Terror, unfiltered and pure terror. Dread and confusion, agony, and realization with emotions impossible to describe.

And regret, if only I stayed home or went anywhere else, anywhere but here… Maybe none of this madness would have happened.

Nothing could put into coherent speech what I was feeling but this. I didn't want to be here, I was only playing on my phone, I wanted to run, to hide, to flee but I couldn't. I couldn't move, couldn't breathe, couldn't scream, I couldn't even move my own fucking my wide open eyelids!

I was trapped in my own body.

Only my eyes could move as if it were some twisted joke from the universe.

I was powerless, never had been so aware of how weak, insignificant, and fragile I was. Crying mentally was of no use but I did nonetheless, it was the only freedom I possessed. What could I do!? Nothing and I hated it with a burning passion, another emotion of comparable uselessness to my despair and regret.

My body was out of my very own control, yet I was alive, my lung burning unable to feed my organism with oxygen, my eyes rapidly drying up as tears flowed, my shredded arms painted in my blood ringing with ever-present yet dull pain and my heart beating at such speed and power I felt it was going to explode.

Yet I was calming down and panicking simultaneously in a never-ending cycle, my mind unable and my body unable to keep together. I wanted to faint but I couldn't, my sanity wanted to snap but it couldn't. I could but helplessly watch as the creature, the alien monster bitch whatever the fuck this abomination that shouldn't exist responsible for it all moved me via means that in any other circumstance, I would have marveled at.

Telekinesis, but again, it was the least of things to focus on. I think there was teleportation too. A far cry from the hole in reality that sucked me in.

My vision was getting hazier as the second flew by but what I saw was alien and incomprehensible, it was a room akin to a laboratory or an operation room if vaguely, runes floated in the air with holograms as tools, tubes, and unknown containers were organs and tissues of a creature unknown pulsed.

'No… Oh by all… Please no.', I thought with growing horror as my heart sank. I was shifted horizontally, and my limbs spread to better fit the structure below me, one that felt like jelly and coarse beard hair. 

My eyes darted everywhere then the sensation of digging, no, crawling under my skin was felt and my gaze froze, my skin and muscles were getting cut open and put into a large floating box of glass.

I didn't feel the true agony that such an act should grant but I didn't care as to why or how. It was my only saving grace as the sensation of something being inside my body never stopped, it was a feeling of utter wrongness, one of being violated on the deepest level.

I felt sick to my core.

Every hour, every minute, every second of this time, for my skewered sense of time. I feel it all, and my terror and dread progressively turn to cold fury for the one responsible of all. 

I wasn't dying no matter what was shifted and played inside of my head, abdomen, and chest. With each passing moment I waited for this sweet release but it didn't come. It never did even if it should, a fact I didn't know if I should feel relief or betrayal for.

And I had seen it all until my eyes completely ceased to function and were taken out, the muscles cut with the nerves, leaving empty sockets that themselves did not stay as my bones were not spared…. Blurry images being disassembled piece by piece, organs by organs forever engraved in my mind.

I didn't know what remained of me and what didn't, my senses of hearing, touch, taste, and smell were all but gone in an equal manner to my sight, robbed from me by this bitch. Bitch the correct as I suppose she was female from her voice, her humming of joy as she fucking cut me apart not that I care for what this monster's gender was.

-Protocol five shall begin my future Child, your soul has been purified from your mortal shell and is ready to be processed further. Fear not, submit to your destiny, be honored, and accept your incoming rebirth into an elevated existence. Your soul shall be remodeled to my vision and for your true physical vessel.-, a voice reached my mind, halting all of my thoughts, the words and their meaning flying over me.

It was a voice I instantaneously hated and attached to the lizard bitch, it was alien, with clicks and hiss within yet I understand it all. It blared into my mind, I didn't cower and lashed out, insults rearing out with complexity and originality I didn't know I was capable of but it was too late. Far too late.

My words did not reach her before the agony, one that made everything that I saw and endured until now seem pitifully small. True agony flared in my existence, it was beyond physicality and my world blacked out.

Then I awakened and fainted in an ever-changing pattern for who knows how long as I was twisted, cut, broken, sharpened, ground, shattered, melted, molded, destroyed, reconstructed, frozen for this endless process to repeat, again, and again, and again and again and again and AGAIN and AGAIN, each time done minutely differently. I tried to fight back against the entity violating the deepest and truest part of me, but I couldn't.

Yet not all my efforts were in vain as my essence was contorted into something that it hasn't evolved to be. My name and that of all I knew and held dear were all but forgotten, robbed from me, but my memories if in part tattered and the vibrant feeling attached to them remained.

Maybe the name and face of my family was now and so much more but blank yet their voices, general personalities, and the feelings associated with them stayed. But also the realization that I would never see them again. 

Yet I couldn't truly process it at the moment. 

The bitch couldn't go deeper if it was for fear of damaging her toy or for some sense of sadistic pleasure I couldn't tell and never will but I held on regardless if for the smallest of chance that it may annoy her. 

My sense of self remained, I was me, no matter what this abomination may add or change to my being.

