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She surges forward, like waves rolling up the shore. Boneless, she is Manikin-the-squid, and the squid travels more swiftly than one might expect. Her teeth are clenched together and her lips peel away from them in a childish snarl. The land is strange, it’s half-melted, like her, and seemingly empty but for whatever teems on the horizon and the strange trees that grab at her with their prickly branches, that try to absorb her into their too-soft trunks. A branch plucks at the black curls of her mane and Manny growls at it, bites, and hates these stupid, flat, useless teeth that click together dully. She wants her beak, she wants her lion’s claws, but the fog stripped her of those things so neatly. The debt paid to the belly of the Beast to be reborn in this madness is a lesser concern, she is learning how to use this fluid body. Like tentacles, her legs pull her across the livid landscape, and instinctively she keeps to the bone-dry earth, avoiding the still and glassy water. Sometimes, when she peers into it, her reflection does things it ought not to do, and so she has stopped going near the mirror pools at all.
The Thing on the horizon never seems nearer, but she is tireless, even here, and she outpaces the few other adventurers that she bothers to notice. They stay, and they wait, as if the mortal-made-god has a plan, as if they have any reason to care for it if he does. Manikin has her own plan, it is to find one of those little brown birds that burst from her poppy-flower blood and to feel it crushed between her teeth, to squeeze it in her tentacle-leg until it breaks beneath the pressure like a toy. She wonders if there is anything within them to crunch, any fragile hollow bones or if, like her, like the trees, it is a fluid-filled sac that will burst and ooze. She wonders if it will bleed black oil or bright flowers. She wonders and dreams, and does not see the creatures that gather ‘round, that seem to surround her no matter how deep into their world she ventures. The light of the sun slants suddenly, a sudden drop and bounce as if it dangles from a string, and then it falls still, but the changed shadows bring a welcome sight. Ahead of her, the distant shimmering has stopped racing away, the ground glows purple-pink and bright lights drift upwards like dandelion puffs made of stars. The octopus girl slows her tumultuous roll forward, slows to a stop, and twists her long neck fora better view. Glimmering, gleaming, the lights seem to birth themselves from the magenta earth, they make no sound and have no scent, and when she touches one with a sinuous leg, it <I>burns.</I>
Where she touches it, the starlight turns black and the burn leaves an orange scar on her skin that crackles and sears like acid and Manny cries out sharply in pain, tears leaping to her bright yellow eyes which roll, blinded by the pain of the poison. With a sobbing whimper, the girl sucks the limb back, it recedes into her body while she snivels and scowls through her tears. Her vision is slow to return, and when it does, the field of rising lights has turned black and dreadful, dripping down, thick like strands of dark mucus. She snorts her disgust at the change - not <I>her</I> fault, this - and cautious, but undeterred, she loops her uninjured leg around a rock and pitches it clumsily into the field of poisoned thistle-stars. It thuds against the oozing tar. It explodes. Shards of rock are flung back at her and a tiny creature tumbles out.
It’s not the bird.
No, it is <I>assuredly</I> not the bird from before. She cannot name the creature that tumbles out, it has long arms and legs like a monkey, yet it lacks a tail. Its face is a raven skull and its arms end in nimble fingers that flex and curl into the still-bright earth. If it has eyes, she cannot see them. It chirps, and she almost understands what it says, her head tilts to one side. She chirps back. It smiles somehow, but Manikin does not smile back, and she does not question how she knows it is smiling, despite the immovable bone of its mouth. Instead, she curls her leg around it and feels the way its small body snaps, squeezing until the strain of her wicked curiousity bubbles blood from the hollows of its empty eyes, and the blood is red and normal and mundane. She throws the thing aside, shattered and boring, and turns away from the ruined starfield.
Is this what they have all come for? Pink dirt and tiny, fragile monsters? She can break her toys at home just as easily.
