I fall into the chasm for only a few dozen meters before I am swept up in another pulse.

The force propels me almost immediately into a spiraling stone arm parallel with one of the levels below. I strike center with my chest, ribs bending and breath forced out into the storm I ride.

But with my impact, the stone is sent off angle. Some unseen tether bends and snaps, and the entire structure crumbles as if it were a length of hollow chalk. The debris falls ahead of me, pulled by its weight into the depths of the shaft. It impacts another constellation of stone far below, shattering it instantly and growing in size. Each layer adds to the onslaught and soon I chase behind a crushing wave of gnashing rubble that consumes all in its path.

The stone roils, and the walls begin to shed pillars of their own as the descent carves through the passage. Boulders are cast like droplets from all around my descent, and it is not long before one intersects my path. It strikes a glancing blow against my forehead, and I am blinded by the force. My ears ring as I push past the pain. Blood flows above my fall as a scarlet trail, and I pull myself into a fetal position to protect against further impact.

With my face against my knees I am blind to the chaos that carries me, but am at its mercy all the same. Another wayward fragment collides with me and sends my careening towards the chasm walls.

I impact, and the shock sends me into darkness yet again.

What providence spared me from my inevitable fate, I cannot know. Perhaps the wave of dust somehow cushioned my fall? Perhaps I was favored by impossible luck? Perhaps some grand architect saw fit to pluck me from the cataclysm and alter my course whilst I was senseless to the world.

How I survived, ultimately, is unimportant.

All I know is that when at last I awaken, eyes fluttering in the still swirling dust, it is after the destruction has ceased.

Though my survival is only just.

I lie broken and shattered. Any recovery lingering from the wheeled titan has been thoroughly undone. Bone punctures through my left thigh, and my right arm is folded beneath my back far beyond what my muscles should allow. I attempt to move and my chest explodes with pain. When my body reflexively takes in a shallow breath, I find my lungs no longer have the tolerance to hold air and cough from the feeling of suffocation. The coughing fit exacerbates the pain, and the vicious feedback makes me faint mere moments after I have awoken.

I regain consciousness and am more measured in my approach. With slow, agonizing precision I extract my arm from beneath my back. My shoulder pops and grinds in its socket. When free, my arm hangs limp and worthless, its defining bone structure reduced to gravel and gel. I position my leg straight, submerging the extruding bone back beneath the pool of blood that wells in the gaping wound.

Tears flow freely, and only the fear of pain from further movement prevents me from losing control entirely. I bite my tongue and copper fills my mouth.

I barely manage to bring myself upright, and with no strength to move further, I resign to leaning against the slight incline I have landed upon.

I hold myself entirely still and try to center my thoughts. I focus on my surroundings to distract me from the pain.

The room is dim, but still illuminated by the consistent glow from the walls, though here it is faded and diminished, as if shining through a film of grime. The tunnel I fell through yawns into darkness above me, light gone completely in the path of my descent, and the rubble I followed is nowhere to be seen. Instead I lie on a surface of solid stone, though with frequent changing elevation as if the room had been cast from a mold of tumultuous waters.

I examine the stone and with dawning horror realize it is patterned and marked. At first I believe it to be pareidolia of my anguished mind, but the suggestions within the rock are too consistent to be coincidence. The outlines of bodies and faces, blurred and melted into a single tapestry of death.

I wonder at first if they are the remains of my mirror twins from the chasm above, but they are of varying age, gender, definition. Some are stretched and distorted in cartoonish exaggeration, others fractured and broken, lacking faces or limbs, only recognizable as humanoid by the proximity to their neighbors. Whatever purpose this charnel pit serves, I have had no grand contribution in its formation.

I then realize it does not matter how or why this place exists as it does. It fittingly resembles a mass grave, and I am soon to join its number.

I reflect on my aimless journey thus far. Guided by inscrutable monsters into deeper and deeper waters, with no goal in mind. I call myself scholar? Pathetic. I am merely a doe-eyed wanderer in this nightmare, to be captured and devoured by its fathomless depths.

