I lay in a dark cavern, looking down at nothing, it's cloying.
I know something should be there. But Nothing is there, far more than Something ever promised.
A noise reaches my ears, and I jolt my head upwards. And suddenly, I'm not in that void, but in a well lit dining hall.
I am at one head of the table, closest to the door. To either side of me are an uncountable number of marionettes, they all appear to be looking towards the other head of the table, for permission.
At the other end of the table, is a demon…
I blink and.
No, just another marionette.
The doll at the other side of the table picks up It's fork and stabs into a piece of red, raw meat. And it then brings it to where it's mouth would be, and pushes it against it's face.
But it doesn't have a mouth. It try's again, and again, and again. And-
It's neck snaps from the frantic jabs of it's fork into itself.
As the other dolls see this without any eyes, they repeat the actions of the first, and all get so desperate to get the food into their mouths that they all snap their own necks.
I look down at my meal, but am not greeted with fresh meat, but with a rotting, ichor filled, pile of a substance that could have looked like meat at one point…
As I hesitate, I look up, and all the maniquins are staring directly at me, with necks that don't work right…
I look back down at the bloody red meat on my plate, and forget my hesitance.
My fork pierces it and as I lift it out, the act of my movemeant sends echoes of corruption in it's wake.
I blink again and I have a piece of meat on my fork, I bring it too my lips.
But hesitate as I see, strings. On my wrists?
I follow the strings up to the rafters of the room I am in, and see the -
Nothing, I don't see anything.
But as I look back at the dolls, they're all broken, bleeding oil through the all over their shells.
They are still watching me.
And my mind unconsciously shifts my eyes ever so slightly to the left, and from that angle I now see the strings that have them moving.
I follow the strings up to the rafters and see a-
Nothing…
I look back down and the puppets are gone.
And before my eyes space collapses as the table's other side quickly approaches.
In the seat of that other side, once seating a puppet. Now sitting there is a mass of darkness…
As the darkness in the chair gets closer, the sounds reaching my ears get louder.
From a whispering, to a talking, to a yelling, to screaming.
And as the table disappears, and I am brought face first into that deafening darkness, I make eye contact with, something….
And wake up.
- - - -
As the little one suddenly jerks in her surroundings, it seems she doesn't even realize that she is shivering.
While she was dreaming, she had gained the attention of a contingent of the imperial dolls that had taken to hunting whom so ever found themselves here.
She at times appears to either be as quiet as a mouse or as cacophonous as a drake, such a nature was likly to find herself dead in such a place as this.
But she has potential…
- - - -
As my mind, still rattled after trying to recollect the happenings of that dream, starts to subside in it's panic, I finally acknowledge the sounds in the background, it sounds like something is, breaking…?
Or no, more like… a ton of… marble on stone.!
I cast my ki out to feel for how many there are…
One, two, three, four, five… six….
Seven.
Seven emotionless life signatures fall within my awareness.
A familiar panic tries to sinks into my thoughts at the idea of having to fight so many of those things…
Paralyzed by the thought… i curl up into a ball, and stay there, in the dark, hoping that they will leave…
'How many more times will we be paralyzed by fear…?' An exhausted voice, one I had never heard before, rings through my mind.
'is this where you want to live your life? Cowering away from adversity, at the single thought of more effort..?' She says in a gravelly tone.
'I feel like my reaction is pretty reasonable…' I reply.
'When will it be reasonable, to take no action?'
She answers my statement with another question, and I feel my blood boiling as I Seethe from the implied insult.
The anger quickly overwhelms me as I say 'who are you, to question when I do or don't want to deal with something!?'
'And who are you? To allow us to be lead by our emotions.?
The thought, stops my anger in it's newly gaining steam thoughts…
'I am trying, trying to keep us alive, and if that means we cower in the dark, then that is what we do.'
Undaunted, she responds.
'Why don't you open your eyes? And see just how much, we have become a puppet to our fear?
Unknowing of what she means, I roll my eyes, but decide to humor her, and as I think to do so, it is as if a lid is lifted in my brain.
It's not a mental image, but there isn't any real way to describe it, as anything more than a feeling.
A feeling of an endless amount of red string, organizing my mental state, for the express purpose of surviving, and only that.
And in this expanse of string, I hear the echoes of a now familiarly gruff voice 'what is it you want in this life, truly?
I look back at her, the figure of an extremely short child, using a stained potatoe sack as a dress, with dark brown eyes and a resting scowl.
I sink to her level. Strings above us forgotten, and say.
'I want to live.'
She gaze intensifies, but I interrupt her before she can say anything else.
'But more importantly, I want to die.'
She looks at me, with shock in her tired eyes
Shackily, I continue, 'I want to die, at t-the ripe old age of eighty, surrounded by friends, and. And b-be, able to say…'
'I did it.'
She looks at me with acknowledgment in her eyes.
But I move my eyes back up the strings, and I shift my vision in that nastolgic way, and find the source of the strings controlling me.
I look back down at the little Shepard… me.
And say, 'would you like to help me deal with that?' I say as I hold out my hand
Her surprise is replaced with a feral delight, and she takes my much larger palm.
