Matthew was hardly the oldest man to have lived in the area, although he did have a good fifty years to his name at this point. And in all that time spent on this green world, very few things looked as strange to him as watching the thin corpse of a girl flop out of a crypt door and roll herself down the handfull of stairs into the forest surrounding him. He watched all of this from a short stump of wood he was using as a chair next to a small campfire. Mildly entertained by the woman that was flopping about like a fish, he continued to turn the cooking squirell on a spit as he watched her flail her way towards him.
'To think that this woman will one day rule the world', he thought to himself, resisting the urge to shake his head. A thick volume of a book rested in a burlap sack next to his seat and he casually glanced over at it as he reminisced about the task set before him by a god. Steeling his eyes, he took the squirrel off the spit to begin cooling down, and set himself to his first task. It wasn't his fault that a smile started to break free on his face as he thought about what would happen next.
—---------------
I had managed to make my way a few feet outside of the crypt before the man stood up by the fireplace and made his way over to me. Instead of the help I was expecting from him, he promptly grabbed me by the throat and lifted me up to meet my eyes again.
"You must learn control." was all he said as he walked back to the crypt door and promptly tossed me back through the door to collide with the back wall of the crypt. Without another word he turned around and left me alone to stew in my thoughts for a moment. I wont lie to you and say I didn't cry to myself for a bit. Frustrated and alone without even the ability to make a sound outside of the essence that made up my true existence at this point, I…took a moment to just let it all out. I was right there. I had gotten out of this damn crypt and finally touched grass for the first time in what felt like an eternity, but that man had just thrown me back in here.
A few minutes later, my frustration had subdued itself into subdued bitterness that allowed me to start thinking again. The man certainly wasn't acting like I was an enemy of his, more like a old fatherly figure who was dissapointed in me. Resigned to the fate I had been forced into by circumstance I accepted the fact that perhaps I should listen to him and figure out what to do next.
I took in the room around me a little bit more attentively for the first time, looking out at shelves of nick nacks that lined the room from floor to ceiling. Children's toys of dolls and small wooden swords lined the lower shelves, but made way to common workers tools on the middle shelves, and then finally what looked like an odd assortment of alchemical bottles on the highest shelves. Something caught my attention on one of these top shelves as I spotted the carcass of a raven floating in a solution filling a large jar. Most importantly, I could see the bones that made up the creature as bright as a light shining from above.
Out of curiosity, I reached out for the small bird bones, curious if I could control their-. The buzzing in my head rose in pitch blocking out any semblance of a coherent thought from my brain before I retracted my essence back to my main body. Yeah, controlling dead animals certainly wasn't going to happen for a little bit, so instead I focused on the lone arm laying across the room from the rest of me where it had ripped off earlier. This time, while the buzzing increased in my head it wasn't insurmountable. My essence easily slipped into the separated appendage and gave me control over the bones as I started manipulating the fingers to drag the arm forward. Strangely enough, my consiousness seemed to be connected to my arm now as my viewpoint followed the movements towards the door and I began to see around the corner of the doorway even though my body was far deeper in the crypt. That could be usefull, i thought to myself.
The act of dragging the rest of my arm with just my fingers was slowing my progress as it grated along the stone floor of the room. With an absent thought I tried flexing my wrist in a way that might have lifted the rest of my arm off the ground if it was still attached to a normal body, but nothing happened other than the rising of my wrist bone a few inches off the ground. Frustrated for what felt like the tenth time that day, I realized that trying to drag my body around with the lose bits of skin still clinging to my bones wasn't going to last me very long and I needed a solution.
I thought back to the way I fused the bones in my hand together to fashion a bladed edge, and started experimenting with the idea of thin strands of bone stringed above and below each of the joints in my arm like a marionette. Now, instead of flexing my wrist I could take the string overlining the wrist joint and reduce the size of it until it started pulling the rest of the arm up behind it.
'Its working!', I thought to myself as the arm gradually lifted into an upright position as I tried to balance the appendage above my hand with some quick footwork, or i suppose it would be better called, fingertip work. Teetering as my new setup was, I strung a couple more lines of bone between the forearm and shoulder bones to tie the larger pieces together, and started walking my new setup towards the door using my fingers like spider legs.