What purpose did I hope to find here? What use would recounting my experiences have, even if I should return to waking? I would be executed, or worse, committed as Void-poisoned lunatic to isolation vault on some dark asteroid.

This was no experiment. This was no revolutionary idea. This was a desperate attempt by a failed academic to gain renown.

I have sent my mind to die for this pointless communion.

I suddenly remember that I am not actually here. Not physically, at least. The sensation of this dream-form has been so perfect, so parallel to the world of waking that I easily forgot I am merely an avatar and my corporeal vessel still remains in the world beyond the dream.

Perhaps there is still a chance for me to be saved? Though without knowing how perception of time is affected here I have no way of knowing if help would ever come. Already I feel as if I have spent untold aeons here, and even if the descent in the lack was merely a trick of my dream-sense, weeks have been lost to my wanderings through the city, the expanse, and the labyrinth of dust.

The experienced time weighs on me, and I feel a sensation in my dream-flesh that I have not felt since first communing.

I feel hungry.

I focus on the new sense in an attempt to block out the pain of my dream-vessel. What I would give to have some form of sustenance. Some semblance of comfort to alleviate the suffering I have brought upon myself.

I suddenly long for a particular food vendor that would ply his wares in the pavilions beyond the research facility campus on Terra Lacrima. Privileged few were permitted by the Orokin to occupy the rotating markets, and they were oft claimed by gastronomists of high standing who would charge exorbitant prices of the elites of the city proper, indulging their vices with little care for expense.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

It was a hostile place for those of us with low standing who were forced to coexist in shared space with our golden lords.

Yet there was one man kind enough to offer us a simple dish for meager price. Too low-class to be considered edible by the elite, but perfect for those of us looking to expand beyond the facility provided rations.

It was a helping of ground meat mixed with common spice, roasted domice apple, and Venutian garlic. The meat was formed into small balls, coated with dense blankets of wheat berry dough, and fried in rich bovidon tallow until golden brown. It was served piping hot along with chilled slices of pickled hab-allium and drizzled with savory gravy. While our lords would openly sneer at us for our unrefined palates, the decadence was perfect for those of us seeking relief from the cold and sterile research labs.

I would sit in the secluded gazebo behind our campus gardens, indulging in my coveted prize and watching golden sun set beyond gleaming spires that scraped the stars. For a moment, as the city lit in the wake of the falling shadows and woke for the night, I would experience a rare moment of serenity. That simple fried dish soon became Pavlovian to the experience, and even the scent of it was enough to put me in a brighter mood.

Even now, broken in this hellish place, I long for its simple comfort. Should I ever return to the waking world, that simple meal will be the first thing I eat. I will have to remake it from how I remember him describing the recipe to me...his recipe...what was his name?

I spoke with him nearly every week for seven years. We shared stories of our families.

Why can I not remember his name?

I am shaken from my reverie by a sudden fluttering sound, like sheafs of paper being blown in the wind. Something approaches. Before I even lift my head to find its figure in the dark, I am prepared for its arrival.

Another horror has found me.

What abstract form it aspires to be, I can barely fathom. It shuffles slowly on shaky limbs with joints twisted in facilitation of its clumsy quadrupedal movement. Its central mass is a withered corpse with elongated fingers reaching skywards, arranged in mimicry of split ribcage. From within their grasp, a twisted arboreal shape sprouts forth. But instead of leaves and bark, it bears the weight of fractured human forms, their bodies intertwined to share flesh and feature. Fused marble skin reaches crescendo as a bloated body gripping itself in pain, splitting its trunk into an unhinged maw that spits silent fire.

Boundaries eroded in madness, fragmenting individuality. Sublimation of form. Words fail to describe the shambling mockery of the waking world that presents itself before me. The creature itself even seems to despise its design, interlocking limbs and half finished faces clawing, biting, and pulling at one another as if desperate to split itself in twain.

The stench of wet earth overwhelms me as slick black roots twist forth from the orifices mimicking mouths and split skulls. Roots tie themselves into a semblance of wings that crack and stretch to become canopy, droplets of inky fluid spattering forth and hissing as they eat through the solids they rain upon.