And for lack of a better explanation, we fly up to the thing, a trauma response, that was meant to help us through the events of our early years here…
But had grown into a desperate need to have everything be in control.
And just as we reach it. I realize, this fella, he's just like a spider, not really malicious, just afraid, and confused.., and probably very tired from the constant stress…
So instead of trying to hurt it, and in turn, hurt myself, I look to myself, nod at her, and bring the big guy into a hug.
The trauma freezes at the unexpected touch, and tries to wriggle free but we don't let go, and it realizes we mean no harm and finally, finally, relaxes.
'Not everything needs to fall in line… I don't know how long it will take, it we will survive. No matter what, but we can only do that if we start. Okay?' It melds into me, and I feel it finally sleeping…
- - - -
The girl had understandably fallen to her panic again, but the Dolls are aproaching rapidly.
She is still shivering, no doubt from her lack of clothes in this place.
But in her doing so, she doesn't realize that she is making noise, and therefore attracting them to her like moths to a flame…
But just as they are within meters of each other, she stiffens and then relaxes fully, and looks up.
Directly where the imperial dolls have stopped due to the lack of sound…
Then the little one stood up, disregarding my darkness, and began walking slowly toward her enemies.
Her footsteps are silent, but her gait is casual, as if she's just going on a stroll…
And as she passes the dolls, one by one, she places on their exoskeletons a, rune?
A very, very small rune.
And oddly enough, the dolls only react to her touching them a few moments after she has already left their reach…
after she has already marked all of them with the rune, she pulls on her other hand.
Wherein lays… nothing?
But as she pulls on this nothing, non the less, all of the runes activate at the same time.
And absolutely rip apart the torso pieces of the deadly crustaceans.
Killing all of them almost instantly…
Then, she grabs one of them by the ankle and then on continues, taking an almost B line for the key she had lost.
But as she makes her way, it's clear she's walking in a random direction, her hands infront of her, moving around to find walls that aren't there.
Which looks even more humorous, seeing as she is too toeing as she does it.
Well, it would have, if she wasn't drenched in dried, and fresh blood.
But she did eventually get to the wall, only steps away from the key, she sits down, takes from the shirt she rolled up into a makeshift pouch, a, knife?
And then begins scribbling on the ground.
She seems to do that a lot…
- - - -
'It's cold… hurry up with the rune!' Cyan demands.
'Ohh this is gonna taste sooo good~' Green pipes up, practically salivating.
And that thought has me actually salivating, so as the fire sputters to life (one that isn't going to keep going until it dies… thankfully…)
I pluck the limbs from the thing, place to the sides to use as a proper for the torso, so it isn't completely burnt all at once…
Though since I only have a vague picture of a flame, so I'm mostly going off of previous experiences to not get burnt, and that's not really the best.
But what really isn't the best is that I can't find that damned orb!
I was looking for it for what felt like hours, until I hit this wall, it really isn't the greatest situation to be in…
'And certainly, it is killer, to be trapped by indecision, but its also very reasonable to want to be in control.' Is what I hear when I tune back into my mind.
'I think it might be more that we thought we were in control when we weren't, that was really bad,' I can't help but agree with myself with that one.
'So, how do we make more situations with, control?' The question has an obvious answer.
In answer, a mental picture, of thousands of hundreds of runes, all connected with string and all within my control… it felt euphoric, but also, be like, way, way more than we would feasibly be able to do…
'I think this might be over complicating things… aren't we supposed to be escaping?' Orange asked.
'Well yeah, but to do that, we will most likely need to kill a lot more of those guys, and doing that in the safest way possible would be nice.' Cyan said.
'Okay I guess I see your point, just as long as we don't fall to that paralysis again, that was frustrating.' Black, for the first time in a while, speaks up.
'Rodger that boss! You hear that, white? Make sure not ta' freeze up ya tall ass!' I roll my eyes but nod, and tune back out of the conversation.
The smell that reaches my nose is divine.
I haven't actually tried to apply a mana skin to myself since the change…
But I need oven mitts and I don't want to destroy any more of my clothes.
I feel the mana veins inside my body, flowing steadily through out my ki system and returning back to my organs, what I shall henceforth call my 'mana core'
I guide my mana to my skin, but as it meets my mana, it doesn't expand from me, or get close to touching the skin at all…
It's like there's something missing…
The words of purple come back to me, 'there is more to a body than muscle and bones, there is also blood, organs and skin…'
I have muscle and bones, blood and organs…
But there is clearly something missing…
Body, Soul, and what else…
Hmmm… this is a body made from the energies already used in the body, intended as a way for me to completely connect myself with my soul.
After a few minutes of thought, and after using the limbs I had been using to keep the torso form heating too quick as makeshift tongs and taking the shell off the fire, I simply decided to look at the model for a while.
Then it hits me.
The entirety of the brain is missing! It's the mental energy we need to add!
'Took you long enough…' red mumbled
I tuned them out and tried to manipulate my mental energy…
Only to end up… in my mind…
- - - -
Ooh cliff hanger…
If you have any questions, feel free to ask, please I'm begging.
If it hasn't become apparent, something's aren't going to make real sense for a while. But I feel like I'm leaving enough clues for the story to be found.