"But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura
Hungry, the door – the mouth – feasts. It takes the abstract – their memories, their emotions, their voice. It takes the physical – their traits, their color, their skin. But then they are through, for better or worse, and through their eyes, the dark god beholds the world.
It is strange, and terrible, and he is repulsed and intrigued all at once. Just as the afterlife is a step removed from Beqanna, here again is a world further removed, further distorted. The colors of it are wrong – they hurt the eye in a way he cannot quite understand. Things around them are stretched or shrunken, never the right size.
And then, the buzzing stops.
He waits – they all wait – for something to happen, for the world to explain itself. For that’s what should happen next, is it not?
But like all things in this awful place, logic, too, is distorted.
Instead there is nothing for what seems like an eternity.
And then there is noise again – a chirp, almost birdlike. Answered by another call, some distance away.
The things – these others - appear as if blinked into existence, and the dark god realizes, a bit too late, that they had been there all along. Camouflaged or invisible or – or what? He tries to fixate on them, but he can’t, there’s only a glimpse, a twisted limb, a mouth.
They look different from each set of eyes he tries – or, what glimpses he can get - and he gives up on the logic and focuses on their motive.
They’re fast, the creatures.
Carnage doesn’t realize one has drawn blood on them until it’s gone again, seen and not seen. A noise cracks the air – a bone, breaking – and this seems to excite the creatures more, they move upon his acolytes, and there’s more blood, more breaking. Hungry.
He’d sent them to a massacre, it seems.
He should cut his losses, do what he can to patch the hole, move on. He’s seen this world and the things it holds. What are a handful of lives?
But losing all of them would be a shame. He had not meant to lose all of them. A few, sure, but not all.
And so perhaps it is his pride that leads to what happens next. He reaches. From his place on the Beach, he stretches his powers through the afterlife, to that damned cliff, through the tear. He reaches for them.
Sweat breaks out over his body at the effort – his magic was not meant to extend through worlds, not without his physical body – and he feels the world gnawing at his edges, hungry for him, too. He grabs at their bodies – he isn’t sure any of them are still alive – and pulls.
There is a screech of dismay from the creatures, a unified sort of cry, but he can’t pay attention to them, he has to focus on pulling them back. Salvaging what he can.
He looks back, once. The hole is closed, or, it seems to be. Good enough.
He dumps them back into their bodies on the beach, breathing heavily. He feels weak in a way that he has not felt since he vomited forth Pangea, when his magic was sick, malfunctioning. He brings them back to life, enough to see them breathing, and then moves on to the next. He is suddenly quite tired.
NOTES:
- HEADS UP: Please go back to your post from Round III and make an OOC note to clarify what the “door” took from you! I was able to glean it from most posts, but not all. This may or may not influence the final post. Sorry for not clarifying sooner!
- The weirdo world was quiet…until these things/creatures/others attacked. You can leave their description vague, or have them appear as whatever monster you want to describe – in this world, they appear differently to everyone, which is why Carnage could never get a read on them.
- The creatures attack you. You can fight back, but you still don’t have any of your power, and eventually succumb and are probably partially eaten.
- Carnage yanks you back into your Beqanna body and brings you back to life, although not peak health. You’re still weak, and any traits will return slowly (meaning you don’t have them immediately upon waking, you can bring them back whenever after the quest).
- Whatever the door/mouth took from you is still there. It can be permanent, or slowly restored/corrected IC over time.
- Replies are due by Friday, September 4th at or before 11:59 PM CST. If you need to withdraw, message me. Failure to reply without officially withdrawing will result in elimination or a defect.
- This is the final round, yay!
- Also uhhh fair warning I didn't proof this and I'm sleep deprived so if it doesn't make any sense feel free to ask questions!!
His body aches and Svedka’s voice matches it’s tone as a shuddering and painful groan leaves his mouth. His entire being, his very soul, does not like this in between - this edge between afterlife and more, and his own spirit balks at the idea of moving further and forward. He couldn’t move if he wanted to and he is thankful when further instructions from the dark god do not resound within his ears. But his eyes remain locked towards the further in, watching the gentle sway of movement in the distance, nearly mesmerized by it.
