ORIGIN

As soon as the creature began to stir from his sleep, Anubis immediately stood. It had been a while and the fungus was beginning to take hold. He could see the necrosis beginning to spread and the mold had begun to carpet a good portion of its body. Good. He was struggling to stand, struggling to stay awake.

Still, he didn't want him disrupting this part, so he crept up next to him with a sorrowful look in his eyes. "Shh, it's okay. I know it feels weird. But don't worry. You agreed to this, remember? Oh, but maybe you don't, you started feeling woozy right after you agreed." As he spoke, he tried to weave more then words, threading more fungus into the concoction currently waging war on Ketur's body, but the strain of already holding up the wither and the decay made it difficult for Anubis to focus on starting up something else. He felt his magic strain and snap and no mycelium appear this time. So it was nothing but his words to convince Ketur to stay still and complacent.

Anubis frowned and tried again, focusing every bit of his magic into it, but it only burned into him and his head and the edges of his mouth began to drool a foul mycelial gel. He coughed briefly, a bit of off-colored spittle hitting the ground.

It shouldn't be like this, it shouldn't be like this!!

He stepped back, fully standing between Ketur and the entrance now. "It doesn't matter," he whispered, seeming not at all perturbed by the migraine fiercely raging in his mind. "You are here and you are mine."

As his own magic weakened from the continuous force, he reached out in desperation and tried to speed it up, end it quickly. Let the decaying fungus finish consuming its body. But the fungal he grasped and activated wasn't Ketur's but the spores that ever lingered on his pelt. Pain blossomed over his flank as fruiting bodies began to sprout, eating away at fur and skin.

He cursed, blood beginning to run down his side. Still, he stood defensively, his lips curling back in a grow, daring Ketur to move and try to leave while he stood there.

The claw came down before Anubis could properly react. Trying to pull out of the way simply sent the claws tearing across his chest. A high pitched yelp of pain turned into a furious, guttural snarl. Anubis's golden eyes momentarily flashed blood red as magic ripped from his body, violently and almost aimlessly.

The pain felt familiar, the feeling of warmth scattering over his fur and skin reminded him of tusks tearing down, gouging into his,body, sending him to his first death. He'd been small, weak, defenseless. He was not so anymore.

He glared at the creature, emotions heightened, cornered, and finished as, with that surge of magic, came the low, animal snarl of "Then belong to no one. Be nothing!"

The fungus already on his skin would speed its process by many times, joined further by blod red varieties quickly growing fruiting bodies. It would strip his flesh, his muscles, all the way to the bone, but it was weak. It would be slow.

Anubis stood where he was, still growling, aggressive, feeling the blood running down his chest, and watched coldly as the creature fell again, but this time as they were stripped of life. Slowly. They struggled at first, but then those struggled slowed until it was harsh panting, not knowing that every pant spread the infection into their lungs and then deeper and deeper.

Anubis watched, at first still reeling from the almost-fight, the almost-failure, but then in fascination. And he slowly stepped forward, ears up, eyes alert, nose at work. It smelled quite rancid in here, of course, but there was already the stench of death rising from the other one. So he sat down next to him and waited. Waited and watched.

Watched each and every spreading pocket of curling flesh grow darker and larger as the fungus ate away living tissue bit by bit. What had started as a fairly weak magic became stronger and stronger as it went, feeding and feeding on scales and flesh and blood and muscle and nerves and sinew, second by second, minute by minute, until hours were passing and Anubis was still watching and Ketur was still alive.

But it was ending soon. He knew. The breaths were growing fainter. The last twitches were beginning to grow weaker. It was time. He could save this experiment yet.

He placed a paw upon the exposed bone of Ketur, which could barely be called a gembound anymore, and rather a large pile of gore; mangled, bloody meat where a gembound had once lay. And he focused for a moment and suddenly he wasn't Anubis anymore. He was within what had once been a creature, half a life, fleshless, and everything was white hot agony and everything was black and red and gray and he couldn't see because the fungus had already reached the eyes and eaten them right out of the skull and he could feel where they'd been in a way he couldn't feel his eyes before.

He could feel everything and nothing. So many hundreds, thousands, millions of tiny wounds like insect bites from a hundred swarms, but it was all one great wound as the last of the fungus ate what it could before the body expired and became indigestible black oil. If he could he would scream and cry and shred off his own skin if only to escape this agony that he could not stand for a second more, yet there was just the tiniest part of him that held onto his purpose, his reason, his sanity, and it was an anchor. A pin in the world that held his being together.

The body left behind had gone still. Ketur's mind had emptied from the hours of agony. A grey, clouded dullness had come to his eyes as every part drooped. Given in, accepted, waited for death and begged it to arrive, had barely even processed that anything had changed at all. Perhaps they thought they had already died and was looking at their body from afar.

Within the not-body, Anubis waited, ticking down the seconds, until at last it was like approaching an edge. Things were fading. Sensation blinked out like lights, but also it was like traveling down the hall of the prison, the light slowly disappearing in the distance. He could feel a shroud coming over his mind as the brain that currently housed his consciousness began to give out. He could feel his heart stopping, the last, weak beats before the blood began to chill, and suddenly fear gripped him. Not for this body, not for the end, but for his mind, slipping away with it. Like scrambling back up slope of gravel that was beginning to fall, he dug in his claws and threw himself back, the spell snapping back as the last moment closed in.

All the pain faded, but numbness had taken over instead, an echo of that finality. He panted in place, eyes wide, hackles raised from the shock of it all. And before him, the creature was dead. He had missed the cutting of the thread, but it was a small misfortune in the wake of the experience he had just received.

He stood for a moment longer, brain struggling to process, before he soundlessly walked a few paces away and curled up, pressing his nose into the golden scales of his back leg. He didn't sleep, not just yet, silently thinking and processing while the meat beside him slowly began to decompose. After another hour or so, he at last allowed himself the sweet embrace of sleep.