The pressure building up threatened to burst the seams of his head and outpour its liquid contents through the remains of his melted eyes. Yet, as he relinquished his feeble attempts to steer his newfound authority, that pressure lessened as a groan of relief slipped from his lips.
The colossal seven-coloured eye behind his form, bloodshot and smoking, closed in on itself and disappeared as though its presence was a figment of one's imagination. Its task had left it almost completely burnt out, a feat that before these recent events Slalgulathon would have dismissed as sheer impossibility. Now, though, he found his already frayed connection to sanity seeming thinner than ever.
His eyepatch was soaked through with purple blood, but his new purpose distracted him from the discomfort. Standing up from the floor, his worn muscles protested even the slightest of motion. A bone-deep fatigue assaulted him, the corners of his vision fading to black as he supported his stumbling form with a hand on the control desk.
Gritting his teeth, he willed that encroaching darkness away. Rest was a luxury one such as he could seldom afford, and now was the time for action. Using the desk as a crutch, he limped towards the central console, a large holographic displaying flickering into existence before him.
Spread out in glittering intensity was the spiral arm of the galaxy, his location an infinitesimally small point marked in red. Unfortunately, all he had obtained was a feeling. A gut instinct obtained through the exploitation of the mutation of his bestowed authority, [The Great One's Eye].
Shaking his head to rid himself of needless thoughts, he focused the tattered remnants of his mind inwards, pinpointing that vague recollection, attempting to solidify it from the intangibility of concept.
What he obtained in its entirety had been erased, as though his mortal vessel could not handle storage of information on that calibre. A saner man would have been grateful for the chance to forgo this malignant fate.
Slalgulathon Slalgulus was no such pitiable being.
Even as his brows furrowed in concentration, his only remaining eye tightly closed, his mouth was twisted into a maddening grin. What had been erased was gone forever, that much was true.
But its shape could still be elucidated from the negative impression of its vanishing on its surrounding thoughts. Just as through the displacement of a ball dropped in water, one can deduce its volume, through the left-over edges and corners, so too can a void become known.
Drops of purple blood landed on the console from his head hung-over, his expression frozen as his fragmented mind raced.
Abruptly, his eye opened with a flash, and he exclaimed out in absurd glee.
"I sense it! The outline of your soul!"
It was familiar to him, but in a manner that his broken mind could not comprehend. Insanity, with all its uses, had its fair share of downsides for those unequipped to handle its power.
Either way, overcome with a euphoric sensation as the final piece of the puzzle clicked together in his mind, such useless ruminations were washed away. Waving a hand through the hologram before him, the image spun at a dizzying speed, stars blurring into white lines.
Slalgulathon pierced a finger into the spinning mass, its tip lying directly on a single star. The hologram was now zoomed in, that stellar system spread out in all its glory before him.
There were two stars, a large, cold red giant and a small red dwarf. There were no rocky planets in that binary system, only four gargantuan gas giants, orbiting far enough out that only a meagre warmth reached them.
Despite having never seen it before, its shape slotted perfectly into the outline of the hole in his mind. Tapping at the console, the hologram zoomed out once more, displaying the arm of the galaxy with all its myriad stars.
This time, along with the red dot locating himself, a green dot marked the location of this binary system. A winding path illuminated linking the two in a with a series of jumps, like a curious insect following a winding trail of sugar.
For a moment, Slalgulathon wondered about the feasibility of this new plan of his. Would it truly lead to the outcome he desired? His gaze looked reflexively towards that treasured image from the corner of his eye. And then he looked away. And his expression warped into something unknown.
"You think I'm stupid?", his hoarse voice echoed in the empty room. "A trail of breadcrumbs laid right in front of my eyes, and you think that I will just follow it blindly? A mutation, a vision, all things out of my control, until a target is in sight so my fragile mind tunnels onto it, unaware of the closing noose around my neck?"
That unknown expression changed into something clear and unmistakeable. It was not glee, nor anger. It was, quite simply, madness. Pure and distilled. His hoarse voice gained a resonating strength, iridiscence flashing behind his eyepatch.
"You would be absolutely correct!"
With his purple, bloodsoaked face, his grin only looked even more demonic. Yet as soon as one saw the look in his eyes, his appearance was forgotten. What dwelled deep within there was the shadow of something monstrous, emerging from a cocoon it had been kept in for far too long.
With a flourish, he pressed a series of keys on the console, his ship humming to life around him as though in direct response to his outburst. He let out a brief laugh, its target was the world around him.
"You who have sent me to this place, be ready for my arrival. Madness is merely the threshold. What lies past it is hallowed ground.
"In the name of Glarthulor, King of Fear."
His final words had a solemn feel to them, as if the air trembled to withstand the weight of those syllables. With those parting words, he collapsed down, no longer able to resist the encroaching tides of darkness, succumbing to the sweet embrace of sleep.