Part of him wants to think about what is next, but part of him is still completely content to stay here in this nothingness, within silence and never-ending but never-having-begun-in-the-first-place. There is no fight left within him, it seems.
Then, the movement in the distance changes.
It is no longer in the distance.
It is moving faster and more desperately than it had before - as if it had recognized him and found a new resilience in its mission, barreling towards Svedka in such a fashion that the stallion is sure he would meet his second death.
And then, as if it couldn’t get any worse, Svedka too recognizes the creature coming towards him.
He had never seen his lion - not in this way, of course - but he had always seen the aftermath. The blood, the forgotten lapse in time, the sourness in his stomach from red meat. As the cougar lopes towards him, Svedka almost finds the beast graceful in its movements, claws outstretched and jaw gaping. There is something different in the darkness of its eyes though and Svedka finds it somehow familiar, but as a high-pitched and shrill yell resounds from its black-lined lips, he forgets all about the creature’s eyes.
Fear suddenly cools in Svedka’s stomach, even though he had already met death once by the beast’s claws. He couldn’t imagine being torn apart again and with a desperate cry, attempts to leap backward from the lion in a scrambling shuffle, half-rearing when they collide heavily. A paw finds purchase in the bulk of his shoulder and another on the other side where his mane meets his neck. The lion’s jaws attempted to snap at his withers, but had been unsuccessful since Svedka had lifted upwards just before they had met. Svedka’s breath had been sucked from him in their collision, leaving nothing in his throat for a scream. The lion pulls downwards, thick shreds of bright red blood pouring from each black claw that opens his ivory and gold skin as easy as butter.
This time, the stallion found the breath in his lungs to scream.
Ribbons of skin fall around him, hanging there loosely by whatever sinew and ligament still remain intact. The lion did not pause and quickly leapt forward again to find purchase somewhere on Svedka’s body - hoping for his teeth around his throat. But Svedka’s form wavers in and out, dancing like an apparition before the mountain lion. The beast falters, missing completely. It tries again and the same thing happens.
Both of their eyes meet - cerulean and black - and both of them have the same realization at the same time.
Svedka was being pulled from this nightmare.
With newfound motivation, the lion no longer was set on killing Svedka - now he was only trying to save himself.
The mountain lion yowls desperately, attempting to leap towards the stallion but, again, does not find any purchase as his solidity wavers in and out. For a moment - where Svedka realizes that a second death was not coming (hopefully) and that the lion was trying to latch back onto him - something like sympathy finds the bright blue of his eyes. The door is closing, they both can feel it, and the anger that once powered the lion’s movement is now fueled by absolute fear. Even its roars are no longer for a boast of power and strength, but desperate howls for a rope to hold to, to bring him back too.
The door is closing, and the darkness chases Svedka no longer.
Svedka watches helplessly as the lion attempts to dig itself out, protesting and fighting against the pull that tears him away from the stallion. The beast cries for mercy, for salvation, for redemption. Svedka pauses, hesitates, his eyes wide with sorrow as the thing he once despised now clings to him as its only hope. The stallion reaches out to the lion - bloody, shredded, torn - and their gaze meets for one pivotal moment as sadness, fear, and finality hit them both like the crash of an unforgiving wave.
And then, Svedka is whisked away through dimensions and eons, pulled by his skin by magic. Even as he falls through time and space and heavens and hells, the stallion can only close his eyes and see the burning image of the lion, begging for its life.
The stallion is thrown onto solid ground with no care. His ripped shoulder and neck scrape into the dirt and sand recklessly until he finally shudders to a stop, lying there nearly motionless save for the fragile way his ribcage rises and falls. As he lays there, blood still pulsing through open tears in his skin, Svedka grievously wonders if the lion had never been just the lion - that, behind that dark door, he had left a piece of himself to die.
Hot tears fill his eyes and he blinks them away by squeezing his ivory lids tightly shut.
In the sudden silence that stretches on, he has ample time to think about what has happened so far.
He doesn’t want to remember, doesn’t want to count each and every new scar he has earned both physically and mentally in such a short amount of time. He should be moving. He should be simultaneously distracting and preparing himself by walking around and learning everything he can about this new hellscape. These trees are wrong, so what else will be wrong? This grass moves in far too fast waves, what else will move too quickly? Even the colors are off. Is that all that will be off in this place post-devouring? He doesn’t want to find out, but he doesn’t want to remember, either.
