WnW 11.1 – Greet Death

The Hermit’s hand was rough to the touch, skin somehow scoured by the absence of human physical connection, as if he had spent his life only knowing the unrelenting nature of objects hard and mechanical. At the moment of contact, the world went black. I saw nothing, felt nothing but the hand, and then even that too left me alone in the void.

It was a peaceful nothingness. The serenity was tempting, drawing out a deep desire in me to forget myself and become a part of it.

But I couldn’t, not when I had just begun again.

The darkness split open.

An abstract painting was revealed to me, of colourful orbs within a black plane, white dots of light scattered across it. Things grew more focused and depth was added to the diorama. Those dots of light were like holes punched into a black box by a faraway needle.

A green orb was closest, only a part of its mass was within my vision. The surface rippled in a shimmering wave. It was grass as teal as a mossy stream under a blue sky. The grass moved like a living thing, where normal grass remained where it was in the dirt, this grass seemed to be the surface and as such it was not constrained to stay in one place and instead roamed like rogue waves.

The red orb loomed ever present, even here. While all was silent, the tremors that ran across the fleshy surface, like tendons shifting under the skin of a clenched fist, made it seem like that silence could be broken at any moment. Shapes drifted off of the misshapen orb, like crimson bits of gore floating off a decaying fish. The Shapes fell towards the brightest of the orbs, Earth, a massive marble of brilliant blue and green lit by the distant sun.

Something sprouted from the teal grass and blocked out my view. A bulb of black spotted with yellow like a poor facsimile of star-speckled space. It unfurled slowly into stringy petals like a jellyfish. The flower-head was followed by its body, pushing itself free from the surface, bits of pale dirt falling off the humanoid form. Tightly wound fibers created the limbs and a torso with no skin to speak of.

Other bulbs began to sprout from the surface as this one completed its emergence and tilted its flower-head up towards the Earth. Its arms raised up as if to welcome the planet and then its feet left the grass behind as it slowly floated away. Like divers ascending to the surface, the spawn floated off towards the bright blue sphere.

They were leaving me behind to go to Earth. 

My fingers entwined tightly with blades of grass. I didn’t want to float away.

Suddenly I became aware of my broken body. My need for air. My need to find Nell. Both urges mixed into a primal drive. My limbs couldn’t move, every fiber of my body had been shredded by the transport, every organ rattled around so much they should have been mush. 

I took from the planet, grass melting into me and I concentrated on where to allocate the healing energy. The bones in my arm set, the muscles stitched together just in time as another spawn came a little too close. I seized its ankle and consumed it in an instant, the entire plant-like being folded and was swallowed up. Matter was converted and repurposed and I resisted the burn in my lungs that demanded I try to take a breath.

I dragged myself to the next closest spawn and ate them as well. With two healed arms, I crawled forward. Two more victims and I could stand. 

It felt terribly hot and cold all at once, both forces biting away at my flesh. Ignoring the pain, I raised myself up and gazed out across the rolling plains of blue-green grass. My eyes refocused and I could see the surface of the red Lacuna. The skinless spawn on its surface raised their heads and roared silently, clawing at the Earth until they began to fall towards it.

There was something else in the negative space behind the Lacuna, something that drew my eye away from the stars. A shadow. A blot. I stared at it until its form became a little clearer, like my eyes had adjusted to the dark. It was another Lacuna. I remembered, even at the beginning, there had always been two in the sky. The crimson heart and… this. A bruise hidden in the dark.

I shivered and tore my gaze away from it.

Where was Nell?

The surface of the green Lacuna had no features beyond the undulating fibers and the bulbs that sprouted from it. I picked a direction and walked, gazing up at the Earth. Eventually the urge to breathe faded.

After walking for what could have been minutes or hours, my foot bumped something.

There was a gap in the grass. A sharp rectangle of white stone lay there, a little lower than the grass, strangely inert when everything else was in motion. The stone had a polished shine, like an unmarked gravestone lying on its back.

I reached down and pulled. The white melted into me, revealing a staircase beneath. It was finely crafted, with no cracks or imperfections, descending down into absolute shadow.

No stars twinkled in that deep. I felt that this must have been made for me.

An invitation inside.