Uuuhn…

Slowly my consciousness fades back into existence. By which I mean, I just woke up from the deepest sleep I’ve ever had. The first thing on my mind is the boy. The boy that was so suddenly and violently ripped from my arms. I try to open my eyes, but only there’s only darkness to greet me. Trying to speak up only results in an eery quiet. There’s nothing. Not even my own voice. The final straw is when I try to move. But I can’t. I can barely feel my body at all. Only parts of my head, nothing else.

If I could hyperventilate I probably would by now, but even that doesn’t work. There is nothing moving through my mouth and nose. But I am starting to panic and that is the understatement of the year. The boy has already left my mind, because I find myself in an arguably worse situation. Not that I know what his might be like, but anything seems better than being trapped in some coma/paralysation bullshit.

Alright Ellen, calm down. Gather your wits. Panicking will get you nowhere. I’d slap my cheeks if I could, and strangely enough something does seem to brush past my face. I can’t quite make out where exactly, but it seems to be directly under my right eye. I try to slap my face again, and once again I faintly feel something stroke passed it.

Okay, pretty sure that is my arm. Which would mean I’m not completely paralyzed. It feels really weird though, like someone else stroking along your leg while it’s asleep. But knowing that I’m not comatose or paralyzed really calms me down. It calms me down so much, that I’m starting to feel sleepy again. And what’s the harm? I’m probably just in a hospital bed, my parents right by my side, being relieved that I finally moved.

With that in mind I drift back to sleep.

--

Hmmmmmm, now that was a nice nap. I stretch my arms and legs, trying to get that morning stiffness out, but make contact with some kind of shell. That’s way different than the soft bedsheets I was expecting. That alone would be some cause for concern, but a shell being around me is not the most of my current problems. The thing that’s concerning most at the moment is that my little stretch came pared with eight more limbs than it was supposed to.

What the Fuck!?!!?

I immediately recoil and pull my limbs back. Twelve limbs hit my belly, but not just my belly. They also hit something hard and pointy, which is apparently my mouth, going by the limbs I now feel moving around my mouth. I open my eyes, but there is still nothing there. Only a profound darkness. I quickly reach for my eyes and feel two limbs slap into my wide open eyes.

Aaauww!!

I snap my eyes shut and quickly start rubbing them with my hands. But no hands are rubbing my eyes. In their stead are a pair of tentacle like appendage writhing across both my eyes. This is the strangest feeling I’ve ever experienced, but it also somehow feels kinda nice, so I’m going to keep rubbing for a little bit. As weird as this overall situation is, the soft and warm liquid all around me combined with the rubbing of my eyes is quite the pleasant experience. Still.

I stay like that for a while, gently floating in my isolated confinement. The only thing that accompanies me is the silent beating of my heart. At least there something that’s familiar. After a good while of just vibing I can feel something amazing begin to happen within my body. With every beat of my heart, some kind of pulse quickly follows it, spreading right from the middle of my body and then outward. At first it is weak, barely noticeable. But with every pulse it becomes stronger. As time goes on the pulses reach further and further, slowly mapping out my body until they reach the skin. There it abruptly stops, but it does go an to map my body further, slowly spreading across my back and along my tentacles until they reach the tips.

Every pulse now goes through my entire body. It almost behaves like a scan. Wait, it actually is a scan! If I look at those pulses I can clearly see the outline of my body, even the outline within my mouth and throat? Something like a throat at least. Well, I’m not exactly seeing the outline. It’s somehow making a coherent picture within my mind. I can clearly see what’s where, as far as even the tiny teeth within my suckers, which I now have apparently. I have hundreds of them even, spread over eight of my tentacles.

Speaking of tentacles, I can now make out clear differences between them. I have two with their base right beside my mouth. They’re the once that I’ve basically been using as arms, cause they’re the once that react when I try to move, well, my arms. They’re way longer and thinner than the other ten, and they’re way less stiff. Like, I can fluidly move them around, even make little waves like ~~~~~~ that.

The two other tentacles in front of me are basically the opposite. They’re thick, stiff, and seem overall way more powerful than the others. I have a hunch that they’re especially good at grabbing things. That leaves the other eight, which are essentially the middle road between my other two pairs. They’re shorter than either other pair, but they are way more flexible than the front pair, but less flexible than the arm pair. Together with the thick pair in front of me they form a circle around my mouth and arm pair.

I guess that seals it. I’ve reincarnated. As a squid, or an octopus. I’m pretty sure neither of them have twelve tentacles, though, so I’m going with a combo. The Squoctopus, trademark pending. I’m sure neither the squid or octopus have a mouth like mine. It’s basically a beak acting like a gate for a circular maw full of teeth. Precisely like the Kraken from pirates when it chomps on Captain Jack Sparrow, only mine is covered with a beak that is acting like a gateway to that toothy hell. Only I get to see the full picture, because I’m not looking at it from the outside, but rather with this strange sight which doesn’t leave out any detail. Unless I stop focussing on it, so I do that.

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The pulses steadily slow down, along with my heartrate. Actually, I’m not sure any longer that that is my heart. I didn’t see one just now with the scan anyway, nor any other internal organs except for my mouth and throat. And that was disgusting enough, so no. No more of that for now.

On the other hand, maybe I can send that pulse out, get a clear picture of my prison/egg, cause by now I’m pretty sure it is an egg. I focus back on the pulse, which is still slowly going. I focus back on it and as soon as I do I can feel it speeding up again. It spreads faster this time, so I gotta be quick if I don’t want to get traumatized any further by my very own toothy monstrosity. I sort of try to will the pulses toward my front tentacles. Legs? Let’s call them my front legs for now. That little laps in focus almost made me see the thing I really don’t want to see, so I quickly grab that focus back and will the pulse towards my front legs. And it actually works! All of it moves towards the front and steadily starts to pool within my front legs.