In the quiet, Sabrael feels the wrongness deep in his guts, in a spot where the dragon normally curls up and nestles within him. He hesitates without the beast’s warmongering spirit; he’s always been less without him, it’s an easy thing to admit now.
But erring on the side of caution as the prey animal he truly is saves him – for a spell.
From a thick cluster of the jagged, ragged trees comes a chirp to cut through the suffocating silence. Another comes just after the first. For the briefest of seconds, Sabrael thinks he will be all right. Foolishly, he thinks nothing else terrible will happen. It is the call of the mockingbird, after all, a call straight from his childhood in the Dale. Like the reptile he sometimes is, he sheds the tight layer of fear he wears and reveals only the uncertainty below. This will be something I can overcome, he thinks, still a fool.
Mocking, he will remember the thought much later. Mocking me.
Sabrael lifts a hoof to step forward, still cognizant of old pains and uneager to receive new ones. He is sure that this is the way out, though. He is sure that he has gone through enough, that it will be a gilded path ahead after the maze of thorns behind him.
When his hoof comes down and the decision is made, the creatures swarm.
They come from all directions all at once, all moving too fast. Things with long arms that drag themselves out of the tall grasses, scraping the yellowed earth with their raptor-like claws. Things that swing down from the bent and broken trees and land on stork-like, skinny legs that eat up the ground easily. Things that rise from the dirt at his feet, even. Things that wrap their bony hands around his legs until one snaps.
He only advances as far as that first step before it is all over. They are too fast and he is too damn weak. He bucks futilely against the grabbing hands of Death, even after one of his front legs crumbles underneath him. The pain is astronomical, but pain is nothing new in and of itself. What is new is the hopelessness that finds him in that moment. Whereas before, Sabrael would call upon his better half, the infallible behemoth that would make him feel stronger than he ought to. Now, he is alone. He’s never felt so alone in all his life.
Death is coming, he is sure. He feels gutted, even as the Things try to gut him, tearing their terribly long nails into his sides, his belly. He feels despair when he remembers the faces of his parents, his friends, Wallace, even as the Things pull down his head and begin chewing. He feels his ears go but that is not enough for them it seems. The Things gnaw deeper, to the skull – he can feel the sick vibrations of their teeth just above his brain. It won’t be long now. And what a funny thing to die here, again. The darkness blots out the edges of his vision.
And then –
Sabrael feels a tug. Like an anchor, he is dragged from this plane of existence. He laughs at this, an impossible sound here and now, but it is more at the attempt than anything. The absolute balls Carnage must have to think he can be saved! The Things shriek madly and give chase as the prone stallion is yanked back. He shrieks, too, as the exposed bone in his leg bumps and grinds on the alien ground. He thought he had felt fire before as it ignited deep within him and expelled through his throat and past his lips; this fire was an entirely different animal as the pain burned him from the outside in. The stallion knows it is worth it if Carnage can pull it off. But he has his doubts.
The Things are still fast and still following his battered body like hounds to a lure. He sees their snapping jaws as they come within inches of his face. He sees his own flesh as gristle between their dagger teeth. He sees their dead eyes, too, his own reflection staring back in their glassy surface. The terror of the hunted is clear in his expression. All those times he’s been in Their position as he took his prey, never in the position he is currently in. It should be sobering, this realization, but all he thinks about is Death.
Their dark god’s grip is not gentle but perhaps it couldn’t be. One Thing reaches desperately for him as he’s lifted up. A single claw caresses instead of cuts his face as he moves out of reach at the last second. He’s out.
The hole is next. His whole body trembles as the darkness closes around him again. No, please. Not again. He anticipates the hands, the claiming, the undoing. His body is nothing to be proud of, certainly not now and maybe never, but it is his. But there is only the dizzying rush of being pulled back. There is only the door as it is slammed shut behind him.
Hungryyyy -
He thinks he can almost hear it, still.
