[Player Log Start!]
[Log Holder: Verity Monroe]
[Level: Two]
There were voices in her head, calling her through the nest.
Not just in her head, though. They were all around her. Building the pathways on which she walked, clearing the area of any guards who might see her. They clustered all around and guided her. It was nice, all things considered. To let their voices drown out her thoughts and worries… it was a method she needed to employ more.
“What are you?” She asked as she pushed more loosely packed earth to the side, following the precise instructions of the voices whose origins she had yet to determine.
We’re human. They told her, voice soft and yearning. We’re human, can’t you tell?
“I mean, I can’t see you, so no.” Verity replied, looking around as if she would miraculously catch sight of the people these voices were attached to. She imagined them to be as wan and gaunt as their voices, trapped in the tunnels until they had fused into them entirely.
No, no, it’s not like that.
“Are you using a Telepathy Ability?” She asked. If there was any way to start learning Telepathy, she would be the first in line to learn that. Assuming she survived whatever these people were calling her towards.
You can say that.
Brilliant. Not suspicious at all. Was it perhaps a byproduct of a different Ability? Because that was an interesting concept. Depending on what else the Ability could do.
You can learn it if you come with us. Become one of us.
Were they going to start chanting now? She hated when people do that. Also, she turned to look at the top of the tunnel she was crawling through, “Why have I been verbally responding to everything you say if you could simply read it from my thoughts?”’
We have no way of knowing if you’re speaking aloud. We lack the ability to hear such distances. All we have been doing is reading your thoughts. Duck low, please.
She pressed herself to the floor of the tunnel, and what had once been dense and impermeable bent and warped easily, until it had sunk down into a hole shaped exactly like her. A light layer of roots crawled out over her, but Verity remained calm, unmoving as a raven flew directly over her.
Once the danger was gone, she took a harsh breath, and pulled herself out from the temporary bindings. Had to move fast. Had to get to the humans before the birds found her.
The end of the tunnel drew near. Except this time instead of darkness, there lay in front of her an almost blinding light. She hissed as she pulled herself out, clutching at her eyes to shield them.
That’s the Sun. The voices reminded her pointedly. You will adjust to it. Hurry. Come with us. We will teach you to survive.
So she screwed up her eyes and fought through the pain as her eyes readjusted, stumbling forward in the meantime with only the voices for direction. Out here, which she slowly realized was the tip of the Nest, she expected to be found immediately. But no. She was alone, with the wind ripping at her as she forced herself to walk.
Good! The voices reached a crescendo in their excitement. Now, kneel down, right there, pull apart the nest, and you will find us buried there!
What was Verity supposed to do, not trust the strange voices that had been her only guiding hope? Of course she did as they said.
She wasn’t sure what she had been expecting the humans to look like, or what condition they would be in, but as she pulled apart the oddly spongy layers of thick mud and matted twigs, she caught sight of something truly out of this world.
Underneath the spot she was clawing at, there was a pool of some kind of green liquid. Thick and viscous, but almost completely translucent. And suspended within it were beings. People, for the most part. Or bits of them, at least. And one large raven, whose head was the only thing she could make out.
Her hands, caked with the mud, tingled in a familiar way. A hand floating to the surface twitched, sending ripples through the whole pool.
“You are… human?” She laughed.
We were once. The voices from the mass admitted to her, in a way that might almost bely some shame. Then the extinction happened. We could not live like that. All of our healing knowledge was poured into keeping a lifeform alive. We thought that if we could some day find a suitable host – such as a Golem, or a robot – our people could live again.
Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
“And you’re helping the crows out, why?” She checked, wiping off the mud from her hands, revealing raw red patches from where the skin had been eaten.
They provide for us. And now one of theirs has become our own, so its interests have become our interest. It is a matter of survival that we have the best and the brightest with us, for mankind’s return.
Well, mankind at the moment looked like the grossest soup of all time, but that wasn’t very polite of her to say, so she kept her mouth shut on that topic, instead turning to more pressing matters.
“You said that you wanted to make me part of you. Like… as a host? Or do I drop inside and let myself be digested for real this time?”
You are a powerful specimen. We knew from the trial. We make sure to test each and every one who the corvids are willing to sacrifice. It is likely that you will survive if you were to fall in. We will attempt to implant one of our consciousness in you, and if you survive the process, they will live on in you. If you don’t… you become another one held in this cocoon.
She took a breath, weighing the options. Either way, the chances of death were certain. Meaning that there was nothing to lose.
So obviously she jumped.
