2 — Twisted
----------------------------------------
For a long time after his vision faded to nothingness, the universe was still and silent. The concepts of “sense,” of “self,” nearly lost their meaning in all that entropy. But out of a vague sense of possessiveness, he tugged them back from the void’s maw. The void’s… maw? Yes, this darkness had teeth! Twisted, gnashing, serrated teeth trying to pull him apart strand by strand. By comparison, his were dull, crooked things more suited to crushing plants than piercing flesh. Every time the void tore into him, he had to scramble to dislodge its fangs, clacking his own against them to limited effect. On a whim, he eventually started trying to keep count of how many times he warded off the void. However, he ran out of words to describe the number after “duodecillion.”
Then suddenly, the darkness fell away. Replacing it were stars of impossible colors, countless beyond even the void’s teeth. Some stars burned their images into his being, while others tried to hide from sight entirely. Beyond just their visage, each star impressed a distinct feeling on his other senses, including some he hadn’t known about before. There was a periwinkle star orbiting a pearly-gold one in a binary system that smelled like freshly fallen snow, and a lone blue star that sounded like an ocean breeze. So vast and varied were the stars — so utterly beyond his comprehension were they — that those were the only two stars in the entire sky that he could describe out of the myriad he’d witnessed.
And before he could even scratch the surface, everything vanished once again. A different void enveloped him, and this one was distinctly white. There were no impossible colors, no utter absences in his view, only white. Nothing tried to bite him or grab his attention. He just sat there.
Inert.
Waiting.
…
Boredom ensued.
So much, in fact, that he began to feel annoyed.
Then, the most amazing thing happened.
He had a thought!
… Hrm.
Lacking though his eloquence was, that singular thought proved enough to cause a change; ink-black words thundered through his mind shortly after.
Conscious thought detected. Soul not previously integrated.
If one is possessed, state your name or designation.
My…?
It took him a good, long while to remember what a “name” was.
It was even longer before he remembered what his was.
… Cain Peyton.
Name confirmed. Generating body.
Huh…?
The universe ignored his question and changed once again.
----------------------------------------
Wakefulness came abruptly.
Where moments ago there was nothing, there now lay a thrashing body, confusedly gasping for air as though it had never breathed before. Confusion rapidly mounted, but the panic receded. It began breathing somewhat normally again, and used its hands to take stock of itself. Torso, legs, face… and, ah, he had no clothes. He did not like that at all. Too exposed… but to what? Where was he? He sat up as fast as he dared, taking stock of his surroundings.
I’m in a forest?
[ Reincarnation complete. ]
The entity “Cain Peyton” has been deposited at a random survivable location.
The entity has been inoculated against local common pathogens.
Knowledge of first encountered local language will be supplied.
The words simply floated in his vision. And as Cain stared at the cold, uncaring hallucination, he remembered. He remembered floating through a peerless void, remembered the sea of indescribable stars, remembered the white space. Suddenly, he was keenly aware that he’d experienced all this with no body, no brain. If he had experienced it bodily, he was sure that the sheer amount of time he’d spent in those in-between spaces would have driven him insane. The word “duodecillion” echoed in his skull, the weight of time immeasurable weighing on him like a physical force. And then, finally, he came to the most chilling revelation of them all.
I died.
He died, and the universe had laughed and called it a prologue.
None of it mattered.
He could kill himself again, and it still wouldn’t matter. He would just wake up after another short eternity.
The forest around him was dead and dry. The air was cold and still.
The words of whatever distant god was responsible winked out of view.
Not a single bird sang. Not a single voice reassured him.
Cain did the only thing a person can do when utterly bereft of purpose.
He picked a direction and started walking.
----------------------------------------
When an existential crisis constantly loomed at the edge of one’s mind, distractions were welcome.
[ Tidbit Unlocked : “Entropic Biome” ]
This area has been tainted by the influence of Entropy.
Any manner of twisted creatures may reside here, but one thing is certain:
The living are not welcome.
