BELOW: CRAWL 19 (Patreon)

I’m still gone. Still far from my body, which continues to be so profoundly cold that it is a whole different kind of agony, floating up to me as one of the connecting links between my current existence and the rest of the “world”. 

But I’m still here. In the water. In the deepest dark, with no shore in sight, no lungs to breathe, no shape to exist in, only the frenetic chaos of being pulled in too many directions and surrounded by pressurized misery. But I’m here. I’m here. I escaped. 

And I forced the system to recognize me. I forced it to say something different, forced myself away from that deeper darkness and the dead-end horror that it tried to drag me into. I float up towards the lighter parts of this un-place, real and not real, and soon find that the currents I passed by before can pull at me again. I have choice, now, which is more than “Slave Of Thought” offered me. 

One of the four options remaining can go right out. Burrowing Worm, as much as it might suit me in some ways, is positively fucking useless. The system itself recognizes it as a retreat, something that costs me more than it offers, and what little it offers isn’t exactly worthwhile. Barely any Aspect improvements, and the only non-stat bonus it offers is that I can gain SIN from eating rocks. Which, come on, what the fuck. Useful exclusively for if I want to run and hide. 

Beastly Ripper is also out. It’s strong. Intensely so, offering me a lot of major upgrades, but the loss of GNOSIS is too much. Losing the ability to manipulate SIN, even temporarily, ruins everything I have and everything I can do. I’m sure I could get the GNOSIS back given time, but I’m on the clock, so to speak, and then there’s the Necrothurgy. I don’t think it’s a COMMANDMENT, I think that’s just what it was mutating into in that evolution. If there’s a chance it’s a GNOSIS, then all of this would be practically for nothing. 

That leaves Symbiote Feeder and Singer Of Broken Songs. I have a pretty major aversion to both. One of them ties me permanently to my current situation, connected to the beast, which is sustainable but not ideal. The other…

It reminds me of Masked Father. The Cult Bitch. Beautiful in a fucked up, alien sort of way. No Wounds I was aware of, and access to more than a few GNOSIS. Someone who got SIN from things done to others as much as things he did himself. And he’s strong, that’s for damn sure, strong enough to terrify me, strong enough that even now with my current setup I don’t think I have much chance against him. Though he’s probably had a long time to work on boosting his stats over time, maybe building internal WOUNDS, whatever. 

It’s the better option. The only weakness it has is the loss of WOUNDS, which make up a considerable amount of my kit right now. All of the options are flawed, and though I can feel other pulls on my existence, tugging me towards other possibilities, none of them feels strong enough to navigate by. 

And one thing I know for certain is that I don’t want to be lost in here. 

But that thought does offer me a possibility. Because I have the time to think it, then I have the time to act, right? And if I have the time to act, then I can change things. See things that I couldn’t before. 

For the first time, I turn to look at myself. 

I’m not real here. Technically, I don’t even know if this place is real, like it’s another layer to BELOW, or a different version of reality, something the system created or something new altogether. I know that my body doesn’t exist here, though I can still feel it. I could possibly still leave, go back to it, but… I’m not sure it would work. The bubble of SIN surrounding me, that colossal wave that overwhelmed me, feels almost like a cushion, or a weight, keeping me here beyond the evolution threshold. I’ll have to spend it, burn it, something before I can ever make it back. 

But… the me of my mind is also here. The center of me, what I picture in the depths of myself around that pit of tar that is my SIN.

I can see my titles, for one thing. 

They’re floating inside of me, though only one of them has its roots spread out, drinking and sustained by me and adding structure to the pool at the same time. But also, they’re not. I’m not real here, not a singular point, and those titles are outside, and they’re bulbous, strangely shaped, like they’re about to sprout new parts of themselves. They’re what’s drawing me towards the currents, what allows me to move between them. 

The titles are the things I’ve done that are worthy of the system’s recognition. The buds… maybe possible other titles? Or… can titles evolve?

I’m a formless nothing with no beginning or end. I’m a miniscule speck in the depths of an endless, horrific sea, trying to drag me where it pleases, where it thinks I deserve. 

Two options out of four, then, because I can’t afford to lose my ability to control SIN, and I can’t weaken myself so much that all of this is wasted. Maybe there’s some combo I could do, evolve into the Burrowing class and then evolve again right after, but the amount of sheer fucking waste of SIN to upgrade myself back up?

No. 

I float upwards, outwards, inwards. I stretch my no-self towards the stream that speaks of delusion and false glory, and I stretch myself up, to the current that is hunger and infestation and crawling things that feed. 

If the system couldn’t force that evolution on me, then who says it can force me to choose just one?

I don’t exist, and yet, I feel myself strain. Some part of me back in the “real” world is hurting, suffering, and I think perhaps I have screamed, though that place is far from me now. 

I can do this. I can make this worth something. I can make it worthy of the me I need to be. I can. 

I stretch towards the Beastly Ripper evolution, but then retract. Something about it is antithetical to the Singer of Broken Songs. I wonder what for a moment, but it’s obvious. One removes GNOSIS and gains WOUNDS, the other removes WOUNDS and gains GNOSIS. They’re opposed, and while maybe I could–

Nope. No, that felt like it pulled at something I do not want to be pulled. My body is definitely screaming out there. 

I abandon the Beastly Ripper evolution, focusing all I have on Singer Of Broken Songs, Symbiotic Feeder and Burrowing Worm. The latter two are on the same “shallower” level of this place, a bit easier to pull together, but. I feel myself getting pulled in two different directions, the other currents gradually feeling less and less intense as these three take up my whole focus. Singer Of Broken Songs is heavier than the others, and while the pull I feel towards it isn’t stronger, the current itself is. The difference between a GHOGIEL evolution versus a THAUMIEL. Still, I bridge the gap, my accomplishments, my self, forcing the connection to maintain itself.