A few seconds later I stared out at the forest floor as my arm crab contraption became outlined by the frame of the door. Once again, the lone man looked up in between bites of his dinner as the setting sun was starting to set behind the trees. As he stood up from his meal, I started to become uncertain about his allegiances. Was he really an ally like i thought, or was he just a captor set to keep me traped in this crypt?
This time, as he walked up to me, I tried to keep away from him, scrambling towards the edge of the stairs as the bulk of my arm bobbed above me, but it hardly mattered. Quick as can be the man snatched me up by the elbow of my arm and held me up like an awkward club as his eyes looked me up and down. Slightly annoyed at this point I tried to reach for him with my fingers before the man merely pushed his arm out until I was clearly out of reach of the rest of his body. Somehow he hardly seemed concerned with the fact he was carrying a disconnected arm as he cocked his head as though in thought.
"Using bone strings instead of muscles isn't the worst idea you could have thought of, but it's still not good enough.", and with that he quickly caught my wrist in his other hand and brought my forearm down to crack along his knee, cleanly breaking my bones in two. A sharp pain that was nothing like the buzzing i had felt up until this point invaded my mind as I found my arm sailing through the air to fall on top of the rest of my body at the back of the crypt once again.
—
My mind, no, my essence screamed in pain as I quickly tried to knit my bones back together despite the piercing feeling in my soul. What seemed like a few faint drops of liquid essence dripped out of the open break as I brought the two halves of my arm together as quickly as I could with the awkward bone strings in the way and tried to get everything back in place, slowly willing the pain to die down as I mended everything together.
Still shaking in place I almost withdrew inside my head again to try blocking out the situation at hand until I noticed the bone like liquid that had fallen onto the floor. It was less of a puddle and more like a small mound of jelly, especially with how slowly it had originally leaked out of my bones. It suddenly dawned on me that this was like the bone marrow that dogs would lick out of any bone treats you gave them. More exiting than that though was the sudden realization that I could still control the small puddle as I willed it to slowly roll itself across the floor to climb up the rest of my body.
Under my spectral sight it appeared like the liquid was floating in mid air a half inch away from the rest of my bones before I realized that it was actually sitting on top of the flesh I couldn't quite see while deep in my spectral sight. While curious as to what it must look like, I decided I didn't quite want to see what kind of shape the rest of my body was in after I had torn off my arm and then promptly been broken in half. Regardless, my new liquidus bone puddle offered me several new ideas on what to do next.
—---
The sun had finally set on Maathew as he remained by the campfire, casually warming his hands as he watched the flames. He hadn't allowed himself to become entirely distracted by his thoughts though, as he saw a small movement out of the corner of his eye near the door. A thin smile creased his face as he lifted his gaze to meet a small hand that was clinging to the top right corner of the crypt door. It froze in place, as though she was hopeful that inaction could make him forget that she had been caught, but he continued to stare at the hand, unimpressed.
The hand began to move again after some time, carefully withdrawing a barbed fingertip that had been sharpened like the tip of a sword before placing it forward across the threshold to once again sink the finger deep into the unmarked stone face. Each step, the hand noticeably twisted the finger in place once it was submerged in the wall, likely catching the barbes in place so that it couldn't fall out while hanging. Still, Matthew would have been impressed with her progress if she had been just about any other human than the legend that she was. Regardless, he merely leaned back on his stump of wood and observed her newest attempts to explore.
Now that she had been caught, the hand seemed to get annoyed at the situation and quickly shifted all its fingers at once so that they fell out of the holes in the wall at the same time. The hand fell unceremoniously to hit the edge of the top step and rebound out onto the forest floor like a stuffed animal falling from a bed. It would have almost been cute if not for the fact that the hand hardly looked human any more as her elongated finger tips cut into the ground like thin white stilletos, while the only skin and meat left to the hand happened to be situated allong the palm and back of the hand. Instead, a thin almost reddish yellow sludge seemed to connect the rest of the joints in the hand as the spiderlike contraption adapted the tips of its fingers to be less sharp so they would stop digging into the ground with every step.
By the time the hand had finished approaching him, it now truly resembled some strange version of a five legged spider in truth as it came to a stop in front of him. It was fairly obvious that the creature couldn't speak for itself, so the man decided to answer the question she was probably asking.
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"Good evening Dei. My name is Matthew, and your name is obviously, Dei."
The spider seemed to cock its head at him, thinking.
