Perfection Made Porcelain

???? ATC

It was dark when The Cartographer awoke. A sweeping, cold, endless darkness that he didn't recognize.

Where was he?

Where was the rest of his party? The Archelogist's Guild?

The man tried to sit up, only to find his head brushing immediately against the ceiling. Was this some kind of container he was in?

"Anybody?!" He called out.

He waited.

Nothing.

He frowned and pressed his hands against the material in front of him. It was some kind of smooth stone and cold. Solidly constructed and smelled strongly of dusty clay. Struggling, The Cartographer tried to rock himself back and forth in the confines, but found the box was sturdy, as if it were being held in place by some means.

The Cartographer tapped the dark hard clay with a hand and listened quietly. There was no response, and he tried his best not to panic at the situation and tried to figure a way out of this. Perhaps this was a prank by some of the mercenaries fhat had accompanied him and his guild members to the largely unmapped Great Eastern Forest of Posiil.

"ANYBODYYYYYY?! HEY! HELP!"

His throat was sore from yelling. From screaming for help. From cursing and snarling and kicking at the hard porcelain. The nameless man gave a shout and feebly struck the door in front of him. It didn't budge.

He lost track of time as he kept pounding away at the confined space with nothing but his bare bleeding knuckle. The box was a decent sized cube, almost similar to a small cell, he could get some decent weight behind a hit, all he had to do was lean back against the wall and he could get a good kick in.

Was this a punishment of some kind? Some terrible punishment for all the things he'd screwed along the journey? Perhaps it was getting them lost just a few days earlier.

Why had no one come to his help?

''ARGHHH! ARGHHH...!''

The Cartographer pressed his hands into the hard clay and pushed. Hard.

He pushed with all his might, giving it everything he had.

''ARGHHHH...!''

Angry sobs followed by a flurry of punches in the darkness.

It seemed like forever, punching at one particular spot until it cracked, dust seeping from it and coating his fist.

BOOFMCRACK.

White dust coated the floor window, and, and he was surrounded by shapes of white and black.

The Cartogapher found himself naked, stripped of all of his gear, his skin deathly pale, and standing in a length of a corridor, many boxes much like his own lining the walls.

How long had it been since he had seen the sun?

Wait.

Noise.

Run. Now.

This place beat like a heart, cyclical, always punctual. A strange metallic rhythm, grinding, the distant sounds of hot liquid metal being poured, a throbbing telling the nameless man something was working in the deepest reaches of this place. He looked at the porcelain cubes he was trapped in, and the geometry of this place, and concluded he had to be trapped in a much bigger porcelain cube than the one he was confined in. Further proved as he wandered, slowly and captiously.

The Cube was completely decentralized and everything looked almost the same.

His breath, heartbeat, heaving offered the only echoes of life here, sans the distant noises of work, reverberated against the boney walls of the halls he passed through.

He passed through strange sructures made of bone, metal, hard porcelain and what appeared to be a spiderweb-like membrane that covered almost everything.

The Cube's noises grows stronger, louder, and closer. At first a low, monotonous beat, it now thump like a giant drum against the alien architecture caging him. Low, high, long, short, it never stopped.

This was a nightmare. He had to run. Run. As fast as he could anywhere.

Run.

Escape.

He ran until he reached the center, and saw it.

A massive, far-spreading chamber of porcelain, all kinds of liquid metal being poured into various mixing pots, flesh like cables that pumped a bright blue liquid throughout the massive cube and then his captors...

Along the walls surrounding the massive chamber were slots, and in them porcelain, doll like humanoid creatures with features of various races from the planet Laguna combined into almost all of them. Some had the draconian tails of Pryldahnians, combined with the large elvish ears of the Alphonse Island elves, paws from the reclusive Parudese panther people tribes, and tusks and large bodies of Greentusks, and the features of various humans, flesh still showing and slowly being reworked into pseudo-living statues. The armor that was grafted onto them pure white metal that looked like it was halfway between bone and porcelain, and every one of them was in varying condition. Some had bits of paint and other decorations on them.

The strange cables of bright blue wonder fluid pulsed and wobble, alive and well. Bravely, he peered over the edge to see what was below.

Mountains of bones being crushed down into dust, and turned into the clay. Varying races pumped full of the wonder fluid and brain washed, their natural bodies had been seemingly torn apart and reconstructed, with entire limbs and large sections of their skin replaced with the same porcelain-like metal, leaving gaps of their muscle and sinew exposed as they were being worked on by the porcelain monsters.

And all he could do was stare in horror and short breath.

Go.

Run.

He turned his back to the scene before him and ran, all before one of them jumped from a level above and right in front of the nameless man.

Only this one was much more unique than the others.

This one was a seven foot tall porcelain humanoid, with refined cat like ears atop it's head and a long cat like tail that resembled more of a spine now, it's body set against a white veneer with gold inlay with proportionate flower like adornment running up it's side, symmetrical and perfect in every way. It's grey face was featureless aside from lilac markings that depicted a flaming lotus, associated with the long disappeared Kundalandian race.

''Wha- Wha- Wha-'' The Cartographer could barely gasp as the unique porcelain creature approached him.

''PRISONER ESCAPE!''

About a dozen Luektorem all began to stir from their stasis along the walls, starting to march towards the nearest set of stairs towards their leader who cornered the lone man, blocking any escape.

''What are you?'' The Cartographer finally choked out, falling back and frozen in fear, now noticing the leader was simply wearing a mask, as he could see where the white porcelain armor ended and the grey stone of the featureless mask began.

''We are The Luektorem… We will return you to clay. Remake you, remold you, make you perfect.'' The leader spoke with a deep, smooth hypotonic voice.

The leader pointed to himself, porcelain fingers clacking against porcelain armor.

''As for myself... I am THE Luek.''

The Luek seized the man by one of his arms and hauled him to his feet, and all he could do was scream and flail to avail.

''There is we are searching for, something hidden within the minds of a select few... We will see if you hold this secret. If you not know this secret, then you will become part of us...''

''Perfection made porcelain.''