Nobody's Servant 1.0

Infirmary

I am somewhere warm. It's dark, and there is no air to breathe, under this thick fluid resting heavy around me. I have to get out. I'm not safe here, something is coming for me, from all directions.

I can feel how sorry it is, for what it's about to do to me, but its will is undeniable and I'm about to be ripped from my leathery sanctuary, just like everyone.

I spasm as I feel pain shoot through my body. In double vision I take in my surroundings, I'm not there anymore.

My hands are strapped to the edges of a slab, fingers gnarled. I can feel that instinctual, hated bloodlust that seethes out of my shock but I'm thankfully secured too tightly to act on it. I think this is the first time I've been cognizant of it in the moment, like I've receded into my skull to study it as it takes control from me.

Someone leans in; I think it's Nym, but he's masked up in olive drab, wearing scrubs with a built-in full face covering. Someone else is here too; he is staring intently at me as he handles a syringe. I recognize those eyes, glassy and piercing all at once. Why is Suraokh here?

Stupid question, of course he's here. A better question would be why didn't he come sooner? He can stop me from medicating but not from getting myself eviscerated?

I almost don't register the prick of a needle amid the searing, electric sensation that feels like it's going to rip me to pieces, but I'm gone again the moment I process it.

I am somewhere cold.

I am weightless here, body illuminated by a distant point of light somewhere off to my right. To the left, there is nothing. My pieces drift toward nothing. As I think of reaching for them, my arm joins them.

So what is this, is this death? I don't remember this part, but then again, I went out pretty suddenly the first time.

There is a sound. Filament monitors whining as they power on, whining forever. An incessant tick-tick-tick-tick-tick of paper being wasted. It's coming from the light, spreading out a thin line across a black horizon. I turn my hollow body toward it and I am somewhere else.

Hard surfaces hold me in place, ridges like molars digging up against me as I become aware of the deep crag of bone around me. Only a sliver of light pours in, but my vision exits my body, traveling out through the crevice. Something floats in the cavern beyond; well no, one can't call it a cavern, it's hardly big enough for the object inside.

It's an orb of sickly gray flesh, my only company here, occasionally rippling from some internal impact, with harder, sharper objects making stark impressions. I think I'm watching a gestation, something about to break free.

I was just there, I think. It feels like I should be in there.

And then I am, and the fear is back. I plant my single leg in a keratinous divot and push, limp arms useless as I rely entirely on the shape of my plated spine to rip through the vesicle containing me. This is not my body, clearly. But oh, it wants to be. These memories want to be mine.

Memories, yes, this is something that happened already. I am so sure I was being pursued, that I still am, and for every second I spend in this floating shelter in the heart of the world, what's coming for me draws that much nearer.

"Pursued" is the wrong word. This perspective is unaccustomed to words.

It's more like it has already consumed us all whole, and this is the impending crunch of vast muscle, snuffing out stars on contact on the way to break the bones of our worlds.

I tear through the skin, and rather than break into open air, the suffocating pressure of a frigid ocean pours in, clinging like gristly bile, and beneath it, I fade out.