BELOW: CRAWL 18 (Patreon)

Awaa I missed a chapter and I'm still sleepy somehow and my stummy hurts aaaah

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Something that comes to mind is a memory that I hadn’t even remembered I had. I watched a movie at some point, and someone, I think the villain, said something that apparently stuck with me. 

Hell is not flames. It’s ice. Nothing burns like the cold.

It makes some sense. A bad enough burn kills off the nerves, destroys them entirely and leaves nothing for the pain to grow through. But cold? It burns, yes, but it burns like cold until it burns like heat, the brain tricked into suffering in all new ways as more and more pain digs in, as frostbite comes forth. Eventually the cold kills the nerves too, but it certainly takes longer. I haven’t been burned alive, either, but I hear that in that instance the smoke kills you faster than the flame, so maybe it’s just another argument in favor. 

I wouldn’t know. I don’t think anyone has ever survived having their veins filled completely with napalm or liquid nitrogen to talk about it. Hell is full of fresh experiences like that. 

All I know is that six hundred and ninety SIN has just flooded into my system right alongside something I’ve never heard of before and which wasn’t on my stat-sheet beforehand, and the sensation takes overwhelming to a very literal level. It’s like being drowned. It’s like being held under the ice, dragged into the deep no matter how I spasm or struggle. 

The Strong Arm That Hates takes the opportunity to punch me in the face, completely shattering my jaw, but I don’t even blame it really. The rest of me is spasming just as badly, if not quite as maliciously, kicking at the stairs, falling down and then throwing myself back up with violence. I’m actually lucky that my Ossified Jigsaw bones don’t lock the same way as a normal skeletal system or I’m pretty sure I’d have broken my own spine against the stairs, and probably my legs besides that. Slithering Worm activates subconsciously as bits and pieces of me try to crawl in every direction, to throw myself forward and back and up and down and desperately find someplace that isn’t here and now. Even the Strong Arm That Hates joins in, throwing me about with its more intact skeletal structure and trying to rip itself away from the cold and pull me apart. 

There’s literally too much SIN to control. Even if I wasn’t blatantly drowning in the cold of it all, I don’t have the skillset or the level of control required to use all of it. I briefly try to grab ahold of it, but it’s like trying to grab a whirlpool with my bare hands while actively drowning in it, any semblance of its tar-like nature subsumed beneath the violent flood of it all flowing through my system.

Months of work. Months of work and work and work, trying as hard as I fucking can to keep myself from reaching the threshold and evolving until I’m ready. Lust’s Blinders and my own stupidity, a lethal fucking combo. 

But 690 SIN… 

Maybe it’s worth it. Maybe my stupidity pays off. 

SIN: 151 (+542)

THRESHOLD OF DAMNATION REACHED

BLOOD IS POWER

POWER IS EXISTENCE

YOU SURVIVE

YOU CONSUME

SUFFER THE CONSEQUENCES

WITNESS THE AVENUES OF SUFFERING AHEAD

YOU HAVE ESCAPED THE GRASP OF A HIGHER SINNER

YOU HAVE MAINTAINED YOUR MUTILATION AND SUFFOCATION FOR AN UNINTERRUPTED MONTH OF SUFFERING

YOU HAVE BOUND YOURSELF TO A GREATER SINNER

YOU HAVE CONSUMED THE FLESH OF DOZENS OF YOUR FELLOW SINNERS

YOU HAVE STOLEN A LIMB FROM ANOTHER

YOU HAVE GAINED SIX TITLES

YOU HAVE DESIGNED AND SELF-INFLICTED FOUR WOUNDS

YOU HAVE SURVIVED A BATTLE WITHIN A LESSER FIGHT PIT

YOU HAVE STOLEN A GNOSIS THAT DOES NOT BELONG TO YOU

FOR YOUR SINS, DEEPER DAMNATION IS ENACTED. 

SELECT YOUR PATH

The pain changes. It goes from being a part of my body, something running through me and tearing me up inside, to something that surrounds me and washes away everything but the vaguest bits of my personhood. Again, I feel like a piece of seaweed or algae, torn off of any surface and trapped inside currents of cold, impossible darkness, just like my first evolution. The burning becomes distant, vague, and the words in front of me, the system that connects this place to my mind, feel just as vague and insincere as ever. 

