The walls bent around the thing that called itself Nardeth when living beings were nearby. The walls sloped inwards and curved down in the middle, forming a small stalactite that it didn’t notice yet. The thing was too busy consuming. The shadows made half the room’s colors pale and plastered the other half in black – something the thing would have thanked the gods for if there was anyone to thank, if it in and of itself wasn’t one of the oh-so-mighty gods. And it could not begin to thank itself for anything that had happened in the past two hours.
As if any of this had started in the past two hours.
That was a lie it told itself, because it had no recourse but to offer itself at least one single lie about this situation. The truth was that the thing – the object, the creature, the being – had been consuming her from the moment it had met her. This was just the nail in the coffin, the ritual that brought the truth out of the metaphysical realm Archons were so fond of, and into what everybody else liked to term the real world.
The thing was kneeling, hunched down before a hollow cadaver. Its mind phased out of reality for one second, staring at the corpse like it was on a TV screen. At least this way it could see what was happening, take a break from the fugue of red. And all of this was in red. How human of her. The thing had somehow never realized her blood was the same color as a human’s. Having gone out of her way – she had, right? – to give her most recent form pink hair, one would think she would take other steps to divorce herself from the lesser species, at least when it came to the substance that kept her physical form going, ran nutrients through it. (Red. Red. Human-like. Was she trying to emulate the Renegade?) The thing hated her. It hated her. It couldn’t say that, that was awful, it was cruel, and worst of all it was untrue. It hated what it had become for her. And that was why it ate her.
Entrails lay scattered around the yellow-haired item’s physical form. They’d lost their meaning as functional parts of the body, and so they barely retained their original forms. Mrellin’s guts were shaped like what they were now: food. The object grabbed at the nearest chunk of intestine and ripped at it with its jaw like a panther. The sinew stretched and would not tear. Tears formed in the object’s eyes and strings of sallow hair connected to its head collapsed onto the sinew.
The thing needed to stem the flow of saltwater. It knew exactly what to do.
The Nardeth-form burrowed its head into the crimson cavern that had once been Mrellin’s chest and stomach. A few ribs still remained, scratching at the skin of the thing’s cheeks and forehead. Claws that had, no regeneration needed, formed at the end of its arms now pulled at what was left of the ribs and cracked them off like a wishbone. And tears flew out of the thing’s eyes and mixed with the blood so smoothly that it couldn’t even feel anything that was leaving its tear ducts amidst the cocktail of liquid tasting of metal and salt.
What did it say about this unchristenable being, that they’d thought they hated themself (back when it had had the gumption to call itself a “they”), and yet it was throwing the blame for this event onto anyone but itself? The fault was Mrellin’s for letting it get so attached, for letting it get so dependent, for letting it turn into a vengeful, bitter creature outside her care, and the fault was the Ship’s for trapping the two in here, letting them get so cooped up and lonely, not because they couldn’t leave but because the cost was too high, it physically hurt to leave, and Mrellin had had to stay to protect it, and back then it had called itself Nardeth and pretended it was made of concepts and its physical form didn’t matter and yet that physical form had stabbed into those concepts and ground them down with the pain until the only remnant was the ambulatory body.
It licked at the salty blood-mixture. It tasted good. Mrellin always had, conceptually, and now the thing was experiencing that in the rawest form. What a blessing. What a joy. What a privilege. Not a single other Lightbringer would understand this. The thing had risen beyond even Time-Lordhood now.
The item flossed its teeth using one of the pink hairs from the ground. It took one moment before it clicked that it was one of Mrellin’s hairs.
She was not worthy of that. The item spat out the hair.
The walls caved in, not in a way that let them crumble – the Ship cared about herself too much for that – but rather a way that saw the walls tighten around the Nardeth-creature and the spire hanging from the ceiling descend. The Zadellin produced a creaking noise that could believably have come from the shifting walls, entirely to alert the entity below of the changes. The stalactite began to drop down and it was in the center of the room, the same spot that the thing’s hunched-over back happened to be. The thing saw this occurrence and scrambled for the final piece.
Because it had already devoured every piece of Mrellin’s body that it could get at. The raw muscle and sinew – and oh, the fat enriched the texture beautifully – and the skin it had had to tear off to get to the meat hiding inside each limb. It had leaned back, back into the memories of when Mrellin called it Nardeth, and let the love in those thoughts sink into the taste. She was delicious. The moving object had torn through the guts, leaving them strewn over the Ship’s floor, in order to get to the hearts – and when it had gotten there it had taken extra care to give every bite intention and care. There was magic in a Lightbringer’s heart, and the object wanted to become one with this particular heart-power. Not because it was power, but because it was Mrellin’s.
The creature had even eaten the bone. The teeth. The cartilage, oh, the cartilage. The thing’s form had restructured itself just a subtle bit while it was looking the other way, the way of Mrellin; not enough change to use up a lifetime, but enough to gain teeth that would chew, crack, pulp without issue even a substance as tough as the bone and cartilage of a Sun Builder.
But there was one thing it had not eaten. One thing it was saving for last. The eyeballs. It needed Mrellin’s eyeballs. It needed to understand how she saw, what colors she processed the world in. It needed— it needed— it needed— her vision. And oh, the eyes would pop like jellies. It knew the spear was coming for its back, and it knew it did not have time to escape, and it lunged for what scraps were left of Mrellin’s face to find the glowing white jewels in the flesh-rubble.
Claw clasped around a soft, malleable sphere. Gotcha.
And its back was speared by the ceiling of the Zadellin, eyeballs still in hand. The body that pretended it had once had a name was dead.
Silence.
The door swung open. On the other side of it was a familiar face: medium-dark skin, smooth-cut hair, mouth perpetually on the verge of a grin. It was Zerlan.
How did the thing know that? How did the thing know who that was without turning around, without hearing zir voice? It was not a thing of meaning anymore. It was a body, with bodily senses, telepathic connection with the universe thoroughly stripped away.
No. Wait. The thing knew the answer to why.
New locks of hair drooped down into its vision. Her vision. The thing that used to say her name was Nardeth looked down at herself. The skin on her hands was light, but not pale; long hair, breasts, a full figure. She ran her hand – not a claw – across her face, and felt its softness. The room was still dark, colors unclear and shapes bathed in obscurity, but she had an inkling she knew what color her new form’s hair was.
She turned around, wide-eyed, to face Zerlan. He spoke.
“Oh, hey, Mrellin. Where have you been for the past couple hours?”