BELOW: CRAWL 15 (Patreon)

Laroia remains utterly disgusted by the food on offer, even though she does, eventually, give in to it. Starvation will do that to a person, drive them beyond any limits and understandings they might have had about themselves. Samir is much more self-eminently satisfied with the meal, though I can tell that he’s not comfortable with it being an arm rather than a cut. They both eat until they are no longer starving, and no more. 

Which does leave me with an fortunate amount of arm-meat to play with.

It also sort of works to answer a question I’ve had for a while, that being the question of how there are so many Wretches in hell.

My rise to power, in just a few months, is what might be considered meteoric. Going by my metrics, it’s just barely faster or better than what the average must be, because, let’s be real, I don’t feel like I’ve done very much. I’ve eaten, I’ve fought, I’ve breathed. That’s life, here in the BELOW, right? 

But here, I get to see one of the two reasons why every person in the world doesn’t have magic skills and super-mutations and climbs gates magically fast. Reason one? They don’t want to. 

Most people, at least going by the examples I’ve met and the two Wretch friends I have, don’t want to be cannibals. They don’t want to inhale needles every waking moment of the day. They don’t want to go out and fight and get tortured over and over for the sake of power and ideals. Most people just want to live, and be alright, and aren’t willing to roll naked over razors and broken glass to pursue some random ideals that are completely out of sight and maybe impossible. 

Reason two? SIN degradation. 

I haven’t really experienced it properly, but that’s because I’m always drinking more of it in. There hasn’t really been a point where I wasn’t taking in SIN consistently except when I was in the tunnel and in the cave I was trapped in, and in both cases, I think eating the stone offered me a minute amount to sustain myself on. Not enough to grow stronger, but enough not to go… what’s the system call it? Still? Enough not to go Still. And that’s with a title that allows me to resist SIN degradation more than others. 

But if it’s real, like the system says it is (and I have absolutely no reason to think otherwise), then it makes sense that people who don’t actively pursue power end up losing SIN over time. If you’re only breathing when you have to, only eating when you have to, then it makes sense that you’d end up losing some of what little you gain to that degradation. 

I am, it would seem, an exception to the common trends. For every monster I’ve seen, I’ve seen a hundred wretches, between the Home and that fight pit, and here’s why. At least, I think that’s why. Superficial guess, but it feels right. 

I fill my stomach back to fullness, and then eat some more after, the Broken Gullet providing me the space I need to glut myself. Ever-Starving Beastling means that my gut will empty sooner than later, and I’ll be able to starve myself even worse than before, but that’s strength, too. And when I’m done, there’s still an annoying amount of arm left. 

The fucker was heavy. Dense as fuck. 

I leave the arm aside for now. 

“When can I go back?” Samir asks me, not long after I’m done eating.

I don’t bother writing anything down. I just shake my head no.

“I know you have a plan,” he signs at me, “but I have to go back. That’s my home. He’ll hurt people while I’m gone.”

I shake my head again, and this time I go out of my way to scribble on the wall. Won’t hurt them. Don’t know U left.

“You don’t know that!” he signs, angrily. 

I growl a bit under my breath, then grumble something unintelligible even to myself through my Broken Gullet. 

Fuck it. 

It takes a while, but I manage to move enough bones around to use one of my malformed little arm-nubs to write properly, and quickly enough that it doesn’t just piss me off. 

I have a plan. Getting stronger. When I am strong enough, we go back. Together.

Laroia looks back between the two of us, trapped between two stronger SINners and totally lost in this new world. Something I’m going to keep trying to fix, as soon as I have fucking arms to sign with, damnit. For now, it’s… it’s whatever.

She’s better off than waking up alone. I can still convince myself of that. 

“How long?” Samir asks.

I mime looking up at a nonexistent sun in an all-black literal cave, then back to him, then shrug, loud and clear. 

“The longer I’m here, the more people get hurt. The more of them get stuck with guard duty, or sent out instead of me. I have to go back. I’ll go with or without you.”

Scribble again.

You’ll be lost. Don’t know where to go.

“Doesn’t matter. I have to try.”

Fuck you, Samir. Fuck you to hell and back for being a goddamn person with ideals that I have to fucking deal with, I hate you so much right now. 