She turns, and she sees them, then, suddenly. Not one, not ten, not thousands. There are too many even to count, the entire world is made of the little beasts, they link their arms and become a stone. They swallow one another and become a tree. They will swallow her too, perhaps. The ground breaks apart, hundreds of arms un-linked, hundreds of nimble fingers that grasp her bubbling flesh, that curl into it like clay until she bursts beneath the pressure of them. She has no bones to snap, it doesn't seem to matter. The land breaks apart into tumbling madness, the creatures play tug-of-war with her jaw and they crawl down her forced open mouth so that she must swallow them and choke, and yet she does not die, because she has <I>already</I> died and so no end comes, no darkness, only the ticklish pain of their fingers splitting her from inside out, of arms thrust out from her belly that wriggle like a thousand worms, of shredding like wet paper, but never falling apart enough to find peace.
Had this always been their plan, or is this revenge?
Behind her eyes, they tramp through her skull, and she sees them, and each is different. Bird skulls, yes, but some have no head at all. None have eyes, only rending fingers that pierce into the backs of her eyes and avert her gaze where she does not wish it to go. Back, back, those golden eyes roll, back a hundred years to pasts she cannot comprehend in this impossible place. Great beasts lumber over a world made of tiny bodies and their footsteps crush the bones that were stolen from her, and she feels every crack, and she screams.
Her scream gurgles from a throat that boils and bulges with the squirming creatures, no place on her skin is still, and the scream fades into a mournful wail that continues even as Carnage's magic finds her. It takes so long, perhaps because she has gone so far, but his magic catches her up sharply and she sheds the monsters as she is retrieved, trawled from the bottom of the sea like the carcass of a whale teeming with hagfish. They fall away, they dissolve, they spill from her mouth like a living river, and if her grandfather's magic is neither gentle nor compassionate, she is beyond noticing. The world is flashes, eggshells, and darkness, and fog, and without ceremony, she is deposited in her body again hard enough to beat her cold heart back into motion.
Around her, the others rouse, but Manikin does not seem to do so. The world is heavy and she has forgotten her bones. The girl remains prone at the grey stallion's feet, yellow eyes rolling in her soft head and a feeling of fullness in her belly. It makes sweat prickle across her lips, and then, impossibly - oh, but what does impossible even mean, now? - impossibly, she vomits a beast with long arms and legs and nimble fingers, but no head. Its red blood still stains her teeth.
<center><p class="manalive_quote"><a href=https://www.deviantart.com/shevy-art>Image by Shevy-Art</a></p></div></div></center>
She surges forward, like waves rolling up the shore. Boneless, she is Manikin-the-squid, and the squid travels more swiftly than one might expect. Her teeth are clenched together and her lips peel away from them in a childish snarl. The land is strange, it’s half-melted, like her, and seemingly empty but for whatever teems on the horizon and the strange trees that grab at her with their prickly branches, that try to absorb her into their too-soft trunks. A branch plucks at the black curls of her mane and Manny growls at it, bites, and hates these stupid, flat, useless teeth that click together dully. She wants her beak, she wants her lion’s claws, but the fog stripped her of those things so neatly. The debt paid to the belly of the Beast to be reborn in this madness is a lesser concern, she is learning how to use this fluid body. Like tentacles, her legs pull her across the livid landscape, and instinctively she keeps to the bone-dry earth, avoiding the still and glassy water. Sometimes, when she peers into it, her reflection does things it ought not to do, and so she has stopped going near the mirror pools at all.
The Thing on the horizon never seems nearer, but she is tireless, even here, and she outpaces the few other adventurers that she bothers to notice. They stay, and they wait, as if the mortal-made-god has a plan, as if they have any reason to care for it if he does. Manikin has her own plan, it is to find one of those little brown birds that burst from her poppy-flower blood and to feel it crushed between her teeth, to squeeze it in her tentacle-leg until it breaks beneath the pressure like a toy. She wonders if there is anything within them to crunch, any fragile hollow bones or if, like her, like the trees, it is a fluid-filled sac that will burst and ooze. She wonders if it will bleed black oil or bright flowers. She wonders and dreams, and does not see the creatures that gather ‘round, that seem to surround her no matter how deep into their world she ventures. The light of the sun slants suddenly, a sudden drop and bounce as if it dangles from a string, and then it falls still, but the changed shadows bring a welcome sight. Ahead of her, the distant shimmering has stopped racing away, the ground glows purple-pink and bright lights drift upwards like dandelion puffs made of stars. The octopus girl slows her tumultuous roll forward, slows to a stop, and twists her long neck fora better view. Glimmering, gleaming, the lights seem to birth themselves from the magenta earth, they make no sound and have no scent, and when she touches one with a sinuous leg, it <I>burns.</I>
Where she touches it, the starlight turns black and the burn leaves an orange scar on her skin that crackles and sears like acid and Manny cries out sharply in pain, tears leaping to her bright yellow eyes which roll, blinded by the pain of the poison. With a sobbing whimper, the girl sucks the limb back, it recedes into her body while she snivels and scowls through her tears. Her vision is slow to return, and when it does, the field of rising lights has turned black and dreadful, dripping down, thick like strands of dark mucus. She snorts her disgust at the change - not <I>her</I> fault, this - and cautious, but undeterred, she loops her uninjured leg around a rock and pitches it clumsily into the field of poisoned thistle-stars. It thuds against the oozing tar. It explodes. Shards of rock are flung back at her and a tiny creature tumbles out.
