A Vanishing Gear |BEING REWORKED|

The Journey's Beginning

 It was dark. It was quiet. And then it wasn't.

The little creature's eyes snapped open to a horrible, searing pain in her head. She scrambled in an ungainly way out of the glass tube of some kind of liquid she'd been floating in. Where was this place? How did she get here?

The metal walls stretched on up to an impossibly high ceiling, and the walls were lined with rows and rows of those same chambers, some empty and some occupied by monstrosities that startled the slugcat whenever she took a glance at them.

She plopped herself down awkwardly and raised a paw to that burning spot on her head, only to flinch even looking at it. More like a hand than a paw it was, long and thin with four fingers and a thumb towards the back. Surely that wasn't right?

Looking back to the claws of a giant six-legged lizard which took up most of its chamber, those hands were the wrong ones. Not sleek-scaled and blue and glowing with an enchanting light- dull-clawed, spindly, and a kind of dusty pink color. Not quite right.

A flash of bright, orangey light from the corner of her eye took her attention away from her wrong claws, and towards a little tunnel embedded in the wall, three little lights above it. What could that have been?

She got to her paws. Surely those limbs were too long? None of the other creatures had any that tall. The unnamed slugcat wondered why, but couldn't think of an answer. Maybe at that light there was something that could tell her more?

Her limbs felt unsteady as she walked awkwardly forth. Maybe they were too long... walking just felt wrong. Did it feel right before?- ...was there even a before? She couldn't remember anything from before she'd emerged from that glass chamber.

That little tunnel was cramped, and the air heavy with lizard musk. She didn't recognize the scent, but knew to be wary of it. She walked with more caution than before through the cramped chambers than before, cold metal chilling her paws.

I don't like this, she thought. It wasn't just her that was wrong, no, it was this whole place. The ground wasn't open like the endless dunes, these were closed in by steel walls. And those walls? They just stood, perfect and rigid and unmoving. Though they didn't move, they felt like they were closing in on her.

The ground? No, the ground was off, too. Not soft and cool like the sand, these were harder than stone, and ice-cold, too. Why was it so, so cold here?

She shivered, letting out a breath that floated up into fog. That... that also wasn't right. Never had she seen that before, no, it was always too warm for that. What even made it so cold in these accursed chambers?

That flash of bright light appeared again. She whipped towards the source, and standing there was the strangest creature.

It was some kind of an... eye? There wasn't really anything else to the creature, besides a glowing stalk that made up the rest of its body and four little tendrils off to each side of the eye. Even though the slugcat had no recollection of her past, she knew that... thing... surely wasn't normal. Just like the rest of this place.

The eye creature pointed an odd glowing symbol, in bright red, down the hall, where the slugcat spotted little ice crystals dotting the walls, like deadly little diamonds. The glowy thing was right, maybe she shouldn't go there.

She looked around for a different path and found one off to the side. It smelled a little more like lizard than the rest of the place, but the air coming from it was much warmer than where she was standing. Maybe that one was worth a try.

Hand-paws pattering across the metal floors, she made the turn and resumed on, downward now, into a warmer region of the... whatever she was in. It seemed a bit safer than everything else, except for the eye creature, which was still following her through the place. It unsettled the slugcat, sure, but it seemed to be leading her somewhere... she couldn't help but wonder where that place could be.

The tight, cold tunnels seemed to continue on and on forever. The rooms and corridors were scattered with all kinds of shiny things with sharp angles. It was all unsettling and strange to the little slugcat, but the eye creature's guidance was strangely calming. She trusted it, and followed its signals left, right, down, and all through this odd place.

Eventually, they came to yet another tunnel, which the eye pointed down into. The slugcat climbed into it, and was greeted by a sudden, bright light.