Michael could feel his flesh dripping down onto the grass beneath his feet, and quickly made some drastic decisions.

Up to this point, there’d been no real detriment to having as many soldiers as possible, but that had just changed. He could feel them dragging him down alongside them, like a group of drowning rats climbing atop each other in an attempt to escape the water.

Michael cut his connection to the soldiers surrounding him and immediately felt a weight lift off his chest. With them out of the picture, the bagged infected he kept attached to his belt could start to fix his body. For whatever reason they didn’t seem to be hurting in the slightest, and with their help Michael was rebuilding his body faster than it could melt.

But that only solved one problem.

Monstrous creatures were moving through the field. They seemed to be made of dozens of melting bodies adhered to each other, and from the looks of it they were all still alive.

The soldiers surrounding Michael were beginning to stand up once more. Their flesh hung loosely, but it seemed to have stopped melting after a certain point.

And not too far away Michael could see the end result of what they were going through.

A monster crawled through the field, it’s body made of dozens of bodies that seemed to have melded together, and they were being surprisingly friendly for something that was currently charging him.

“What a lovely day to be outside. The glow of the sun on the grass is beautiful, don’t you think? Why do you resist the light? It’s quite beautiful, simply let it flow through you and you’ll fully experience it.”

A quick glance away from the creature revealed his former soldiers moving towards each other.

“Nope, none of that.”

He wasn’t about to just sit around and wait for another more of them to assemble, even if they weren’t part of the hive mind they were still made of his flesh.

Michael snapped his fingers and each of the soldier’s necks simultaneously did a full one-eighty.

They stumbled for a moment, almost falling to the ground, but they didn’t quite act like they’d been injured. It was more akin to someone being shoved than getting their neck broken.

They still moved towards one another, clearly wanting to form into the creature that was currently rushing him.

Michael quickly unslung his crossbow and fired several bolts that struck and imploded a few of the monster’s many heads.

It didn’t even seem to react, it just kept barreling towards him while talking about laying down in a park or something dumb.

Dozens of human and animal limbs propelled it across the field as Michael put the crossbow away and pulled out his war hammer.

It reached him seconds later, its many arms reaching out to grab hold of him as the hammer reached the peak of its momentum, and then Michael disappeared with a flash of light and reappeared beside the monster.

The weapon collided with a meaty thump and sent the creature rolling through the field. Blood shot from its body, and Michael's body moments later.

The blood formed into spears that moved to pierce the monster, but the further they got from Michael the more effect the sun seemed to have on them.

Their form started to shift away from the weapon he wanted them to be, until he eventually cut his losses and just retracted the blood back into himself.

“Keith, you got any idea what the hell is going on here?”

“I don’t know what exactly happened to that...thing, but for whatever reason the sun here is sentient. It’s also a god if that means anything.”

“Wait, I thought gods couldn’t attack me without repercussions.”

“Well I’m not too well versed in how Order does things, but he doesn’t seem to care what this one's doing, obviously.”

He chuckled,  “I'd bet it's because this thing’s barely a god. Calling it a god is like calling a feral raccoon and a human the same thing just because they can both open up a trash can. It could simply not be intelligent enough for him to care.”

Turning away from Keith, Michael glanced back towards the monster. There wasn’t even a mark where the hammer had hit and it was already making its way back towards him. The soldiers were rapidly forming into a similar creature, and off in the distance Michael could see half a dozen more of the monsters making their way over.

It looked like it was about time to get the hell out of here.

Technically he recognized where he was. This world’s facility shouldn’t be more than a few miles away, but the teleportation power didn’t recognize it as somewhere he'd been. So he’d do the next best thing.

Michael took in his surroundings. The dried up grass, the cracked bed of the stream that snaked through the field and the various piles of trash somebody had decided to dump here.

With that done he took a step and in the next instant he was at the edge of what he’d been able to see.

Michael grinned, so this was how the yule man had traveled such long distances.

Michael took step after step, the scenery flashing by as he walked. Each step sending him an incredible distance until he eventually stood in front of the facility.

The door seemed to have been caved in, probably by the creatures he’d seen in the field. He’d seen an alarming amount of them on the way over here as well and didn't waste any time before stepping into the facility.

Once he'd stepped into the darkness of the facility he immediately felt a weight lift off his body.

“So that's how this thing works, huh.”

Michael experimentally put his hand back into the sunlight and immediately felt his body start to melt again. Not just his hand, but everything.

He retracted his hand and the sensation went away. 

"Keith, I don't think many people survived this bullshit."

----------------------------------------------------------------

With the experiment concluded, Michael began to make his way down into the facility. If there was information anywhere on why the sun decided to go all murder hobo it’d be down here.

There was also a small chance of there being survivors down there who could simply explain what happened themselves. Although the broken door at the front and the occasional sound of monsters echoing down the hall didn’t fill him with too much confidence in anyone actually being down here.

He was walking through the halls when Keith decided now was the time to talk.

“Alright, time to spill it. Why haven't you said anything about that prophecy yet? You know, the one where you end up wearing me. I’d thought it’d make you upset, possibly make you do something drastic, but you haven’t done anything about it yet and that honestly surprised me. Why are you so nonchalant about this?”

Michael chuckled, “You do realize that you saying this could very easily be the thing that convinces me to take some potshots at you with the crossbow, right?”

“No you won’t. If you were going to do that then you’d already have done it. You’re smarter than that. That’s the only reason I’m even asking you this.”

Michael rubbed his beard in thought for a moment, “Alright, let’s put it this way. I am going to wear you, that’s just something that’s going to happen. Nothing I can do about it.”

“If I were to just chuck you somewhere, then it's likely I’d end up wearing a different version of you. At least while you’re by my side I can exploit you for your knowledge.”

Michael grinned, “Besides, if I end up wearing you then it's because I need to. You’re really not all that convincing since you can’t read my mind. You’re more like some edgy mask, and I've used the internet since I was a kid. I’ve dealt with hundreds of people like you and not one has convinced me to off myself just yet.”

Michael was about to poke more fun at Keith, but he spotted something out of the corner of his eye.

It wasn’t something that a normal person would have seen, considering how dark it was down here, but he’d definitely seen something poking their head through the tile floor.

However when his eyes lingered on them for too long they retreated back into the floorboards.

“Well I guess this is still one of the foundations buildings. It’d be weirder if something didn’t manage to get out with all this happening.”

Michael pulled the crossbow off his back and fired several shot into the darkness of the hallway.

Several seconds later the bolts circled back around and hovered at his side. He reached for the knife at his side and made a small cut in his hand, dripping the blood over the bolt.

It clung to the projectile, festering and growing into dozens of eyes that covered everything except its tip.

He repeated the process half a dozen times before letting them soar through the halls as he leaned against the wall.

He’d figure out what was stalking him through these halls one way or another.