There is a final pinching sensation like a hook being released and then he is slammed back to life, to his body. The first thing Sabrael notices is not the return of his heartbeat or the air swelling back into his lungs, it is the pain. Dulled, but still there. Inside as much as outside. He knows he will linger in it for a long while, maybe even a lifetime or two. He stays there on the beach, unwilling and unable to move, where Carnage has left him without a word. There is no gratitude between them for a place found or a life spared. There is no commonality that can be shared between an unwitting beast and a God who luxuriates in being what he is so unapologetically.
There is only the spark of life that speaks to some kind of hope growing within the broken man.
09-01-2020, 04:57 PM (This post was last modified: 09-01-2020, 04:59 PM by Blasphemare.)
blasphemare
She could feel Carnage’s disgust and intrigue. She could taste it on her lips and hear it in her ears and see it in her eyes and smell it in her nose, but try as she might, she could not rouse those emotions in herself, though she knows they would have been there if the hunger had not eaten them from inside her mind. She stands there, almost shell shocked, but unable to feel that, watching without emotion as everything around her contorted into weird shapes and images. This world was strange, that was for sure.
The old mare finds herself waiting, for what she could not have said, but wait she did. She grew almost impatient–if she could actually grow impatient anymore. And then the creatures arrived, or at least made their presence visible to the new arrivals. Though visible wasn’t exactly what she would call it, for they flashed into existence and moved with a speed that made viewing them nearly impossible.
They moved with a purpose. They moved to attack. Where Blasphemare should have felt fear, she felt nothing, so she stood her ground as the creatures attacked. It was painful, but somehow she knew that this would not be the end. The creatures ripped into her, taking flesh and bone alike. Yet still she stood, as still as a statue, waiting for the end. Their hunger is thick in the air and feels a great deal like the hunger that had stolen her emotions.
They rip into her and the others, and she hears screams all around her, screams that should have elicited panic or at least some fear, but there is nothing, nothing but pain as they take her piece by piece. Had they tricked Carnage? Had they intended him to send them here so they could feast on the flesh of other worldly beings? These were questions she pondered as the pain continued to grow, as they continued to rip into her flesh.
She had all but given up on life. Carnage would surely leave them here. That was his nature. But then she felt it. She felt his presence, even more than just in her head, but surrounding her, encasing her in a magical field that rips her back out of the hungry hole, rips her back through the afterlife, pulls her back to the beach in which her body lay, twisted and mangled upon the ground. She watches without feeling as he stitches her back together and puts her back into her body. And then she was breathing once more.
She should have felt relief, maybe even gratitude toward the stallion that should have left them there, but she felt nothing. She felt nothing as she watched Carnage breathe life back into the rest of the bodies that had fallen this day. She felt nothing as she reached for her magic and felt it still gone. She felt nothing as she did a mental scan of her body and found it all there, weak but there. She felt nothing, and she should have worried what effects this might have on the growing foal within her, but she felt nothing there, either. She simply felt nothing.
When the buzzing stops, Beyza first assumes it is something else being stolen from her. That this strange, alien place is just going to keep eating away parts of her all while her mind remains aware, remains trapped in a decaying body as more and more slips away.
But then she takes a fumbling step and her hooves shuffle on the ground with a soft sound. A breath of relief escapes her and her eyes close, enjoying this small island of peace as her worries and panic ebb.
When she opens them again - she sees the figures. She blinks again, out of surprise. It is as though they did not so much arrive as just appear, pieces of the landscape hobbled together to form grotesque and twisted bodies. Beyza actually feels some more of her fear fade away for a brief tease of a moment as she regards them. That undauntable curiosity takes over and she marvels at the, and how they don’t so much walk but slide and stutter over the extraordinary landscape. The area around her births so many of them.
She is still busy marvelling at them when they attack, and it is only then that she remembers that she has no magic.
Remembers she cannot even scream for help.
Beyza thinks she does hear screaming, though. The noise echoes around her as she is knocked to the ground that feels slick under her skin. Is that someone else’s terror or is this place somehow teasing her with her own voice? They had stolen it and now they play it in a broken, distant loop as Beyza feels what it is like to have her leg bones splintered.
