He almost laughed, the pain mixing with irony. Clawing. Grinding. Like a sharp pin scraping through every crack of him.
Of course there was a deficiency. He was a hollowed out corpse of a planet. There was nothing left in him.
"You think I don't know that? You think I can't feel it?"
He tried to pull away from the searing cold line, but there was nowhere to go. The agony went with him. It was him. He was just a shell filled with burning cold.
[Restoration requires...additional anchor...]
Anchor?
He could barely think. The pain blurred every thought into scratching static in his mind.
What anchor?
No answer. Just that same pressure in his head. Heavy. Inevitable.
[Anchor...required...]
"Fine," What else can he do? "At least tell me what it is."
That searing cold crawled deeper, threading into every fracture that was already screaming. He felt it was studying him. Deciding.
And then, something.
A flicker he hadn't noticed before.
It pulsed under all the cracks. Buried like a coal under ash. Like a wound he'd forgotten.
An ember, ignored, left unchecked.
He didn't know what it was, but the moment the cold touched it,
He felt a spark.
A heat that didn't belong here or it was his. A pulse that felt too alive.
What... is that?
No reply. Only pain. And that spark trying to grow under it. Like it found a fertile ground.
He almost wished it wouldn't. Because with every second the heat spread, the pain multiplied.
The searing cold and the newly found heat coiled together. He could feel them twisting, fusing.
Becoming something he couldn't name.
[Assimilation...pending...]
He wanted to say no. Wanted to tell it to stop this pain.
But all that came out was another wave of raw sensation.
It was alive, he never felt this much alive in his life ever. Not even when he was human.
The cold is eating him alive. The heat is burning him from the inside.
And in that moment he knew,
Being alive is the best. Pain is friend, it's hard bitter truth and he should be glad that pain is with him or else everything is cold dark void.
"YESSSS!" He yelled out.
[Assimilating...1%...2%...3%]
[Assimilating...5%...6%...]
The numbers kept rising up in his head with an emotionless voice announcement, each tick another needle jammed deeper under his dead stone heart.
The heat pulsed stronger now. It wasn't just coal anymore, it was a roaring fire. A living, breathing thing that clawed up through every crack.
He could feel the cold trying to choke it. Smother it back down. But the fire didn't care.
It wanted out.
It wanted him.
"DO IT!" Donnes yelled out. "If you're going to burn me, then burn me."
[Assimilating...10%...]
The heat moved like liquid, flooding old fractures, licking up the walls of every hollowed vein in his body. He felt it sinking into the pit where a molten core, his cold heart used to be.
"AAHHHHHHHHH!"
THUMP! THUMP!
"Huh?" Suddenly the pain subsided and it felt like beats. "Heart beat?"
Yes, it was a heartbeat. He felt the ignition of the core within him.
THUMP! THUMP!
With each heartbeat he felt the fire spreading all over his body like lifeblood and that dark cold started to evaporate away.
THUMP! THUMP!
[Assimilating...15%...20%]
He could feel the crack in him mending, pieces falling off from him and landing in the pool of fire now burning hot within.
[Assimilating...25%...30%]
Suddenly he felt something fundamentally changed in him.
His eyes suddenly opened. Whatever he was able to understand so far was all feelings and sensation but now. He has vision. Out of nowhere.
"What?...where am I?" He found his limbs. Hands, legs and his whole body. But glowing, flickering blue white like a phantom.
"I am a Hologram?" That's what it looked like to him.
He looked around and saw he was standing on an arid, broken cracked dead surface. Full of ridges, and canyons around.
He bent down and tried to touch it.
"Ahh..." He was able to touch it and felt the touch too as his fingers rubbed the surface as if he was rubbing his face skin.
He rubbed the fine powdered dust, not even qualified to call soil.
"This is me?" No doubt about it now at all. He was a Planet.
He looked at his hands and legs, he was in his human form, as he was, when he was, as Donnes.
"Donnes, Aidoneus." He murmured both names.
[Assimilating...35%...40%]
The earth beneath him suddenly shook. The land cracked and a plume of smoke and ash shot out.
He can feel that his cracked shell, the tectonic plates are now moving and adjusting to fill the open gap, consolidating to return to its safe completely spherical shape.
Another heartbeat.
THUMP. THUMP.
[Assimilating...45%...50%...]
Suddenly he felt his legs have strength or some kind of previous shackles have been broken.
He immediately ran to experience that and came close to one of the open cracks.
Hot searing lava was flowing through it. He felt like jumping in it. He was sure he could do it.
And he jumped.
"AAHHHHH!" The moment he splashed into the thick gooey lava, he found that it was just warm, not like life threatening burning hot.
But then as if he had all the controls in him and his glowing hologram-like phantom body sank deeper.
He didn't even need to flail his arms or anything. He quickly understood that it was his will.
Wherever his will wants, he can go.
And so he did. He quickly went deep in his core.
[Assimilating...55%...60%...]
The moment he reached the core, his face went pale with terror.
"GRAVETH!!" He yelled out looking at the terrifying thing squirming and flailing with its hundreds of tentacles like arms trying to take over the whole core.
Sensing his presence the squirming mass of gooey thing morphed and a face materialized on it.
It was the face of a female.
[Welcome Host. Assimilation is in progress...I will keep you updated.]
"You... you." It was the primal fear... he never knew he had or rather it was the primal fear of Aidoneus. The Planet who died from Graveth's feasting.