Chapter Text
It was cold.
I didn’t know where I was, but it was dark, and most importantly, it was cold. The kind of chill that felt like ice in your veins, like your very bones had frozen themselves solid. I tried to take a breath, to regain my bearings, to make some noise, but it was all useless; breathing didn’t work, leaving only an uncomfortable, stuffy sensation in my sides (-what?-), I barely managed to move my unwieldy, oversized form, and, most alarmingly of all, my voice… didn’t work. I couldn’t let out any sort of noise, let alone form words. There was no sound of blubbering through whatever icy fluid I was surrounded by, there was just.
Nothing.
I’d like to be able to say that I managed to pull myself together, that I immediately devoted myself to finding a way out of this predicament, or that I stopped moving and calmly analyzed the situation. Or even at least that I’d managed to gracefully mitigate and endure my panic, enduring the onslaught of my frantic, confused emotions with poise and grace as I let myself freak out with some degree of control.
Of course, none of that is what happened.
Put simply, I freaked out.
In more detailed terms, I panicked, desperately squirming and shaking around whatever I was enclosed by, trying to push and batter at the boundaries with my frantic, pain-wracked limbs, to escape, as both my own natural instincts, something other I couldn’t quite yet explain, and possession of a fucking brain told me I needed to leave leave leave leave LEAVE-
Naturally, this was when the poor, overworked, atrophied husk of a body I was currently inhabiting, previously stillborn and immobile but now being moved with much more intensity than it was able to bear, promptly stopped being able to handle the frantic thrashing about it was being forced to perform.
I passed out.
—
I woke up again, coming to to not only the same unbearable coldness (-was this what frostbite felt like, I wondered? No, you were supposed to stop feeling that at some point, weren’t you-) as before, but also to a new sort of pain in my limbs, one I did recognize.
I was sore, all over. My arms and legs, especially, felt tender and raw, as they’d been the parts I’d moved around the most in my brief struggle, but generally all of me felt overworked, like I’d been trampled by an angry mob.
I panicked again, though this time with much less thrashing about than before for my body’s sake, but I panicked nonetheless.
I was cold, and sore, and lost, with no idea where I was or why I was even anywhere but my home. The last I’d remembered I had been falling asleep in bed, after another conversation with-
Don’t. Don’t think about it. Not right now.
I swallowed, trying to shove the thoughts away from my mind, but I couldn’t, now that I had thought them. It was too much. I was cold, alone, somewhere unfamiliar, in almost too much pain to even think (-it felt like I had a lance of jagged ice in my brain-), and I had no idea where home or my lover even were.
I was crying, I realized, unable to stop myself. I mutely accepted that fact, opting to let myself have whatever reprieve I could, rather than try to fight it. For the first time in years, I allowed tears to run across my mask-
Wait.
That hadn’t been a metaphor. There was a literal mask. On my face. (Around my head?)
I blinked, or at least I felt the sensation of blinking, which made no difference to my ability to see my surroundings, currently nonexistent as it was, as I slowly, gently brought up one of my sore limbs to touch it, carefully adjusting it so I could actually feel the porcelain-like mask on my face, even as my tears still ran free.
What the fuck?
…
Wait.
While I was unsure what had prompted me to do so at that moment, I slowly ran the limb over and around my mask. There were odd protrusions on it, almost shaped like spikes (-or whiskers, perhaps, the thought came to me-) on the side of what would have been my cheeks, as well as what felt like horns, jutting out from the sides of my face as well as from the top of my head, though the topmost ones pointed upwards…
I wonder if…
I recalled my earlier thrashing. My limbs, bumping against themselves as I shook them gracelessly around the (-still so painfully, horribly cold-) fluid, an extra flare of pain occasionally shooting up said limbs as I slammed them into something hard. An idea flashed into my head right then, and I had to focus to even keep it within my head through the ever creeping chill. Thankfully, the simple act of focus itself helped me more than I might have guessed, what seemed like a phantom warmth soothing my limbs for just a wonderful moment, though as soon as it started I knew it would flare out soon.
‘It’ll be enough. It has to be.’ I thought at the knowledge the sudden clarity in my mind wouldn’t last long. Enduring the thankfully reduced pain, I tensed my sore muscles, brought my head back…
And threw it forward, making sure to put all of my body’s weight behind the blow, however small it might have been. There was a dull, muted crash as my horns impacted with the hard surface around me, and I could feel the impact reverberating through my horns, to the rest of my mask and my somehow much less tangible body.
‘Like a tuning fork.’ I thought absently, half delirious and only becoming more so as the cold suddenly came back, crashing over me in a wave like I’d just been once again dunked in ice water. Somehow, my body staunchly refused to adjust to the temperature, or even to at least grant me the mercy of deadening my nerves. I trembled, almost breaking down again-
Crack.
My eyes immediately flicked up at the sound, noticing faint cracks starting to open up in the wall before me by the barely visible light shining through them where my horns had struck. Impossibly faint.
But they were visible.
‘I’m going to get out of here.’ I finally thought, for the first time truly resolute as I brought my head back before driving it forward again, the cracks slowly, slowly broadening as I did so, more light seeping in, the cracking and crashing noises resounding throughout my very being as I dashed myself against the wall again, and again, and again, and again-
—
Outside, in the darkest, deepest, sealed off depths of the Kingdom of Hallownest, there was a loud gush of dark, stale fluid pouring out from an egg onto the ground, accompanied by an exhausted, atrophied body falling to the very same ground mask-first.
