BELOW: CRAWL 20 (Patreon)

The trek up out of the dark is a quick one, my new body making everything feel so much easier. My Aspects have increased, yes, but so many of the badly-healed scars and messed up parts of my body as a Hungering Ghoul have been fixed and replaced. More than that, there’s the fact that a Hungering Ghoul is weak. Possibly by design, it’s not much stronger than a Wretch, both sitting in the Least-tier of THAUMIEL. All the Aspect upgrades don’t change the fact that the hips were shaped a certain way, or that the guts were always sort of knotted-feeling, or that my shoulders never really worked right. . 

Now, though, I’m changed. Something new. Something altogether more dangerous, more designed, even if I’m not what I’d call well-designed. 

I’ve gotten taller. My skin is smoother, with weird little squiggles along its surface somewhat similar to a worm’s rings. I’ve filled out a bit, but that just takes me from being anorexically starved to merely skinny, and I can feel my joints bending more easily. At least, more easily than before my Ossified Jigsaw WOUND, which…

Yeah. It’s not here anymore. I shift and bend, feeling out my new limits, but my bones are no longer shattered into pieces and kept together by the WOUND, able to interlock and change freely. It’s weird how quickly I got used to feeling like my body was a bag of shattered bits and bobs, because now, not having to clench just to keep my body from falling apart, I feel almost unmoored. 

It doesn’t help that things seem… slower. Just a bit. Like I used to be able to tell where all my bones were, and now I have to go out of my way to check. Raising a hand to my head confirms it– the open gaps in my skull where brain-matter was half-visible have closed, vanishing entirely. No more Expanded Mind WOUND, either. Both of them just gone, as if they never were. 

As the evolution promised. 

Hungry Singing Worm. I can’t help but wonder if they way I’ve been referring to myself in my head has an effect on the evolution I… shaped? Created? I wasn’t fully able to control what happened, but I absolutely did have an influence on it. Maybe with higher Aspects and a higher dose of SIN, I could control the transformation even further. Still, the details of it were clear enough; one of its negatives was to lose half of my WOUNDS.

Lucky for me, it looks like it rounded down. Or maybe the Strong Arm That Hates is a different type of WOUND, I dunno. Either way, it seems I got…

I don’t know. Unlucky? My two newest WOUNDS are gone, leaving me with my big fucking Broken Gullet and the–

Huh. So that’s the one that got picked. Even at a glance, I can tell that my Suffering Stomach isn’t the same anymore. 

Looking to see the changes that have been made to me, I pull up my system sheet.

HUNGRY SINGING WORM: LEAST TIER
GHOGIEL
+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
SIN: 92
ASPECTS:

VIOLENCE: 13 (17-4)
One’s ability to cause Harm and Suffering

DESIRE: 44 (35+9)
One’s ability to Perceive and Influence indirectly
Lust’s Blinders

CONSUMPTION: 24 (20+4)
One’s ability to Devour and Endure
Ever-Starving Beastling

COWARDICE: 24 (20+4)
One’s ability to Avoid harm and find Escape
Slithering Worm

TYRANNY: 26 (14+7+5)
One’s ability to Command and Dominate
SELECTION PENDING

SALVATION: N/A
One’s ability to Exist

COMMANDMENTS:
YOU POSSESS NOTHING. YOU ARE NOTHING. SUFFER AND BECOME.

MANIFESTATIONS:
YOU POSSESS NOTHING. YOU ARE NOTHING. SUFFER AND BECOME.

GNOSIS:
MANIPULATION OF SIN (2nd TIER)
One’s being is defined by SIN, but through comprehension, through will, a SINner may shape that definition, turning their acts of un-grace into specific steps, specific changes, and further distance from the ABOVE. More than just a thing to imbibe, the true manipulator can wield SIN as fuel, as lubricant, as a multiplier of harm.

Infusion (Common)
Bend SIN from out of one’s body into prepared Still-matter or inanimate bone.

NECROTHURGY (1st TIER)
SIN defines one’s being, but what is defined? What is shaped?
What is perceived. What is known. What is remembered. What is experienced. Take hold, bend and break, wind and unwind. Madness is power, and your power is madness.
The Home That Misses You (Exotic)
It misses you. It’s a home. You are home. You are missed. You should stay. You should be home. Home misses you. You remember home. You remember home, don’t you? And it remembers you. Isn’t it good to be remembered? Isn’t it so good to be wanted and missed and to have a home? You are home. You should be home. You should be a home. A home is in you.

WORDS OF BINDING (1st TIER)
SIN defines you. It defines others. Reach definition together through the blasphemy of communication.

Lesser Contract (Common)
Tie yourself and one other to a promise, establishing a cost of SIN for forsaking it. If the SIN cannot be paid in the present, it will be paid in future, drawing from further gains.

WOUNDS:
BROKEN GULLET (Common)
Shattered pieces of what was a face, what was a throat, forcing one’s hunger to overwhelm and allowing them to shovel anything into the wound that causes it.
SUFFERING STOMACH (Rare):
Torn open and made to drench flesh in pain and acid, an organ birthing violent digestion that burns through living and Still matter just the same, save for the bodies of those it is bound to.
STRONG ARM THAT HATES (Common)
Taken from an unwilling donor, ill-suited to the thief that has stolen it, here is the feast of a bold little worm. While there are many arms that hate, this one embodies a strength that is rare for its single-mindedness.