Her mind is trying to rationalize what is happening but it is all white noise with no logical thought for her to grasp onto. Beyza’s eyes are wide in terror and all she can see around her is a wave of these beasts, climbing over each other like a tide trying to get to her. Her mouth keeps opening to speak or scream but not even a gasp comes out. She opens and closes it like a fish out of water as she tries, again and again, to call out until she begins to choke.
Not on oil this time or even rats - but on herself. Her blood and pieces of her throat as it is torn and shredded by too many mouths to count.
She has just tipped over the edge of death when she wakes on the beach in a violent gasp of breath as it rushes back into her body. Beyza jolts to her hooves only to collapse back onto the sand a moment later when pain shoots through her legs and they give up beneath her. She is still covered in her own blood, but the damage done to her body is lesser than it had been - she actually frowns at this thought, frowns at one foreleg stretched before her. It is not broken anymore and the pain is not blinding. Instead, it is violent and dull, as though her entire body is bruised deeply.
She sags fully back into the sand, letting it cushion her head. Her whole body trembles still and though she thinks of Jamie - wonders whether he made it - she cannot bring herself to try to call out to him or even look. Beyza just closes her eyes and lies there, the new sensation of fear alive and coursing in her veins where her magic had once been and she does not have the energy to fight it. Not yet. She succumbs to this weakness and even as she sobs quietly, she promises herself this is the last time she’ll let the fear win.
The shadow thing delights in the quiet where there was once such a dreadful sound.
And the landscape here is so spectacular in its oddness, the way things appear to be far away and right in front of him all at once. There is no depth here, only illusion. But he moves toward the movement, drawn to it as if by magnets. He does not think of Beyza, does not worry where she might have ended up. He feels no guilt, no grief. He feels only some quiet, insistent need to hurry.
Go, go, go, his brain murmurs.
Come, come, come, the moving things call.
He can hear them. Their want for him to come closer echoes in his head, in the marrow of his bones. Surely if the heart still beat, it would push the sound of their want through his mottled veins. But there is no heartbeat so the sound is not in his veins, it is everywhere else. It is inside him and outside him. It is in the peculiar earth and in the strange, strange sky. It is in the roots of the perverse trees with their twisted spines. It is in the rise of some distant (or is it close?) mountainrange. It is the beginning and end of time, the moving things’ want.
And who would he be to deny them?
He goes so willingly. Lovingly. He surrenders to them. He belongs to them.
How ecstatic he is to belong to anything at all. Finally.
He is a figment of their imagination. He has come home.
And the moving things appear before him one by one. An army of darkness. Their shapes warped by the peculiar sun. So dark that they appear purple. Or some shade of some color he’s never seen before. They are grinning shark-tooth smiles at him. Ink-black mouths. Freakish yellow eyes.
They are him.
Each one of them.
Or some twisted version of him, at least.
Grinning at him, all wide-eyed. Unblinking.
Come, come come, they chant. And he goes, goes, goes. Fog curls around their ankles. So many dozens of them. His fog. But it is black instead of gray. It is black just as they are black. Or is it purple?
“I’m home,” he sighs. And there is no pain here. The lungs do not rattle and the heart does not spasm. He is home and he feels nothing but relief.
Home, home, home, they echo. He could disappear among them. But the sky goes dark, too. Plunges them into their own shadows. And the first him turns its strange head and sinks those razor sharp teeth into his shoulder. He cries out in surprise, Jamie. Stumbles. The pain is tremendous, compounded by his sense of betrayal. He has found his way home, but even his home does not want him.
He turns to look and finds only air where the edge of his shoulder had been. A second him sinks its teeth into his hip as he begins to bleed. He cries out this time in pain. Blinding pain. Pain that makes his vision strobe and his knees weak. Pain unlike anything he has felt before, certainly. Worse even than the pain the fog had wrought.
“No!” he cries, but this army of darkness cares not about his objections. Another plunges its teeth into his spine. Jamie can feel the bone splinter. And he knows them, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that the bones are real. That he has not imagined them. But his hind end goes weak and he sways on his feet just as another goes for his windpipe. Another for his other shoulder. And each time he looks, he sees glaring holes in the darkness that he has come to think of as flesh. They are taking and swallowing whole parts of him. Ink-black mouthfuls of the shadows that comprise him.
