Path of Exile Talent Competition

The man screamed as Researcher Margarete pressed the golden fragment of the Device to bare skin.

There was a purity to the sound, an earnestness, as if he were trying to persuade her that the Truth he was in the process of birthing was worthy of this torment.

She would be the judge of that.

He convulsed on the table as the process took him, his restraints rattling as he thrashed. At last, he spat something from his mouth- a pure thought, crystallized in an instant into something real.

His Truth clattered to the floor, a crude brass statuette hanging from a golden chain. It was still wet with saliva.

The man collapsed back onto the table as Margarete set the golden shard of the Device aside.

Always a different object, always a different shape. Why?

With delicate care, she removed her gloves, tucking them into her lab coat pocket. She closed her eyes, then knelt and touched the smooth surface of the ornament.

A vision of an older woman appeared to her, standing in a small but orderly library with a book in her hands. The vision faded and she was back in the lab, the man breathing heavily on the table.

Margarete scratched a note onto her pad. This development was unexpected, the man should have been able to bear many more Truths before falling into this state.

"A shame," Margerete wrote on the pad, "We are only on the thirteenth test, and the subject's Truths are no longer verbal, having regressed back to simply visual. The pace of his rapid deterioration concerns me."

The broken man hung limply, slumped half fallen from the table, unwilling to struggle further.

She was going to have to request another test subject. Margarete frowned, and scratched more messages on her pad. "I will likely need a new truthbearer, one who is not retreating to a place of mental safety."

Once that startedey did that, all the Truths were just shadows circling the comforting thoughts.

Margarete laid a hand on the man's head, his skin cold and clammy with sweat.

"It's okay, dear. I don't know what you saw in the dreamlands, but you should know that all your Truths are appreciated. I promise I'll be there to witness them."

There was no power in the latest Truth, she had felt that with certainty. It offered a weak vision and nothing further.

None but the first Truth held power. It was her calling to find out why. Diligence is what matters most in a Researcher. Not just the how, but the why.

"To that end," she told the man, patting him gently, "we are ready to begin one last test." Margarete grabbed the man beneath the arms, repositioning him on the table such that he might be somewhat comfortable for what was about to pass. "What I have planned for you is most novel... Birthing a Truth while simultaneously experiencing another."

Margarete pulled the rack of Truths closer to the table, ones that had been selected by Researcher Graven specifically for this experiment.

With a casual hand, she selected the one she would use from the front, a small iron music box.

A voice she knew, her own voice, rang in Margarete's ears.

"I'm afraid of what the device may be doing to us. For what it is making us do."

Margarete jerked with surprise and dropped the box, so jarring was the experience. It thudded to the floor, the metal box ringing like a bell.

Margarete reached over and tore the identifying card from the rack.

The label read only: Subject 245.

She scanned the other cards. They were all from the same subject.

Which meant they were all... from her.

Such a thing wasn’t possible. Birthing Truths was damaging to the subject. Surely she would have remembered such a thing?

She passed her hand through the odd collection of objects, a dozen phrases springing to existence in her mind. They spoke over each other, leaving only snippets.

A lacquered, lapis broach.

"It does not even seem to require physical contact anymore."

A quill.

"Some subjects can endure a thousand times, others only once."

A cloth doll.

"There is power here. Power we could use."

Margarete's throat was dry, and her heart raced as she recognized the very last Truth in the row, a small whittling knife.

She reached for it, the shape achingly familiar, straight from a childhood spent perched on her grandfather's knee.

As her fingers brushed the wood grain handle, her voice, cracked with stress, whispered to her. "I don't even remember why we started these experiments."

Margarete flinched, knocking the knife from the rack. It skittered across the floor, unnoticed.

She felt ill, her stomach churning, the urge to vomit rising suddenly in her throat.

She knew this feeling. She remembered, suddenly, that she had been through it before. Speaking each Truth had torn at her, ripped off a piece of her and cast it into the world, ragged and bloody.

The pain was blinding, and as she sought comfort from it, she searched for any happy memory, despairing at how difficult it was.

Through blurred eyes, the only thing she could think of was how long it had been since she had seen the vast, golden skies at dawn.

And she knew she had one last Truth to give.