Awakened

Beyond Mortal Understanding

((Experienced a pretty bad bout of writer's block for a few months, but I'm back with a banger!
...One with a pretty intense BODY HORROR WARNING.. for like. The entire chapter.))

There was a gentle breeze coming in from the open water today. The waves delicately lapped at the shore, the trees rippling and rustling in the wind. The sun was just barely peeking over the deepslate roof of the mansion on the water.
All of it paled in comparison to the hypnotic purple swirls of the portal set into the cliff face.

Faintly, he could make out the room behind it; walls lined with barrels, shelves and chests. The oxidized copper lights and blue concrete stood out through the thick, swirling haze. The colored embers drifted around the portal, bringing back faint memories.

The first time he'd seen such an otherworldly phenomenon. The time he'd dared to step through. The terrifying drop and chill on the other side, of choking when he'd landed in so much water. Cold water. Freezing, even.
His first experience with the Overworld had nearly killed him via hypothermia.

He'd died a little while later anyway, wandering helplessly with no way to climb back to that distant portal. He remembered calling. Begging for another piglin to be around. Even a hog, or a speck of red or even familiar orange.

Nothing greeted him then, nothing but frigid blue and black, like a terrible bruise against the charcoal flesh of this cold world.
He remembered how hungry he was then, a gnawing hunger in his gut that the last of the crying obsidian couldn't stave off anymore; the numbness in his hands and nose despite the itchy hairs they were starting to sprout.

Despite how much fear the very sight of the stuff had sent through him, all he could think anymore was how much it looked like nylium. Surely it was barely edible. He remembered collapsing to his knees, spitting out the useless rocks and scraping the cold, wet mold off the hard rock. He remembered hesitating at how moist it was, more like the insides of a magma cube than soft, stringy nylium.

Distantly, he wondered what would have happened had he not paused. If he had started eating regardless of how weird it was. If he had not noticed the patch of mold that writhed around the spent obsidian, coiling around it and clinging to his legs like it knew he was the one to spit it there.

That first moment of contact, of the vast, utterly foreign consciousness somehow seeping into his own. Back when he couldn't begin to comprehend what it was asking- no, pleading from him.

The only reason he hadn't scrambled away screaming then was because he was too cold and tired to do much more than fall backwards with a gasp. Part of him then had still clung to that contact, recognizing the sense of awareness that wasn't his own. Loneliness had been the bridge then.

But the anchor had been hunger. Without words, the sculk could only register feelings, identify his starvation.
At that time, it had something else to order it's vast knowledge into something useful, something that resented the sculk, disgusted with what it wanted through lack of understanding.

Still, the sculk was trying. The sculk had crawled into his still living head, bringing with it a sense of clarity. Even when it fed him energy- enough so he could finally stand and back away from the mass of black and cyan stars, it was still clinging to him. The taste of mold on his tongue, bitter, coppery, stale, the musty smell flooding his nostrils as the sculk stuck to his skin and touched his mind.

It couldn't meaningfully communicate, not then. No, it could only impress emotions, could only glow brighter to his underused eyes.
The sculk had guided him then, stumbling, near blind as the bluish stars shone brighter in an unmistakable path, leading him through tunnels until he finally encountered light once more.