 Something in the noncorporeal pool that is me starts to turn, pulled one way by the shallower current of the Burrowing Worm evolution and harder by the more powerful evolution “below” it, but I resist, hanging onto the weaker class with something. 

And then I’m sort of… rotating. 

Spinning in place, kind of. But not really. The little pool of SIN, the excess from reaching the evolution threshold, spins around me / is me, and I feel some of the “waters” shifting, pulled towards the disruption I’m making. My grip starts to loosen, and something heavy joins in the movement, something thicker and slimier than the other currents which is in me and pulled to me by one of my titles, one that I don’t recognize. Before long, I’ve made a mess of myself, turning from a stream of liquid and nonexistent body to a churning mass that feels like it’s going to be torn apart at any moment.

And then something in me snaps, and I feel part of me come loose, and I’m tumbling into the stronger of the three currents.

But something’s different. 

I didn’t manage to pull the evolutions to one path, but I did something. Some part of the other currents flows with me, and the way that I am tumbling messily seems to affect the stream I’ve fallen into, creating a disruption that briefly slows and changes it. 

And I fall right through that disruption, moving faster and slower at once than the rest of the current. I don’t escape it entirely, but rather than drowning within it, I’m drowning along its surface, pulling in almost the same direction, but with added viscosity and movement that sets me apart.

The system’s words fill my nonexistent sight as I find myself exhausted, the pool of SIN I came in here with spent to create the disruption in the channels and the fluid orbit I’m currently in. 

HUNGRY SINGING WORM (Least Tier)

GHOGIEL

A malformed amalgamation of SINful pride and mindless beasthood, crippled by its own nature and doomed to come apart. Incapable of reaching for a deeper realm, the gluttonous creature instead transforms itself to suit its environment, spreading a plague of ideas and an infestation of flesh through those foolish enough to listen to its crooning, poisoning its surroundings with similarly malformed symptoms as it squirms and writhes through the dark. While ultimately weak, those that it perverts often find themselves empowered by it, forced to become a part of its feeding cycle as it pursues metamorphosis to try and shed its lowly form, though what emerges is far less powerful than its origin and far less pure than what even the more depraved SINners enact upon their victims.

+9 DESIRE

+4 CONSUMPTION

+4 COWARDICE

+7 TYRANNY

-4 VIOLENCE

LOSE HALF OF YOUR WOUNDS

TRANSFORM A WOUND INTO A WOUND MORE USEFUL TO YOUR “HOST”

GAIN TWO GNOSIS (ONE RANDOM, ONE COMMON BINDING)

+5% SIN GAIN FROM ACTIONS BY OTHERS THAT YOU HAVE FACILITATED

+10% SIN GAIN BY HOST

GRANT OTHERS THE ABILITY TO GAIN ADDITIONAL SIN FROM EATING YOU

Alright, so I see some System out there is sour about me beating it. Fuck your description, asshole, this is beautiful. 

It’s a piece of shit, kinda, but it’s mine, and it’s a proof of concept. I don’t have to just fall into the currents, if I have enough SIN and achievements, I can pull them together, modify them. Maybe even make my own someday? 

Even if I could fall back out of this current now, I have no plans of doing so. It might technically be shittier than Singer Of Broken Songs, but not by that much, and it brings together parts of the other evolutions I wanted, albeit in modified forms. I didn’t get all that I wanted from them, nor did I get to choose what I got, but it’s better than something that constantly reminds me of the Cult Bitch. And it’s mine. And it’s got synergy.

I gain SIN from actions others do that I “facilitate”. And my “host”, which I can choose, gains more SIN just from being around me. So as whoever I choose gets more SIN, so do I. That offers some growth possibilities that the other classes didn’t as boosts to SIN gain seem pretty rare overall. 

And it’s got the word worm in it. Which is my name, kind of. Or it’s… what I am? Whatever. It’s mine. 

I let my awareness dissolve into the tarry darkness, fading away as I cement my decision in the face of hell’s terrible choices. And then, for a while, I’m gone. 

I see the notification before I even wake up. 

SIN TOTAL: 92

TYRANNY +5

ASPECT THRESHOLDS BREACHED

SUBJUGATION DEMANDS SUPPLICATION

I groan, my voice echoing strangely in the carved house I’ve crawled through. It sounds… different. Strange. Almost musical, but in a way that makes me think of a calliope– beautiful in the right scenario, eerie in most others. 

It hurts to move. I feel where parts of me tore open and have stayed that way, feel the edges of where my flailing in that trance-state worsened some of my injuries. Not just literally, either; some of them feel deeper, bloodier, less healed for more reasons than just having been torn open wider. It’s like my body tried to reject itself, and is only now while I was unconscious trying to reconcile back together.

ASPECT THRESHOLD BREACHED

SUBJUGATION DEMANDS–

Yeah, yeah, asshole, gimme a second.

I go to sit up, and find that moving feels very different now. 

I look down at myself, and the rising sense of dysphoria quiets and worsens at the same time. And what’s worse, how loud my movement is lets me tell just how quiet it is down here, which means that any sounds I was making have faded from even echoes down to nothing at all. 

How long was I down here?

Damn. No breaks in hell. 

…Except while I was in that stream. Transforming. Where I… wasn’t, for a while. 

Shit. This leveling-up thing might get addicting.