Sadly, this particular distraction only added to Cain’s pile of worries. Seemingly at random, he’d begun to feel a horrible itch on the back of his head, before finding inky-black words worming their way into his mind’s eye again. That — he hesitated to call it a voice — that had been projecting words into his mind claimed to have reincarnated him somewhere survivable. And yet, this newest revelation explicitly stated that the area he was… ‘spawned’ in… was hostile to living things. Like himself, apparently. And the more he looked around, the more convinced he was that this forest indeed hated life. Trees all but crumbled to dust at his touch; if the air weren’t so deathly still, they might have blown away on the wind. Grassroots and vegetation gave beneath his feet, but somehow made scarcely a sound. Calling it a forest really was a misnomer — there were no trees here, only husks.
The canopy would have been easy to see the sun through, but there’s too much cloud cover.
Orienting himself to any particular cardinal direction would be challenging. Cain was rather certain he needed to make it out of wherever this was — the utter silence put him on edge — but had no way of knowing which way to go to that end.
The only plausible option, really, is to just keep walking as I’ve been.
The thought irked him, teasing him with his own powerlessness.
The leaves on the ground irked him, dry, yet stubbornly refusing to crunch.
The occasional creeks irked him, moving at a glacial pace and bearing similar temperature, but refusing to freeze.
The clouds in the sky irked him, defiantly refusing to let him discern any meaningful directions.
The whole damned ‘forest’ just irked him something terrible, really.
Almost enough to distract from the hairs that rose on his arms.
Creeeeaaaaak-k-k…
A dry groan sounded from somewhere behind him, freezing him in place on sheer instinct. The sound was almost wooden, but very distinctly not, being punctuated with much more organic sounds; the dull popping of stiff joints being flexed, slotting into their proper place between the bones. After that, there were no more sounds for several tense moments. The dead silence loomed heavy over Cain’s head, and the air seemed to grow imperceptibly stiller to match. He was almost convinced he felt a presence inching closer, but surely, he must have been imagining it! Right? Right…?
…
The faintest of breezes brushed the hairs on the back of his neck.
Adrenaline gripped him with all the tenacity of a professional rock climber, and he threw himself aside.
SNAP.
The calcified clack of a sharp set of teeth sounded out at what was really quite a reasonable volume. After the pervading hush of the forest, though, the noise rang in his ears like a gunshot. Cain staggered to his feet and took off at a sprint, not daring to look behind him. He couldn’t hear any footsteps following him — he could barely hear his own — but once again inexplicably felt that something was coming closer. This time, when the hairs on his neck stood on end and screamed ‘danger!’, he didn’t think twice before diving out of the way.
SNAP.
He got a brief look at his pursuer before he started running again, and it was almost enough to freeze him in place. Its form was long, lanky, and visibly emaciated. Its torso and limbs looked somewhat human, but the illusion was broken by the uncanny proportions and the gnarled claws at the end of each digit. The head appeared slightly canine, with an angular skull and fleshy ears dangling from the sides, but the jaws were completely wrong. Instead of a long snout, it had a wide, rounded mouth like a shark’s, with teeth to match. Instead of an empty maw or a long, flat tongue, it had a thin, snakelike one that hung limply from a gap in its frontal teeth. The eyes were truly black. Not the jet-black that leaves a glossy sheen, but well and truly black. The sockets seemed utterly devoid of all light, and looking at them burned his brain. They almost reminded him of sunspots.
As the nightmarish creature pursued, a pattern emerged.
He ran until his lungs screamed for air.
He dodged at the last possible moment.
SNAP.
Run.
Dodge.
SNAP.
He ran.
He dodged.
SNAP.
Over and over. All too quickly, Cain’s stamina dwindled, while the monster in pursuit seemed divorced from the very concept. Its movements were jerky and mechanical — inflexible, but efficient, as it mindlessly repeated the exact same motions it knew. Over and over.
Run.
Dodge.
SNAP.
Cain knew that running wouldn’t be enough to save him. In a war of attrition against whatever that was, he would always lose. As the landscape around him became slightly more varied, he realized his only hope was to somehow find someplace that the creature couldn't pursue him. The dead trees grew slightly farther apart, and more and more rocks littered the ground. Occasional half-step ridges jutted from the soil, and the ground grew firmer.
