My greatest fear for as long as I can remember has been of losing control.

How could it not be? I imagine every abnormal must suffer this revelation sooner or later, the realisation that they are surrounded by fragile, immaterial things and the need for endless restraint to preserve them, but I have known the exact force necessary to crush a baseline mobian's skull since I was four years old... Or whatever age correlates with my previously immortal existence. Heck, not just known, it's ingrained in my muscle memory, and it is considerably less than the force necessary to destroy your average badnik, and far less than I can apply at any given moment with a swipe of my tails. This is to say nothing of a chaos state, fuelled by the powers of the Chaos Emeralds, flooded with endless amounts of chaos energy and trying with every moment not to put a hole in the floor while you walk. A chaos state has allowed Sonic to handle physical gods and otherworldly horrors that even the strongest abnormal would otherwise struggle against… And I suppose I have too, if the records of the catacombs are to be believed.

And even this is still trivial compared to my greatest weapon. It wasn't my body that wiped out the kukku after all, even with six Chaos Emeralds in my grasp, but my inventions. Sonic is one of the mightiest heroes the world has ever seen, and he has faced off against the greatest threats with mindboggling ease. But even the most deadly of these extradimensional threats has been immaterial to what technology has accomplished, and a grain of sand on a beach compared to what it could accomplish.

For all his evil and madness, even Robotnik has shown incredible restraint against the world at large, a gentleman's agreement between us, for the moment we step too far the world is not ruined, it is dust, leaving us to continue our squabbles among the stars. A machine built right can harness chaos more efficiently than any mobian, and even without it simple chemistry could extinct all life with the right push, so how could my greatest concern not be in constraining this at any given moment? In restricting my activities and thoughts alike to avoid that slippery slope to oblivion?

But Madworld invades these innermost thoughts of mine, twists feelings I've long sought to intellectualise into being unbidden, tempts me constantly to give in, to surrender the control I've valued for so long. Shupnikkurat's offer - whether to become a creature of the crimson or some pactbound thing like Cosmo - is more of the same, and I'm ashamed to say it's a tempting one. What better way for a thing such as I to remain in control than to surrender that control to a higher power? As a mindless abomination the damage I can do is likely restrained to double digits at the most, as a servant like Cosmo, rigidly enslaved into a strict role in service of the chosen and defence of my own life? I am absolved of responsibility, a passive observer of successes and failures over which I have no control, no duty to resolve. A child, under the eternal gaze of the watchful parent I have never had.

What greater temptation could there be for an ancient horror like me than a little peace? What use is self reliance, self control, or even reason when the truth is unbearable? When all our struggles for safety and goodness are meaningless in the face of vast cosmic indifference, where we are prey to entities so far beyond us that we are beneath even their malice, what meaning is left?

I have never considered myself a hero, but I've tried to be like one. Sonic never needed to make the decisions I've had to make, never needed to sacrifice the things I've sacrificed, and I used to think this was because he was strong enough to prevent things from falling so far in the first place, or to find options that someone like me could never reach… But hearing myself talk about his failures, his deaths, over and over in the records of this place has robbed me of even that sense of security. Weight of evidence leads me to conclude that Sonic, as strong as he is, as determined as he is, is simply lucky, that he, like every hero, will eventually face some impossible choice for which there is no third option, some deadly threat that no hand is waiting to reach out and save him from and his refusal to compromise or change, his greatest strengths, will become his inevitable downfall.

And as I reach that conclusion, here in the underswamp, with the pull of the hallow in my bones that pushes me to constantly reject it, to seek out some intangible "noble purpose", I am forced to realise that this thought comes not from outside influences but from the depths of my own mind. Cosmo has made me her villain, and the madness that entails makes a dreadful sense in this backwards place. Should I reject control altogether? Should I embrace every mad whim? She tells me that the death of the plantastrophe has doubled the time remaining for my world, as the power of nature to resist the corruption has been unleashed. But what if I were to simply make the world equally inhospitable for all the powers therein? Lava is in infinite supply, after all, and the ash of the underworld held a certain purity of its own. How much longer might that extend my deadline?

Well, I remain hopeful for an alternative that isn't literally drowning the planet in an ocean of lava. I mean, it's not very efficient, and that's not going to do anything about the rocks, right? Maybe if I made the lava hotter somehow, it could melt the rock too. Hm…

Yeah, went to a dark place there. Might be because I'm stuck down here in the underswamp. The ravages of this place's savage denizens is as relentless as ever, despite the death of its guardian, and my hatred of turtles exceeds that of even the most beleaguered plumber. "Not the bees" has likewise become a commonplace utterance in the face of their merciless onslaught. Yes, a little lava would seriously be an improvement, and it keeps trying to grow on me. Ugh. Bad enough with Shupnikkurat's "gift" sprouting from my fur, I've lost track of the number of seeds, spores, weeds, and various noxious growths that I've picked up - more to get them off me than any particular desire to spread this awful place.

Heh. At least Cosmo seems to like it here though, she's been in a good mood for what I'm estimating is all day, even if she is currently yelling at me for playing with my new toy. I'm hopeful, given the progress we've made and her newfound willingness to let me carry her - at least across gaps she can't cross herself - that we'll reach the surface soon and I'll be able to once more use the bone glove without having to worry about accidentally directing Yorick, and the portal it holds, down into some lost cavern, or worse, into the depths of a lava pit. I'd rather not have to clean that up when I get home.

Speaking of which, hopefully enough time's passed that the team's managed to come together. I desperately need to talk to Knuckles, figure out whether that fox is a robot clone or who I think she is, and... start making contingency plans with Sonic in case I'm too late.