Nobody's Servant 1.0

Good As It Gets [vore]

I remember light. When the sun melts out of orbit, molten tendrils of rotten aether reaching for the face of the world, it's not that dim bruise color you can look at without consequence. It is bright and blinding and deadly. With no warning, the wards failed to power in time, and neither did I have any hope of making it to the shelter. The view of the impact I got from the skyway above the water I had been halfway across at the time will be burned into my mind forever, I'm lucky not my vision, though it took an eye in exchange. Another more tangible kind of burn, and only one of many. No great loss, it is as replaceable as anything.

My home, however, is a loss I cannot reconcile. That entire island will have burned away so abruptly and completely that almost nothing remains to conserve outside my memories. That home on a hill my family lived in for three generations, the caves my grandmother and her fellows made into holy places, the scent of incense wafting from the market road by the shore. Patterns that will never repeat.

I do not know what became of my father. The rest of my family should have been well clear of it today but he would have been somewhere on the campus with me, same as every day. Many colleagues as well; some names I'd embarrassingly never even put to faces. I might never, anymore.

And here I am, on some shore at the farthest tip of the island chain, carried off first by the shockwave, and then by the towering waves that followed. My useless, waterlogged lungs attempt a sigh. It's a small comfort that I need so much less oxygen. A living thing's record would have ended not far from the sun's point of impact.

I shouldn't be this calm. I should be sobbing on my knees on the ashen beach. Crying hasn't come so easily since I died. But that's fine, right? I try to tell myself that now is not the time for a personal crisis, but as I feel that tremor in my shoulders and weight in my chest, I know I'm wrong. It is the perfect time for a personal crisis.

I can't even know who survived. Even if someone finds me, I might still have no one to return to.

All the tears do hit then, and I let their sting wash away the numbing burn of the sea, openly grieving for a while before even making an effort to pull myself out of the shallows. Eventually, though I lift my head, the aftermath of my quiet despair holds fast. The gentle gray tide invites my blank gaze, its chill working down to my bones.

There should be no tides at all. The usually stagnant, silent, poison sea only stirs up like this during a storm, and the sun has long passed by. The clouds remain. They continue to roil, fallout from the sunstorm still spreading. Lightning in sickly shades runs a jagged circuit through the perfect circle bitten out of the sky. It's only going to get worse. I think of my mother and sister. Even if they find adequate shelter, if their island didn't get its wards up in time either, then they'll be stuck there for a long while. The air will have turned poisonous as well.

Regardless of whatever advantages my altered body confers, I still need shelter, so I begin to pick myself up out of the water. I can think of an escape plan after I have assured my survival in the short term. I would love a cave. Nothing less will count for much at all.

There are some pieces missing, forgive me.

I am, and for now continue to be, Merion. My represented animal is a black-backed jackal, not an uncommon sight on Paliputra, at least not these equatorial parts. Neither are aberrated individuals, among whom I also count myself. Transition from living to undead is a process well enough understood to prescribe, even if the success rate leaves so much to be desired. Am I one of the lucky ones? It's been a while and I still have yet to decide.

Until officially counted among the casualties and the missing, I am a Maxim Directorate citizen. They will be looking for me once the storm clears. At least, I hope so. I was, until just this afternoon, a full-time necrotech operator but the likelihood of any part of that campus continuing to exist in recognizable form is, shall we say, suboptimal. Subatomic.