Nobody's Servant 1.0

Regeneration [vore]

I wake to pain.

It squirms through my body as muscle and bone, metal and rubber fail to make peace. It is as if the organic and synthetic each had an immune system of their own, committed to violent rejection of the other. I don't even have what it takes to move beyond spasmodic writhing, motorics in metamorphosis. My back quivers. My head pounds. Agony explodes in places that didn't even exist until moments ago. It's like being suspended in molten diamonds. By luck, I manage to find the surface, blindly breaking free, only to feel a hand grip my face.

"You are not finished yet," Suraokh says, then he pushes me back under. My flesh sticks to his palm even as he follows through with a flick, taking care not to touch the pool himself.

I feel myself sinking deeper than I should even be able to. I try to go anywhere else inside my mind but every memory I would escape to is intense and painful. There is nowhere to hide from the light.

I don't even realize it's over at first, that I'm finally at rest on the nacreous altar until Suraokh tries to pull me off of it. There's no floating, no light, no droning sound, but ohhh there's pain as he lifts me. I scream, or I try to, but all I can manage is a groan as my spine sears in my lower back. Something fused together wrong.

"You are dying, focus now," the doll urges.

"No shit I'm dying, you pushed me!" I hiss. "You said I'd be compatible!"

"You are compatible, please listen," he soothes. "Your body is attempting regeneration. Your dead components confuse it."

"What do you mean?"

He rewinds, and the noise at the end sounds like a scoff. "This process will be gradual. Today it will remain unfinished."

"I'm stuck like this?!" I snarl.

"You must listen to me," he insists. With a single shake, it feels like something could fall out of me. "Preserved, dead cells attempt division. This has become very complicated."

I could have told him that myself, when the pain in my back surges again and my leathered skin warps and splits to chase a branching spine. I bury my face in his chest, teeth clenched nearly hard enough to crack. New vertebrae twist out fractals, unfusing hips and spasming my legs as though the ligaments of each might snap. It takes precedence over any senses I might have retained, my 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 while. A dull prickle moves in all throughout my body where pain had been predominant. In time, exhaustion wins out, the rigors wear off, and I listlessly slump into Suraokh's delicate embrace. He's soft.

"It is all over now," he says at length. "You are all done, Merion. You survived the initial process."

I slowly unfold myself up onto my knees as best as my languid posture will permit. I touch my own face, digging a finger into a cheek to stretch an eyelid. Even the injuries the sun and sea left me with have been corrected, my vision restored to both eyes, every cut and burn gone without a trace. Cells dividing, not merely again, but faster than ever before. False life, made a little less false.

There is more of me than there used to be. When I finally stretch, I feel my hips and back strain against the weight of numerous tails. I turn to look over my shoulder at them, confirming their addition. It's not an unexpected sight, I felt those nerves misfire as they grew, but it still feels surreal to lay eyes on them. Despite a bushy texture suited to the original, the patterning is different. Simpler and sharper black markings on sandy yellow fur; overall, it has a healthier sheen even if its color is as dull as before. I do not recognize myself.