Corrupted Timelines

An Atlantean's Day

Warning: This chapter has some gore and dark themes. It isn't too bad, but it might disturb some readers. Enjoy.

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"Looks like we'll need to ration again today."

"Again? How long is this shortage going to last? It's been nearly a week!"

"I know, I know, but there's nothing we can do about it."

"We could get higher priority by-"

"Listen, we've talked about this. Gura isn't joining the military, especially in the state she's in."

"But we don't know how long this is going to keep up."

"They said it isn't going to be much longer. The new Priestess is getting pushed back out of our main region soon."

"That's just what they want us to think..."

"Unfortunately, that's all we know."

A pale, bed-ridden Gawr Gura laid in her room, listening to the conversation between her parents. They would argue like this every now and then, but it never got bad. A growl in her stomach forced her to roll onto her side. The pain grabbed and tore at her insides.

"So... hungry..." she whimpered to herself. Maybe she should just run off to the military on her own. Her body craved food so badly even though her parents were giving her most of it. Some disease was probably ruining her digestive system, possibly even a parasite. It wasn't unheard of for an Atlantean to get sick, just very, very rare.

The pain subsided soon after and drowsiness took over. This was how her life had been for the past few weeks. With the ongoing war outside, food was getting harder and harder to come by. Officials tried their hardest to ration what they had the best they could, so that no one went hungry. But of course, they weren't perfect.

Gura fell asleep in the fetal position like she normally did. It was just really comfortable. A few flashes of a bad dream caused her to wake back up, nearly immediately. In them, the war had gotten too close to home and one of the creatures had injured her parents.

She awoke in the fetal position, just like how she fell asleep. Except she wasn't in her room anymore. She was in the main living area, pulled against a wall. What was she doing out here? There had been a few cases of her sleep swimming, but normally her parents would wake her up. But they weren't here either.

Gura got up off the floor and drowsily swam across her living room and into the kitchen. Still no signs of her parents. The front door was locked and closed when she'd passed it, so they were probably still in the house. She had a bad feeling about this.

She swam up to the second floor and found her parent's bedroom's door slightly ajar. Her parents never left the door open, even a little bit, when they were sleeping. A slight clump of something floated out of the gap. It was a purple, foul smelling liquid. The feeling of unease grew inside of her as she approached the door and looked inside.

Her parent's room had been ripped apart. Pieces of bed sheets and curtains floated about the room along with more of that sickly purple slime. Gura was repulsed when some of it made its way near her. Even the furniture was torn apart with something resembling bite marks covering the piece's surfaces.

It smelt like death in the room. Her eyes continued to reluctantly scan around the room. As the debris moved about, she caught a few glimpses of her parent's fate.

Among the floating objects were an assortment of body parts.

Gura felt herself gagging, but couldn't pull her eyes away. The flesh was mostly intact, but there were large chunks taken out in similar bite marks. They were oozing with whatever purple liquid was in the room, it seemingly replacing the blood inside.