The words aren’t enough. They don’t fit the truth behind them. Like a shell of wax paper wrapped around the truth, shrinking the strangest and most impossible of high concepts into something I can even begin to comprehend, that same sense of frustration and grudging, reluctant submission that is always present in the system only magnified now.

It’s a long list of accomplishments, and again, it’s too small for what it represents. I feel that I could stare at them for longer and they’d break apart into more and more sub-notifications. But I can’t. I can’t even see, really, because sight is a lie, I am a floating clump of malformed nothing caught in deeper and darker waters than I was ever made for. 

Each sentence is a weight. It ties into me, falls inside me and wraps around me like chains, like cement, making it so the currents that buoy me aren’t able to hold me back or keep me near the “surface”. I plummet deeper and deeper into the cold, down further and further, and it almost feels like I have a current of my own. All that extra SIN, turned to a pool around me that influences some of the darkness surrounding me.

A hundred whirlpools, stronger than before, further BELOW the surface than before. Like there’s a million different paths, a billion different waves in this vast black sea, and each set of words I have earned joins the current most like it and pulls me down and away.

Too strong. Too strong. Strong enough to rip a little clump of seaweed to pieces, to tear me to shreds entirely. Even with the cold of my own little puddle of SIN, it’s so small compared to what’s around me, so absolutely miniscule in the face of this black ocean. My words and shapes and definitions churn and swirl, but one of them almost seems to move on its own, actively yanking me towards–

I sink deeper, faster and faster, pulled past the first of the currents that tries to grab me. 

BURROWING WORM (Least Tier)

THAUMIEL

How you have wasted yourself. How you run from the depths. What a pathetic thing you are, to crave the safety of simplicity. How wise, in acknowledging the waste that is your existence. Or perhaps you think yourself somehow special or important enough to claw your way up from self-destruction, to gain some advantage from abandonment. You have dug a tunnel through an infinitesimal amount of BELOW, but enough to imprint your efforts to yourself. While there is no way backwards save to rot and become Still, this is one of the closest equivalents one could uncover.

+1 VIOLENCE

+4 CONSUMPTION

+5 COWARDICE

-15 DESIRE

-15 TYRANNY

GAIN SIN FROM CONSUMING STILL MATTER

That might have some advantages, resetting me, but let’s be real, I–

Something pulls me out of it. Rips me out of it, before I have the choice, before I can even think of examining it properly. Usually, my emotions are muted here in the whirlpool, but there is surprise, mingled with a bit of concern. 

But maybe it’s just that it’s an option I’ve surpassed. Maybe I’d have to “swim” back up to even reach it. I grab at the next one, intending to keep myself in it, to see it properly.

SYMBIOTIC FEEDER (Greater Tier)

THAUMIEL

The parasitism that the SINner perpetrated on reality itself is not enough. It has bound itself to another, wrapping itself around that entity’s form and making itself suitable to the uses of its greater. By complementing another’s depravities, the SINner feasts upon the remains, picking apart what grander creatures discard or never care to see. Ultimately, the Feeder is a lesser thing than its superior, but by becoming invaluable, gradually, infestation can progress to more and stranger forms.

+5 VIOLENCE

+2 DESIRE

+5 COWARDICE

GAIN 1 GNOSIS OF BINDING

GAIN OR TRANSFORM A WOUND USEFUL TO BOTH YOURSELF AND YOUR “HOST”

TAKE 10% OF SIN GAINED BY “HOST”

Ok, this one has a lot more advantages. And it keeps me in THAUMIEL, which lets me keep drinking SIN more easily, which–

Again I am ripped free. The fear is sharper now. The cold is in me, in my awareness, not just in my body, so far from me now. Something is pulling me. Something is dragging at me, forcing me deeper, deeper–

There. Another current. Dive in. Move. Move.

BEASTLY RIPPER (Least Tier)

GHOGIEL

Having experienced one of the lesser manifestations of the rage and violence of SINners, your own acts have resonated with it, allowing a mutation. Tear yourself apart, rip away your pieces, and what remains has stepped onto the path of the beast, forsaking yourself for the sake of the brutality you have visited upon others and the opportunity to commit more. 