…

Okay, what do I do now?! The pulses of energy are pilling up a bit too much for my taste. They’re actually starting to heat up. So much so that it’s beginning to hurt. A lot. I need to get rid of it, but it won’t leave my tentacles. And sending all this energy back into my body seems like an amazingly bad idea. Maybe it works like electricity, going from some negative pole to a positive one. Nah, that would have worked a long time ago. Unless, the water is isolating it?

I slowly reach forward with my right front leg towards the shell of the egg and the moment I touch it, all the energy of the pulses shoot into the eggshell. It happens so violently that a shockwave is released within the egg, almost knocking me out. It doesn’t though, and I can clearly feel the energy that has entered the shell. Only for a split second do I see the entirety of the egg, then it’s all gone, just as all the energy within both my front legs, leaving the right leg frail and painful. It actually seems to have shrunk a bit.

Auw.

What the hell was that?! They could’ve given me a warning label, but no. Experiment at your own discretion, Ellen, even if it’s dangerous!! So it does work like electricity somewhat. Build a charge and as soon as there is contact, BANG!!! I guess that’s good to know, and something to watch out fo… Wait. Cold?

A sudden cold flow right in front of me brings me out of my little internal rant. The cold quickly spreads around me, pushing away the warm liquid that was comforting me, until my surroundings are of an even, chilly temperature. Did, did I pierce the shell? I mean, I must have with the shockwave and all, but this went way to quick for a small hole.

I warily move one of my arms forward, passing right by where I would expect the shell to be. But there is nothing. I move the tentacle around, trying to find the edge. But the only thing I feel is sand. No shell, only sand and what must be water. And a few rocks. And something squishy? As I move my arm over the sand to feel my way around and, honestly, to feel something else again, I feel something squish, but quite familiar. It feels exactly like the eggshell, but it’s in the form of a bowl. And it can fit in my little tentatip.

That’s all that remains of my egg, just a small sliver of shell. So for now, no super front leg annihilation beam. Way too dangerous. That little surprise attack does now leave me somewhat in the open. The little hollow that my egg was in was not very deep, and the sides are already beginning to collapse.

How do I know? Well, some part just buried my behind, which startled me (only a little) and made me shoot up. And now I’m completely blind of my surroundings. There’s only me, nothing else in a wet, black abyss. Who knows what else it out there in that darkness. I sure don’t, and it’s starting to terrify me. So I do the only thing my smart squidly brain can come up with, which is turn around and smash full speed back into the sand. At least here there’s some modicum of reality, unlike up there. I could’ve gone down a little gentler, though. Auw. Note for future self, I guess.

I let myself settle down again. Panicking won’t help me. It hasn’t in the past and it won’t now. I just need a moment to familiarize myself to my, once again, changed environment. I really hope this doesn’t become something consistent, but that may be some false hope. Ah well. Always better than no hope.

With that in mind I slowly manoeuvre my new body across the floor, by which I mean, dragging it along with my arms. I have by far the most control over them. My two front legs are still sore, and I don’t have any control yet over the other eight. I tried, they just flail around. You try moving your left hand in circles while moving your right up and down. Any normal person won’t be able to do that. Not without trying for a while, at least. And then multiple that four times. That’s what I’m dealing with right now. So for now it’s the dragging life for me. I do try to move them a little though. Just enough that it seems they help, and just little enough to not become a burden. #Me in any group project. Yeah, that’s not something to be proud of but some people just don’t work well in groups.

Anyway, the dragging life. It isn’t going that well. Not as well as I hoped. The backlash of the blast has left me somewhat tired. But slowly the soreness in my front legs is going away and my right leg is gaining it’s former shape, which eases some of the worry I still carried. So that is great. What’s not so great is, I seem to be trapped yet again. A shell within a shell. Shellception. BWAAAAAPH.

Well, not really a shell within a shell. I was in an egg, which was in a hollow of some rock. And something else. I have no idea what that something else is, I only know it’s covering the entirety of this little hollow, leaving no way in or out. At least none that I found. I can maybe blast it, but I’m not finished recovering from the last one. I’m not sure leaving me in any worse state is smart. I’m personally leaning towards not smart.

What I can try to do, and my plan for now was, is try to reproduce the initial stages of the blast. But this time make contact with the target from the beginning so the energy has somewhere to go. Once more I focus on the pulsing, slowly speeding it up and guiding it into my arms this time. I’m not sure my front legs can receive another such beating. But that worry seems unfounded, because the pulse passes nicely through my arms and up into whatever my new roof is made out of.

With every pulse my sight into it extends, but there is no end. This is not some thin shell covering me. Whatever this is, it is absolutely huge. It’s spread out far in every direction. I pump even more energy into the thing, but that solves nothing. It only speeds up the rate at which I’m tiring.

Without having reached the end of the thing I have to give up. Any more and I’ll faint, and that is something I’d rather avoid, since my last faint didn’t turn out quite so well for me. I retract my arms and slow down the pulse. For some time I can still feel some if the pulses within the thing above, but they quickly simmer down before disappearing entirely.

I sag myself back to the floor of my hollow. With a final bit of energy I try sending a pulse into the sand. But the energy remains within my tentacle extremely similar to my first try, so I immediately stop trying that. Got it. Immaterial doesn’t seem to work. But the shell did work. Maybe it only works on something organic? Which would mean the thing up there….

I refuse to look up. If that is an organism, than I’m screwed, so just don’t think about it. I do think I’ll be stuck here for a while. The only thing dangerous down here other than myself seems to be the thing above me, but as long as that remains dormant I should be safe here. I do hope I don’t get hungry too quickly though….