his back and coughed up black water. He had survived again. He was strong. And he had sacrificed.

The goddesses would reward him for this... or else.

He awoke to a burning brightness and an uncomfortable ringing.

Etyam sat up on the metal table, rubbing his red eyes. It was cold in here, and strange. He didn't remember falling asleep, but...

First things first, it was time to get out of here. Holding the dagger pointed forward, he moved to exit the room. The door gave way easily at his attempt, into an equally too-bright hallway. He began to move forward.

Slam.

Somewhere behind him, something crashed shut. He turned sharply.

The door was still open.

He narrowed his eyes.

The maze was rather anticlimactic, in truth. Just a mess of hallways that led to more hallways that led to still more hallways. It hardly seemed to necessitate a dagger at all. If it was a test of survival, he seemed to be winning by as many miles as he'd covered scouring the infinite hallways. Because so far, he hadn't seen one single reason to -

Thud. Thud.

Screeeech...

He turned the hell around.

Something approached, little more than a black speck at first, coming toward him with rapid speed. A black, vaguely humanoid shape clutching a pair of vaguely familiar scissors.

Oh ******** this.

He bolted with the same agility that had thrown him across bridges and through flamethrowers. He bolted until his heart was pulsing quick enough to shatter, until he practically slammed against the exit door. It didn't budge.

"Come on, come on," he growled, clawing at the number pad. His vision blurred for a moment --

He thought about the mountains sometimes, the distant land he'd come from, but these days he thought about it less and less.

He adjusted, to his humanoid shape, to the clothing that hid his skeletal frame, to the way everyone around him made their fleshy faces into weird shapes called 'expressions'.

He adjusted, to going from an empty world to a bustling one with family, friends, familiars. From a place that was dead to a place that was so alive.

She asked him once, if he ever missed his old home.

Of course not, he reassured her.

He was lying.

"You did this," it taunted in a distorted female voice. "You did this to me..."

Distance: 35

There, to the left of him, a tattered piece of paper lay on the ground. He hadn't noticed before. How could he have missed it?

A=0, B=1, C=2.

What --

Screeeech. Thud.

DISTANCE: 25

The paper was pretty much all he had going for him right now. He could solve this... right?

A=0, B=1, C=2.

But what numbers needed to be punched in??

DISTANCE: 15

A stained red paper caught his eye.

A C E G.

Something clicked in his head. With lightning speed he punched the number code in. The door crashed open as he slammed bodily into it.

Even as he took off for the forest he could still feel cold fingers brush against the back of his neck.

DISTANCE: 5

He was stopped once again by a dead end. A building loomed above him, strangely haunted, casting shadows that didn't look quite right, especially at the edges of his vision. It might as well have been a wall.

This was the end.

"Now or never," the goddess practically whispered in his ear. The dagger glowed a deep red, like his heart. He turned around.

They were there. They always were.

The scissors flashed in a downward arc as the dagger swept up.

He could see it in her eyes, the exasperation. He did not know the words to say, nor did she. But it was her duty as a mother to raise him and protect him from harm, no matter where he'd come from.

He looked for comfort, and reached up for her hand. She drew it away at the last moment, from the wicked claws of his that could never be gentle.

He withdrew, and his heart seemed to dim.

He didn't know better.

She stumbled backward, a dagger growing out of her chest like a blossoming red flower. He could see through the obfuscation, the vague shape. Her eyes were the same. His mother's eyes. And they went wide, wide, before her body dissipated into nothingness.

The dagger glowed even brighter as landed in front of him.