A cold metallic box sealed away Harper’s naked form like a corpse. The only problem being he was still alive. He was wedged in tight enough that he couldn’t move a muscle. Despite that, he still tried to thrash around. Not even a wiggle.

Harper took in a harsh breath. “W-what the fuck is going on?! Where am I!?”

He heard wet footsteps outside the box. “Hello? Is someone there? I’m stuck in here, help me!”

The footsteps stopped in front of the box. A clicking sound echoed inside the box, followed by the screech of metal. After that, he felt the wall to his left give way. A bright mint blue-green light then blinded him. He brought his hand up to his face and found he was actually capable of moving.

Two hands then hooked under his armpits and dragged him out of the box. He was so dazed from the sudden light, he didn’t have the energy to react. He was then tossed on the ground. It was covered in a layer of mud so deep his entire frame sank under the surface. He picked himself out of the mud slowly.

“Get up. Don’t turn around.” A woman’s voice sounded behind him. It sounded detached and unfeeling.

Harper somehow felt less safe outside of the box than inside of it. He did as the voice asked regardless, standing up with his back to the source. Instinctively, he raised his hands. This was not his friend, and the less threatening he seemed to them, the better.

“Good. Stay like that.” The woman approached him, audibly slushing through the mud until she was right behind him. “You are no longer on your home planet of Earth. You will not be returning anytime soon.”

“Why?” No sooner did he speak than he felt a pain radiate through his entire form with enough intensity to bring him to his knees.

“I’m not finished.” If the woman was annoyed at all, she didn’t show it. “You are on the prison planet Venali for the crime of nearly ending the Cosmos in a previous iteration. You won’t be leaving anytime soon. There are others on this planet, each of them a scourge of the Cosmos in their own right.”

Harper didn’t dare speak. He was still on his knees from the first bout of pain. Eventually, the silence rang out for long enough he considered speaking. “I don’t understand. Are you saying I’m a danger to the universe? I’ve never even left my hometown!”

“If you are here, it is for a reason. Whatever you did specifically is not knowledge I am privy to. Now, there is only one rule of existence on this planet.”

The pain radiated through Harper again. He screamed out, but it wouldn’t end. If anything, it only increased in intensity. It grew and grew until he was certain he was going to die. He tried to crawl through the muck to get away from the woman.

She followed behind him. “Death is meaningless.”

Harper exploded into a rain of limb confetti.

* * *

Harper awoke to a comfortable temperature. He didn’t open his eyes at first, simply enjoying the feeling of the afterlife. It was neither hot nor cold, cramped nor spacious. Death felt surprisingly nice.

Finally, he opened his eyes and was blinded by a bright mint blue-green light. It felt like an off color for wherever he was, sickly and detached. His stomach sank as he slowly looked to his left.

There were bits of him, or his past self, strewn about everywhere. He covered his mouth with his hands as bile rose, but he couldn’t hold back. The vomit covered his hands and legs as it spewed from between his fingers. He clumsily threw himself out of the box he was in, which he could now tell was a fridge. He landed in his own guts.

“Wh-wh-what the fuck!? Dear fucking god, what is going on?!” Harper scrambled to get up. He heard a crunch and looked up.

Surrounding him was a dimly lit jungle, though dimly was being generous. It was more like someone walked into the jungle and whispered the word light. It was filled with trees meters wide and covered in branches, such that he had no idea how high they went. They also prevented him from seeing the sky in any capacity, explaining the dimness that surrounded him.

Another crack sounded, this one behind him and accompanied by a growl. He didn’t wait to see what it was, sprinting off into the sweltering heat of the jungle. Maybe he could find a hiding spot, maybe he couldn’t, but either way he needed to run. He ran towards the section illuminated by the fridge so he could at least see something.

If only the mud underneath him wasn’t up to his knees, then he could’ve run better. As it was, he speed trudged through the muck. He looked up and saw vines everywhere. No, better not; though he had the strength, he didn’t have the endurance to go vine swinging like a monkey.

He ran through the jungle for at least 15 minutes, somehow not being attacked by any animals. He definitely poked himself on the underbrush more than once, and considering he was naked, it wasn’t pretty. He was bruised and bleeding everywhere by the time he made the decision to stop.

Harper leaned on his knees and gasped for breath. He licked his dry, cracking lips and wiped the sweat from his brow. Wherever the hell he was, it was ungodly humid and blisteringly hot. And the muck was a sludgy consistency that left him almost certain he’d picked up more than one parasite. Hell, maybe even a leech or two.

He trudged onwards. There was nothing else to do but walk, after all. He kept his ear out for any signs of running water, but it was overshadowed by the veritable chorus of animal noises. And the stench, dear god the stench. He wished he didn’t have a nose so he didn’t have to smell the muck underfoot or the clearly rotting animal smells everywhere.

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He counted his lucky stars he wasn’t a threat to his surroundings, because everything was absurdly violent and had no qualms showing it. On more than one occasion he heard screeching in the branches above him or in the far distance. It was, every time without fail, followed up by the sounds of flesh being either torn, crushed, or pierced as well as a heavy scent of blood. It even dripped down from above and onto him.

He wasn’t proud of it, but he tried drinking whatever dripped down, only to spit it out immediately. It was completely unpalatable and, for some reason, burned his mouth and skin like literal liquid fire. From then on, anytime fights happened above him, he moved as fast as he quietly could to avoid the splashdown.