As the burden on his legs grew greater, Cain knew he was heading uphill, however gradually — and with the high ground came the promise of safety. Despite the mounting exhaustion in his muscles, he did everything he could to steer himself onto the path of greatest resistance. Presumably, the terrain would get even rockier as he followed the slope; his chances of finding cover would increase, and his assailant would be slowed, however little.
His instincts screamed at him with renewed urgency, and he readied himself to—
Snip.
He cried out in pain, wasting precious oxygen as his left hand was cleanly sliced away. That single wasted breath let his fatigue grow even worse, compounding with the rapidly mounting effects of blood loss. Instead of aiming for his neck, the creature had aimed for a less essential body part in order to prevent Cain from dodging. The only respite he received was from his pursuer briefly slowing to chew his hand. Unsurprisingly, it was of little comfort.
Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.
Run.
Cain forced himself to speed up further, using the pain of the sudden dismemberment to ignore the pain in his legs. He needed every iota of speed he could possibly get, or he risked having another bite taken out of him. The spike of adrenaline he’d received helped a little, but it still wasn’t enough. He simply wasn’t getting enough oxygen anymore. He grew increasingly lightheaded as the seconds wore on, and no breath was deep enough to fill his lungs. All too soon, he began slowing down involuntarily, as his muscles became fully incapable of keeping up with his demands. His vision became blurrier and darker as he felt the presence loom closer and closer.
Run!
Just a short ways ahead, his sole hope of survival revealed itself. A narrow ditch in the rocky ground.
Just run a little farther…
The hairs on the back of his neck started to stand up. At the last moment, he leapt for it.
Snip.
----------------------------------------
Cain had bought himself a minute of life, at best. The beast couldn’t twist its wide jaws to reach the bottom of the ditch he now lied in, but blood still poured from two stumps that had once been a hand and a foot. Only a singular lifeline remained.
[ Tidbit Unlocked : “Entropic Wounds” ]
A wound left by a creature corrupted by Entropy.
Entropic wounds will drain mana and interfere with natural healing.
Such wounds are highly difficult to remove without the use of magic.
It was exactly what it looked like; his last hope was magic. He somehow had to figure out how to cast magic in the short window before he bled out. ‘Survivable,’ my ass. His only leads at the moment were the wounds themselves. Magic was presumably fueled by mana, which his apparently magical injuries were draining. If he could use that to isolate mana, making his survival into a game of magical algebra, then he might be able to figure out how to use it. As far as plans went, it wasn’t one, but it was all Cain had.
For several seconds, he made his best mockery of meditation, trying to ignore his imminent death. Alas, it was utterly futile. Even beyond the blinding pain of his severed appendages, an unnatural chill gnawed at the injuries. Wait, maybe that’s the mana drain! If the creeping cold in his injured limbs was truly the feeling of mana loss, his chances had just improved the slightest bit. He spent the next several seconds trying to feel the presence of mana, using his wounds as a point of reference. If the mana drain feels cold, mana itself probably feels inherently warm, right? My chest feels like it’s on fire, even though that’s probably just the exhaustion.
As his vision dimmed further, Cain attempted the exact type of fanciful, stereotypical magical bullshit that one would expect from a fantasy world. He tried to focus on the warmth of his beating heart, drawing it out through his blood to the bleeding limbs. To his surprise, the ominous chill was pushed back — but he continued to bleed.
All that did was restore mana to the drained area. I haven’t actually cast anything. Shit!
Next, he just took his best guess at how magic worked, and tried simply willing his wounds to heal. Surprisingly, it helped a little — the bleeding slowed slightly, and some of the pain receded. But it wasn’t enough. He had to give more specific guidance than just ‘heal me!’, apparently. Cain tried focusing more clearly on what he needed for the second attempt: a new layer of skin over the limbs that could stop him from losing more blood.
It was agonizingly slow compared to the rate he was still bleeding that, but as Cain watched, his first ever spell began to form. If he were more adept at perceiving his mana, he would likely marvel at what a mess of a cast it was, but circumstances had not permitted him ample practice. Instead, he watched in morbid fascination as the raw flesh at the end of his left arm bubbled, gradually forming a thin layer of fresh skin. A burning sensation told him that the same thing was happening to his missing foot. Watching the equivalent of blowing bubbles through a straw happen to his own body was uniquely revolting, but he just couldn’t stop looking.
