Sean felt like he was still trying to catch up to a movie that had skipped ahead without him. One second he had been on his couch, snacks happily in hand, then that thing had grabbed him, and now he was…
Wait, where am I?
Sean tried to move, but for some reason his muscles felt weighted down and didn’t seem to be responding. He tried to call for help, but it felt like there was warm sludge stuffed into every square inch of his lungs. He also couldn’t see anything, as if someone had draped a thick curtain over his eyes and then taped them shut. No matter how hard he tried, Sean’s eyelids refused to so much as quiver.
It felt like there was a great weight sitting on his chest, sitting on all of his limbs – but Sean couldn’t move to get it off. His lungs emptied as that weight pressed down, and a desperate gurgle escaped his mouth. A mouth that felt wrong for reasons Sean didn’t have the words for, and that was when the horror film that was his current situation ratcheted up another notch.
Just as Sean realized he couldn’t take in another breath to feed his deflated lungs, a man’s voice – shrill with anger – shouted words off to his left that made no sense at all. Then the surface Sean was laying on trembled as someone struck it. An instant later, another voice began whispering in the dark - but Sean couldn’t make much of it out.
Partially because despite the voices’ relative proximity, they were both muffled for some reason. Like his ears were stuffed with the same warm slime his lungs were packed with. Mostly however, it was because neither of the two voices were speaking English. Sean had learned a few words of Spanish and a handful of Italian and French from his cookbooks, so he could pick up on the cadence of those - he was sure. Whatever language these two were speaking, it didn’t match those at all.
Which did not bode well, but worse than that was the fact that Sean could tell one of the voices had just told him something. Something that, despite the obvious language barrier, he had understood. It was there and gone in a moment, a fleeting understanding in otherwise incomprehensible gibberish, but the man had been talking to him – and he had told Sean not to talk. A command that felt strangely compelling for some reason.
Then the voices went back to gibberish, and Sean’s inability to breathe took center stage in his thoughts once more. Fear consumed him. Visions of all the horrible things that could be happening to him right now rushed through his mind. Had he been drugged? Kidnapped? Were they going to kill him? Why were they going to kill him? What had–
Before Sean’s panicked mind could complete another thought, he felt someone grab the disgustingly hot and wet socks they had shoved onto his feet in powerful hands… and push. His body –which for some reason also felt like it was also wrapped in damp, meaty socks – slid easily over and off whatever surface he had been on.
Then, Sean fell. Head first, and tumbling helplessly into the unknown abyss below, Sean fell.
For about two seconds.
With a sickening crunch, Sean’s body crumpled into unyielding stone. His knees briefly met his jaw, though the impact felt like it was buffeted by thick, warm pillows. Sean tried to reach out to stop his descent as he felt himself begin to fall again, but it felt like he was grasping at sheer stone with sausages around his fingers - he couldn’t grip anything.
So, he fell again, and again… and again. Thump. Thump. Thump. THUMP.
Sean lost count of the number of times he crashed into solidity only to sllide further down into the darkness. He also quickly lost track of which direction he was going. Each time Sean slammed into a wall he briefly hoped the journey was over, only for gravity to take him down another drop and speed him into a fresh wall with a wet slap.
An idle thought rattled around Sean’s mind as his body slammed itself into yet another surely unhealthy configuration of limbs. If concussions are cumulative, I’m going to be brain-dead at the end of this.
Mercifully, the downward crash-coaster he was on ended soon after… with an open drop into empty air.
Before Sean could get more than two fully splayed-out cartwheels into his unwilling rotation he landed roughly on a heap of squishy somethings piled atop one another. Trying to get his bearings from feel alone, Sean immediately noticed two things: One, he somehow wasn’t in any pain. Two, thanks to whatever slick substance this heap was covered in, he was now sliding down once again.
Frantically, Sean flung his arms out to stop himself. His arms worked now, for whatever reason, but his sausage-fingers still weren’t responding properly. Like he was trying to move them through mush. Try as he might, it was still a struggle to get a firm hold on anything.
Once he eventually did, after sliding probably five or so feet down, Sean realized he could finally see again. Somewhat, anyway. One of his eyelids had been jammed up his face far enough in his fall to allow light in. Or at least, to allow something in. The bottom of the abyss was dark enough that it clearly didn’t have any real sources of light. Nevertheless, Sean could still see.