Speaking of fights, one was coming his way, and fast. He ducked behind a tree, covering his mouth and holding his breath. The thrashing of two beasts came crashing through and, unfortunately, stopped right next to him. One of the beasts was letting out rapid chuffs, while the other was doing something between a howl and a roar. It didn’t matter what the sound was, only that it hurt Harper’s ears, but he didn’t dare move a muscle.

A ripping sound tore through the trees and the roar-howls stopped. The chuffing also stopped. Silence. For once, nothing rang out through the jungle. Not a single animal made so much as a sound.

What the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck. Do I check or do I stay? I’m so fucking thirsty, but what if one of them’s still alive? Oh god, oh fuck, I’m going to die again!

After several minutes of silence, during which Harper nearly moved out from his hiding spot, the chuffing resumed. He let out a reactionary breath of relief from his nose. The chuffing stopped. He stopped. A snorting sound took its place, followed by a disgusting squelching sound coming his way.

He was out of options. As quietly as a mouse, he allowed himself to sink under the mud. He didn’t dare move any faster than a crawl, lest an errant squish from the muck reveal his position. Finally, he found himself laying on his back under the mud and once more holding his breath. His arms were crossed and covering his mouth and nose.

Though everything sounded muffled under the mud, he could feel the vibrations. And something big was coming his way. But he didn’t concern himself with that. As long as he didn’t move, it should ignore him. He was much more concerned with the thing currently tickling his right ear.

Whatever it was, it had no legs as it slithered along the outer edge of his ear. What it did have was two antennas on its front, which were poking and prodding his ear as the creature continued slithering.

The stomping was close, oh-so close now.

The creature moved closer to his ear hole and stabbed its antennas directly inside. Harper tightened his entire body in an effort to avoid flinching. It crawled towards the hole.

Rumble. Rumble. RUMBLE.

The maggoty thing crawled into his ear, and he could hold it no longer. He’d rather die than have a worm crawl in his ear. He shot out of the mud screaming, grabbed at the thing in his ear, and ripped it out. He then threw it full force at the enormous warthog stomping in the darkness.

A squeal. The warthog stampeded away.

Several crunches sounded through Harper’s entire being as his right leg was crushed by the hog. He resisted the urge to scream again, instead biting down on his lip hard enough to draw blood. Tears spilled from his eyes, but regardless, he was alive. Battered, bruised, and broken, but alive.

He tried getting up. He whimpered as the pain of a broken leg pierced through him.

So I have no food, no water, no shelter, I’m naked, and my leg is broken? What the fuck did I do to deserve this?

He knew why he deserved it. He didn’t state it, not even in his own thoughts, but he knew why.

A glimmer of blue light in the distance. His eyes widened. He didn’t know what the light could possibly be, but anything was better than the near pitch black darkness filling his surroundings.

He flipped onto his stomach and crawled for the light. It could take him 20 minutes or 20 hours, but he would make it to the light.

More creatures crawled along his stomach and along his nether regions. He paid them no mind; if they wanted to kill him, he was powerless to stop them.

A deluge of sounds and smells assaulted his senses as he crawled in the muck. He could actually hear it wriggling. He didn’t like it. As for smells, well… something had to make up all the muck he was crawling in, and it certainly wasn’t all dirt.

An animal padded up to him and sniffed at him. Apparently, it decided he was dead, because it bit into his left arm and ripped at it. He screamed bloody murder, but that only caused the creature to double down until it ripped his arm off at the elbow. It then left back from where it came, satisfied with its prize.

He grabbed at his leaking arm and squeezed, trying his best to stop the deluge of blood. While doing that, he continued to crawl as best he could between his right elbow and one good leg.

After a harrowing amount of time where he was left blissfully alone by the animals of the jungle, he made it. At last, he reached the source of the blue light. It was emanating from a bush. No wait, not the bush itself, something inside it. He crawled up to the bush, but it still wasn’t clear. He took a deep breath in and gagged when he could literally taste the spoiled air. He then crawled into it, doing his best to ignore all the branches stabbing at his naked form.

Harper gradually exhaled and released his stump, nearly collapsing from blood loss right then and there. He resisted the urge through sheer grit and curiosity. Fumes were all he had left in actual energy. He forced himself to reach up and grab at the light, which was fuzzy in his vision.

It was soft, smooth, and covered in bumps. He tugged weakly, yet it still popped off the bush without issue. In his hand he held some kind of fruit, or maybe it was a berry, but it was clearly pushing out at least 30 extra fruits from its skin, like giant fruity pimples. Regardless, it was the first piece of possibly edible food he’d found the entire time he was lost in that jungle. Sure, it was glowing, but who cares? He was going to die whether he ate it or not.

He brought it to his mouth and took a bite. And another one. And another. It was pure ambrosia. The juice spilled down his jaw as he devoured it. By the end of it he was licking his fingers and mouth, the filth that covered him forgotten.

Now that’s a fucking last meal…

Harper had an ear to ear grin plastered on his face. He rolled over onto his back and looked up. If he could have smiled wider, he would have.

Up in the canopy, winding through all the branches and leaves, was a fist sized hole. It went all the way up, clean to the sky itself. There, he saw a glowing dot. A star.

If that’s not my lucky star, I don’t know what is.

He closed his eyes, never losing his smile, and let death take him.

Skill Earned

Clone(Rank 0)