Skin shudders with the sound of rustling leaves and metallic ash falls as feathers from the wings of root, curling and writhing like wounded snakes as they dance through the air and rend stone to sand.

The role of this monstrosity is clear. Decomposition. Reclamation. A scavenger of carrion.

And I am sure now that it has come to claim me.

It crawls towards my broken body, the whisper of soft decay in its wake as it gently shifts solid into dust and ash. I am struck by how quiet the horror is. I wish that I could welcome my fate with dignity and resolve, but I cannot. I am overwhelmed by fear and pain, and I whimper like a child in the face of oblivion.

But when the creature reaches me, it does not attack. With one of its limbs it gently pushes me aside. The movement still sends shockwaves of pain throughout my body, but it was not the action of some starved beast. It seemed almost considerate.

The creature vomits a torrent of ethereal flame from its central maw onto the space where I once was. Fire falls as liquid, then rises into the air with the soft and weightless quality of wind-driven pollen. The space where I was depresses, and the ground becomes a pool of light as the cold fire works against it.

From the pool, shapes emerge. One, then another, then a third. The humanoid figures I saw trapped within the stone crawl forth, reaching out to the beast for succor. The creature clasps their eager forms gently and guides them into its embrace. The emerging bodies pass into the creature, and then through it. They do not add to the creature's structure in any deliberate manner, they simply join with it and become part of the mass wherever they fall.

The light fades, and where an angled incline once was, there is now a divet from where the silent flame danced across its surface.

The creature moves on, finding another spot and repeating the process. In short order the creature adds to its size, growing from cadaver sapling into towering tree. Its canopy wings spread wider and the metal ash falls as snow. It lands upon my face and wriggles into my cheek, caustic properties eroding my skin. It burns, but I find the pain pleasant for reasons I cannot explain.

I notice more of the creatures approach and they join the harvest. They find suitable spot marked by some unseen quality, burn forth new additions to their hive, and continue onwards.

I feel the ground rumble as they grow in size and number.

More and more they eat away at the stone mass, desperate figures in various levels of fragmentation eagerly accepting the invitation to join a new whole.

What was once a herd of ponderous creatures has become a forest of wandering trees. The snow falls thicker. I feel blood wash over me as skin is hewn from muscle. The sensation is warm and comforting.

The creatures pass by me numerous times, and each one shifts me with the care and consideration of a parent handling a newborn child. I find myself envious of those shattered forms drawn forth from the stone. I realize that what I once saw as agonized self harm is in fact a network of broken souls in desperate embrace, both seeking and providing solace all at once.

The ground splits. I fall as it shifts and settles, but my nerves no longer respond to the disturbance. I am enraptured by the tumbling snow. I watch with detachment as my fractured leg sloughs away from me and slides down the slope. Steam rises forth as the meat falls from the bone. It amuses me somehow. I laugh, but silent warmth flows from my mouth instead, shining pearls tumbling in its gentle current.

The creatures rise far above me now. They move slowly, burdened by their towering trunks. They seek each other, meeting and embracing to become grander form.

They become truly awe inspiring things, rivaling even the megaflora from old Earth. I reach towards the sprawling canopy in wonder and my arm looses from its seat with a wet thump.

The creatures become too large to move, instead forming roots that spread across the remaining stone as ropes of marble flesh. Arms reach out along their length, pulling more of the fractured bodies from below. When roots meet, they entangle and become one, joining root to root and tree to tree. The ground shudders and thunder approaches from below.

I lie on a dense mycelium net, supported by its undulating mass as it reclaims the surfaces below me. Soon there is no more herd, there is no more forest.

There is only the one and myself.

The feathers fall across my face and I become blind. Vitreous humor runs down my masticated cheeks as tears of joy.

I am ready.

But then I hear a deafening crack. My nerves are long devoured, but my equilibrium remains. With its remaining sense I feel myself falling. The mycelium shifts beneath me, allowing my remains to fall into whatever lies beneath.

I see now I was never to join the embrace of their number, they would have taken me when they first approached if I were.

I fall from the conglomerate as an excision.

I fall into deeper depths.

I fall into a final, lonely oblivion.

NETRA [https://i.imgur.com/HTIXdKo.png]