ACTIVE TITLES: 1/2
INACTIVE TITLES: 5

Two new GNOSIS, and a modification, it seems. Also worth looking into, but the changes to my more powerful WOUND are what I came here for. It’s not much to look at, at first. There’s a single added line, with no changes to its name but a rise to a level of rarity I’ve only seen once before. Neither Common nor Uncommon but Rare, the same as my Expanded Mind, a WOUND based on tearing apart my own skull and keeping the holes open. It makes it the second most unique WOUND I’ve gotten, and I can’t help but wonder how many ranks there are for this system of categorization.

System? Anything you want to tell me about that?

Silence. No new words, because of course not. Why make it easy? Why ever make anything easy?

But the change is in more than the descriptions. I can literally feel it, and looking down, see it too. As I shift focus out of my system sheet, I can see it there, the gaping, half-healed orifice of scar tissue and acid along one side of my gut, and how it’s changed. It looks more like a scar, now, or like a seam, something that can open a window rather than just a hole, and it arcs from just below my ribs on my left side to just under the curve of my belly, along my waist. I try to focus on it again, and it feels different too, like there’s some sort of new muscle inside of it that I can flex. 

And when I do, it opens wide.

The scar-seam splits wide, and inside of it are loops of intestines, wrapped unnaturally around a round, swollen organ inside. Said organ, my stomach, has cuts and molten holes in it where acidic bile leaks out, slathering the intestines, and when I try to recoil, I see them move.

I don’t know if I’d like to have a mirror. It would make it easier to see inside, though I really can contort myself really easily in this new form, but also, it would make it easier to see inside. It’s bad enough having to feel it. 

Fresh loops of intestine come into contact with the center of the WOUND and a slight burning sensation arises, not as bad as I thought it would be but still the feeling of something hurting in my organs in a way that shouldn’t be. I try to “move” things the other way, utilizing new “muscles” that aren’t technically supposed to function like this, and find that the intestines start to spill out, like long loops of snakes emerging from inside my gut. Except they’re not just falling out of me, they’re moving, and actively. 

Tentatively, forcing myself to get used to the discomfort, I try and single out one loop and get it to move. 

It slowly and awkwardly shifts past the others, sliding around and knotting up my guts, and then emerges. It doesn’t fall, nor does it rise. I’m adapting quickly, but it’s still a mess, hard to control, but I see the way it shifts and track the feelings inside my body that make that happen. 

Pretty soon, I have a tendril of my own guts wavering out in the air, resisting gravity and capable of further movement. Something new to train, and, considering how it literally drips stomach acid, which leaves my skin with just a slight pain but starts eating through the staircase I’m standing on, something that has more than one use to it. A delivery system for the acid that makes the Suffering Stomach useful to begin with. And according to the information I got in my original view of Hungry Singing Worm…

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

It might burn my chosen “host” as little as it burns me. Which would be very useful indeed, if I wanted to offer something more to our arrangement. Maybe I could paint its claws in the acid? It would make for a powerful synergy, if it works that way. 

I’ll find out later. There’s more to see. 

Slurping my loop of intestines back inside myself, making sure to forcibly not ignore how that feels so I can make myself get used to it faster, I turn to the changes in my GNOSIS.

As I continue walking up the many layers of the home that almost unmade me, almost consumed me entirely, I examine what’s new in the system sheet. 

Firstly, the default GNOSIS seems to have an upgrade. 

Infusion (Common)
Bend SIN from out of one’s body into prepared Still-matter or inanimate bone.

That’s new. And I didn’t really learn it, did I? I learned to manipulate SIN on my own at first, and that’s what got and upgraded the GNOSIS. Here, the system just sort of pushed that information into me. Brings up all kinds of interesting implications. More importantly for right this second, I can feel the shape of muscle memory I didn’t have before, helping me to know what to do. I know that I could find (or remove one of my own) bones and start pushing SIN into them, though something tells me it wouldn’t be very efficient. Not as efficient as using it on another person or my own skills, but if my evolutions can be influenced by SIN totals, then maybe having batteries of it can be really useful long-term. 

Then there’s WORDS OF BINDING, a new category of GNOSIS, and my second common-gain. I don’t know what it’ll feel like, but I’m sure I’ll be able to feel out the shape of it later when I experiment with it.

WORDS OF BINDING (1st TIER)
SIN defines you. It defines others. Reach definition together through the blasphemy of communication.
Lesser Contract (Common)
Tie yourself and one other to a promise, establishing a cost of SIN for forsaking it. If the SIN cannot be paid in the present, it will be paid in future, drawing from further gains.

 It’s almost stereotypically hellish; demons make contracts all the time, after all. And again, it’s information fed directly into my mind, not something I figured out on my own, but again, it brings up a certain question. 

Could I have figured these out on my own?