If I can fully regrow the hand eventually, maybe I can pull some stunts straight out of Parasyte.
He blinked as his train of thought screeched to a halt.
… I’m… a little impressed at myself for likening this to a horror anime.
The absurdity of his situation, and of his response, sent Cain into a small fit of giggles. His oxygen-starved brain certainly wasn’t helping. Or maybe I can make a little hand minion thing, like Thing from the Addams Family…
“Hah… aha!”
The entropic husk watched from above like a statue as Cain, drenched in his own blood, laughed himself to sleep.
----------------------------------------
When Cain woke up, the notion that any of his recent experiences could have possibly been a delirious dream was immediately shattered. Staring directly at him were two eyes so wholly black that they hurt to look at for too long. The air was thick with the smell of iron. His throat felt dry and distinctly not fleshy; his nose felt the same, and every breath he took carried a gentle sting with it, all the way down to his lungs. His legs were sorer than a hungry toddler’s attitude, and felt fifty pounds heavier than they normally did. He shifted a little to scratch a minor itch on his side — and received a fresh jolt of adrenaline when his left hand refused to respond.
Fuck, I forgot about that.
Feeling a fleshy stub bump into his side when he’d been expecting his own fingers made him nearly jump out of his freshly regrown skin.
Right… magic. That thing seems content to sit there, so I should probably experiment while I can.
With a wary glance at the beast — its features were so odd he was having trouble making up a name for it — Cain started trying to replicate his earlier miracle. However, his mana proved frustratingly elusive — without the stark chill of mana drain to provide contrast, it was difficult to pick out the feeling of mana from his natural body heat. With enough time and concentration, he was sure it was manageable, but there was a giant murderous magic beast standing over him. It was not an environment conducive to concentration.
In a moment of frustration, Cain reached his good hand out towards the beast — though not too far — and imagined frying it with lightning like Palpatine. The attempt on my life has left me scarred and deformed, but my resolve has never been stronger!
“Agh! What the…?”
A jolt shot through his nerves as electricity arced momentarily between his fingers. The tips had been burned, and there were already boils forming, but he had nonetheless succeeded in creating lightning from his fingertips. As Cain examined the film of dead skin hanging from his fingers, he had an exciting realization.
I don’t need to be actively focusing on my mana to cast spells. I can just do it.
After a few moments of reining in his focus, he felt the skin on his fingertips regrow under the dead layer. It took several long seconds, but the pain from the electric burns receded to a mere lingering sensitivity of his nerves. He flexed the newly unharmed digits in wonder, and perhaps a bit of repulsion as the dead skin fell off from the weight of the fluids underneath.
On the bright side, chances are my disability will only be temporary.
He turned to the culprit, a malicious gleam in his eyes.
On the brighter side, vengeance shall be swift.
Despite his excitement, Cain recognized that if his vengeance were to be too swift, he would burn his hands — er, hand, again. It would be better to practice with less dangerous magic before going full Revenge of the Sith mode. Preferably something that would also have some immediate use. ‘Water’ and ‘earth’ type magic had promise for utility and defense, respectively. After a terribly painful coughing fit, however, he settled on water.
He had an easier time falling back into focus without a hand full of fried nerves, and achieved success with surprising ease. In only a handful of seconds, clear water was steadily streaming from his palm — like a water fountain without the taste of metal and mold. Cain took several minutes to drink the miraculous fluid, stopping only when he could hear it slosh in his gut when he moved. After that, he spent some time going over all the caked blood that had dried onto his skin, rubbing all but the faintest tinge of red away.
Right. That was nice. Now, some proper wizard shit.
Cain restarted the spell, but instead of letting the water follow gravity’s whims, he tried to continue manipulating it after it had manifested. It was a solid step up in difficulty from simply creating water and letting natural law handle the rest, and if he tried to move it too fast he would lose control. Interestingly, he found he could alter the state of the water as well. He was able to shift the concentration of energy within his geometrically incorrect orb, creating portions that boiled off into steam while others froze solid. Trying to control several different states of water that were never meant to be in such close proximity proved too much of a challenge, though. He quickly had to toss the orb to the side before he dropped boiling water on himself.