They are him and they are showing him what he is capable of. One of them (him?) reaches into his mind, puts a laugh there. Something maniacal, something cruel. This is everything he had feared.
Home, home, home, they chant and their voices grow in volume, expand until this whole strange world is nothing but the sound of their voices.
And the pain is so tremendous that he cannot see beyond it. Around it. Through it. He knows they are there by the way they continue to sink their teeth into his flesh. He knows they are there because they belong to him and he belongs to them.
There is nearly nothing left of him when the whole world goes some dreadful black. A fish hook in his belly, dragging him from their grasp to someplace else.
It is the sound of the waves crashing against the beach that rouses him. And he is so impossibly still for a long moment. Until the lungs cry out for air and he drags in a rattling breath. Exhales a wheezing sigh and forces those freakish yellow eyes open. He lifts his weary head to examine the body and finds himself whole again.
He lets loose some mournful sound. This is Beqanna. He is alive again. He can tell it by the heart beating in his chest and how the lungs twitch and spasm with their want for air. He had finally found his home and then he had been stolen from it again.
She stood there on the strange beach, the sands shifting and the trees melting around her, the world always seemed to form new things after getting rid of one, there never seemed to be an end to the process. As she awaited the next orders, the movement in the distance drew closer to her; but, rather than step closer towards it out of curiosity, or run in fear, she stayed in place, indifferent and unknowing.
Orders did not come, and therefore she did not move, and in time the shape disappeared. The small mare squinted, trying to see if it had just turned tail in the other direction. Everything felt so quiet and still now, as if the strange thing had just vanished, but how could it have when it was just there? Astra turned her head to look to each side of her, to look behind her, to look anywhere for it, and yet there seemed to be nothing. Once she faced forward again though, suddenly it was right in front of her - or rather, its teeth were.
A maw of shattered glass gaped in front of her, so many rows to rip and tear, and the stench of death lingering within. The creature itself seemed to be made of wood and rotting flesh, each splintered leg ending in a point. Her own feet tried to find themselves as she backed up, failing to plant her footing firmly in the otherworldly sand; however, she did not fall. Instead, the creature grabbed her with its sharpened teeth, shredding into the soft flesh of her chest, leaving parts of her muscle hanging on only by thin pieces of skin.
Astra cried out, her emotions had left her but the sensation of pain was a physical thing that lingered, stronger now that there were no emotions to distract her from it. There was no fear telling her to run, there was no anger telling her to fight, she collapsed to the ground and shrieked in agony as the creature tore into her just as the greyed stallion had.
More creatures swarmed, had they been hiding until blood had been drawn? Or perhaps, had they arrived at the scent of the carnage? It didn't matter, there wasn't anything she could do, nor did she care enough to try. Teeth bit into her legs, her flank, anywhere that wasn't being crowded by one of the others. A small, weak cry came from the tiny pegasus as she felt a chunk of her shoulder leave her body. There was no where to run anymore, and she knew this was likely the end, she had come to the beach out of curiosity, and lay here now in this strange universe to be ripped apart, sent to the slaughter by both her own nativity and the dark god that stood out of reach, realms away now for all she knew.
Blue eyes shut tightly as she accepted her fate, when suddenly there was a pull. Ripped away from the mouths of the hungry wooden creatures, she watched as they chased her, their legs moving quickly despite how fragile they seemed. A trail of her own blood was left behind as she was whisked away, and before she knew it, she was in the mouth once more. Though the journey was just as terrifying coming up as it had been going down, nothing reached to tear away from her this time, nothing more was stolen from her, there was only the pulling from the other side.
Reality came back faster than she could blink, and suddenly she was back. Ragged gasps shook her frame as Astra tried her best to catch her breath, every movement causing pain to shoot through her, healed but sore from the trampling her physical body had endured from the cruel stallion. Black feathered wings were now tucked close to her body once more, no longer strewn across the sands of the world of the living; though she could tell they were fragile for the time being based on the agony they caused her just from the smallest movement. As her breathing slowly returned to normal, she made no attempts to get up, choosing instead to lay there in wait for whatever else might come, unsure if it truly was all over.
