Content Warning
This post contains potentially sensitive material:

gore

graphic themes

put me out of my misery
my mind feels like an archenemy

The ringing of silence, the press of something smooth and cold against his skin, are the first things that register to his brain, slowly rousing from unconsciousness. The weight of limbs, the rise and fall of a diaphragm, the expanding of ribs with each breath; and the rhythmic thrum of a heart beating strong, routing blood throughout the veins, come next.

He comes to awareness in starts and stops. Feels the walls around him - rigid, unbreakable - pressing his body into a tight curl. The feeling of claustrophobia, of being contained, compacted. The rapid increase of his inhales, exhales, the tingling in the tips of his finger joints, the panic, fear, terror, as his lungs grow suddenly taught, unable to take another breath.

The pressure of it against his skin is too much. He thrashes, hurtling brittle, pointed elbows into the walls surrounding him, clawed fingers scrabbling wildly at the surface before his face. He can't see - whatever walls contain him, they keep out any light, leaving him to suffer, alone, in the void.

He doesn't know how long he's been in here. The thought sends another piercing spike of panic through his oilstone heart, and his struggle grows in fervor. Through his scuffles, he hears a sharp, sudden crack. A ray of light shines through a break in the wall, and triumph roars in his ears.

But the encasing isn't fully broken yet. He resumes his ferocious scratching, and is soon rewarded for his efforts - by being unceremoniously thrown to the ground. He scrabbles for a moment, muscles still intent on breaking through, before his groggy mind processes that he's out.

He's safe.

---

To the outside world, a chrysalis had hung in one of the abandoned rooms of the barracks. It was still, quiet, dead - until, suddenly, something moves within. As the Thing inside moves, the chrysalis swings to and fro' in wide, wild motions. Then - suddenly - it cracks.

Shatters.

And in the midst of broken shards of blackened stone, It emerges.

The lump of dark, gelatinous meat shudders and shakes, twisting from shape to shape, sprouting new limbs and losing them in random spurts. The air is sweltering against Its rotted skin, a horrid change from the cool darkness of Its cocoon. The creature arches, bends, the slopping mire of Its flesh smoothing and settling into a more stable, though no less disturbing, form.

It raises Its head to the ceiling above, Its black facade splitting open to reveal rows and rows of sharp ivory teeth. Eight white eyes pop open along the sides of Its skull, and from them flows a gooey saline substance, akin to tears. An unholy sound rips from Its maw, that of a thousand voices screaming out in agony. Blackened sludge drips from Its mouth and skin, falling upon the cracked floors with a soft sizzle.

All he feels is pain. Confusion, terror, but above all pain pain pain as the remainder of his bones and muscle tissue shift beneath the last clinging layer of his epidermis, scraping against each other at some points and popping into entirely different places than where they belong at others. Decayed, liquid skin erupts into the facsimile of a correct limb in the absence of one, too-thin legs and bulging arms ending in hooked, claw-like appendages supposed to resemble fingers. He boils beneath the heat of the room, cooks within the aching heat, and writhes in his own toxic juices.

His form balloons outwards abruptly, then settles once more into the compact frame he tends to find himself in - similar to that original body he'd been made into, only smaller, more... normal looking. Still just as against the laws of reality, sure, but far less frightening.

He heaves against the smooth ground, black muck spewing from his jaws like radioactive vomit and tears spilling down his face. He claws weakly at the floor beneath him, all splintered wood and shards of stone - but the only solid thing he can grasp to try and ground himself and escape the overwhelming, soul-crushing fear.

Another gurgling scream tears itself from his throat, but he hardly notices, jerking and flailing and generally floundering like a fish out of water as his body comes to terms with its newfound surroundings.

Time blurs. And at some point, the energy fades from his scrapped-together shell of meager bones and muscle, skin and cartilage. He pants against the dusty floors, the action itself of inhaling, exhaling, expanding and retracting his frail chest and sunken sides, soothing his damaged mind.

'Just breathe,' Some forgotten voice coos, hardly recognizable to his half-conscious mind.

'In, out. In, out. Relax.' Says the voice, murmuring sweet nothings to his exhausted self.

(Unbeknownst to him, to It, the voice is a vestige of his sanity - the conscience he once bore, before the pain and the corruption.)

One long, mournful sound draws from the depths of his chest - and then he falls, suddenly, silent. Ashen limbs fall still, muscles lose their tension, and like a marionette with its strings snapped, he goes limp.

Misery shines in the white gleam of his eyes - rests in the hunch of his shoulders. Small whimpers rise occasionally to the air, but otherwise...

Should one find him, he will appear... dead. Nothing more than a rotting corpse, left to decay to dust within the shelter of the barracks.

i don't know what hurts the most
holding on or letting go

A shape--in fact, a Shaper--had drawn close at the first sign of this Oilstone's stirring. The size of a medium dog, yet fox in shape: jet black as though no light nor shadow could touch it, as if it were a one dimensional silhouette. Glowing pink-purple eyes stared keenly at the chrysalis, and a maw with the same bright hue framed rows of jagged teeth.

By the time Leech emerged from his shattered chrysalis, that one had left--to return with half a dozen more.

"Is it dead?" asked one, pushing to stand on hind legs.
"It always looked, ehhh." (A gesture, with one crooked forepaw.) "Weird."
(And a snort, of amusement. "Even compared to the other ones, here. Hey. HEY. Buddy. -You dead?"

A hind paw nudged for Leech, a pathetic attempt at awakening him.

"Eeeeey, that's the guy that was doing the uhh. What was it. City testing, right? Skyscrapers, vents, ducts and all that?"
"Ugh, I remember that. All those details." (Laughter.)
"Wasn't bad though, right?"

One crouched, peering at Leech more closely. If the Shapers were disturbed by the threads of gore and deathly, mismatched scraps of flesh, they mentioned nothing of it. "That explains why this chrysalis never woke up. Not with the rest of us, anyway--we thought you was one of us!" More raucous laughter, then.
"Andy? Ask it if it wants a beer."

@Leech

Her mournful existence, unfortunately, stretched into infinity, endless days of wretched wanderings through the caves, trails of black ichor and stained, decayed earth following each and every miserable step. Eyes hollow, empty, devoid of all thought as the leash of Chaos led her to each end and every corner, yet none noticed She of the Black Paths. None stopped to say hello, no words passed or offered to Her and so she cried. She cried and wandered and mourned her own existence. How wretched a life, a woeful, cursed existence.

The opened cave beckoned, steered away from whatever pointless path she walked. Across sands - hot and searing, yet this pain meant little, perhaps nothing. She was alone, so alone. So alone and miserable and no pain hurt worse then her grief.

The valkhound sobbed as she moped through Centaurus, the warm water like burning fire against her legs, the bugs buzzing around her like pins and needle against her sloughed flesh and raw muscle, tensing at each pinprick, but she ever walked, seemingly unbothered, save for the soft moans and cries that ever echoed from her maw.

Screams. Shrieks. Like it had called its unknown name, like a tether in its heart had just pulled taught, the pitiful creature changed its course, unflinching, almost unwilling. A beaten, hopeless horse tugged by its ever-insistent rider to the next destination. It would arrive at the Barracks some minutes after Leech had emerged, stopping in the doorway and looking back and forth, some cognition beginning to awaken in the depths of its corruption-adled brain.

The Shapers were here, oilstone creatures, and - "Screaming....kin..." she moaned, long and soft. "Do you hurt? Dooo...youuu?" She didn't seem to notice that it might be dead. Maybe she wasn't even talking to Leech. Maybe she was talking to herself.

@Leech