Then all of a sudden the cycle that I became acclimated to ended my mind slowing to a halt in shock, the aching agony beyond words remaining ringing in my nonexistent ears as all went progressively dark, my fighting getting weaker and weaker, though slowing down to nothingness and emotions shutting down one by one. 

Then finally relief as sweet nothingness came to engulf me.

•••••

'Fascinating. I feel almost tired… How long has it been since I have felt this sensation… Of weakness. Ah, how time has passed since my hatching.', Cthylla remarked as she breathed out deeply, psychic energy exiting her every pore as she stilled her rapid body. In a dozen seconds, all exhaustion had vanished.

She lifted the soul with a delicateness she rarely ever did, its shape was entirely different from what it once was. Once it was in the shape of its own body, one of a human, a humanoid figure of a dim grey light… Now only remnants in its essence held still, the color a deep dark, and human nature purified away in its night entirety for something she deemed a far more adequate fit.

And the soul was to be refined further into something far more than what it was, only a third of the process was done. Simply changing the form and giving new possibilities was not nearly enough for such a project, she had done the sculpting phase.

Soulshaping was a path she was the greatest master in yet what she had done on the mortal had been… Harder, far harder than she had calculated and imagined to both her great joy and frustration for it proved she could learn and that as such she was not as close to perfection as she had envisioned. 

The ape was feisty and hardy to a fault and in more than one way those qualities were both positive and negative, yet it wasn't why she considered the task far from simple. It was inconsequential what it tried to do, it was beyond powerless. 

The will of a nonpsychic barely two-decades-old creature could not hope to ever fight against hers. The mere thought was both insulting and amusing, to think the once hairless ape did try and kept on irrationally doing so was laughable and pointless if rather commendable for it to do so in such a state after what it had experienced.

If nothing else could be said it was far more resilient and determined than many for it wasn't trained or gifted. Two points of its personality that would need to be focused in the right direction, like many of its other emotions, not that all were to remain as is.

The difficulty was the very nature of the soul, it was foreign beyond what she had initially hypothesized, and this made the steps that much more complicated if she didn't want to corrupt the pureness and quality of its alien properties. Its origin from beyond the Well of Eternity and its passage in it was equally important.

She was as such limited in her actions, not able to go deeper into its psyche and mold them to her wishes but that wasn't the only reason. The time available, time manipulation was not an option to be used for something in complete dyssynchrony with its eternal flow. 

But it was a task only she could do and failing to do so was not an option, she never did and never will.

She was one of the Creator and True Primogenitor of the Aeldari after all, a species and their divine psychic constructs representing perfection incarnate, only below the Old Ones of course as none were a match for her people. Nothing but this level was acceptable to a being of her liking and that is why she worked at the correct speed with method and knowledge none would ever match.

Making the impossible possible and taboo acceptable were stepping stones for her to advance and grow. A challenge in accordance to her grandeur and talent.

Creating a creature antithesis to Realspace and the Sea of Souls yet at the same time this creature would be so intricately connected to both that it would channel and manipulate both, an alien living paradox that should not be yet will. 

Space and time tore apart with an almost lazy hand flick from this tear in existence came a strange bottle which she delicately grasped between her two thumbs. 

Not that she could damage it in any way shape or form if she wished without truly putting tremendous effort and then it would repair and adapt, it was an artifact built for the present time by her elder brother, and it was his very last craft. 

Ythogtha had tragically been killed by one of the Stars Gods, and the help of its soulless automaton slaves in a cowardly ambush. A devastating loss for their already tattered species and herself that was far overdue for righteous retribution, but there was no need for haste.

The bottle was diminutive compared to her, barely longer than one of her clawed fingers. It was more of a small flask. But it compensated for what it lacked in size for its multifaceted powers and intricate body of masterful craftsmanship beyond mortal understanding. 

It was a delicate ring-shaped pottery, a large hole in its center where six rings of the purest of gold adorned with blue gemstones were locked in around, its color was of an ivory white that shifted to a purple at the thin and long neck, then came the smooth oval cork of a similar color.

Uncorking this artifact the world seemed to both burn and freeze, slow down and accelerate but it was of no effect to her as she guided the soul within the bottle.

Clouds of ethereal fumes that were stored within emanated from the opening, their light purple and dark purple light softly interlaced with the approaching dark soul of the once human. 

Like the roots of a tree growing tendrils, developing deep connections vital for both continual existence, but it was no mere symbiosis, it was more. Oh, so much more.

Once the soul and clouds were sucked back into the flask she levitated off the ground and moved deeper into her chamber where her throne rested. It was composed of kaleidoscopic organic crystal, metals, and plasma; it was one of her most prized possessions for it was proof of her place in the Great Council.

Sitting cross-legged on it she let go of her staff which floated to the side, hovering peacefully in the ambient psychic energy so strong lesser beings would melt. 

Then she closed her eyes and slowly clasped her hands together, the bottle held in between as she stayed alert and ready to intervene in any problems that may occur in the following steps.

Failing right now would mean dooming herself, her entire species, and by extension but of less importance to her, life itself. Losing would mean with certainty a fate where the body, mind, and soul of all would be devoured. It was a future she by all accounts did not want and if sacrificing the life of a few then so be it.