It’s not the bird.
No, it is <I>assuredly</I> not the bird from before. She cannot name the creature that tumbles out, it has long arms and legs like a monkey, yet it lacks a tail. Its face is a raven skull and its arms end in nimble fingers that flex and curl into the still-bright earth. If it has eyes, she cannot see them. It chirps, and she almost understands what it says, her head tilts to one side. She chirps back. It smiles somehow, but Manikin does not smile back, and she does not question how she knows it is smiling, despite the immovable bone of its mouth. Instead, she curls her leg around it and feels the way its small body snaps, squeezing until the strain of her wicked curiousity bubbles blood from the hollows of its empty eyes, and the blood is red and normal and mundane. She throws the thing aside, shattered and boring, and turns away from the ruined starfield.
Is this what they have all come for? Pink dirt and tiny, fragile monsters? She can break her toys at home just as easily.
She turns, and she sees them, then, suddenly. Not one, not ten, not thousands. There are too many even to count, the entire world is made of the little beasts, they link their arms and become a stone. They swallow one another and become a tree. They will swallow her too, perhaps. The ground breaks apart, hundreds of arms un-linked, hundreds of nimble fingers that grasp her bubbling flesh, that curl into it like clay until she bursts beneath the pressure of them. She has no bones to snap, it doesn't seem to matter. The land breaks apart into tumbling madness, the creatures play tug-of-war with her jaw and they crawl down her forced open mouth so that she must swallow them and choke, and yet she does not die, because she has <I>already</I> died and so no end comes, no darkness, only the ticklish pain of their fingers splitting her from inside out, of arms thrust out from her belly that wriggle like a thousand worms, of shredding like wet paper, but never falling apart enough to find peace.
Had this always been their plan, or is this revenge?
Behind her eyes, they tramp through her skull, and she sees them, and each is different. Bird skulls, yes, but some have no head at all. None have eyes, only rending fingers that pierce into the backs of her eyes and avert her gaze where she does not wish it to go. Back, back, those golden eyes roll, back a hundred years to pasts she cannot comprehend in this impossible place. Great beasts lumber over a world made of tiny bodies and their footsteps crush the bones that were stolen from her, and she feels every crack, and she screams.
Her scream gurgles from a throat that boils and bulges with the squirming creatures, no place on her skin is still, and the scream fades into a mournful wail that continues even as Carnage's magic finds her. It takes so long, perhaps because she has gone so far, but his magic catches her up sharply and she sheds the monsters as she is retrieved, trawled from the bottom of the sea like the carcass of a whale teeming with hagfish. They fall away, they dissolve, they spill from her mouth like a living river, and if her grandfather's magic is neither gentle nor compassionate, she is beyond noticing. The world is flashes, eggshells, and darkness, and fog, and without ceremony, she is deposited in her body again hard enough to beat her cold heart back into motion.
Around her, the others rouse, but Manikin does not seem to do so. The world is heavy and she has forgotten her bones. The girl remains prone at the grey stallion's feet, yellow eyes rolling in her soft head and a feeling of fullness in her belly. It makes sweat prickle across her lips, and then, impossibly - oh, but what does impossible even mean, now? - impossibly, she vomits a beast with long arms and legs and nimble fingers, but no head. Its red blood still stains her teeth.
<center><p class="manalive_quote"><a href=https://www.deviantart.com/shevy-art>Image by Shevy-Art</a></p></div></div></center>