+10 VIOLENCE

+8 CONSUMPTION

+5 COWARDICE

LOSE ONE GNOSIS

TRANSFORM ONE WOUND INTO A HIGHER RARITY

GAIN OR UPGRADE ONE WOUND

BEASTLY: GAIN +5% SIN FROM CONSUMING OTHERS

Ok, this one’s not as strong as I’d like for being in GHOGIEL, but the stats are good, and there’s advantages I can examine and compare. But I can’t. Something else is pulling at me still. This current holds me a moment longer, and I feel how I’m entangled for a moment. A stream of black liquid in an ocean of it, and I’m connected to it by strands, little strings, and in them is the violence I have done, the sharpened claws, the hunger, and–

Deeper. Down into the water. Even without lungs, it feels like drowning. There’s one last pull that might be strong enough, one last current that might be able to buoy me above that deepest dark, and I shove myself towards it, all will and no mass.

SINGER OF BROKEN SONGS (Greater Tier)

GHOGIEL (PRIDE)

Again and again you have made demands of the world, confident in the assertion that you are greater than you are. Your arrogance brings out the madness in others and in yourself, drawing you deeper into a web of insanity that demands you strike against hell itself. Beautiful, misshapen, malformed, imitation of the divine, pretender of virtue, you are shaped by the higher ideals you ape at, ever incomprehending, ever failing, transformed into the shape that least defines the nature of a SINner. Inspire, convince, lead them to your doom, that they might share your grave in the annals of the story of BELOW. 

+10 VIOLENCE

+19 DESIRE

+5 CONSUMPTION

+10 COWARDICE

+25 TYRANNY

GAIN TWO GNOSIS (RANDOM, UNCOMMON OR LESSER)

LOSE ALL WOUNDS

+15% SIN GAIN FROM ACTIONS YOU HAVE INSPIRED IN OTHERS

Oh. 

Oh. Oh no. No no no no no no no–

I don’t know if I am ripped away or if I let go.

It doesn’t matter. I’m dragged down, torn away, past other currents I can feel but which I’m not anchored to as much as the others, and there is something deeper. I pass some kind of threshold and the cold, the rushing dark, the sensation of nothingness, suddenly gets magnified by pressure.

I have gone deep. Too deep. I am not made for this place. The SIN that surrounds me as a bubble is pressurized and then overcome almost immediately, the depths of this trance-space that feels too real to just be in my head, and the dark rushes forward, reaching in to crush me.

FOR YOU, DEEPER DAMNATION HAS BEEN ENFORCED

BEHOLD THY PATH

SLAVE OF THOUGHT (GREATER TIER)

SATARIEL

You stole something that does not belong to you. A thought that is not yours. Foolish and bold, desperate thing, but foolish above all. It is beyond you, as was the one that thought it, and now you face consequence. The SINs are of gluttony and desperation often lead to poisoned wells, and your hunger poisons you almost as much as that which you have stolen. 

+57 VIOLENCE

+70 DESIRE

+100 CONSUMPTION

-16 TYRANNY

LOSE ALL GNOSIS

LOSE ALL WOUNDS

LOSE ALL MANIFESTATIONS

GAIN ONE COMMANDMENT: [YOU ARE A HOUSE THAT MISSES YOU]

SATARIEL. A type of SINner I’ve never seen before, a level… beyond? Beside? GHOGIEL. And the highest boost to my Aspects I have ever seen, enough to overcome the price of multiple upgrades and my tiers. But the GNOSIS, the WOUNDS, even MANIFESTATIONS, which I don’t even have, all gone, and a COMMANDMENT, something that the strongest creature I’ve met directly told me to not fucking bother with even thinking about, it was so far above my paygrade.

Fuck me. Fuck me. The description alone would be enough to make me fucking run from this.

But it’s so heavy. 

It drags me in, and I feel almost powerless to resist it. I can still feel the other currents but they’re distant and weak, and I have to spend every bit of my strength not to get sucked into this evolution immediately. There’s nothing to grab, nothing to hold onto except the other sets of words, the other things I’ve accomplished, trying to drag me in their own directions but fundamentally weaker than the one, screaming, burning riptide that yanks me so deep so so quickly, faster than anything.

