V1 Incline 12: Nin

What... What's going on? Everything is dark, I can't see. How did I even get into this darkness...?

Something has its hand tightly locked around my ankle... Two things, maybe? What is holding onto me!?

Confusion is never something I thought could terrify me, but, here it happily proves me wrong. Not only that, my body hurts, everything hurts. My head's pounding away with throbs that go against my skull. My eyes are in pain no matter what I do, they hurt when I keep them open or closed. Not that it matters if they are open, I can't see anything!

My body is groggy all over...

It isn't getting any better either even as everything starts to unblur. My ankles are bare and pinched at while my back is sore with shallow cuts all over. Whatever is holding onto me, their grips are hard and solid. This isn't skin against me...

Wherever I am, I am going along the ground... I can feel wet, damp soil and all kinds of muck soaking through my overalls and getting caught in them. Whatever these things are that have me, whoever they are, clearly, they don't care... They're just dragging me everywhere, wherever they want me to go.

If this is how they are going to treat me, why can't just go ahead and kill me!?

But maybe some god doesn't want me to, whoever it is, they want me to suffer. Of all these stones rolling under me, none of them is in the ground enough so that I can just grab it to fight back against the dragging. I'm like a broken trailer with a missing wheel! The ground makes way for me as they near-enough plough me through it...

Wherever I am being taken, though, it sings an unholy song. Screaming, crying... Wet tearing and howling... I try to keep the noise out by blocking my ears with my hands or the soil.

But it just worms its way through the grains of dirt!

There is also the chittering, this, strange, alien chittering. It is coming from just ahead, from behind and further ahead in all directions. The darkness even starts to subside and dim, dying light breaks it apart. Clearly, thanks to it, I'm in a tunnel...

And what holds onto me isn't human, not even the lie that they might be armoured...

My chest is heaving and my is breath shaking, "It opens up... The tunnel, it..."

Coming to a close, it opens up into a far larger chamber. Whatever these things are, whatever is in there, I need to break free from these hands! But it is just mud and loose allsorts. There are no rocks for me to grab, there are just tiny little pebbles...

There is nothing big enough to be a weapon here!

If I have no opportunity to escape, what is going to become of me? My destiny is something evil right now. I want to wish and pray that something will show itself to me and that I can have a chance! But in what must be some kind of mineshaft, how will the gods even hear me...?

The ones who do not want to damn me, anyway...

Wherever I am, I am going through a spot of relative brightness now, I can see better now. These things that have me by the ankles, they're naturally armoured from head to toe. The light also makes it clear that it isn't just this dark, oil-in-water-shaded, shining plate of theirs that makes their grip harsh. These things are large, head and shoulders taller than I ever will be!

These things are clearly bugs, that much is clear. Towering, muscle-slabbed bug monsters. With all this chittering and their hard, shell-covered bodies, how could they not be? But why are they bugs...?

Bugs are small things... Tiny and annoying, but small...

Them being bugs only makes it worse, of all the things I learned in school growing up... Why did the unique features of bugs have to be the thing that haunts me right now? Wearing the corpses of other bugs to hide their scent... Laying their eggs in the corpses of their victims...

Bugs are gruesome things and I am in the grips of a pair of them.

However, to my shock, they suddenly let go and stare at each other. I stare up at them, too weak to get up and run. My fear paralyses me, running would be pointless in a place like this... My eyes lock with their sickly yellow ones.

I want to be some kind of demi-god that shares blood with the God of Apathy. I want the apathy of Apahthein so that I can at least be calm. Why do I have to be mortal? All I am able to do is tremble and shake like a little child.

A useless, helpless child with no mother to cry for...

"H-Hey..." I weakly let out as one of the creatures bends down to grab me. With an effortless hoist, it places me on its back as if I weigh not one gram. I might as well be a pillow...

Whatever it did it for, the creature seems determined to break my body in two. Its arms curve me around its upper back and the small, spike-like bumps force their way against my overalls. I groan out my misery and try to move my body away from them, but it's pointless. The noise and the smells of this place, everything, even the air stings me and now with these spikes up against me...

It is all becoming too much.

There's no optimism in my head, I can only ponder how I am going to die. Eaten alive or maybe I would be given a small mercy before the same fate. Are they going to torture me to appease some god? Whatever it is, I just need to come to terms with it...

Maybe I can try to get comfortable, as best as I can, anyway... But, no, it's pointless. Resisting makes their grip firmer and harsher. Going limp just lets them pull me closer and I shiver as the spikes stab me.

Taking the moment I have, I spit bloody saliva at the back of the creature. I am going to get the taste of copper out of my mouth as best as I can just to spite it. Then, it starts to get brighter, but, it might as well have stayed dark. Everything is still dim, unclear and it all remains hidden in shadow.

In a way, I am reminded of lights on their way out in the industrial parts of Tobaballe... Though, I can only wish this place is as nice as those rough parts of the city. I do not want to see this place better, I hate everything I can see. Closing my eyes does nothing either, this place is full of screams...

All along the walls are these jagged frames made of dark carapace that is darker than the shadows. They pulse with evil intent and the gaps that do not have a man hooked up to them have strange, mouth-like holes. This thing eats stolen freedom and clearly, it delights in the terror of those it traps. Many struggle to get out, but some are limp.

That is going to be me...

So many dark-eyed omens are hooked up on this strange thing. If they were free, I can only see them collapsing like the hopeless skeletons they practically are. All hope comes to die in this dim, amber light. There will be no escape once I join the dozens already up there...

