Chapter 240: Tyrant: Soul Debts A/N: This Chapter might be somewhat graphic to some readers. Please tell me if I should tone it down if writing something similar in future Chapters. Cheers Astrl The chamber for the second phase of the trial was practically the same as the first. In fact, it was so identical that Finn suspected this was the same chamber, just somehow looped and reverted back to its form before they had been tested. He glanced back through the door he held come through and couldn’t find it again, making him suspect his hypothesis was true. He quickly shook the thought away, though, as it was inconsequential either way. He instead focused on the task at hand, scanning the chamber deliberately to find any clue regarding this next trial. The sound of grinding stone suddenly broke the silence, making him glance up sharply at the source. The ceiling had shifted and a huge chunk of it lowered down to the center of the room like a pillar. Everyone stood still and watched silently, all trying to decipher what the trial this time might be. The ceiling pillar continued its descent, and as it lowered, Finn felt something change in the air. Pressure. Not the atmospheric kind that made ears pop or breathing difficult. This was something else entirely. Something that pressed against his very being, like invisible hands pushing down on every part of him simultaneously. The pressure intensified with each meter the pillar descended, and Finn’s knees buckled slightly before he caught himself. Around him, the others were experiencing the same phenomenon. The three remaining sailors stumbled, their faces contorting with confusion and growing panic. "What... what is it this time?!" one of them gasped, the single woman among the three surviving sailors whose names Finn still didn’t know. The pressure doubled. Then tripled. Finn felt his body being forced downward, his spine compressing, his legs trembling with the effort to remain standing. It was like someone had multiplied gravity itself, making his own weight unbearable to support. But that wasn’t the worst part. As the pillar descended further, something else began to surface. Thoughts. Urges. Desires that Finn normally kept buried so deep he could pretend they didn’t exist. The urge to simply take what he wanted, consequences be damned. The desire to hurt those who’d wronged him, not because it served a purpose but because it simply would feel good. The impulse to abandon everything and everyone, to prioritize only his own survival and pleasure above all else. Base desires... Primal desires... Unsightly by all definitions... And it wasn’t only him. One of the sailors collapsed to his hands and knees, panting like an animal. His eyes had gone wild, unfocused, the intelligence in them dimming as something more primitive took control. "N—Noo!! Get out!! This is not... me..." he muttered, but his words dissolved into incoherent growls. The pressure increased again, and Finn felt himself being pushed toward that same edge. His body wanted to drop to all fours, to crawl, to reduce himself to something lesser than human. To give in to the weight pressing down on him from above. This pillar represents the heavens, Finn realized through the mental fog trying to cloud his thoughts. This is what the Crimson Fist Tyrant faced as a Baboon. The universe itself showing it its true form, telling it to know its place. To remain a beast. To never aspire beyond what it was born as. The female sailor let out a sound that was half-laugh, half-sob. Her hands clawed at her own clothes, tearing fabric with desperate urgency. "I can’t... I need..." Finn’s vision swam. The pressure was unbearable now, crushing him down not just physically but mentally, spiritually even. Every base desire he’d ever suppressed came roaring to the surface all at once. Violence. Lust. Greed. Pride. Wrath. This wasn’t like the "refined" desires he could rationalize. Nothing like "strategic violence" or "calculated self-interest". All logic and disguise that humans naturally used to pretend these desires didn’t exist within them had disappeared entirely. All that was left was raw, ugly, and primal. This trial was forcing Finn, and all of them, to confront that truth. The sailors had completely succumbed now. What happened next made Finn’s stomach turn even through his own struggle against the pressure. The two men and the woman had lost all semblance of humanity. They tore at each other’s clothes with frantic desperation, their movements animalistic and devoid of any tenderness or even basic recognition of each other as people. They saw the other person as just a body of flesh to satisfy the base urges that had overtaken them. And this wasn’t limited to just lust. Mixed within all those desires were also things that were simply dark and insidious for the sake of it. These suppressed desires simultaneously erupted within