So, it looks like trying to control lightning right now would go poorly.
He momentarily set aside his dreams of becoming a Sith Lord. The galaxy would have to wait.
Instead, Cain worked on his control of the conjured water. He made his goal to move it faster and faster, perhaps at the cost of some precision. If it proves impossible to aim, I’ll just kick myself later. Though it took what felt like hours under the watchful gaze of his admirer, he eventually got the hang of propelling the water at roughly the speed he’d expect of water-based spells — operating under video game logic, of course. He pegged it at around the speed of a slower arrow, one designed more for ease of use than effective range. He didn’t know much about archery, but understood that there was plenty of variety in the types of bows and arrows that were used throughout history. A hunter and a soldier would likely need different arrowheads.
He launched his little water-bolt at a rock face jutting from the side of his ditch. It soaked the stone with a satisfying splat.
Not the most powerful, but enough to knock an unsuspecting neighbor on their ass. Cain smiled.
He had never been under any illusion that he’d be able to exert substantial enough force to truly injure anything with his water-bolt. He was, after all, a total amateur at magic. No, the real kick to the spell would come from a trick he found just earlier. By manipulating the water’s temperature, it would be laughably easy to turn a harmless splash into a cruel weapon.
As he tried to arm a newly-formed water-bolt, however, something unexpected happened. He was trying to raise the temperature to a boil, but the water was resisting him for some reason. Cain felt a chill in his gut that indicated the effort was costing him mana, and let the water splash down harmlessly. It slid off his skin in lukewarm streams.
Oh, I think I see the problem.
Cain summoned a larger mass of water and made another attempt. This time, he wasn’t trying to raise the overall temperature. Instead, he just shifted the energy from one half of the particles to the other. The result was a crackling lump of ice and a hissing glob of water. I guess conservation of energy still applies… sort of. He found that he was able to revert the change, too, by moving the energy in the opposite direction to restore the water to a cool, natural state. Frowning, he contemplated how he could best make use of the water if he had to work with both ends of the spectrum.
Well… oh. Oh… alright, that… would probably be a war crime.
The husk stared blankly at him.
— And thirdly, the code is more what you’d call guidelines than actual rules…
----------------------------------------
Cain hobbled through the cursed forest, cackling.
Behind him trailed an excess of thin, icy needles, enough to properly ventilate a small house, he reckoned. Whenever a new threat presented itself, he simply conjured more of his new favorite spell. A thick, hollow spike of ice would slam into anything that dared approach with bared teeth. The front of the spike was made of thinner ice.
Creeeaaa—
Crack.
Whenever the deadly projectile made contact, the outer shell crumbled from the front, and highly pressurized steam exploded outward from the point of impact. He had made a rudimentary explosive round. The magic seemed to be attracting more monsters, but now Cain had a way to put them down. It turned out that the things chasing him came in many different shapes, though. Some even looked like regular animals; deer, foxes, rabbits and birds had all appeared to attack him, all sporting the same black eyes and emaciated frame. The smaller critters he simply shredded with the smaller icicles — after shaping each frost missile, he had a certain amount of ice leftover to repurpose into less deadly projectiles.
If only I could’ve figured this out earlier, I might still have both hands.
But while the trees had thinned and the terrain had grown steeper, Cain wasn’t out of the woods yet. Entropic monsters still regularly came after him, even if he could see them coming from farther now. Vaporizing his enemies into clouds of gore made for an intoxicating sense of power, certainly… but the creeping cold beginning to form in his chest told him it wouldn’t last forever. He needed to find a proper shelter, and unfortunately, his absent foot wasn’t great for walking on.
Not to mention, my balance feels way off…
Losing body parts wasn’t very fun. Cain turned a vaguely feline creature into conspicuously bloodless confetti to take his mind off of it. Their total lack of internal organs is almost as disturbing as the alternatives, honestly. He sent the extra icicles to join the flurry at his back. Less vomit-inducing, though, so no complaints. He stumbled slightly and let some of the weight fall on his good hand. He craned his neck, twisting to look behind himself.
Still clear, for now.
