Celia didn’t stop moving. Even weighed down like a whale, she didn’t stop. The fire was still falling from the sky. Jonas was still locked in his cataclysmic battle, and this game of hide and seek was over. She had to keep going.
It was instinct. It was survival. It was the only thing she knew to do. Run, Celia, run. She repeated the mantra to herself over and over again.
It wasn’t enough. Stamina gave out, and then her legs. She fell belly first to the ground. Dreg in tow. Meal slowly digesting, and healing her just as slowly. But, at the very least, the chaos happening in the sky wasn’t as loud. Wasn’t as close. The beams of light a far cry from where she lay, and carving grooves into the earth at a distance where she could only distantly feel it.
And even that was insane. She didn’t know power like that. Wasn’t familiar with it at all. Didn’t even know a Marked could get strong enough to fight that.
Didn’t know she could get that strong. Eyes drifting to her mark once again. Studying it in muted silence. Watching it pulse with shifting flame, the color changing almost imperceptibly every few seconds.
The dam broke. She couldn’t stop herself from freaking out. Crying. Silently wondering why this had happened to her. And silence soon became wailing grief. Sobbing that she couldn’t hold back. Barely muttered curses at the world itself and all its cruelty. Followed soon after by questions of what she was becoming. Of what she was, and who.
No answer came. No sudden realization. Or voice from afar. There was only the silence. Only the absence.
Only her.
She dragged herself over to a nearby tree, and laid herself against it. Laid Dreg beside her, and waited. Waited for the sounds to stop. For the ringing violence to go still. For things to return to a state that somewhat resembled the calm she had known a few days prior. Which, even then, had been a nightmare for her in its own right. But this. This was something else entirely. Too big for her. Too scary.
And she simply wasn’t strong enough. The other hers. They were strong enough. She saw it in their eyes, felt it pulse through them. Tasted it in the way they carried themselves. And that made them all the more mysterious to her. Made them hows rather than parts of her.
How? How could she be like that? Strong within and without. Strong enough to fight without pushing back a sea’s worth of worries and questions and doubts and fears.
How?
And as she questioned it. Wrestled with it. She heard something come her way. Something heavy dragging along the ground. The noise of bushes rustled and trees bumped. Something huge.
It appeared right in front of her. Bruised, battered, bleeding. E-10. Staring at her through the eyes of a goat and a lizard.
“Last. Was going to… save you for last. But… need blood. Need strength. Need yours.”
Celia spat at him. The regular kind, no heat, and it only sailed halfway there before splattering on the ground between them.
“I need a break. So please go choke on something somewhere else. Please.”
“So… prey still has fangs… even when… when so weak? Good. You will be a… sublime offering unto myself.”
Celia didn’t have the strength to fight back. She knew it. E-10 knew it. Despite that - despite how terrible she felt, how terrible and confusing the world felt - she tried to stand. Tried and stumbled. And then she tried again. Angry.
At herself. At how scared she felt at the moment. At how powerless she felt.
But she refused to die on the ground. Like a worm awaiting its end. So she forced herself to stand. Used Morphology to give herself the strength despite how much it hurt to do so. Blood spilling from between her teeth. Single good eye beginning to cast the world in a shade of a blur. Body protesting the weight she carried at her front.
But she stood. And as she stood there, a last minute idea came.
Designation: Trueborn Hybrid (Beyondling)
Classification: Feastling
Slots open: 7
1: locked, 2: This maw for Mine, 3: These teeth unending, 4: Tremor sense, 5: Lash, 6: Candle hearth, 7: The camouflage horrific, 8: Chimera physique
Modifications available: Hard shell, Sing oh Queen of harvest
Insight(s): The color of shadow, The weight of self sworn independence
[The Hunger Pained, The Self Fractured]
|Mark of Myriad fates|
Skills: Morphology, (Passive) This Hunger Consuming, This outcome undone
Celia switched out her Tremor sense for her newest unused Modification.
Sing oh Queen of harvest
Her lungs bursted. Pain followed. Sweet, blissful, terrible, and an agony all consuming. She felt her senses ripped from her. The world diminishing in a way she couldn’t explain. Like it had lost a color she’d forgotten was there. Replaced by something else. By a dullness that was all too familiar.
And then dullness was swallowed up.
Consumed by a shift in her biology on a level she hadn’t felt since she first arrived here. When the parasite had married itself to her flesh.
E-10 moved. Lashing out like a viper going in for the kill. Both maws opened wide to devour her.
He was too slow.
Celia bent inward.
Growth achieved!
Nature advanced!
[The Hunger Pained, The Self Fractured] - Catalyzed - [This Thing of Three Selves]
Acquiring fuel for Idealization!
The world slowed to a halt. E-10’s blinding speed became a smeared blur of motion stuck in place. And the mutant Celia had consumed became her fuel. Stomach receding as it was used up in an instant.
Mind exploding within itself. A million and one ideas of her passing through in a kaleidoscope of infinite impossibilities. She saw herself as so many things. A knight. A berserker. A chef. A ceaseless glutton. A seamstress. A black splotch of violence. A snake. A flower. A dragon. A blade.
There was no end to it. Just a stream that threatened to run on forever. Threatened to drown her as it asked a new question.
What was she?
Why was she?
Who did she want to be?
There was no grand contest this time. This time there was choice, and she was given the power to choose and to reject. To mutilate and maul her very being, or to elevate it. To become something more or to drown herself in her worst traits.
But it was too much. A sea. An ocean. And she was drowning. Drowning beneath it all, scared, and too weak to choose all by herself. Alone. Alone. Too alone.
So she reached for someone else to hold her hand. To be there with her. To help her and keep her sane. A companion that shouldn’t, could not exist. And yet, she found them. Touched their hand and let them pull her through the sea and up to the surface.
And there Celia shifted. Broke apart into three parts. Each one a whole dependent on the other.
Her flesh broke apart, like a cocoon at last spitting out its victim. Scales smoothening out and taking on a solid white color. Arms splitting into four, each one bearing two rings of black. Nails sharpening further into claws. Jagged and ending in a prong of two, almost unrecognizable to how they had once been. Three insectoid wings bursting free from her back. Hair becoming a dense mat of multicolored flowers.
She felt her lungs inflate after that. Swelling in size as musculature grafted itself onto their form. The dress like armor of her form changed in shape as well. Color shifting to a mix of yellows and purple. Sleeves curving around her shoulders before descending down her arms.
And from her head grew a single twisting spire of a horn.
Time resumed. E-10 struck, and Celia moved. Launching herself out of the way with a kick to the ground. Wounds rapidly healing as she rose to her full height, and found herself taller than before. An inch down from seven feet. She was wider too. Hips making her feel like a hippo.
And like a hippo, she charged with feral rage. Releasing a scream of sharp noise. The sonic burst of sound rattling the hydra, causing his two heads to recoil. She took that as her chance to grab Dreg, morph herself another wing and take to the air. Flying as quick as she was able.
E-10 didn’t follow.