It was a small victory, but Sean would take it. Even if his vision was blurry to the point that it looked like he was gazing through a fishbowl, it was still something he could work with. Enough to make out what was in front of him.
Wait, what is in front of me? Sean wondered, staring blearily at what he had managed to grab onto to stop his descent.
He tried to narrow his eyes, but that feature apparently hadn’t come back online yet. So he simply stared, and tried to concentrate on it. It was hard, as his mind still felt rather jumbled from his earlier fall, but eventually the object he was holding came into focus.
A broken pair of shorn rib bones jutted out from what could only be a human skeleton not five inches from Sean’s face. Somehow, he had managed to grab onto the dead man’s hip bone for support. A hip bone which was, itself, lodged into the chest cavity of another dead body beneath it.
And that one was attached to–Oh my god.
Sean stared at the pile beneath him in slack-jawed horror.
He had landed on a pile of broken, rotting corpses casually tossed atop one another like a death cult’s best attempt at some grisly pyramid. A pyramid that looked to be at least thirty feet tall. Sean couldn’t even begin to fathom how many bodies it must have taken to make this – and he was laying right on top of it!
It took a moment for the morbid reality of that to really sink in.
When it did, Sean expected a chill to run down his spine. Mentally, he felt like it might have… but there was no actual sensation echoing back from his body. No sinking feeling gnawed at his stomach, and no pounding heartbeat accelerated ever faster in his chest. It was like his body’s entire fight-or-flight response had been kicked offline.
Sean knew he should be scared - any sane person would be right now - but instead of the physiological reactions of the flesh, he felt… nothing. There was no measurable response from his body at all. It was unsettling, almost like his body wasn’t even there. Squinting at his hand just to confirm it actually was there, Sean made another discovery.
He was stark, bloody naked. Or, more accurately, bloody and stark naked. His skin was far paler than it should be, and torn in several places. Slimy green ichor covered him, seeping into his wounds. Its viscosity and near luminescence evidence that, whatever the ichor actually was, it was not a naturally occurring substance.
Sean tried to take an experimental whiff of it, only his nose didn’t respond. It felt plugged up somehow, to the point he couldn’t even twitch it.
Which was when the fact that he still couldn’t breathe arrested Sean’s entire thought process. He tried to inhale through his mouth, but there was too much weight on his chest pressing down to allow it.
What’s– what’s going on!? Sean thought, pressing both hands to his chest in panic.
He had to get whatever this was off of him before he ran out of air, but the sensation from his hands was strange. Like he was rubbing two raw chunks of steak together with wet gloves on. Things that were supposed to be firm and solid, like his chest or fingers, no longer were. It was more like…
…like he had just let go of the only thing keeping him from falling further down the corpse-pyramid.
Damnit! Sean shouted in his mind as he fell down, scrambling, once more.
Though he was unable to find another hold, the actual ground was only a dozen feet away. Sean slid to the ground and tumbled backwards, landing in a rough heap. His face smashed into the ground and a cracking sound came from his nose. It was, thankfully, not accompanied by any pain. Whatever drug this pair had dosed him with, it must have been strong stuff.
Before he could ponder that line of thinking, something wet slapped onto his shoulder from above, diverting his thoughts. Sean tried his best not to think about what it could be.
Instead, Sean picked himself and looked down at the ground, trying to figure out why no matter what he did he couldn’t actually feel what he was seeing. Or, maybe more accurately, why he couldn’t see all these strange sensations he was feeling. All of his limbs felt like they were weighted down, but he wasn’t even wearing clothes.
What’s going on here? Sean thought, lifting first one arm, and then the other.
There had been no pain at all from his last fall, nor the one before that. The ground beneath him was rough stone covered in a luminescent layer of that green ichor stuff, so by all rights that should have hurt. But it hadn’t.
He looked around, noticing for the first time the hewn stone rocks that had been cobbled together to form a wall around whatever chamber he was in.
Sean blinked. Or at least, he tried to. He tried to adjust his eyes, but his one open eyelid didn’t respond any more than the closed one did. His vision was still blurry, too. Like he was wearing someone else’s prescription glasses. Even so, what he was seeing didn’t make sense.
Stone wall… corpse-pyramid… Sean paused, before opening his mouth and shouting: “Where the hell am I!?”
