Nobody's Servant 1.0

Regeneration [vore]

I wake to pain.

Muscle and bone separate from metal and rubber, reattaching only to do it again. I don't even have the faculties to move, motorics in metamorphosis, limiting me to involuntary, spasmodic writhing.

My back quivers. My head pounds. Agony explodes in places that did not exist until just now, any other sensory feedback is just garnish. But with enough repetition, it breaks through to me that the slow, measured, repeating sound droning just beyond my faculties is speech.

"Focus, or you will die."

I try to get it together so I can at least look at Suraokh, but he's already so close our noses are almost touching, startling me into a jolt that sets off a new wave of tremors, tensing damaged muscles too soon.

"What's happening to me?" I manage to seethe out.

"You have become something more. But, blood is being lost," Suraokh states. "Part of you is wounded. It did not mend itself. Focus to make it stop. The base of your spine. Just think about healing it."

"Believe me," I growl through clenched teeth, "I would love it if I could."

"You misunderstand; you can heal," the gray kangaroo insists. Even the sound of his lexicon module rewinding itself for the next five sounds urgent. "Think about healing it now."

He instructs me as if I can wish for anything else right now. The pain of preserved skin ignites anew as it grows as if alive, the base of my spine splinters and multiplies to twist out fractals that unfuse my pelvic bones and spasm my legs as though the cords and tendons of each should snap. It takes all precedence over any senses I might have retained, ringing ears and blurring eyes taking in their ruined record as I try to latch onto whatever numbness I can find among it all.

It finds me, eventually, I'm not sure if it was exhaustion or shock, but it all subsides after a point. My entire body is taken over by a dull prickle instead, which slowly recedes down my spine. When it is gone, so is the pain. Even the injuries the sea left me with have corrected themselves; however minor, they were the kind of thing I'd still have requested maintenance over. At least until now. False life, made a little less false.

There is more of me than there used to be. As I stretch, I feel my hips and back strain against the weight of numerous tails. Turning my head, I confirm their addition, a wide and bushy fan of new appendages fighting for space at the base of my spine. Their appearance isn't totally unexpected, I felt nerves misfire as they grew, but it still verges on alarming all the same to lay eyes on them. Their patterns are clean; sharp and simple edges between the black and yellow fur. I find the same as I look down, hands finding places to push as I pick myself up, their two-tone markings similarly defined where once had been a smooth gradient.

"I thought you said I wouldn't notice anything different when we were done," I remark. I'm not displeased with these changes, at least not on their surface, but they have greater implications I'm already beginning to contemplate.

"We must not be done," he remarks back. For as little as his lack of expression gives away, he's surprisingly sassy. "Advanced compensation for your cooperation. If that framing helps you."

I can't keep my head from tilting, the angle of my ears not hiding my frustration. "I thought I was doing this for you. Why do I need this?..."

"You will find out soon. Lucky you ended up here. The journey ahead is dangerous. But less dangerous now." Holding my unfinished weapon, he turns quickly and begins marching toward a narrow crevice in the walls of the pale yellow stone pit. Before I follow, I take one last glance at the shifting, rippling prismatic well in the ceiling that bestowed me with... whatever this is. I hope it's worth the pain. More than that, I hope it's worth the trouble it's no doubt put me in.