“Slave Of Thought” pulls me in with all of the inevitability of gravity, and I’ve slipped off the edge of a cliff into deeper waters. 

Except I didn’t steal shit. 

If someone leaves a thing in an abandoned house with an open door, what fucking expectation is there that it’s a belonging? That it’s important enough to have an effect should it be taken? Ask for it back like a normal person you piece of shit. 

I hold tight to the rage, to the frustration, to the animal panic of watching the jaws come to snap shut around me. They’re something to remind me I’m alive, that I’m more than just tumbling detritus being drunk in by some grander horror. 

Fuck you. 

I won’t let this place break me. I won’t. Hell WILL not break me. 

Fuck yourself to death and die, asshole, I make my own fucking home you stupid piece of shit you don’t even know my home. Shit yourself inside out and then eat it all back up and rot from the guts on out until all your teeth are inside your fucking guts and your own gaping asshole replaces whatever fuckass excuse for a dribbling patheric worthless thing you call a mouth.

I wonder if my lack of a mouth is making me more creative, or if I’ve always been so classy with my insults.

The thought goes away because I’m very busy violently cursing at this thing trying to drink me in and make me a part of itself. 

I AM NO ONE’S SLAVE.  

THIS PLACE WILL NOT BREAK ME.

I categorically refuse. Every single hate and fear and bit of disgust that I have at the idea of a tyrant and a tyrant’s victims demands, unyieldingly, that I cannot surrender here. I have taken in something beyond me and it is poisoning me but fuck you bitch try me.

I spent a month in the dark, stewing in my own intestinal acids, eating rocks, one armed, in a lightless, airless, starvation-filled tunnel. Before that, I spent a week in paralysis, impaled on a goddamn spike, staring as someone I hurt was forced to regenerate into a box too small for her and begged me to kill her. And that’s not even counting the time I became a limbless torso, alone, in the dark, for weeks.

I have been in hell not even a year. Maybe half that long at most, maybe slightly longer, but already, the core of me is cemented, rock solid and colder than cold. 

I do not deserve this. No one deserves this. BELOW is not worthy of existing, not in a just universe, not in a universe that I have power in. I do not allow it. I do not abide by it. I DO NOT ALLOW IT.

AND I WILL NOT BE ITS SLAVE.

The shackles tighten. The black depths of this endless sea, of the truer layers of hell, drag at me, like there is a meat-hook stabbed into my fucking soul with which to drag me. Reality itself tells me to experience the consequence that this unjust, cruel, vile place demands. 

You left it behind to rot, so I took it. Fuck you, mystery person, or the system, or whatever weird thing designed this fucking place. 

I’m a goddamn worm, ain’t I? Worms slip the hook all the fucking time. 

YOU HAVE STOLEN A GNOSIS THAT DOES NOT BELONG TO YOU

Pull out your eyes and shove them up your urethra you fuck

YOU HAVE STOLEN A GNOSIS THAT DOES NOT BELONG TO YOU

I stole what belongs to no one. I ate of the rotting apple buried in its own madness.

YOU HAVE STOLEN A GNOSIS THAT DOES NOT BELONG TO YOU

 If I am a thief, then I am a thief of nothing but what was freely abandoned and should have been better kept.

YOU HAVE STOLEN A GNOSIS THAT DOES NOT– 

And I don’t give a fuck if this bitch is SATARIAL rank or whatever, because I am no one’s slave, and I don’t care if I am mad to say it, but I do not allow BELOW to define me.

YOU HAVE STOLEN–

YOU HAVE–

Who the fuck said that you can tell me what I’ve done?

YOU HAVE TAKEN A GNOSIS BEYOND YOUR COMPREHENSION

Better.

I rip free of the current in a single explosive blast of metaphysical force and metaphorical violence, and the other words of the system, the other acts and SINs which I have defined myself by, rip me back up like ballast towards a different part of that undersea darkness.

But I feel the cold, and know that it will not leave me, no matter how high I float.