Only, instead of thoroughly justified indignation, not a single sound escaped his mouth. His jaws had moved a bit in time with his words, but his lips hadn’t. They hung limply towards his chin, as if shot full of novacaine. His lungs hadn’t responded at all. Not like they had no air and needed some, but as if Sean couldn’t inflate them at all.
Why… Why can’t I breathe!?
Abandoning speech entirely for the moment, Sean refocused on trying to get some air into his no doubt dying lungs. He hadn’t gotten any since waking and he was pretty sure there was only so much not-breathing one could do before permanent brain damage set in. No matter how hard he tried however, Sean still couldn’t suck any air in. Or move his lungs. Or even feel them. At all.
Nothing about his entire vocal apparatus was working. A fact which should have been horrifying. His body should have been screaming at him, or overriding his own control in its attempt to survive the lack of air – and yet it wasn’t. There was no response at all. Even his own emotions and reactions to the situation still felt somehow… muted.
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This has to be a nightmare. Sean decided matter-of-factly through the addled haze that was his clearly off-kilter mental state. Alright. First problem: Breathing. Get whatever this is… out of my lungs.
The heavy weight on his chest was still there and, somehow, inside him. Like his whole interior had been filled with sand and was straining against the weight just to move. His skin also felt… off. Covered up. As if he was enclosed in another layer of thickened skin stretching over his own like some sort of horror-film flesh-suit.
Sean struggled to lift his arms to his face, hoping to figure out what was going on and maybe clear his airways. Each limb still felt heavy though, almost weighed down. As if someone had tied sacks of wet meat around his limbs and closed his fingers in thick sausages. It wasn’t impossible to lift them, just rather awkward and… slow. Nothing he could feel felt right, and that fact was really starting to get to him.
It also didn’t help that the world felt like it was slightly off-level. Trying to move his neck was a strain, so Sean grabbed both sides of his head as firmly as he could and adjusted the world back to a proper horizontal. Then he moved to the next phase of his plan.
Slowly, gently, Sean pressed his sausage-fingers against his cheeks and tried to massage the unnatural feeling out of his face. To his surprise, both face and his fingers resisted his touch, moving only slightly in places that should have been pliant. Puzzled, Sean pushed his fingers in a bit but again, he felt nothing. He stared down at the rest of himself, trying to figure it out.
It wasn’t just that his body was numb. Sean had been to the dentist before - this wasn’t that. He couldn’t actually feel anything. Not the chill from the floor, not the ichor his toes were now partially submerged in, and not the large toe on his right foot that was - on closer inspection - bent almost completely backwards towards his heel.
Instead of feeling pain from that area however, Sean got the distinct impression his feet were covered in some kind of... lukewarm jelly-socks. Confused, he wiggled his toes experimentally and watched for movement. They sort-of wiggled in response, the broken toe bending even further to reveal white bone jutting out from slow-moving dark blood.
Revulsion flooded Sean’s mind at the sight, but it dispersed quickly. There was also none of the normal urge to vomit that he had always associated with feeling suddenly sick. There wasn’t even any bile in his throat. There was no… anything in his throat.
Do I still have my throat!?
Searching sausage-hands quickly clamped around his own neck, confirming through the vague sensations he could feel that there was indeed still flesh in that region. Despite what he was sure was a fairly tight grip, as much of one as he could manage right now anyway, Sean didn’t feel any sort of constriction on his pipes. On the contrary, they felt full. Like he was mid-swallow on some stuffed potatoes.
Which was, oddly enough, the final bit of weirdness that broke him. Unable to make heads or tails of what was going on any more, Sean abruptly sat down. He let his head fall into his hands with a soft plop.
Okay… what… What in the blood-soaked hell is happening here? He wondered, feeling the wooziness from before finally beginning to lift from his mind, retreating as if the sun had finally risen.
This can’t be a dream. I was just on my couch! Watching TV! I had a date tonight! And now I'm… I'm…
Had he been kidnapped? Had those voices from before been the ones who drugged him? Is that why he felt like he was trapped in his own body right now? He was having some sort of out-of-body experience? He’d heard of people describing situations like this on sites like Reddit detailing the aftereffects of crazy new drugs, the kind that never ended up ‘FDA-approved’.
