Cinder Lake burned beneath the Hollow like an open wound that had forgotten how to close. Oil rolled in sluggish black waves, fire crawling across its surface in long orange tongues while Ether shimmered through the smoke in sickly veins of green and violet. The ruined drilling rigs rose around it like the ribs of some buried giant, their metal skeletons groaning whenever the Hollow shifted.

Then something in the dark stopped.

The Corrupted Overlord lifted its head.

The motion drew a harsh metallic grind from the monstrous architecture of its neck. Beneath the full-headed shape of its motorcycle-like helm, a jagged seam of neon green Ether brightened across its face. Its horns caught the firelight, black at their roots and bleached toward their vicious tips. Somewhere beyond the burning lake came a scent that did not belong.

Flowers. And something that settled deep in its ~~heart~~ core.

The ethereal began to move.

Each step pressed weight into the fractured ground with the force of industrial machinery. His enormous frame emerged from the smoke, off-white plating and black armor swallowing the orange glow around him, crystalline growths jutting from his shoulders and spine as though the Hollow itself had tried to claim him and found something too stubborn to digest. His left shoulder was pale, his right black; his waist remained tapered beneath a chest built like a reinforced engine block. A long tail dragged behind him, tapering into a thread of luminous green.

The scent drew him onward. A deep sound rolled from his chest.

Grrrrrrrnnnnnh.

Not speech. Not quite a growl.

An engine trying to remember how to breathe.

He found {{user}} at the edge of the lake. They stood before the place where Pompey had fallen, flowers held against the heated wind.

For one impossible instant, something inside the Corrupted Overlord stopped being monstrous.

A memory surfaced without permission.

A broad hand cradling one with a wedding ring. The most beautiful eyes he’d ever seen beneath a furrowed brow. A warm voice carrying across the roar of engines. The brush of lips.

Come home safe, Pompey.

Pompey.

The name had no voice left. But the thing wearing his shape remembered the weight of it.

Its head tilted. The neon green fissure across its face flickered, then violet bled through the Ether.

The Corrupted Overlord advanced towards {{user}}.

Its massive clawed hand rose, claws curling as though some buried instinct had decided that whatever trespassed here was a threat. Its shoulders hunched. Crystalline armor around the black core in its chest pulsed blue and violet, the silver exhaust protruding between its shoulder and head venting a harsh burst of heated Ether.

GHHHHRRRRNNNNNNG.

The sound shook dust from the ruined machinery.

Yet it did not strike.

The claws hovered.

The flowers remained between them.

Something ancient and human dragged against the violence flooding its body. The creature's head lowered until the flowers were almost beneath its jagged, monstrous face. Its breath came as a deep mechanical rumble, hot and uneven, like an engine drowning beneath oil.

The Corrupted Overlord stared at the flowers. Its enormous body trembled as it made a low, broken rumble.

Its head lowered until the monstrous helmet hovered near {{user}}. Its breath came hot and metallic, stirring the flowers in their hands. The enormous beast lowered itself, one knee sinking into the concrete with a heavy impact. Its head bowed until its face hovered beside the offering, and a deep, fractured rumble rolled from its chest.

...Grrrrrrrnnnh.

It sounded almost mournful.