(Blume)
I felt that I was being swallowed. I was being carried underground by blood vessels at great speed. A huge network was revealed, with blood vessels as large as common sewage pipes.
I was going toward the dragon's heart, very deep into the geological bed. I was carried with a variety of elements in vessels getting as large as pipelines for oil or gaz.
I entered a heart that looked larger than a power plant, making a lot of hydraulic noises and everything close warming up closer to boiling temperature.
I went around that and was carried further. Further down, deeper into the Earth and earth. I was brought further down and then upward a little. Finally I was brought at an end and fell into a small pool.
A very nutritive puddle. I was able to sustain myself and regrow a little a body.
As I did, I felt the being I was within, trying to talk with me. It felt like a pressure in the air and within my mind.
I felt that it was hindering the way my body tried to grow. It was influencing me, forcing me to grow in a different manner. I didn't attempt to fight it off.
I left it craft for me a new body as it wanted it to be.
I soon found myself with an eye opening to my surroundings.
I gained sight rapidly. All I could see at first was blurred and spots of red or darker reds.
I could begin to hear sounds too as the sight grew more accurate.
I saw walls of rocks and flesh. An odd structure of a cave with organic ceilings, walls and floors. Living tissues were spread on most surfaces.
The cave or tunnel, or just holes between geological structures, felt like foreign bodies within a giant organism.
Some yellow flowers were growing down there too, fast enough to be seen. They were glowing and brought some dim light to the place.
I began to see what was right in front of me.
I would have cried, breaking down in tears, had I been able to, at that sight.
In a very large pod of translucent flesh, glued to an organic wall like a cyst, was floating a humanoid shape.
A female skinny body with some hair floating around is inside that amniotic fluid.
She has an abnormally large umbilical cord, sized for an adult body, going inside the wall and spreading in roots behind.
I immediately understood and recognised her.
The dragon had kept its word. Rose was being resurrected there.
~
I coughed painfully. My breathing was laborious and made a hissing sound, when it wasn't a moan.
My body was that of a scorched child, without skin nor bones. Only rough cartilages held my raw anthropomorphic body together.
I was in constant pain, as I painfully moved around, holding myself against the fleshy walls.
Every breathing was a torture. Pain, physical pain, was rather hard to endure. I had no skin, and my exposed flesh was always painful.
I had woken up like that.
The dragon had sealed me within that body, and asked me to come further.
I coughed again, and walked in the bowel, toward a room further.
I reached a place with growing light flowers for me to be able to better see.
The ground became flesh on which I walked. I reached another round pool willed with warm waters. A bath?
Something was inside. I heard it again, telling me to go inside.
I fell inside in a great splash. I almost drowned, but managed to stand up.
In front of me, a human silhouette rose. A human body fused to the flesh structure from its back and head. She looked like Rose a lot.
The body partially detached itself and fell inside the pool too. It stood up.
She looked human. She looked like Rose.
She was neither.
She was a puppet for the humongous beast. An interface to communicate. I was hissing at every breath.
B - Why... this... body?
D - It's temporary. I wanted to talk before. I can give you the same body, I have more inside.
B - More... Roses? How... many?
D - The one she is, with memory, is only one as you wanted. Her body without consciousness, I have now about a hundred. I grow more. I can give you one.
B - Why... so... many?
D - I study and use them to grow. They're versatile workers. They are parts of me.
I understood that very well...
I didn't quite want to have a human body all for myself however, even if it was temporary. I preferred to remain as a kind of monstrous flower while waiting for Rose's return to the world of livings.
B - I... prefer... flower.
D - You can't grow roots in me. I don't allow it. Either this, or her, or other animal. Not plant.
B - Ah... Painful... Other?
What animals Rose liked again? I couldn't remember. Snakes perhaps. Though on second thought, maybe this was a good opportunity to try on a human skin all for myself...
It would be much harder for me to grow one on my own.
Even though I didn't like much the idea, this was probably the best decision. It was offered, and I agreed for it.
The human body in front of me came to embrace me, kissing me.
I was surprised but didn't fight it off. That was not a kiss at all.
My temporary body granted to me was falling apart in the pool, and the nervous system being eaten by the other body. I as Blume was being transferred inside that body.
It felt like dying for a minute, losing all senses. But then a moment later, they returned to me. I was on the other side of the movement, finishing to eat and swallow smelly flesh. My arms and face covered in fluids and tissues staining the pool too.
But mostly, I wasn't in pain anymore. I looked at my hands in disbelief, how incredibly easy and fast it had been.
I was almost human now.
More than I'd ever been.
~
I was rapidly accustomed to the body I had sometimes controlled too, though differently.
Now I had an autonomous nervous system working and linked properly to my structure. That was an amazing wonder. I did not need to consciously make everything work in my metabolism. That was a true and functional biological body. It worked. It was stable.
And it needed to sleep.
I followed the others. It was very weird to see. Other Roses, acting like machines, not reacting to my presence, and just doing their jobs like cells.