Just like what he remembered reading in those posts, all of his body just felt…off. Disconnected, somehow. Almost alien. As if it wasn’t really his. Maybe it felt that way because they had injected him with something? Maybe they were experimenting on people here?
Is that why there are so many corpses in their basement?
Any number of potentially plausible explanations, each more outrageous than the last, ran through Sean's head as he tried to puzzle out what in the world was going on. He stared into his hands for a moment, at a loss for any real answers. He honestly felt like he should be freaking out more. He just… wasn’t.
Off-kilter as his mind felt his thoughts were still ordered. Still logical, and still… calm. Even though his heartbeat should be going crazy right now, pumping blood and adrenaline through him as if his life depended on it – he could feel it wasn’t. There was no pounding sensation in his chest at all. Curious, Sean put one hand to his sternum to check for a pulse. After a minute, he was surprised again.
No heartbeat. At least, none that I can feel. Would have to be some pretty insane drug-cocktail they’d found to do that without killing me... Sean noted with more calm than should have been possible at the thought.
Something itched around his closed eye and, absently, Sean rubbed it away with one hand.
There was a soft popping sound and with that, his left eyeball fell out of its socket – right into his other hand. By chance, it landed just the right way to be looking back up at him, a length of viscera still vaguely attached to the back end.
Whatever chemical cocktail or mental suppression that had been keeping Sean from freaking out, broke in that moment.
Yeeeeagghhh!?! My… EYE!? He cried in mental confusion, slack jaw hanging open for another muted scream.
This was too much. Wounds and crazy bioluminescent algae-fluids Sean could do, but if he lost his freaking eye to this?!
Nope. No– this is– no. This is not happening. Sean thought, leaping to his feet and looking around wildly with his one remaining good eye.
He was hoping there might be something he could use to keep bacteria off, or maybe even wash it – but he was in a freaking murder-dungeon. He couldn’t just let it stay out exposed to all this filth, or… or–
Staring down at it, a part of Sean’s mind realized his vision had actually improved despite the ocular loss. He filed that little weirdness away for later however, as he could now see the hand he’d caught his eye with was thoroughly covered in the corpse-juice covering the floor. Given that, there was no way he was going to try and plop it back in.
Of course, that was assuming such a thing was even possible. Maybe if he was able to escape, he could convince a doctor to try?
Questions for later. For now–
Sean’s gaze fell on a scattering of glass jars not a dozen feet away from where he was now. Most of them were broken, but as he stared into the pile he saw that one jar was still intact! Even better, its lid was still on!
Perfect! Sean exclaimed mentally, sudden relief watering down his mental panic.
He clambered over to the jar as quickly as he could. The label on it was almost entirely worn off, but a fragment of the paper was still legible. Sean couldn’t tell if it was written in English or something else, he could barely make out symbols on it. If he lied to himself though, Sean could almost imagine the word on it read: “PRESERVE”. Given his currently slimed eye, utter lack of alternate options, and the fact that the contents inside appeared to be a mostly-clear liquid – that would have to be enough.
Besides, how much more can I really ask for? Sean thought, chiding himself for his own high expectations. Not like I have much choice here.
Attempting to open the lid one-handed with his still sausage-like fingers quickly proved futile. Wedging the jar between one arm and squeezing it tightly with the other made some progress, but his grip kept sliding off thanks to all this slippery ichor crap. Frustrated, Sean carefully wiped the jar on his somewhat-cleaner bare chest, then tried again.
It took far longer than he would have liked, but a hard twist later and the lid popped. Dark green flakes that had crusted the lid’s sides fluttered softly to the wet ground as he pulled the jar open.
Finally, a win.
With great satisfaction, Sean dropped his left eye into the jar of hopefully preserving liquid.It sank into the clear fluid immediately, flecks of dirt and green ichor floating off towards the surface.
Sean felt a smile attempt to stretch its way across his numb face as he twisted the jar closed once more, looking down at its contents with his last remaining eye. Maybe his luck was balancing out down here after all. Maybe he could get out of here, find a doctor and see about some kind of radical attempt at restorative surgery. Maybe they’d even be able to fix his prescription.
Or maybe this would all end up being a really terrible dream. That would be nice.
Watching his little eyeball bob around was mesmerizing now that it was safe. Sean found it odd that he could make out the orb with such clarity despite only having one eye, but he still found its slow movements in the still liquid calming.
