36



The humid air seems to close in around you as you tumble through dreams and nightmares. You see Mexihco, Byzantium, the shattered Specular wreathed in fire, and the crooked gray thing that floats in the sky above this strange land.

You awaken on a flat colorless plain. Except you know you are not awake. This is some new state of existence, something you've never experienced before. The ground shudders as you rise, illuminating the bleak expanse with gray light.

The trembling ground takes the shape of words and symbols that you cannot read. A gasping, feeble voice is trying to tell you something.

It is thanking you.

It thanks you and Dr. Sabbatine for freeing it. Symbols churn beneath your feet and you realize you are standing upon the False Icon. An hour ago, the Icons were a metaphysical abstraction, inarguably real but as distant as the stars.

And now one is churning like the ocean beneath your feet.

Then your perspective changes and you find yourself floating over gray nothingness, the False Icon rising like an infinitely high monolith before you.

It has more to say. Between the crooked symbols and the hum in your ears, you can make out…an offer. And a threat. If you aid it, the False Icon promises a world safe from the monsters that haunt this time, for you–for everyone! And if you seek to bind it again, it promises a tidal wave of monstrosity to drown this world.