Inside this network of bowels and structured caves, there was a few places for these human drones to eat, to sleep, to clean themselves and to rest or exercise.
The dragon held them not in captivity like prison labour, but as small parts of its own persona and organism.
They had human intelligence, but not consciousness or clear self-awareness at all.
Except when they slept or sometimes went in a nervous breakdown. Then the dragon let them rest with lower control over them for a while.
I was discovering why the Dragon had exchanged Rose's life for her ova. It used this material to build its own versatile tools, versatile organs, to help it grow from inside. They had legs to move around, hands, and good heads.
But they were a kind of slavery. They were copy fit to be fully human, but their brain had been kept in an abnormal situation, to allow the Dragon to control them, to incarnate a little in them.
As I am doing from now on? The brain of that body has been restructured to fit my persona.
Even though this body has never been conscious, it might be considered murder and stealing of body for humans like Rose.
It puzzles me. This was a price for immortality, but I doubt that Rose would have endorsed it.
No matter how surprising Rose could be, seeing these soulless copies and the use of them as drones, robots, tools, it would certainly not rejoice her, to say the least.
But I can't blame this monstrous dragon for lacking morality. If anything, it actually had a lot, given other monsters wouldn't have cared for the consciousness of the copies at all.
Rose's copies would have yelled and screamed before being overpowered and their brain being hijacked. The dragon hijacked it before they reach consciousness at least. They never were self-aware. Or very little, during dreams or rest.
I had just been told to wait a few more days before the copy of Rose with full memory would be completed. Meanwhile, I looked around and followed the others.
The Roses didn't react unless the dragon spoke through them.
Like other beings-like-them, the dragon was a shapeless beast, living buried under the ground. It held similarities with the Queen, and me.
When they slept in their fleshy beds, the roses had dreams. And when their mind broke down, they became like babies for a while. They didn't cry much, but couldn't care anymore about what their job was, nor remembered how to eat, stay clean, or even walk.
The rest area, coupled with a kind of leisure and sports room, was a strange place.
It looked like a nursery, all soft, without sharp edges. Only, both the caretakers and the children were the same naked woman. The only difference between them was the caretakers recalled how to walk. The others played, cried and laughed, very randomly. It was a very strange picture of humanity.
What they ate were a kind of potatoes. Only that. Though sometimes, I saw them nibbling on roots they dug up around.
I wasn't at ease in this place. Even though I am grateful to the dragon for helping us return to life, all I now want is to get as far as possible from here...
And I'm really not happy at the thought that Rose might see all this as she returns...
Luckily, I have a few ideas about these sad points to consider, and another concern to address.
I stepped away as a broken-minded Rose was trying to grip my feet in the rest area.
The dragon didn't care much in depth about them. It was not fundamentally evil, it tried to do well even.
But learning about morality and empathy was difficult for a being that had grown a little as a god...
It tried its best, I can tell. But it still was far from something Rose, or even I, could now like.
I went toward the brain to talk. This meant finding the roses operating on the nervous system of the dragon, strong kinds of roots growing everywhere.
Any Rose would have been good, but I wanted a more secluded place as if the others were actually other people. They all were cells of something bigger, but I was growing uneasy.
D - You want to leave before she's ready? Why?
B - I want to do the final work myself. Also, I want to do it with us two alone.
D - Why?
B - Because I love her.
This troubled the dragon. It wasn't something easy to get for this being that hardly had any emotion at all. I would have said hate instead, it would have been the same.
D - I will prepare her for the travel. It'll be easy for you to take over later the final steps.
B - Thank you. I have another thing to ask now, regarding power.
D - You want more power?
B - Not quite. Rose and I have a powerful enemy, that will quickly kill us again once she wakes up. I would like your help.
D - You want me to kill it?
B - Not quite either. The truth is... It's something like you and me. It's learning, only learning about morality and empathy. The way toward humanity is difficult. Well, moreover, I know deep down even Rose wouldn't want that. She wants the monster to stop being immoral, and cruel; to stop killing pointlessly, that is all. She doesn't want it dead at all cost per se.
D - ... What do you want?
B - Give her enough power to survive. And me, enough to change our enemy into something less harmful. Nothing more. I just want us to survive, and our enemy to stop its rampage.
D - ... You two are strange.
B - Aren't we all...
~
D - You know, you didn't meet her by chance.
B - What do you mean?
D - That photon from her that hit you in the very beginning of your existence. It was able to reach you because she already was slightly bound to our world. Normal humans from that time could not exchange anything with us.
How much it could learn from us is a little overwhelming. But, how was it possible then?
B - How come?
D - Either she had already been touched by a being-like-us, or it ran through her line. I think it ran through her line. Something happened to one of her ancestors, involving one of us.
B - Even longer before either one of us could reach the world.. How?
D - I don't know. All I can say is that it probably occurred before her conception, and not on this land.
B - South?
D - No. I would say... East. East, North East....
B - On the continent, a long time ago...
D - You had the chance to meet her because of this, yes, no matter what it was and when.
Rose...
~