She narrowed her eyes at the shape on the horizon. This place was disorienting enough on its own – but she could not tell if it was one shape or multiple. What she did know is that whatever it was – it was fast. There was a shimmer around this creature – similar to what the heat did to the earth on a hot day. A familiar occurrence around Pangea. But she knew nothing like this called Pangea home.
But she did not turn and flee. Perhaps it was foolish, but Anomaly was raised by monsters. Her first memories were of her mother’s creatures – assigned to watch over her egg before she hatched, alone in that sandstone cave in Pangea. The smooth black exoskeletons of the xenomorphs had been the first figures she had set her eyes upon. The teeth and crowned heads and knife-like tails had never been something that had stirred fear in her belly – only comfort. That, in itself, spoke volumes about her upbringing.
So she didn’t recoil or flee from the otherworldly shapes that appeared on this strange horizon. She simply watched as they grew closer – curiosity overpowering caution. The figures – for she was sure now it was more than one – seemed almost elegant. It seemed to plunge in and out of the earth like creatures of the sea did through water.
The land here is arid – more desert than anything though there are trees larger than any she’d ever seen scattered across the landscape. Trees that shouldn’t be able to survive in the sand yet here they were – over a hundred feet tall. But the creatures cut through the sand like the sea, and it wasn’t until they grew nearer that Anomaly began to feel the prickle of fear grow in the back of her mind. Because it was only when the shape raced passed distant trees that she realized the scope of the creatures.
She was in trouble.
She whirled – looking to see if there was somewhere to hide. But there was nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide. She swallowed down the rising panic and turned to face her fate.
But the horizon was empty.
The creature had gone.
The air was still. Too still.
Anomaly knew better than to be relieved. She heard it then. A strange chirping. Like nothing she’d heard before. She turned, immediately, and sawnothing but a shifting of sand. She heard it again, but this time it is behind her. And again, there is nothing to be found. But the sand was moving, she was certain of it. She wasn't sure if the chirping continued, because all she could hear was the pounding of her own heartbeat echoing in her eardrums.
And then, everything exploded.
The creatures emerged in a blinding shower of sand that forced her to squeeze her eyes shut. It happened too quickly for her to truly understand. She could feel the teeth and claws, but the movement is so blindingly fast, she can hardly make sense of the long limbs emerging from the sand below – limbs that move so much faster than she could.
Every few moments she could register a circular-shaped mouth dripping with her own glowing blood or a long tentacle-like limb tipped in a pair of claws shooting from the ground grabbing for her limbs. It was so overwhelming all she could feel is panic and pain – so, so much pain even though she was already dead and gone.
Can you die when you’re already dead? Is there another world beyond this twisted afterlife? The thoughts are fleeting as her energy wanes.
Her screams grow weaker as her body breaks. She feels a long limb wrap around her barrel squeeze – breaking bones and cutting off her screams. This is it. she thinks, pitifully.
She feels herself falling...
There's a horrific screech...
She wonders, for a moment, if the creature was screaming of triumph – having finally pulled her beneath the sands.
But no, that wasn’t it at all.
She’s free. She’s back. She’s alive. She knows these sands, inhaling the familiar scent of lingering salt mixed with decay.
She says nothing. She doesn’t move to stand. She doesn’t check to see if her wounds have closed. She knows she is alive. The ragged rise and fall of her chest is evidence enough of that.
That and the pain, of course. The echo pain still lingers. Perhaps it always will. It isn’t her primary concern at this point. She simply lies there, on the soft sands of the beach, gasping for air.
All while the deadly, glowing blood flows freely from her nostrils onto the stale, damp earth below.
i'm breathing in the chemicals.
WARNING: Anomaly is radioactive. Those that touch her may experience metallic taste, nosebleed, nausea, headache, hair loss and/or skin lesions. Symptoms become worse with prolonged exposure and onset is accelerated when exposed to her blood.
“ I will love you until we run out of mornings. Then I will love you in the dark. ”
As she stands still, straining her ears for reply, she gets an answer she did not expect. Creatures chirp and chitter to one another, unseen. There is a flicker of movement in the corner of her eye and she turns to observe the things lurking in her peripherals. But just as quick, they’re gone before her eyes can focus or process them. Echis whimpers softly in fear and takes a step back from the things as they continue crying out.