For hours, the slow climb continued, as Cain sank deeper into the ephemeral chill of mana loss. The sky began turning pink to his left, giving him a vague sense of where ‘west’ was. The clouds still obscured the exact position of the sun, so he couldn’t get more than a guess at the other cardinal directions. The monster attacks had finally begun to grow scarcer as he fully left the forest behind, which made the journey move faster while feeling slower. Cain found he welcomed it anyway.
Won’t complain about not losing any more of my extremities.
Being able to create water from thin air had helped with the blood loss, but the ordeal had still left him drained. Especially now that the adrenaline high of constant combat was being allowed to leave him, his limbs felt increasingly leaden. Meanwhile, the foothills he was climbing only grew steeper — because yes, he had spotted a mountain on the horizon after leaving the corrupted woodlands fully, and this was apparently its base. Fortunately, his prospects at finding a serviceable shelter had improved a good deal; Cain had already spotted a couple small hollows in the rock. The only reason he hadn’t settled down in one was their size. If he picked an area that was too small, he worried he might run suffocate in his sleep were he to seal himself in with ice.
And I’m not keen on sleeping in the open.
Shivering, Cain limped onwards.
----------------------------------------
True dusk had begun to fall.
Long shadows stretched across the landscape, weaving a spiderweb of light and dark from the rocky terrain. The clouds had finally started breaking up; tufts of white, pink, and gold floated above him like ice floes. Occasionally, a sharp, mournful cry would echo down from the mountain — the first proper sign of life Cain had seen. The mountain itself was like something out of a movie; one face was cast in dramatic red hues, while the other remained ensconced in shadows. It was a level of natural beauty he’d never been able to see in person before.
I bet Lily would have loved this. Minus the monsters, of course.
That was… a saddening thought. He’d never get to see his sister again. Never get to show her this.
With how our parents were acting, that would probably have been the case anyway.
Cain sat himself down on a mostly flat rock with only minor difficulty. A deep ache permeated his body, a reminder of the day he’d had.
At least it’s a lovely view up here.
North, right in his path, was a snow-capped mountain that radiated grandeur. If, for some reason, he wanted to scale it, there was a small patch of hardy pines that had taken root along the base — actual, living trees this time. West, beneath the setting sun, was a river that wound off into the distance, cutting through a great, rippling, grassy wasteland. East, halfway cast in shadow by the mountain, was an expanse of rolling hills, lightly speckled with trees and shrubs.
And to the south, all was grey. Trees that should have been magnificent were stripped bare, devoid of all vibrancy. No critters scurried about, no branches swayed in the wind. The dwindling sunlight seemed to want to avoid that place; where Cain had come from, only death could be found.
Totally unrelated to me, of course. It was like that when I got there, I swear!
Even in his head, the words were spoken in an ironic tone — force of habit, he assumed.
This… feels kind of strange, actually.
As Captain Obvious made his appearance, Cain reflected.
I killed myself.
That happened.
My immortal soul had some kind of freaky fever dream.
Checks out.
I woke up in… some flavor of zombie forest.
So far, so good.
Nearly died again, leaned how to do magic…
Uh-huh.
And kept running until… I got here.
Cain gave himself a pat on the back; he’d correctly restated previous events in a much dumber way!
Cut the snark, I’m trying to think.
And now, the poor guy was just talking to himself. Alone on his little hill.
I said cut it out.
Why on this godless gray earth would he do that? Cain needed some company, if he were to insist on isolating himself.
There’s literally nobody around! Just… shut the fuck up already!
That’s no way to speak to yourself, Cain.
“Will you let me have a moment of peace for once in my goddamn life?!”
Of course I won’t. You’re just twisted like that.
…
Cain made himself comfortable, deciding not to bother with searching for a cave. He drew upon the dregs of mana that remained of his original supply, and started to build up walls of ice to form a dome around himself. The boiling water was cast away, a useless byproduct. After minutes of creating water from nothing, the temporary structure was complete. A small hole in the roof permitted air to escape, and the magical frost encasing him would keep him safe. He curled up on his side to control the shivering.
I wonder…
“What is it now?”
Maybe killing yourself with magic will destroy your soul too?
“Ugh.”
…
He felt colder than when he had died.