The muted crack of the body’s mask banging against the ground was the first thing to break the silence of The Abyss in decades.
—
‘Fuck!’ I thought as I hit the floor head (-or mask, in this case-) first, sending more painful reverberations throughout my worn-out body. I groaned, or wished I could have, riding out the pain, partly thankful that I’d abated some of the infernal cold that had assailed me. It was still cold unfortunately, but I could feel the worst of the bone-deep chill that had assailed me leave, almost as if draining out of the depths of my bones with the cold, murky fluid that pooled around me, slowly draining out of the… thing I had been trapped in.
I groaned, mentally, of course, once more, most of my mind currently too dazed to even attempt to process that, lost between the jumble of sensations it was currently experiencing; the coldness of the cave and the dark fluids I was soaked with, plus the cold that seemed to permeate from my own being on top of that would each have been bothersome to deal with alone, but combined with each other, plus with the exhaustion and pain assailing the rest of my senses left me barely even able to remain conscious.
I tried to push myself up, silently hacking up more of the dark fluid, and found some relief in the odd sensation of gunk dislodging from my sides, letting me breathe clearly. It would have been another sensation for the pile, except it wasn’t necessarily unpleasant, so I decided to let it be for now. Far more concerning was the feeling at the tips of my limbs, or rather, the slowly creeping lack of it.
My eyes widened, and I felt the (sadly familiar at this point) throes of panic begin to take over again as I not only felt but saw my arms and legs be deadened, the spindly and malformed appendages slowly decomposing into more of that black gunk, from the tips of my hands and feet to my knees and elbows, forelimbs dissolving, joining the pool of fluid-
‘No, no no NO!’ I thought desperately, trying to focus once again, to reach for that white heat I’d managed to grasp in the depths of my body and soul and halt the decomposition of my own body, but it was no use, the mysterious white essence only slowing my decay down. I froze, watching more and more of myself fade away and dissolve into the still-growing pool of black slime surrounding me.
‘Please.’ I begged desperately, more to myself than to anyone who might hear, but neither any Gods nor my own Soul answered my cries as I slowly but surely exhausted the stores of both my outer and inner power once more.
‘I don’t want to die.’
That was, of course, when I once again passed out.
—
I woke up.
Again.
For the third time.
I took a moment to stare blankly, taking in a deep breath through my sides, again, while attempting to brush off the edges of the tension I felt, riding out the last vestiges of primal fear and panic.
I wasn’t dead, at least. Probably. Yet.
I tried to adjust my position on the ground, and might have let out a cry of pain if I’d been able to as my body painfully confirmed that yes, I did indeed still live. I took another moment, to try to parse out the feelings currently assailing my body.
The ever present chill both around and within me had unfortunately remained, but it had either eased off some more again, or I’d gotten more used to it; either way I was thankful to get a reprieve.
On the other hand, however, I found that my body was now experiencing a new and exciting kind of pain; my very skin felt raw and oversensitive, each slide of my limbs across-
‘Wait.’, I thought, feeling a flash of surprise. ‘Limbs. I still have limbs?’
I was pleasantly surprised to find that yes, I did indeed still have limbs, and unlike most other things about me at the current moment they felt good, rawness aside. They were… For some reason they felt lighter, like they’d shed unnecessary weight.
…Wait.
I slowly moved my head up, looking at the puddle surrounding my body, to find that in front of me, two particular lines of that odd black sludge extended, vaguely positioned where my forearms had been. They made a disgusting schluck sound as I moved my now tinier arms up, strands of that liquid clinging to my limbs, and I just looked for a second, gears in my head ticking into place.
‘Oh god. That’s. That’s so fucked up-’ I thought, and was thankful both for the fact that my current body was, for some reason, not flesh and blood but this weird goop stuff, and also that as far as I could tell I had nothing in my stomach, because despite it not being flesh and blood that had apparently sloughed off of my fucking frame like I was a tomato, the sight and realization of it was still visceral enough to make me want to empty the contents of my stomach.
‘Don’t. Don’t, just, don’t, don’t look-’ I thought to myself as I struggled to stand up, my legs making the same disgusting noise as my arms in the meantime, almost causing me to lose my balance, though thankfully I managed to catch myself in a crack in the structure next to me. Right. The… thing I’d broken out of. It felt cold and metallic, and, with a sense of trepidation, I turned to look at it.
And promptly froze as I saw my own reflection in the egg, the gears in my mind crashing to a halt with a near-audible screech.
No cost too great.
Short, stubby ink black arms, as well as equally short and stubby and similarly colored legs, coming to a similar, tiny chest, that lead up to a contrastingly white mask, enveloping my whole head. Two deep, vantablack holes in the mask looked back at me, and I had to hold onto the egg for support as my mind finally neared closer to that dread surmise.
No mind to think.
My brain refused to parse it for several long moments, trying to violently tear itself away from the truth, begging me to look away, to look at literally anything else, even the cast-off Void that had served as my twisted limbs-
No will to break.
-But my body refused to obey my mind’s commands, a sheer overwhelming reservoir of resilience I didn’t even remember I had forcing me to look, to carve the reflection into the furrows of my mind.
No voice to cry suffering.
I screamed, wearing my lungs out, making sure my voice was heard all throughout The Abyss.
But despite however hard I tried, no sound came out.
Born of God and Void.
Instead, all my body offered were once again tears, two dark lines of liquid Void trailing down my shocked eyes, in that moment more than expressive enough to compensate for my lack of any other distinguishable facial features.
You are the Vessel.
I fell to my knees in front of my weeping reflection.
Fuck me.