"Sure, sure. Well, try getting the sun out."

How? You suppose you did it in Headspace, kind of. Or the Herald did, and you are the Herald, so it should be easy. Yeah. Positive thinking. You stick two fingers into your mouth, but it's dry and hard in there, and your jaw is unyielding. When you try to cough you can't. "I don't..."

"Is it in there, at least?"

Is that what's in your chest? Something is in your chest. That was the trouble with the stepping, earlier— it's not that you're heavier, it's that your center of gravity is off. Something is where your heart should be. "I think so."

"Great." Ellery raises his tethered arm— or does the goo tug him up?— and shoots you. It doesn't do anything. Except for the plink and the little jolt, you hardly realize. "Hmm. Alright."

You touch your chest. There's no mark. "...Just testing?"

"Sort of. I think you're made of stone. I guess I could grab a sledgehammer?"

"Marble," you mumble to the first thing, and to the second: "You couldn't even lift a sledgehammer. I— I don't want to be sledgehammered. Could it at least be something cool?"

"Like?"

Setting you on fire probably wouldn't work. Neither would chopping your head off. "Exploding me?"

Ellery laughs, a sound you don't like, and drops his crossbow into the blackness. When you blink, he has a new one, darker and bulkier, and he's loading it (tethers bobbing) with a long, fat-tipped bolt. "You're a funny one," he says when he sees you looking. "Let's try this. Stay with me, now. Ready?"

You can't die, so you won't. You're just letting the thing inside you out. "Yeah."

"Okay, then," Ellery says, and shoots you again. You feel the thunk and hear a tsssss and see the bolt flare up white and then you're gone, it's over. You have exploded. You are a cloud of spinning chunks and fragments, and you are the whirling incandescent mass inside it, and Ellery says "Charlotte?" and "Charlotte?" and "Son of a bitch," but you can't hear him and can't respond. You know very close to nothing. You know light only.

Then you come alive in that small room, tangled up on a net on the ground, Ellery peering down at you. Your mouth is dry. You push your fingers through the netting. The doors to the small room open and Richard hurries up and helps you with the net. Your legs are weak; he offers you his arm. "Charlie! Are you well?"

"I exploded," you mumble. "It was bright... I need to sleep."

Shortly after, you do.

————

=DAY 9 / NIGHT 9 RESULTS=
>Gained 1/3 progress toward [Us III]
>Gained 3/4 progress toward [Unionized Ellery IV]
>Gained 2/2 progress toward [The Sun II]; [The Sun I] -> [The Sun II]
>Gained 1/3 progress toward [The Sun III]

————

(3/4)