Life fills me, terror-driven life reinvigorates me. I struggle against the hulking creature with all I have and all I can muster. The fruitlessness of it registers in the back of my head, but my body does not care. Fury takes over my actions and I scream frantically as the spikes stab into me through my own fault.

With a single motion, the creature moves me off of its back and I go quiet. Its grip suddenly moves to my neck and it throttles me with a single hand as it brings me closer. Chittering away, the creature looks directly into my eyes with a tilting, hyperactive head. My eyelids do not come down once.

Opening its mouth fully, it reveals row upon row of needle-shaped teeth on three separate jaw bones. One set on top, the other two on almost finger-like jawlines that keep coming together. From a platform at the back of its taken-apart mouth, a wiry tongue rolls out all the way towards me. Dancing about at first, the foul smell of it makes my flailing stomach contort.

It moves it against my cheek and I create elaborate expressions as the filthy tongue goes over me. The stench is unbearable and I feel nauseous already because of it. Whatever is in that saliva, though, makes my skin hurt. This stuff felt like it is burning my skin!

Thankfully, I am able to keep my lips closed and my mouth away from it, the taste of that stuff remains foreign to me...

Thrust back, wet sensations and firm-gripping spikes appear and cling onto all of my limbs. One of the dark frames is now all around me. I feel no physical pain, but that doesn't stop me from keeling over as if there is pain. I am trapped, I can't get out of this...

Looking around at first, I glare as my gaze meets with the bugs once again. The creature, however, can not care less and its eyes go to the far end of the chamber. There is a tunnel that way as well and a rather aggressive gust of wind blows at us. That has to be the way out, right...?

I guess it doesn't matter if it is, I can't even move properly, let alone get out of here. Sighing at my situation, I place a milder stare on the creature and look at it some more. The light makes its colours more apparent, but a dark shade of brown with an oil-like colour to it isn't much else to look at. It's a bug alright...

Now, though, I can see past the natural armour these things have and it makes me uncomfortable. The flesh that breaks it up looks almost skinless like it's a muscle that's been stripped of its covering. The colours are duller and just enough light fills them out to highlight enough of the detail... What is going to happen to me?

These things do not have hands either, they're three-digit claws that seem to be dully tipped. The creature is hunched over and the spikes decorate its back erratically. Further down, a strange pair of legs with what looks like two sets of knees. The legs go forwards but shoot back suddenly before they end in a couple of brick-like feet with two fat toes...

They all suddenly twitch and look up.

"N-N-NO THEY'RE COMING!" someone screams from the other side of the chamber as he tries to break free. Nearly everyone tries to at first, but seeing so many panicking, it corrects itself. I restrain myself at first, but the chitters coming from above make me move with greater hysteria. Shadows erupt from the tunnels above us, and I see them move onto the frame across from me.

This means one is now above me...

Begging and pleading. I focus on one arm and try to break it free as screams fill the chamber. Throughout it all, a thud resonates. I turn to look at it...

It is, they all are similar creatures in height and size. But, they are all hollow, no more than a skeleton or some kind of exoskeletal frame. Their bodies rattle and jerk and they open up like a box... Is it...?

Am I going to be eaten alive...? Am I about to be devoured whole? Why is it doing that!? Why is it doing that!?

My heart pounds against my chest as if it's trying to escape itself. My chest shakes and trembles with each forceful thud and I start to stammer. A bug isn't near me yet, but those near me do. In front of them.

They are being enveloped from the front...

"OW!" I cry as something stabs into me from behind. A disgusting sensation pumps into me as more and more spikes suddenly pierce me. I struggle against it all even harder, despite how my body is locking up. The creature envelopes me and it staples itself together.

Tears flow down my face as I feel and watch it happen. It isn't slow, but everything feels like it is starting to slow down. Everything hurts and that burn I felt earlier comes in force now. There is nothing I can do...

Nothing!

"Undwote... Damn you... STAY AWAY FROM ME!" I scream just before the creature locks itself onto my mouth. Straight through flesh and bone, spike after spike injects itself into me to add to the pumping sensation. Hooks slice into my skin and pull at it and I feel blood spill out everywhere. But it isn't warm, it's all cold, the wet sensations are all cold...

This thing is a living, twisted machine and it's eating me! I can't even scream anymore, spikes are in my mouth! It is in my mouth! Everywhere, the spikes are everywhere!

I want to thrash, I want to contort and get violent, but I can't. I cannot even fall unconscious, the pain keeps me awake as well as the hooks in my eyelids. The sickly yellow eyes of the creature came closer... Something acidic drips near my face.

It stops, the thing stops moving...

I look through its eyes and towards the tunnel where the breeze came from. There is a light erupting from down there, a dangerous light that cuts down the creatures near it. The light does not stop there, it comes all the way to me... It tears its way past everything and it is coming right for me!

The light strikes the creature and forces us out into the air. Smashing into the chamber's dirt wall, I start to fight against the creature. I try to tear it off of me, but blue light painfully erupts to life on my skin. The light outside remains green, a bright green...

The light strikes me again and I go up against the wall as the turbulence has its way with me. Pieces of the frame smash and break as what sounds like a storm fills the chamber. Bodies and parts of all kinds bury me. Flesh and carapace on one side, dirt on the other.

I'm trapped, sealed off in a pile of bloody corpses.

A chunk of the debris vanishes. Howling winds break into the pile and come to me. The blue light burns all around and the bug on me howls as it dies. The wind-sounding light shoots towards me, filling up my vision.