Devoid of light, similar to the belly of the beast, nothing was visible, but he could breathe properly, ignoring the stench of the excretion and iron, that is.
Damu crawled forward, slowly getting onto his feet, and took a deep breath.
-*Hhhhuup*
.
.
*BOOM* *WHOOSH*
A whipping sound accompanied a boom as it resonated in the embrace of the darkness, smashing into Damu as a splat followed.
*plop* *pit* *plop* *pat* *splosh*
A head, lacking a jaw and tongue, rolled across the grainy surface and stopped after colliding with a wall quite a distance away. It landed in a wet pool producing a splash.
The massive, almost wall like, object that smashed into Damu slowly stopped moving, as though losing it's vitality.
Soon after, the mutilated head started moving and it's flesh started wriggling neck down, the fibers around the spine convulsing as they expanded. The jaw rebuilt itself. The reddish, pink muscle fibers elongated and the bones reformed starting from the vertebrae. The horrid display proceeded as the organs, limbs and nerves reformed from scratch.
.
.
Eventually.. a torso formed, the short stumps budded into limbs. Dorsal and ventral parts connected at the pelvis. Tendons formed, connecting the tissue with the bones. At the point where almost everything was reconstructed, the skin, starting from the head, stretched across, increasing in length and area, as it eventually encapsulated the entirety of the skinless body. Connected at the feet, no scars were left visible on the previously nonexistent body.
The eyeballs rolled back to the front as his eyelids twitched. He jolted up in shock as an electric sensation swam through his nerves, along with the severed connection with his body reappearing.
-"Gah!" Tear panted clutching onto his head, "What the ***k?!!"
•Alert•
*First of three 'complete revivals' used up*
He ignored the alert as he'd lost his mind at this point. Coming back from the literal verge of death was quite apparently not the most pleasant thing to experience. He grabbed onto his head with a hand and clutched at his chest with the other, gasping the air for a while.
-"nOT AgAIn!"
-"No nO NO NO NO NO!? "
Having held out so well so far, despite having gone through so much, he hadn't broken down. However, this was the last straw. He gulped as he felt a salty sensation crawl to the back of his throat. Damu broke down in tears as he wallowed, covering his face.
-"I didn't even want to come here in the first place. Why do I have to go through all this?"
-"Why??"
-"Why?!"
-"Why.?"
Damu had seen tough times since his childhood but he wasn't ever tortured continuously in this way.
He sat coiled with his back against the cold wall as he weeped for who knows how long. Tears streamed down his cheeks forming one long stream that dripped off his chin in the lightless space he was stuck in. At one point though, even they stopped flowing. He sat listlessly. Staring at nothing.
.
.
*snort*
.
.
*sniffle*
.
.
.
*sniffle* *snort*
-"haaah."
His mind was still foggy but crying his heart out helped him restabilize to an extent. He was still a teenager, regardless of the hardships he faced previously, who was still in the process of learning more about life.
He wiped his eyes and swept his palms across his wet cheeks. He couldn't see anything but he could still feel grainy particles spread across his cheeks.
-"This isn't sand..."
Indeed, it wasn't. It didn't smudge even with all the water and blood present. It also felt a bit larger than your average sand granules. Still, it wasn't like he could make anything out since the place was completely devoid of light. Even if his vision had improved, there needed to be a minimal amount of light to make use of it.
He'd recovered significantly now and realized he had previously ignored something that tugged at his mind since the time he was sobbing his heart out. He somberly read the alert.
-"One of three?"
-"So there's a limit?", he thought for a while, "fair enough."
-"It was already too good to be true."
Huh? How come he's already come to terms with this? How did he even know what it was referring to? Should've taken at least a little longer… well.. Letting his emotions settle by crying, he could finally think properly for once. Moving on, he somewhat understood what the system alert was referring to. The fact he just died, and came back.
-"Quite a bother, wasted in vain."
*sigh*
Scrunching his eyebrows, Damu placed his palms on the ground and shakily forced himself up. He felt reinvigorated, not being tortured, or dying for a moment.
He shook his arms and legs to loosen his stiff muscles. Stretching his sore muscles relieved the tension in his body.
He took his first step in a while as a loud *thump* resounded, echoing for at least a minute along the length of the long cave as it gradually died down further into the darkness. He continued marching onwards into the eerie abyss of the darkness.
*Thump*
-"Augh.... Why is it so wet and mushy."
He bumped into something soft but had a certain resistance to it. It felt slippery too. He didn't find anything else, so his best bet according to him was to see what this would lead him to. He placed his palms on and walked across the length of it, not putting his weight on it, knowing he'd fall if he did so.
.
.
.
-"Long..."
He'd walked for much more than half an hour, by his estimation of time. It was a rather large arc, and a certain scent of iron was growing as he went on further.
*Splosh*
An annoyingly sticky and wet feeling enveloped the sole of his feet.
-"Blood.."
Easy to discern considering the pungent smell that was so abundant.
-"Hah, well deserved." A smirk making it's way onto his face as he condescendingly continued, "That's what you get for making me suffer."
*thump* *thump* *Rumble*
A huge vibration shook the cave out of nowhere. Damu lost his footing out of utter confusion, face planting into the slime-like liquid. The entire front of his body, splashing and now smudged with the nasty fluid.
Pulling his face out of blood, he stared at his submerged hands dumbfoundedly.