It’d be easy for her to say she’d kept herself in seclusion for purely selfless purposes.

But Anomaly is not a selfless being.

It is shame that had driven her further into the shadows, especially after leaving the body of the monster-child at the border of her homeland. The child who, unknown to her, still lives and breathes.

But even after the birth of the child, she could feel something inside her.  It didn’t move as the child had, but its presence there was undeniable.  But there was a wrongness to this presence, too.  For Anomaly worried what type of parasite could survive in the poison that was her own body. That was all she had left to sustain her now. 

The presence is constant, but it does not drain her strength as the child did. It is simply there.  Sometimes she thinks she sees the creatures in her nightmares - the same ones that had tortured her - killed her - in the place beyond Death.

She wanted to write it off as impossible.
Unfortunately, she knew better.

In the end, it was the Eclipse that drove her from solitude. Her eyes burned in the darkness, matched only by the scars etched upon her body from both of her experiences with death. But those inflicted by the monsters don’t just glow - they burn.  The burning started the moment the darkness descended upon Beqanna, and with each moment the burning intensifies.

Her breath leaves her in a ragged hiss as something churns within her.  The grasses at her feet wilt as soon as they brush her legs - something that she knows should not happen so fast.  Glowing green blood drips from her nose as her steps become more uneven.

Where is she now?
Her vision blurs as she stumbles through the common lands - consumed by the flames that burn her from the inside. Until she feels something inside her twist - the creature she’s been carrying - no longer content to remain inside its host.  Her mouth opens and a scream pours out - unnatural and foreign.

Not her screams.
The creature’s.

All her her scars burst open at once as the creature pours itself free of her body - reforming itself into something terrible and not quite corporal. But it sneers as the ground is coated in her strange, glowing blood - watches as she collapses to the earth.  But it does not strike her again with those long, curved claws.

Instead, it disappears into the trees, desperate for fresh prey.



i'm breathing in the chemicals.