He wants to go back, because he’s harm-mitigating others in the cult. He can go fuuuuuck himself, having moral principles and being brave and risking himself for others and…

Ugh. He’s a good person, and that is so goddamn annoying right now, when I could use someone malleable and willing to just do whatever I say, because that’s the easiest thing, right? Not a good thing, or a reasonable thing, or anything I’m proud of, certainly not the best case scenario thing for a long term situation, doesn’t even serve me properly in the short term, really. But it’s what I want. It’s what I want, and what I can handle, and I can be a selfish piece of shit, why the fuck not?

I’m breathing needles. Literally every few seconds. And that’s the minimum standard for the pain I have, goddamnit. 

And fuck you for this too, God. If that is you up there, you can rot in hell instead of us, fucker.

Fine, I scrawl. Three more hunts. 

“One more hunt.”

Two. Two beast-hunts. 

“...Fine. But then I’m going, and–”

I wave him off, the little stub coming out of my shoulder making the act look almost comedic and almost terrible. 

Fine. Two more hunts. Two more beast-hunts, which I specified, and which he agreed to, so if he wants to be nit-picky later I will absolutely yell at him for it, especially since I don’t even have my fucking arms back yet. Which I lost because of him, the ungrateful fucking asshole. 

Except that’s not fucking fair. He’s only here because I brought him here. Same with Laroia. 

Who already seems more comfortable with Samir than with me. 

For obvious reasons, of course. He can talk to her. His face isn’t a massive gaping wound. He’s not the first face she saw while waking up to literal hell. He’s not the one leaving her all alone here or encouraging her to be mutualistic with the beast or coming home with severed limbs and covered in blood. All perfectly reasonable reasons to like the new guy more than me. 

The blistering fucking rage and shame and frustration that that makes me feel is valid. And also wrong. And unfair. And not her fault. 

I curl up in one of the deeper alcoves I’ve dug, roll myself into a tight little ball, and don’t do anything for a few hours. 

I don’t even breathe. My heart doesn’t beat, even at the infrequent, one-to-two beats per hour that I’m used to. I don’t move one muscle. 

I just lay there and let myself be exhausted. 

Eventually, the fact that I can’t sleep overwhelms the fact that I am so, so, so fucking tired. 

Almost subconsciously, I check my SIN total as I inhale a breath. 

SIN: 29

Fleshy fucking arm. So dense, and that density seems to come with a lot of added SIN to it. Maybe it has to do with how strong the SINner was? How powerful, how far to the next gate, how specialized? I don’t fucking know, but he was… is, I guess, strong. And that makes for good eating. 

-15 SIN

+1 DESIRE

SIN: 14

I hit the 35 threshold, nice and easy. Almost double what got me my first skill. And…

Nothing. 

No skill-gain notification. Nothing that easy, goddamnit, because why the fuck not? Maybe I’ll get it when I get to 40, like I originally thought. Or 50. Or seven million. Or some random prime number that’s literally impossible to guess, because fuck you, it’s hell. 

Which means I only have two skills I can gain in any sort of reliable time-frame. Violence… and Tyranny. 

The stat I’m trying to refine, and the one that I spend all my fucking time avoiding thinking about. The only one that’s magically climbed up on its own, independently of me investing SIN into it.

My aspects are currently arranged as such:

HUNGERING GHOUL: LOWEST TIERTHAUMIELSIN: 14ASPECTS:

VIOLENCE: 17One’s ability to cause Harm and Suffering

DESIRE: 35 (33+2)One’s ability to Perceive and Influence indirectlyLust’s Blinders

CONSUMPTION: 20 (19+1)One’s ability to Devour and EndureEver-Starving Beastling

COWARDICE: 20 (19+1)One’s ability to Avoid harm and find EscapeSlithering Worm

TYRANNY: 14 (13+1)One’s ability to Command and Dominate

SALVATION: N/AOne’s ability to Exist

My title also applies, because it adds to the Aspects, and I don’t know what happens when / if I deactivate it or evolve, because what if losing it lowers me past a threshold? But whatever. Violence is one Aspect point away, Tyranny is six. That’s seven points. I can do that. Two more hunting trips with the beast, some more on my own, that’s doable. Two more skills added to the pile, and hopefully two that I can use actively. 

And that’s…

Fuck.

That’s if I let Samir go. 

