BELOW: CRAWL 06 (Patreon)

My skill definitely didn’t have any plans for me to bring this person back with me, but that’s its problem. If the beast isn’t interested in having two hangers-on, then I’ll let it eat me so that the new SINner can get away. 

Damn. They need a name, huh? 

Do I need a name? 

I’ve been called nicknames for a while, but “bitey” isn’t that useful for long term identity shit. Can’t remember my original name any more than I can remember anything else concrete about my time amongst the living, and can’t really speak, but I probably should figure out what I want people to call me at some point. 

Something to discuss once we’re back close to the beast’s nest, maybe. Something to pass the time, beyond just breathing and theorycrafting. 

“¿A dónde vamos?” comes the question after over an hour of walking. 

A quick scrape of my finger against my exposed, jagged teeth, and I write on their arm, careful not to let any of it drip onto the stone around us and leave a trail.

One more hour, I write. 

“¿Por qué estamos aquí? ¿A dónde vamos?”

It’s kind of funny that I can understand the language, but neither speak it nor write in it. There’s all these accents I never actually learned, for one. And the spelling eludes me right now. But I know enough to know the questions.

Why are we here? Where are we going?

Before the wound on my finger closes (it’ll be a few minutes still, but whatever) I write something short.

Wait.

And then I wipe up the blood on their arm and lick it off my hand, leaving no trace of it for someone to follow behind us. It probably won’t stop anyone who is capable of smelling blood on the air, which there definitely must be, but it’ll help.

I lied, also. It’s not an hour back to the beast, it’s an hour and a half. 

Same route as before. It’s weird to travel through the dark in a direction I’ve been through before and yet somehow see it for the first time. All of the overwhelming instructions on where to go and how have faded out of my mind, allowing me to actually perceive and understand the world around me. 

I’m not missing much. There were a Lot of alternative pathways and crevices and dark spots that I could have taken and gotten lost down, and didn’t even perceive with how my skill kept overwriting my awareness and filling my brain with instructions both. 

I wonder if it could tell me how to, like, disarm a bomb, maybe. If the active version of the skill can tell me what to say, if I asked it to. If I wanted it to. If I got enough SIN together, could it tell me, walk me through, every single step it would take to break all of BELOW, to unmake it and render it down to nothing. 

Would I want it to?

The skill feels like a slippery slope. Like it could very easily replace a lot of my own thinking, my own awareness, and leave me blinded to everything else. Beyond the obvious weakness of the blind spots it creates, there has to be more that weakens it.

Will it cost more than just SIN? Is there an exponential price curve? Can other things neutralize it or undercut it, creating blind spots rather than just hiding in them? 

Probably yes. Who the fuck knows, though. I don’t have the dosh to be spending it all willy-nilly every time I need something, not when I still need to increase my other Aspects, maybe design new WOUNDS, train my GNOSIS, prepare for my threshold evolution, and have some extra to spare for the sake of having access to heightened healing and such. 

There had better be other resources here in this “game”. It would be really goddamn shitty if this place only had one thing for all of the few, often ironic or painful, advantages that it provides.

Which means it’s definitely only got one resource. Because fuck you, SINner, that’s why. 

This place fucking hates me. It hates everyone, I think. Or maybe it doesn’t care about us at all, and has no mind to care or hate with, but finds us judged nonetheless. 

We’re almost back to where the beast made its den and I found my little divot when my skill… shifts.

I blink. My new “friend” notices the pause, notices the hesitation, and squeezes my hand, their breath still wheezing instead of flowing into them. 

“¿Estás bien?”

I wave a hand, shushing them. 

I want to travel through a safe route to reach the beast with the SINner whose hand I am holding.

And yet still, it doesn’t go back to the original destination. I know where I went, I’ve always had pretty good spatial memory for that sort of thing, and the skill is no longer pointing me where I came from. It’s close to it, but not the same, and I can sort of feel how the skill is… shifting? Expanding? Changing gears?

And it keeps changing.

Because the beast is moving. 

Fuck. Damnit. I thought I’d have more time. Or I guess I just hoped I’d have more time, really, because I genuinely have no goddamn clue about what this thing’s schedule is.

Damnit.

Ok. 

I want to travel through a safe route that will lead me to intercept the beast’s path.

This feels like the sort of thing that I should use the active skill for, but… damn. I don’t even need to check my total to know I won’t have enough SIN for that. 

But it would be really, really nice to know what steps I need to take to get what I want, rather than just the direction I should go in. 

Doesn’t matter. Can’t happen, so let it go. 

I write on my new friend’s arm Hurry, and start to pick up the pace. 

They keep up.

It takes longer to get back there than I’d like. What should have been less than thirty-or-so more minutes to get where I’m trying to go turns into another “hour”, then longer, as we navigate the too-dark tunnels of the underground. 

The passive version of Lust’s Blinders doesn’t have any indication of how far away I am from my objectives or what steps need to be taken to get there. So when it tells me to take another turn, and I find that ragged muzzle facing me directly, I come to a stop very suddenly, forcing the SINner behind me to bump into my back and almost make me fall forward against the beast.

It’s staring at me. Like it was waiting. Or more accurately, probably, like it felt me coming, and decided to stop and see what was up with me. 

Its eyes are like staring into two voids. I can’t see anything behind them. Maybe if I’d chosen a different Desire skill I’d be able to, maybe if I pump my Aspect up high enough I’ll be able to read it, but now? It’s like looking at a shark. But sharks are cute. Sharks have boopable noses and if you spin them they get all confused and adorable and most of them never ever even touch humans because we taste terrible to them and they just get confused sometimes. 

