My 10+ year gaming character was going through some major stress. I’m storing the write-up here for safe keeping ❤
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Umi wakes to a scorching sun threatening to set her skin on fire. With her throat too parched to speak, she stands and realizes she’s in the middle of a dune-riddled desert. The sand grabs at her boots and falls from her clothes in an unending waterfall. Ahead, she sees an oasis. Raising a foot, she feels the weight of the sand tugging her body down into it. She triggers her angelic armor, but instead of flight she only feels more weight pushing her into the dunes. Panicking, Umi tries to fight against it, but the more she struggles the more she sinks. Before long, the sky fades as she’s swallowed by the ground.
Suddenly, she feels her body being tugged by an invisible hand. Opening her eyes, she realizes she’s no longer being buried alive, but is instead trapped in a small crawl space. The smell of damp mildew and stale blood fills her lungs; the cold stone presses against her bare skin. Bodiless hands claw and tug at her body. One fights against her lips, attempting aggressively to part her teeth. It succeeds, and a sickening feeling overtakes Umi as this creature moves down her throat and invades her body. Frantically, she reaches down her throat and grabs what she can of this demon. She pulls with all of her strength until it releases and she rips it from her lungs.
The hand falls to the floor in front of her, twitching and rolling. A bulge begins to form at the end where an elbow should be, elongating in a black ink and slowly taking the shape of an arm, then a shoulder, a head, a torso, a humanoid body. Dripping with ink, it reaches out towards Umi, a wide mouth screaming for help. She backs away shrieking, but a wall behind her keeps her in place. It’s hand closes over Umi’s mouth before the inky body takes the shape of William. Wide, terrified eyes bore into hers while blood pours from a wound in his chest.
Just as Umi recognizes him, his eyes close. The cry for help now seems to be coming from multiple voices, echoing as a choir of pain in her ears. William’s face morphs into Bernard’s, his gaping mouth showing a peak of light where a slit in the throat separates his neck from his shoulders. He opens his eyes and glares, while a strong hand tightens around Umi’s face. Just as she’s sure her skull is about to be crushed, he pulls her toward him and smirks. His face morphs into the worried eyes of Lucious and his grip releases. Suddenly, Umi is sitting with Lucious’s head on her knees. He gasps for breath while flickering candle lights glow off the bookshelves of the sorcerer’s office; the screaming cries for help fading into the background.
As she strokes his hair, his eyes begin to fade into death. Wet tears fall onto and drip from his face for several long moments before Umi realizes that they are coming from her. As her father takes a final, ragged breath, the clear tears turn red. She rests there for a moment, the world darkening around her before the lifeless body begins to spasm. His hands, chest, and face begin to swell, and he rolls away from her. Umi begins to back away into the darkness before Lucious’s body explodes, covering her in cold, viscous blood. She wipes it from her cheeks, her mouth, and her eyes before opening them to see Jake now smiling down at her from where Lucious had been. She stretches toward him, but the thick blood is abnormally sticky, and she can’t pull her body from the floor. Jake’s face takes on a look of agony. His mouth opens into an inky scream of terror, before his chest bursts and covers Umi in yet more blood, bone, and gore. The hand of an adamite reaches through Jake’s chest, who’s final expression is one of terror and pain. He collapses, and the Adamite behind him transforms into a titan formorian.
The blood releases her, and Umi stands to raise her bow toward the living mountain. She grits her teeth and aims for what should be it’s heart, releasing an arrow that hits true. She gasps a sigh of relief as it’s cry fills the black void she now stands in. Her joy turns to shock, though, as she sees Ash tumble to the ground at her feet. His eyes, confused, look into Umi’s while his hands grasp at a glowing arrow buried in his chest. A mute mouth asks “why?” before his body decomposes and turns to bone and sand. She takes his bare skull and caresses it, leaving streaks of blood wherever her thumbs and forefingers stroke. she croaks an “I’m sorry” before the ground begins to rumble.
The darkness begins to gyrate and flicker, swaying almost like the rolling waves of the ocean, before she recognizes that black void is a sea of formorians moving around her in every direction. They stretch out to the horizon, and fill even the skies with their buzzing, pulsing forms. Within their ranks, she sees the bodies of those left on the mountain. They are long dead, with skin rotting from the bone and various parts swollen with congealed fluids. Sand trails from each of them, almost leaking from their wounds.
One familiar friend stops Umi’s heart – the Matriarch. Her face is only half present, and her body looks to have been ravaged by wolves. Where parts should be, there is only shredded skin, organs, and bone. She moves toward her elven mother, but the Formians take notice and turn to look at her. The ranks stop their march, and watch her. Millions of insectoid creatures across the widest expanse of land and air cease all movement and train their eyes on Umi. She raises her bow for yet another fight,prepared but feeling more alone and terrified than she can ever remember feeling. Just before she lets her arrow fly, she hears Rotan’s voice calling out behind her.
She turns, but does not find her friends. Instead, she finds Wormwood’s creatures wearing their faces. When she opens her mouth, a concrete like mix of sand and blood pour from her lips and stop her words. The formorians move in and, within seconds, the world fades into blackness.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Umi wakes, gasping for breath and shivering, a cold sweat drenching her sheets.
CaliStray 