I’d be a fucking hypocrite and a controlling piece of shit if I didn’t. I’d be actively violating his agency, abusing him to control him, all for my own sake, and fuck me, it would be easier, in some very sharp and specific ways, to just bury him until I feel ready. 

And there’s no fucking way I’m gonna do that. No way at all. Absolutely not.

I can bend. I cannot break. I will not break. 

So I’m going to face the Home as a THAUMIEL-level SINner, still. Because I have absolutely no doubts at all that even if I don’t march right in, once Samir returns, he will eventually be broken. And frankly, being that close to it… probably Masked Father will be able to sense me, or track me, or hunt me the fuck down. 

So. Nothing about the plan changes, right? Keep the beast happy and useful. Farm more Aspect points. Get two skills that’ll actually be fucking useful. 

My bones wiggle under my skin, disconnecting way too easily with how my new WOUND works. I can feel it, track how the different pieces are moving, which I’m pretty sure my Expanded Mind WOUND is helping with. I can move all of the pieces of me, all at once, all in sequential orders. 

I look over at the leftover bits of the arm I brought back. It’s mostly bone and tendons now, the majority of the skin and muscle pulled off it and eaten. Still, the fucker’s so thick it’s almost as thick as my arm used to be, maybe more, even with its main muscle groups missing devoured.

My WOUNDS help. And if I can’t get an upgraded skill just yet…

When Laroia and Samir aren’t looking, instead spending time in another alcove large enough for two, I skitter over to the arm. 

I can already feel some pangs of hunger, my body digesting away any satisfaction much faster than before, but I don’t bite down. I don’t eat. 

Instead, I use Slithering Worm in a way the system might not have intended originally. If the system even works that way. 

With Ossified Jigsaw and Slithering Worm both working together, I move bits of rib and shoulder into the skin of my stump, where the first bits of bicep are starting to regenerate, and… pull. 

Little spikes of bone emerge from the skin, facing outward from the center, and I pull the regenerating flesh apart. 

I only whimper the once as I do it. Go me. 

Samir and Laroia turn to look, confused, and Slithering Worm deactivates. With a thought, I push into its active effect, burning a point of SIN to keep it functioning even while I’m being watched. It feels stronger in the active version too, like more of me can be used to move like that, but… I’m not sure and I’m not trying to check right now. 

I lean over, using my WOUND and my skill to grab hold of the arm, and shove it into my still-healing socket. 

The blood paints the dark of the cave again, and I lap it back up, over and over as it spills. Without scabbing, the bleeding just continues, on and on, until the flesh heals.

I grab hold, one by one, of all thirteen available points of SIN I have, once again leaving me with only a single point in my core, all my inactive titles floating on its surface like rotting meat on an oil-slick pond. And then I shove every point, as hard as I can, straight into the joint where the limb meets my still-wounded shoulder. 

Add a little bit of extra stomach acid, just to make it double-stick. Don’t worry about how much it hurts, how much it burns. I can’t die, I haven’t gotten infected so far, and I’m completely fucking done with worrying about that sort of thing. Not if I can get stronger in spite of it. 

I stay there, just breathing, in and out, for one hour. Then two. Then more. A few more points of SIN trickle into me through the needles in my lungs, the affront to BELOW that it is to breathe. And I keep sending as many of the pieces of that accumulated SIN that I can to the limb. 

Bit by bit. A little at a time. A consistent flow, adding to those first thirteen points, though I don’t do a very good job keeping track of how many I spend like this. My theory is that the more SIN goes into a WOUND, the better for me it turns out. Or the stronger it becomes. Maybe both. 

I keep pushing. More and more and more, until I lose track of the time. Until I’ve wasted most of what might be a day in here, just forcing this to work, demanding that it work. I don’t give a fuck if it should work, if there’s some mechanic in the way, if there’s not enough SIN, I don’t care.

It will work. It will work, because I fucking say so, and because I will not abide anything else. 

+1 TYRANNY

Go rot forever. Fuck off away from me for the rest of time. Don’t you ever fucking dare reward me for being the broken thing that I am, for making demands I have no right to. Don’t you fucking dare encourage me to be like this. 

I will not break. I may bend, but I will not break.

15 points in Tyranny. 

And I feel the sensation of my arm, flayed of flesh and muscle, barely even functional, starting to tingle from the connecting nerves. 

Two more hunts, and everything I can find in between. It’ll have to be enough.