This is not a shark. 

Its eyes are all black, with just the tiniest, barest hint of white at the edges. Just enough to be able to tell that it’s looking at me, to be able to track that there are eyes and that they can roll and turn and see me. 

Its mouth is open. Canine-like, fangs too long, almost like tusks more than teeth, jagged and rough and making its own gums bleed out bits of steady red drool. It’s panting, loud, breathing in and out, and I wonder how much SIN it has in store, and if it would like to add to that with mine.

The person holding my hand squeezes it so tight that it hurts. I can feel their fingers straining, the tension in their weak, SINless Aspects trying as hard as it can to dig its nails into my palm in panic.

They’re breathing now, though. Deep and panicked, in spite of the pain they must be feeling. Crazy how the human brain can adapt to anything. Crazy how much pain falls behind fear once you’re terrified enough. 

I don’t look back at them. I stop looking at the beast’s eyes. That too-dead stare that gives me no sign of personhood, of thought, of affection least of all. I lower my head, and raise an outstretched palm. 

I check my total now, quickly.

SIN: 78

Between waking up my fellow SINner and all the hours of breathing on the way there and back, I’ve got a decent amount. Enough to activate my skill, to upgrade more than a few Aspects, hell, I’m halfway to my next evolution, and that’s been waiting for a while. Big on my to-do list, eventually. 

Instead, I drag as much of it as I can up to the surface, and then press it to my palm. 

One of the beast’s hands comes up, contorting to reach me with its too-many joints. Its front paw / hand wraps around mine, and I see it up close for the first time. 

Its claws, so long that they’re more like daggers or short swords than claws, are so very, very sharp. So very, terribly jagged, and where they emerge from its skin, the flesh is butchered open. Torn apart to allow them to emerge, like they ripped their way out of the beast’s flesh. 

It must hurt, to have a WOUND like that. 

I know for a fact that it hurts when it wraps around my hand, stabbing into me in a grotesque parody of the desperate grip that the Wretch has on my other limb. 

I push as much SIN as I can into those wounds, and then push harder, until they flow past them, out into what has caused them. 

I push, and push, and don’t stop until the beast tells me to. I don’t stop until its claws rip their way back out of my hand, tearing new wounds open wide that will surely bleed and ache for days to come.

SIN: 11

Ok, so not all of the SIN I accumulated. Just. You know. Most of it. All of it that could be used for anything. The fucking bastard asshole fuckhead. 

I want to laugh. I don’t. 

It’s just like the Masked Father, isn’t it? Except this time I’ve chosen something more direct. That freedom makes all the difference, but it also feels like it makes the main difference. 

At least the beast doesn’t seem to mimic his cruelty. 

It turns away from me, walking forward into the dark towards whatever got it out of its cave. 

I go to follow, and am stopped by a viciously tight grip on my hand. 

My newest victim / rescue attempt looks at me in genuine desperation. 

“Por favor.”

Please.  

I shake my head. With the jagged remnants of my other hand, I scrawl on the wall beside me. 

It is better than alone.

They shake their head, desperately. 

I scrawl again.

We have to.

I start walking. 

Their hand is so tight around mine that it hurts, though not as bad as the other one. And I’m pretty used to the pain at this point. So though they move slowly, though they keep me from catching back up to the beast like I want to, they do follow along. 

And we go deeper into the dark. 

_______________________________________________________________

The beast hunts well. I don’t know what senses it uses, how it’s picking up its prey, but however it’s doing it seems pretty damn efficient. It leads us in a straight path forward, without ever so much as pausing, until it reaches a cave.

It’s the biggest cave I’ve seen since I woke up. Larger by far than the Home, which was already thoroughly excavated and renovated upon. 

The agoraphobia comes back, loud and painful and cold in my guts. Tunnels are one thing, but being someplace closer to open than not makes bile rise in my throat and a sense of genuine panic crawl through my body. 

It’s vast. It looks much more natural and organic than the usual, even compared to the normal tunnels, with vast stalagmites and stalactites making complex patterns throughout it, almost like a maze. It’s large enough that I can’t even see the other side of it, obscured as it is by the stone shapes all around. 

But I see the red. 

This is a place of murder. A place for hunting and hunted. I see pools of blood, some of them half-lapped up. I see splatters up above, decorating the stone spires in vast painted arcs.

It doesn’t take long for the beast to find prey.

It looks a bit like the Hoarding Shambler. Only four legs instead of five, and with long, grasping arms instead of the weird trunks that tried to suck me in. 

It doesn’t last long.

I wonder what sorts of skills, WOUNDS, and threshold evolutions it had, to get it to that state. I wonder if it feels anything while in there. If it’s sentient. If it’s self-aware, and if it feels the kind of pain that comes with being torn apart the way it has been. 

The beast takes it apart. One half torn from the other, until there is a cavernous valley in the center of its body. It doesn’t even make much noise as it does so, is the funny thing. It just walks over, sinks in its claws, and pulls, and the hoarder-thing doesn’t have time to make any more sound than a huff of escaping air from being torn in twain. 

And then it starts eating. 

I crouch down at one of the limbs of the hoarder-thing, cast aside in the brief struggle and the feeding that came after. 

I raise it to my lips. 

I take a bite. 

And then I break off a piece, and hand it to the SINner beside me.

They are weeping.

I don’t blame them. I think I would be, too, in a different moment in time. 

But I will not let this place break me. No matter what I have to do. 

I leave them a chunk of flesh, and keep eating. Devouring the scraps, like a scavenger worm.