The liquid was thick, but somehow not dense enough to keep her afloat. She went down like a rock, as if the mass of consciousness was pulling her inside, all the way to the bottom, until she collided with more spongy walls, like the kind she had ripped open from above. These ones were more translucent, though, and her eyes could see through it just enough to take in the scene below.
A mass of shifting, feathery black, just as she had expected, and a clear spot in the middle of it all, where there was no one except two humans. Her humans. About to be overwhelmed, for the sheer crime of daring to come rescue her.
Verity screwed her eyes shut, feeling the liquid throb behind her eyelids. She was going to save them. Or the conscious that would inhabit her body from now on will. She was hoping.
They are human. You hope right. The voices returned.
Her eyes slipped close.
[Game Log Buffering-]
[Player Classification Glitch]
[Harbinger Status Conflict]
[Shutdown Imminent: 3…]
[2…]
[1…]
[Interrupt!]
What opened its eyes was not Verity.
There was no physical change to the body, as much as they could parse from being suspended in thick liquid. They blinked once, and the viscosity of the liquid had no irritation this time. One couldn’t hurt that which they had been for nearly a century.
Once, though, she had been a human. Lucinda Hemmings. Working as a nurse in the Experimental Application of Healing Practices, situated right in the capital. Talented, though she was, it was pure luck that had gotten her into the scant pool of survivors. And it was pure luck again that when a being capable of holding life slipped into The Cocoon, Lucinda was the one whose being gained control.
[New Playable Character: Lucinda Hemmings(1) Unlocked!]
They were not Lucinda anymore. They knew it as much as they knew that the transfer had had terrible consequences, in the form of a surge of energy, pushing all around them. Rupturing the membrane of The Cocoon which had protected them for so long.
The liquid was falling. Landon the Raven, their faithful non-human compatriot was falling. The body was falling, but that did not matter nearly as much as the fact that the liquid was falling.
[Applying Survival Instincts!]
Verity Monroe’s newly acquired Ability snapped to life, guiding them into bending their knees and posture so that the shock of the fall didn’t instantly obliterate them. Still, the pain burning up their legs was enough to confirm that several bones broke on the way down.
The liquid splattered all around them. Lucinda’s friends were extinguished.
Your friends, maybe. Mine are still there. It was Verity Monroe’s voice in her head. Now save them. Just like you promised me.
Lucinda had not made that promise. It was them as a collective. People more important than her, now dead, after grasping for straws for so long. But it was her duty to fulfill it. So, Lucinda activated an Ability of her own, just enough to clear the blinding pain.
[Applying Healing!]
[Special Move: Self Restore]
The pain cleared. Muscles stitched back, and tendons unsnapped. The body shifted back into the way it was meant to be. In front of them, there stood two people. One albino boy about Verity Monroe’s age, and a woman with the steady expression of someone in the medical field. Both caked in the gunk and fluids from the cocoon, just like everything else in the room.
Verity Monroe knew them. They were her friends. Hold up your end of the Bargain. She insisted. I’m still alive in here, you know? And I’m making it your problem.
They wished that she wasn’t. That wasn’t true. Lucinda was the one that wished that, not them both. But still, they were humans. And when she had allowed herself to be suspended in the cocoon, it had been for the sole reason to keep humanity going. And they had every intention on keeping that vow.
“Come with me.” They told them, eyeing all the birds surrounding them, all radiating with shock from the fall of an artifact that had stood before any of them had been born.
Immediately, the boy with white hair turned to look at them with narrowed eyes, “You’re not Verity.” He said, “What did you do with her?”
“Very astute, kid. We can have this conversation after we get out of this deathtrap, because now that the control hub is down, this entire Nest is going down.”
That seemed to jolt the woman into action, but not entirely, as she frowned, “Okay, but are you still physically Verity? Or is this some clone switcheroo shit?”
“It’s the same body, alright?!” They snapped, already feeling the world rock under their feet. Landon the Raven had put up some charms to hold the place together that wouldn’t need his constant power. It should be enough to allow most of everyone to get off before those started failing. But only if they moved quick. Which no one here seemed prepared to do.
“You heard the gal, Michael.” The woman – Ben, Verity Monroe supplied – “Get to the exit. Up is that way? Then we climb. C’mon, bodysnatcher, you coming with us.”
“Not so fast.” A throaty, garbled voice spoke up. The corvids had gathered themselves from the shock of seeing an integral part of their culture explode in front of their eyes, and were now hovering in front of them, eyes all red.
[Player Log End!]