From her thigh, one takes a small bite, testing whether she is prey or predator. The serpent child yelps and skitters forward as her body begins to shake violently with terror. Someone’s bone breaks as Echis bursts into tears. Her throat fills with a shriek just as a monster’s mouth is stuffed with her shoulder. She tries to run, to get away, but she only makes it a few steps before more snapping jaws find her. The air is agony enough against her raw muscle, but these hunters bring her to the ground with minimal effort.
They cackle like hyenas as they gorge on the meat of her. Her sage green eyes watch them now, their snow-white eyes finding hers as they gather around her. Their teeth seem to float inside their mouths but they feel firm when they bite into her gut. Echis opens her mouth to beg for mercy but looking at them renders her speechless, now. What color would she even call these awful things? She blinks, and she swears they’re mouthing words to her between each crushing bite.
Stay with us.
And somewhere in the agony of being torn open, she finds a sliver of her that says yes. It pushes its way up her throat and mumbles her consent in between her gargling breaths. Echis coughs and sends a spray of red across a creature’s face.
Be with us, forever.
Her vision begins to grow dark around the edges. Dying happens so slowly here, she thinks. The pack devours her thoughts of her mother as they finish picking her bones clean. (But then how is she still seeing them?) They feast on her joy and her love, still cackling and gibbering as she whispers breathless thanks.
It feels like the end of everything when Carnage’s claws find her at last. There is perhaps a thread of Echis left, now, but he plucks it from the mouths of monsters and drags her back to her body.
It is a fresh kind of misery, to be put back together. The sand is wildfire across her raw muscles and she almost wishes for the peace the afterlife had given her. Not the strange world that had consumed her, certainly, but that bleak ever after she had seen at first. But there is a relentless need to stand, to find a river and wait. (Wait for what?) And so she staggers up with a hiss of pain and fights the tears welling up in her eyes.
She takes her first few swaying steps, and she hopes whatever is at the river’s edge is worth this personal hell.
She cannot bring herself to move, as broken as she is. She thinks she can hear herself crying, but maybe the sound is entirely inside of her head. Blood flows freely down her legs and pools beneath her, startlingly crimson against this landscape of greys and whites, and she wonders if it is the only color in this place.
Originally, she had thought herself deaf - but suddenly, there is noise echoing from across the gloom. Frenzy turns her head towards the first sound, and then the second, and third, and so on. The noises fill her with a fear that she cannot match words to - all she knows is that she is very, very afraid. This is no place for a child or any being from Beqanna. They do not belong here, the some-teen amount of them, and dread fills the girl's gut as strange beings materialize all around her. Or had they been here the entire time?
Was it her blood that attracted them to the group?
Frenzy shudders as their strange forms twist all around her, unable to make out a clear shape because of their monstrous speeds. They are all dark, colorless - fearsome. She sees talons, and teeth, and a misshapen blur that could be something winged, but she can't be sure. Perhaps it is her sudden blood loss that has her so out of sorts, or perhaps this place is just so broken that they don't look like anything she could ever imagine. It comes as no surprise when one of them finally lashes out at her, but still, she cannot withhold her screaming as the reckoning begins.
A snap, and she is on her knees again, as a creature wraps its mouth around her hip and pulls. She can feel the bone being pulled from its socket and she cries out in sudden agony.
Her cries only seem to excite the creatures, and they begin to chitter delightedly.
The attacks come frequently now, and she wonders what it will be like to die outside of Beqanna. Will she be able to return to the Afterlife there, to at least watch over her siblings, or does she just simply cease to exist? She loses herself in the pain and allows herself to float along as they ruin her, piece by piece. A nibble here and a rip there, until she is nothing but endless blood and agony and perhaps she no longer even exists - maybe this is all in her head, and she'll wake up back in the nest with her family.
She doesn't notice then the Dark God reaches for her, and pulls her back through the worlds and onto the beach. She is perhaps one of the last to awaken, and when she begins to stir the pain returns, engulfing her. She sobs then, wailing for a mother she never knew and a father who truly cares. Blood drips from wounds all over and she doesn't have her healing to fix this; she only prays that something, anything, can come and take it all away.
Perhaps a second death will be sweeter than the first.
jamie