their frantic display of obscenity. One of the men laughed. A sound so unhinged and maniacal it barely seemed human. His fingers dug into his own arms, drawing blood, and he laughed harder at the pain like it was the funniest thing he’d ever experienced. The woman bit down on the other man’s shoulder hard enough to draw blood, and he responded by striking her across the face with enough force to snap her head to the side. She smiled at him with blood-stained teeth. They were killing themselves through their own pleasures. Engaging in every vile impulse without restraint or consequence, tearing each other apart both literally and figuratively. And Finn felt it too. The urge to hurt. To take. To indulge every dark desire without care for tomorrow or care for any consequence. His hands trembled as he tried to fight it with everything he had. His fingers were raw as they scraped the stone floor from the combined weight of the increased gravity and the fight against the violent desires rampaging within his body. But all of a sudden, the struggle that looked like a tug of war immediately tilted dangerously, and not in his favor, as desperate hands clawed over his body from nowhere. 𝑓𝑟ℯ𝘦𝓌𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝑐ℴ𝓂 Althea. She’d moved toward him in jerky, uncoordinated movements as she fought against both the crushing pressure and her own spiraling desires. Her eyes were wild, pupils dilated, breathing ragged. She grabbed the front of his shirt and pulled him close, and Finn could see in her expression that she was barely holding on. The same darkness that consumed the sailors was trying to consume her too. The pressure was forcing out every suppressed desire within her, and she was looking at him like she wanted to devour him whole. Her breath was hot against his skin, stirring up heat from his loins. Finn had damn near lost his mind. His hands moved to her waist, gripping perhaps too tightly. He lunged forward for her lips like a crazed man, about to let himself go. Why was he fighting it anyway? He would enjoy it! Just like the others were... But then in the final moment when he was about to succumb, through the haze, he saw something in Althea’s eyes that made him pause. She was still fighting it. Despite everything, despite the crushing pressure and the eruption of every base desire, despite the fact that her body was tilted towards him, ready to be taken, her eyes said otherwise. She was still fighting. Her hands shook violently where they gripped his shirt. Her jaw was clenched so hard he could see muscles standing out in her neck. Sweat poured down her face from the sheer effort of maintaining even this much control. He could see a look in her eyes that tried very hard to convey that this wasn’t them. That this was the trial forcing out the worst parts of their nature, making them confront what they were capable of becoming. The pressure increased again, and Finn gasped, dropping to one knee. His vision went dark at the edges. The pillar had descended to maybe ten meters above them now, and with each meter it fell, the weight multiplied. Althea dropped beside him, still holding his shirt, her other hand clawing at the stone floor hard enough to break her nails. Blood streaked where her fingers dragged against the ground. In the corner of his vision, Finn could see the Blessed standing perfectly still. Ailin showed no signs of being affected by the pressure at all. She simply stood there, watching, those black-abyss eyes observing the trial with ancient patience. Of course she’s unaffected, Finn thought through the pain and pressure and barely controlled impulses. It wasn’t a surprise the pillar had no effect over Ailin. This trial was forcing out the primal human within them all, and Ailin was no longer human... But Finn was human. Althea was human. This was a different kind of torture for them. One that tempted them with extreme pleasures, but was also extremely deadly at the same time. Already the remaining sailors had failed completely, their humanity stripped away, reduced to nothing but base animals engaging in increasingly horrific displays. It was only Finn and Althea still fighting now. The pressure doubled again. Finn’s other knee hit the ground. He was on all fours now, panting, his arms trembling with the effort to support his own weight. The crushing force wanted him to go lower. To press his face to the stone. To submit completely. And the darkness in his mind grew stronger. Louder. More insistent. Just give in. Stop fighting. Let go. Take what you want. Do what you want. Why resist? Why pretend to be better than this? Finn’s fingers curled against the stone, and for a moment, he truly considered it. But then a maniacal chuckle escaped his lips, before it turned into a full blown insidious cackle as Finn remembered something. He knew this feeling all too well. Soul debts.