Somewhere along the walls of tunnel G was a dark blue chrysalis, about ready to burst. When it did, a spotted brown-and-white bird fell out and splattered onto the floor. Its beak was small and its feet were webbed, and its tiny unflighted wings flapped as it tried to upright itself.
It knew two things. Its name was Craig, and it was hungry.
Now, most things are born with some level of impulse control. For instance, when some people see a iridescent gemstone, they may think, 'looks delicious, but is probably not edible.' Craig did not have this impulse control. His line of thought ended at 'looks delicious.'
So, off the puffling went, feet slapping wetly against the cave floor as it approached the Black Spire. It quickly gauged that a majority was too big to be eaten by its tiny beak, and went snuffling around the base of the spire.
It found one very quickly, plucking the tiny chunk of oilstone into its beak, and then rearing back and choking the entire thing down its gullet. What could go wrong, after all?
anyone is free to watch this thing presumably die.
The fact that no gate guards had kept up with the child was... unfortunate.
Nor were there tiny, convenient pieces of the Black Spire simply lying about. Whatever the child thought it was eating, it wasn't Black Spire. That didn't matter; it was close enough. The effect was the same; getting even so close, it began to burn. To sear.
To melt.
The corruption that afflicted those close was in full display: at first a burning, a rush of Chaotic visions and maybe that was the last thing the Puffin would know. Horrific visions, exhilaration, violence, destruction, CHANGE.
Alone, in a visit, it would have inflicted some of itself into him, but he was lingering too long. So that corruption continued, too much for a tiny body, too much at once. It subsumed him, instead. The burning rose in his bones, that CHANGE and DESTRUCTION roaring through him, melting bones to Oil, even before the feathers and flesh and beak and brain all followed. All the child would know was those visions, and a moment of roaring agony as he burned and melted, and then nothing.
The stone was even pulled into the Spire, what was a beautiful blue turning black and cracking, sucked down into the rotten, rank, rainbow-slick black goop that was all that was left of him, pulled into the massive Oilstone and vanished.
Too small; too insignificant. There was nothing even left to find. Likely, no one would ever know that Craig had been here, or even that he had existed at all.
@Craig
Content Warning
This post contains potentially sensitive material:
That wasn't a tasty little treat at all.
A mosiac of imagery flashed before his eyes, a mosiac of things that crawled, that tore, that roared, that conquered. He wanted to be one of them. He wanted to dig inside a soldier in that army and bury himself so deep that their pulses were one. That he became one of the nameless numbers wrecking and screaming in His name.
There was a dim sense of understanding that he wasn't good enough. The marrow of his bones boiled into hot, slick oil, and as the structure of the puffling's body began to gave way, the little bird began to physically melt. For a horrible, awful second, it was a creature with working organs and brain and lungs and heart, but with no bones to keep its frame intact. It was a gelatin sac of fuzz and meat and blood.
The first, last, and only sound that the puffin made was a high-pitched shriek. Disappointment that it didn't make it. Grief that it had done nothing at all. Agony as the burning ran out of bones to eat away, and turned to his guts instead. A mistake, came its first cognizant thought-- I shouldn't have done that. I shouldn't have done that. I shouldn't have done that.
Intestines. Stomach. Lungs. Heart.
Muscle. Skin. Feathers. Keratin.
Was it intentional, that it left the brain for last? Was it punishment? The child registered every moment of pain, every milimeter of its body that began to rot away and become nothing. It happened so quickly, and so completely, that by the time it thought to scream again, there was no more mouth with which to do it with.
The hauyne stone split, bubbling like blackened stew, homogonizing with the liquefied remains before it was all pulled into the Black Spire. There one minute, and gone the next.
Draco fell silent once again.
exit via death