Which is why it jolted him when his eye suddenly dissolved into nothing within the fluid. As quickly and smoothly as if it had been swallowed whole. There one moment, gone the next.
Wha--
Before Sean could even react, a new eye grew in its place - this one lacking any bloody viscera attached to it. An almost perfect sphere with a blue iris in the center. An exact replica of his own.
Suddenly a series of black-and-gold bordered prompts appeared directly in the center of his vision, heralded by an almost deafening level of celebratory shouts. A crowd of hundreds raising all of their voices together in a triumphant concert.
Congratulations! Your ocular sacrifice has been accepted and consumed. You are now flesh-bound to: Sentient Gel Slime, Level 2.
Note: As a summoned creature, additional intricacies of this link may exist, but must be discovered.
You and your bonded creature have each gained the ability: “Mental Link”. You now share a direct, mental connection with another creature! Directed thoughts can now be shared when you both are within 100 meters of one another.
Sean stared at the prompts in disbelief. He’d played video games before – who hadn’t in this day and age – and these floating displays in his vision looked… just like the prompts from one of those. Eerily similar, actually.
Much like before, this was the final straw of weirdness. Sean’s emotions spiked just as his ability to comprehend the situation broke. Only instead of an out-and-out mental breakdown, he felt something deep within his mind respond. Something he didn’t recognize.
A shiver ran through his entire body and Sean felt his rising panic vanish almost entirely in an instant. Even his surprise at the floating text in his vision felt suddenly muted, as if someone had turned the volume all the way down to one on his emotions. Cold logic replaced his terror, and Sean found himself able to consider this strange new development with a great deal more calm.
There’s a... lot to unpack here. He mused after a moment of reading through prompts once more.
His desire to freak out was still there, but it felt locked away somewhere it couldn’t touch him… and it was fading away. Without a heartbeat thudding in his chest, there wasn’t much to compound his fear.
Also… Sean thought, reconsidering the significance of the prompt’s words again as he withdrew from his introspection. At least I'm getting some information.
‘Summoned creature’, huh? The idea honestly wasn’t too hard of a pill to swallow at this point.
Looking back: Sean had woken up on what was probably a table next to a pair of disembodied voices, been summarily dumped face-first down a chute onto a huge, festering pile of rotting bodies, and his own body appeared to be actively falling apart with every passing moment. If that wasn’t enough to convince someone that there was some otherworldly-type necromancy going on, then nothing would.
Or… Sean mused. Perhaps they had simply never heard of magic.
Still… much for the whole ‘drugs’ theory. This is now officially either the best and worst dream I’ve ever had, or I really have been summoned somewhere else. Which, I mean…
It wasn’t like his life back on earth had been bad. Far from it, Sean had finally reached that point of ‘comfortable’ where each day was a relatively smooth breeze. But, if he was honest with himself, there also hadn’t been much in the way of adventure in his life. Certainly not the kind he had dreamt about as a kid, read about in books, or experienced vicariously through video games growing up. Sean had even read a few kinds of books that covered this exact sort of situation.
So, again, the prospect of starting over in a new world – especially where magic was real – wasn’t a terrible one. It might even be thrilling. Though he had to admit the start of it could have been a bit less… morbid.
Finding he could close the prompts out of his vision, or even reopen them with a thought, Sean dismissed them and shrugged.
Make it work with the world you’ve got, I suppose.
As if responding to that very statement, the eye in the jar before him moved. Looking first left, then right, then finally rolling all the way up to stare at him. A thin film of the clear liquid, thicker than the rest, washed down the front of the eye and pulled back up. If Sean hadn’t known better, he could’ve sworn the thing had just winked at him.
Sean gaped down at it. His jaw dropped so hard and fast it felt like it might fall off his face, too. He had almost forgotten thanks to the prompts, but this thing, this ‘sentient gel slime’ or whatever-- had just eaten, and then remade his eyeball. Now he was bonded to it… and it had just winked at him - with his own eye!?
Then the ‘slime’ spoke. Right into his mind. Its tone was hesitant at first, but became more self-assured as it went on.
“I uh, hate to be the slime that asks for seconds when you’ve already been so generous, but uh… you mind dropping that second eye in here? You’re clearly not using it and I’m dizzy enough trying to see stuff down here without any depth perception.”