"You mess with the bull you get the horns!" Aarav yelled. It was an odd thing to say considering he had been fighting was his own animal instincts. Aarav had never been the brightest spark though. Then it looked at the message notifications it had just received and its celebrations abruptly stopped.
Memory synchronisation is complete! Resh and Aarav have fully synchronised! +20 Intellect, +30 Acuity! Your mind is now complete. Congratulation!
Language Mastery: English, you have mastered the Language. Now you will not forget it even if you do not use it.
Language Mastery: Gujarati, you have mastered the Language. Now you will not forget it even if you do not use it.
Language Mastery: French, you have 20% mastery, keep using it every day to master it.
Language Mastery: Hindi, you have 30% mastery, keep using it every day to master it.
Language Mastery: Swahili, you have 10% mastery, keep using it every day to master it.
"What!?" Aarav screamed with his grotesque mouth. Is this…do I have an animal mouth now!? "What is happening right now? What is this!?" Aarav reached to his mouth with his squirrel's legs. "What the hell!!!? No, no, no, no, no, noooooo!!" I don't have animal hands. Aarav closed his eyes, which were on stalks of slime flesh. "Argh!" A scream escaped from his inhuman lips. Tongue rolling and trying to understand the interior of an unfamiliar mouth. Everything seemed alien.
What was happening, what had happened to him? The last thing he remembered was the car accident and then pain and then nothing. That blackness haunted him. Next thing his mind was awake and alert, fighting a body that would not respond to his desires. He had won, a first for him if he was honest but it had been a win and he would take it. It had also served to distract him from his immediate conundrum. He had not instantly realised that he was, in fact, not human. It wasn't even that he was not human. If Aarav was honest with himself he had never really been the most exceptional human being. Barely considering himself associated with the word frankly. But no, he was the furthest, most disgusting thing from a human that was possible.
"This is completely insane! How could this have happened?" The voice that came out of this facsimile of a mouth was guttural and like what people imagined the devil sounded like more animal than human. Aarav had to admit though it might have been an improvement on his squeaky voice as a human. Am I really praising what this thing sounds like? Aarav could not accept that this body was his. It was a body and he happened to be in it. For now. Urgh, this thing is disgusting….why can't I get away from it. And right now this body looked felt and smelled like mud…
Resh was the body, Aarav decided, he was the mind. But that wasn't the case of course; there was no Resh, and the moment that Aarav had fully manifested the "Resh" psyche had melded into Aarav's and the shell shocked human had become the Earth Slime. The reality was that Resh had been Aarav the whole time but with less intellect and just working on instinct. The veil of fog in Resh's mind was now completely gone as Aarav. If anything this new being that he manifested in was more intelligent than he had been in life, especially after the brain trauma.
Instead of having to deal with broken and disconnected thoughts and feelings Aarav's was free and whole to freak out completely at this new reality. "Thanks a lot! For nothing!" Aarav screamed to the sky, to Buddha or Christ or Allah or Brahma or Mahavir or whatever damn god that existed or didn't exist on this plane. Wherever here was. Then the image of a vast creature deep in the earth shivered through his mind and he fell silent for a moment.
"This cannot be happening….but it is happening….I need to figure this out. How could this have happened!! I don't want to be a disgusting slime creature that is made up of a bunch of weird crusty parts and seeing myself in the mirror makes me want to vomit!" Now Aarav was angry. Unbelievable! Worst result ever! Why is this a thing, since when does falling asleep and waking up make you a…this thing!? Wait, but he hadn't fallen asleep. It was a bit of a blur but he had been running from some loan sharks…what was new. And they had tried to run him off the road. He had just gone out for food. They had thought he was running away and he had panicked when they chased him.
It hit him. I…died? No….no.....no...….
He was silent for a long time, wallowing in mud and despair like a turd-hippo. A depressed turd-hippo. Resh / Aarav sighed. No, Resh is me and I am Resh, always has been. Isn't aware of it until now. I have to accept that. Every time he breathed, he was once again reminded of the disgusting mouth and then when he thought about it further the nose wasn't much better. Jagged horrible teeth, a mouth that tasted like blood and a plethora of unseemly sensations coming from this body were pushing him further and further towards insanity.
Aarav once again took a few deep breaths and tried to calm his insane broken mind. He needed to assess his current situation and figure out what this meant for him. He felt like he was handicapped. What he considered his more valuable sense was not working properly, maybe it was dark? There was no colour in the world…was it him or was it this body…? It's time to dig into what is going on with me. After that minor freak out…it was a minor freak out. He wasn't sure who he was trying to convince.
Looking through all the skill notifications and growth and ability it was clear that a lot of time had been spent working on them and pushing the levels upward. But many of these senses left much to be desire, eyes that couldn't see colour, ears that could hardly hear any but the deepest sounds and a nose that could only smell things that were right under its nose and a mouth and tongue that felt like it was from a child's worst nightmare. The sense of taste wasn't great at the moment either.
Out of all of them though it was not being able to see colour that was throwing him off the most, that needed to be rectified quickly as well as understand this whole evolution and growth progress as far as Aarav was concerned, the faster it could get away from this mess of a body the better. I dub thee, turd body. Maybe changing to something fresher and cleaner and nicer would improve his mood? Strong Odour Alteration and Strong Camouflage to the rescue! The Earth Slime scrolled through the list of smells and looks just like online shopping, I can change my entire body though, not just the clothes I'm wearing…
Deciding on Polished Wood, both the smell and the look made him feel a lot better. With the high density of his body, even if it was small at least he was no longer mud-coloured. A nice polished wood was much more acceptable. Not anything close to what he was willing to stick with but an improvement at least.
Continuing to breathe in steady even breaths in and out, in and out, was doing a lot to calm the more irrational thoughts. Halfway through the fourth breath he also realised that he did not need oxygen to survive, was he even breathing in oxygen or was this atmosphere a completely different chemical make-up? Hmm…that's right, keep thinking distracting thoughts and you might be able to forget that you're a damned turd monster right now.
"Well, it was good while it lasted…" Once again Aarav was talking to himself. It wasn't the first time and it wouldn't be the last. Like most recluses, he had learned to keep himself entertained. Aarav hadn't been the most stable person as a human being. So this was gradually pushing him closer and closer to another meltdown that threatened to be even more epic than the one before. He kept trying to bring his mind back to safer topics.
Suddenly, a small inkling of instinct welled up, warning Aarav. Something came stalking into the clearing where the anthill was, and Aarav realised he had been pretty loud in his exclamations of anger, fear, denial and several other emotions that tangled into an unrecognisable mess.
This creature was the last thing Aarav wanted to see as he had flashbacks to their previous encounters. It had not ended well for him in any of them.