Riven stirred awake to a world of dull ache all over. For a moment he thought he had finally died, that the darkness around him was permanent and unbroken.
'Is this… what the emptiness of the afterlife feels like… thought there'd be some light and all?'
Then came the faint, steady rhythm of his breath. And sharper still, the knife of pain riding along his ribs.
'Owwwwww… no. I definitely felt that.'
He groaned and dragged himself upright, back scraping against the jagged wall of the cavern. Every movement he made sent sparks of pain racing through him, but his lips curled into a pitiful half-laugh.
"Not dead yet…"
The sound echoed hollow in the dark before fading away, swallowed by the cavern.
Something was different though. He blinked, realizing the throbbing agony that had gnawed at every inch of him was… reduced. Not gone, but dulled, just like when he'd first slept after the fall. He flexed his fingers slowly, frowning.
'This has something to do with the excessive lumen in the air…'
Everyone knew lumen gathered thick around corridor openings. And inside the corridors themselves? The theories said it would be in concentrations no sane man could imagine. Enough to warp even the very laws of nature should a powerful enough deviant be inside of it.
He looked at his trembling hands, pale in the faint light. His voice was raw when he rasped:
"So how… am I still alive then?"
The answer clawed at him before he even wanted to admit it. His defective body. Even though he had never awakened, even though he was broken, he was still… something more than a normal man. Stuck halfway down the road to being awakened. If he'd been just human, the lumen here would've killed him already due to the lumen poisoning, burning him from the inside out. If he had been awakened, his body might have already been healed. But as he was?
He could taste it on his tongue, the metallic, bitter-sweet, like blood on iron. His defective body pulled in fragments of that energy, knitting torn flesh just enough to keep him moving.
"If only I awakened…" His voice cracked into the dark, hoarse and still weak. He let the words die. No point wasting anger on what he could never change.
He crawled toward the carcass of the fallen deviant. Its grotesque husk sprawled in the gloom, twisted limbs jutting like a shrine to nightmare. One stinger-like leg caught his eye. It was blackened, thick and jagged as long as a staff and ending in a cruel, sharpened point. Exactly what he needed to keep moving.
He pressed his pickaxe against the joint and began to hack. The clang of iron on chitin rang out, again and again, each blow sending pain lancing through his ribs. Sweat stung his eyes as it matted his hair against his face. His hand shook so hard he nearly dropped the tool.
"Come on… come on… don't you dare…"
Nearly an hour later, his already bruised palm gained new additions of blisters with his muscles screaming in protest, the limb finally snapped free. He collapsed against the wall, holding it close. Heavy, yes, but serviceable. A staff to keep him standing. He staggered up, leaning on it with one hand while clutching his pickaxe in the other.
Then the stench from the corpse hit him again. The deviant's ichor, black and steaming faintly in the air, stank like rot and sulfur. He gagged, turning his head. But his blood and sweat, the sharp metallic tang of his wounds were worse. Predators would smell him for miles down here if there were any more in here.
Riven dipped his hand into the ichor and smeared it over his skin, his clothes. The reek was so strong it felt as if he would suffocate.
"Disgusting…" he whispered, bile rising.
He sat, staring at the corpse. Then his stomach growled with hunger. The reminder clawed at him and he cursed under his breath.
With a trembling hand, he tore the last splinters from his pickaxe handle. He ripped strips from his ruined clothes, gathered stones, and after several desperate strikes, coaxed a weak, flickering flame into life. He hacked at the deviant's severed neck, digging into the only soft tissue he could reach. The flesh came free rubbery, slick, foul to the touch.
He cooked it over the small fire. The smell was indescribable as burning hair and spoiled meat twisted together. He gagged but forced it to his lips. Bitter slime under char, his throat convulsed as it went down his stomach.
'Don't… vomit. Don't waste it,' he told himself, swallowing hard. Bite after bite, gag after gag, until it stayed down.
When at last he rose, his body trembled from exhaustion but still moved. The stinger-staff braced him on the right and the pickaxe rested heavy in his left hand. He walked for what seemed like hours, maybe, or minutes it was impossible to know. The ichor stank off him in waves, masking his scent.
'Would anyone even notice I'm gone?' His thoughts scraped, bitter. 'Would anyone even care?'
Kevan, maybe. Lynn, definitely. The rest? No. Not really. Even if they cared, how would they know he'd fallen into a corridor. He might as well have been erased from the world. Rescue was a fool's hope. If he wanted to live, he'd have to claw his own way out.
Making up his mind he trudged on.
And then after a while he saw something new.
A faint glow shimmered ahead, flickering against the walls. He froze with his heart hammering in his ears. With the glow came a sound: low, rhythmic, pulsing like a heartbeat. He crept closer, chest tightening In anticipation.
He got to what looked like a clearing and the first thing he noticed was the black body of a
Deviant.
The creature looked to be at least ten feet tall, with an ugly body. It looked like a cross of lizard and insect. Its spine arched like a crocodile's, it's hide mottled, looked wet, and slick with patches of exposed muscle twitching faintly. Instead of scales, its flesh seemed armored with uneven plates, each shifting with a sickening chitter when it moved. Its head was long, lizard-like and split halfway down its jaw to reveal too many teeth, needle-thin and dripping strands of black saliva. It's eyes were that of an insect, faceted like shattered glass gleaming in the dim light, scanning around its surrounding and unblinking.
It shifted, legs scraping stone, each joint bending backward with unnatural sharpness. Its chest expanded with a wheezing hiss.
Riven's gaze flicked past it. Behind, an entrance pulsed with a glow that had a steady and deliberate rhythm. His instincts roared at him. Whatever that was, it was important. Maybe the only key to escaping this nightmare.
He crouched low, scanning his surroundings. There was a gorge nearby, he wasn't close enough to see its depth but from where he hid he could see that shadows swallowed its depth. He glanced at it, then back to the monstrous sentinel. Then over his shoulder, into the dark he'd crawled from.
A weak, bitter laugh escaped him.
"This isn't going to be easy… is it?"
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