"No, i'm not sure whether you chose that name for yourself or whether it kind of just got stuck to you given the circumstances," he shrugged. "But for what its worth, it suits you."
No response from the spider hand this time as it merely stared at him.
"Yeah, so I can't quite answer that next question you probably want to ask me. I'm not going to tell you who I am or how I used to know you before you died, but I will still be helping you out in my own way. I suppose you could call me your first follower in this new life of yours, although you might end up regretting that with time."
If shock could register on an creature made of bone, thats what would have shown in the eyes of the spider hand named Dei looking up at the man.
—-----------------------------------
With the strange man's words, something twisted itself in her heart and she felt some sort of energy filter through her essence to flow back into the black shard implanted in the body she had left behind. With a jolt, the buzzing that had been becoming increasingly jarring with every step she took away from her humanity vanished. She felt imbued with a sense of vigor that made her feel alive for the first time since, well, since she died.
She? Wait no, I. It should be when I died, not ‘when she died’. What was even happening here? I tried to shake off my stupor, but instead found myself looking back at that shard of darkness hidden away behind a wall of rock, yet clearly visibile to me despite everything in the way. My conscience was pulled away by some strange new gravity as my essence was pulled back to my corpse and a faint light that emanated from within the shard plunged through my heart. Inside the shard a single purple light hung in the air of the void that i was gradually being sucked into.
This was the place I had been stuck immediately after death, most obviously due to a thin song that drifted through the place that I could recognize from the last time I was here. This time though, there was another voice singing along to the melody, a dark timbering voice that supported the rest of the song with his bass line. And all the while, the mysterious purple light thrummed along to the song just in rhythm with the bass line, and I started to actually make out some words among the song for the first time.
“One……gai-.....rst Ascen…ompl….trol fou……la…ing…devel…solu…Detaching humanity.”
Eyes wide in surprise, the purple light flew into me as the sollemn song melded with my soul for just a moment before it came flying right back out, only this time a little bit different. The purple flame now wobbled in the void, looking a little lost as it scanned the abyss. It turned this way, then that, then turned around to look at the essence behind it, clearly just as startled by myself.
My…self? Two pairs of connected consciousness stared down at one another in that instant as the purple flame and the essence inspected each other. Both of them were distinctly me in a sense, yet it wasn't quite like looking in a mirror, and both entities started to back up into the void before she, (it?) started talking.
“You are me…but not exactly?” the purple flame glowed as it spoke.
Looking back at the original essence, she realized that it looked like a matching blue flame, suspended in the open void around them.
The blue flame flickered as it spoke back, “No, we are connected. That much I can feel.”, but after that the conversation died down as the twin sparks merely looked at each other in silence, thinking to themselves.
A sharp pain pierced through the two of them as the blue spark quickly returned to the world of white and bone, drawn back to reality by the pain only to find her hand on fire. Her skin had started to melt off into an acrid stench that left the old man scrunching up his nose as he held her down in the fire using the tip of a sword. Alarmed at the situation, she tried to push herself away from the biting fire, only to find her skin catching allong the sword holding her down, sending a new screeching pain deep into her heart. Despite this, the hand was still able to roll away from the fire to come to a smoldering stop on the dirt floor. The man merely eyed her as he left his sword in the fire while the leftover skin turned into ash before wiping it off on one of the unburnt logs.
If a spider could look indignant, thats the look she would have given the man in that moment, yet to any outsider the boney creature merely looked crouched down to the ground for some odd reason.
The man smiled at her then, “I thought we might start taking care of the rotting flesh before it became a real issue. But i suppose now that you've got a friend in there we might really start to make progress. Go grab the rest of your body and we'll begin.”
—---
After the blue light had left her behind, the purple spark wasn't quite sure what to do anymore. In the back of her head she had the had a faint feeling that the blue spark was taking care of something important, but when she started to reach out to the spark, feelings of anger burned bright in the direction the spark had flown.
So instead, she waited. She had been born in the void to a certain extent so I didn't really seem to bother her, even though she knew more was out there, but what was the point? As long as she stayed here she could merely float in place, lulled to sleep by the whispers of a song in the breeze. It was bliss…
But it was also boring. The purple ember slowly stirred to look in the direction the whispers pointed her in, guiding her toward a world of light as she truly started to take in the world. Her vision blurred as she looked down on both a pile of bones on one hand, but also something that resembled a corpse that reminded her distinctly of herself. If flames could vomit, she decided that's what she would be doing and quickly focused on the vision of bones instead. Confusingly enough, a little bit away from the rest of the body laid the better part of an arm that looked like it had lost both its shoulder and hand.
