He didn't know what had drawn him here, but he had followed the instinct blindly.
Ace Harriet hadn't been in conditions this harsh for a good three hundred years. The explosions of sulfur and the waves of heat made to resurface memories he would rather have kept hidden away... Memories of fighting for his life, of seeing brains dashed against rocks, of seeing his comrades blown to bits.
Frantically, he scraped at his face with his massive claws, thrashing his tail and flapping his wings in panic, doing anything he could to clear his body of the immaterial spatters of blood and viscera... But he could not. They were just hysterical sensations. His nerves were revolting, perhaps trying to bring him under the dark waves of insanity that had threatened to break over his head and drag him into the depths for countless years...
But Ace didn't want to die here. That wasn't what he had been brought for.
All he had to do was keep cool in the suffocating heat until his mysterious purpose was fulfilled.