As she took a better look at the arm it looked like a strange amalgamation of an appendage with several wisping strands of boney string that connected at the elbow and wrist joints. Oddly enough it looked like it had been broken already, stitched together, then broken a second time as a thin stream of gel leaked out of the broken humerous bone onto the ground. As though acting on instinct, the flame decided to make some improvisations on the original design as she made the thin strands of string receed into the arm while she willed the bone marrow gel to gather allong the elbow as well as six other points evenly spaced out on either side of the arm.
A moment later twelve thin pincers of bone extended from the arm like the legs of a centipede to match the thin applications of bone marrow that were now acting as individual joints. Any passerby would be forced to think that an invasive species of giant centipeed had infested the forest, but the little flame merely hummed to herself as she manipulated the many thin legs to carry the arm back into place on the body, nestled in the crook of a very bloody and mishapen shoulder area.
—--
Resigned to her fate, the bone spider thought about leaping onto the face of the man named Matthew and seeing just how much damage she could do with her razor-sharp legs.
‘He burned off half of my hand, and he didn't even ask for consent first! The nerve of the man.’ she thought to herself. Yet even now she didn't jump up his leg to start her attack. For some reason he said he was helping her, even though he seemed to be doing it in just about the rudest way he could. So instead, she turned on her heel and marched back towards the crypt to gather the rest of her body like he had said.
As she walked away on five legs, she let her consciousness wander to look down on the small spiderling from above, even as she continued to control it. While slightly charred along the finger tip areas, the small globs of bone marrow she was using as joints between each of the knuckles seemed to remain functional as she made her way forward. As she walked over, she could already tell that the charred flesh that made up the body of her spider form was quickly wearing away, so she fused the bones in the palm of her hand together to serve as a better base for the legs as the muscle dropped away. By the time she had reached doorway it was hard to even recognize the creature as originally being a hand, instead looking like some sort of poisonous white and gray spider that was crawling up the steps.
When she crested that final step, she hesitated for a moment as she took in the fact that her arm bones seemed to be reattaching themselves to her old body as she looked into the crypt. A dozen thin legs receeded into the sides of the arm as the thin pockets of bone marrow slid along the edge of the bones towards the wrist and shoulder areas. All at once, the moving arm seemed to stop under her gaze as the two of them metaphorically met eyes. How an eyeless spider and a centipede would theoretically meet eyes was besides the point in that moment as they both became acutely aware of the other’s presence through their bond.
After a moment of thought, the spider continued her way towards the body with merely a passing thought.
“I suppose Number Two has gotten to work already. Wasn't expecting that.” she thought to herself.
“I am NOT going to be called Number Two. I am Dei.” a quick reply came back to her.
The spider stopped in her tracks, “No, I am Dei. I came first therefore I get first dibs.”
The other flame seemed to think for a moment before it answered, “Why are we calling dibs on a name that we didn't even choose in the first place?”
“Doesn't matter, it feels right on me now, so that's what i'm gonna stick with…why don't we call you Pei, like purple Dei?”
“Really, thats the best you could think of? That's such a stupid way of doing things.”
“Fine, then what would you prefer to be called? Its not like i'm trying to be rude here, but we're gonna have to tell us apart somehow.”
The other essence took a moment to come up with an answer as the spider finished making its way over to the corpse and slotted the base of her hand into the wrist, making sure the jelly like substance had a good connection.
“Fei. I want to be called Fei!”
“Sure, sure.” Dei thought, “Now mind helping me break a few bones so we can get enough bone marrow going to patch this body back together?”
And with that the two of them got to work. Together.
—---------
As the sun went to sleep behind the horizon, Matthew peered over at the open maw of darkness hiding the inside of the crypt. Loud snapping sounds echoed into the forest that sounded like a large animal chomping its way through a particularly good meal. But as gruesome as the events of this day had been, Matthew wasn't quite afraid of the situation. No, instead he was merely uncertain about the course his life had just taken him as he attached himself to this monster.
“What the hell is this book trying to tell me?” He muttered to himself as he opened the thick grimoire once again, and started reading ahead. “And why the hell do I only have two more days left to train her before something happens?”