There’s no real hints to the ways that SIN functions, no hard sciences or textbooks that I can look into, but theoretically, both of these applications are things I could have figured out on my own with experimentation, maybe. Trying to make a knot out of two people’s SIN is a thought that probably occurred to someone, sometime– did the GNOSIS exist before that, or only after?

And if I lose GNOSIS with another evolution, like some of the options presented to me, can I re-learn it organically rather than needing to gain it artificially like this? Does knowing it exist make it easier or harder?

Though, of course, there’s still the last GNOSIS to examine. 

The Home That Misses You (Exotic)
It misses you. It’s a home. You are home. You are missed. You should stay. You should be home. Home misses you. You remember home. You remember home, don’t you? And it remembers you. Isn’t it good to be remembered? Isn’t it so good to be wanted and missed and to have a home? You are home. You should be home. You should be a home. A home is in you.

It is, to be generous, gobbledygook. Functional gobbledygook, but gobbledygook nonetheless. If I hadn’t spent the last few hours wandering down through this fucked up hellscape-house-thing, I wouldn’t have the faintest fucking clue what it does. Even with my lived experiences, having touched the original thing and the SIN it was connected to that made this weird space, I still don’t know what it does, specifically. And what’s more? 

Not Common, Uncommon, or Rare. Exotic. Which makes it at least one, but possibly more, ranks higher than anything else I’ve got, and more than two ranks higher than my next two GNOSIS.

Except that, unlike the other two, I have no fucking clue what this one does. Nevermind magic muscle-memory, even the description of this thing is a damned mess. I have no idea what this is or what it does, but the new category that appeared above it offers some hints. 

NECROTHURGY (1st TIER)
SIN defines one’s being, but what is defined? What is shaped?
What is perceived. What is known. What is remembered. What is experienced. Take hold, bend and break, wind and unwind. Madness is power, and your power is madness.

Still don’t know what this “Tier” business is with GNOSIS. Nothing else even has that shit. 

Whatever. It reads like some sort of mental effect, something designed around minds, memories, knowledge. It’s not much, but at least it’s something to go off of. I can work with that. 

Some things don’t change, though. For one, while one of my arms fits the rest of my body, slender and soft and weirdly ridged, the other very much does not. 

Strong Arm That Hates is very much still in attendance, and though it’s less twitchy than before, maybe tuckered out by our mutual transformation, the line where my body ends and the WOUND begins is stark. A ragged, slightly bloody, scar-covered mess blends my flesh with that of the beast I stole from, and it seems to have healed quite a bit while I was in the evolution-menu. While there are still areas that are clearly torn open, with muscles visible and skinless, the bleeding has pretty much entirely stopped, and there’s no bones in view save for the knuckles. The open flesh still makes it startlingly red down here in the dark, blood being the only thing of any real color, and it’s got more muscle on it than most of the rest of me put together, all the way down to its claw-tipped fingers. Distinctive, in short. 

And of course, I still have no fucking mouth. 

The Broken Gullet has changed as well, but not that much. There are… flaps? Sort of. It’s no longer just a jagged gash from lips to sternum, and the shards of bone and teeth have been reshaped ever so slightly to scrape against each other a bit less. Now, I can sort of flex the severed halves of my throat together to semi-close it, enough so that it’s not always gaping open. 

But of course, it is still very much a big fucked up WOUND right where my lips, tongue, and vocal cords would be. Because of course, my brain surgery and magic puzzle bones had to go away, but my rock-eating no-talking ripped up face-mouth? Well, we gotta keep the classics.

Nothing’s ever fucking easy down here, is it, hell?

The system says nothing. 

I arrive, after an exhausting number of flights of stairs, back to the room where I emerged from. It’s still pitch black, but with how high my Desire Aspect is, it’s not that hard to feel the contours of it again. Not in any detail, but I can sense when I’m about to bump into something, and then more or less sense the shape of things around me. Not quite like a comic book superhero, but getting closer all the time. 

Over 40 Desire. Still no second skill. But…

ASPECT THRESHOLDS BREACHED

SUBJUGATION DEMANDS SUPPLICATION

That. Still blaring at me every time my focus slips. I think it might be starting to hurt a little too, like having a vibration keep getting closer and closer until it’s starting to get unpleasant. 

But I’ve spent enough time on this shit. Absolutely it’s relevant, absolutely I’m going to deal with it, but there’s something far more pressing I need to focus on right now. 

I don’t know how long I’ve been down here. I don’t know for how long I was asleep, drowning in the cold as I was pulled from one place to another, my body left behind. For all I know, Samir’s already tried to leave and gotten himself lost. Or the beast got bored and decided to eat both of them. Or he convinced Laroia that the Home isn’t that bad, and I’ll have one more person to have to lie to and manipulate my way around rather than trust. 

I don’t want to waste the minutes or hours it would take me to unlock my first Tyranny-skill/mutation. And I’m definitely not putting it off because it makes me feel literally ill to think about. Nope. I do have genuine, actual reasons to move forward and ignore it for just a little bit.

I want to go back to the hideout through a pathway that is fast and safe.

The world narrows down to a set of pathways ahead of me, and I leave the house that is a home that misses you through the same door that I came in from, Slithering Worm activating alongside Lust’s Blinders as I start crawling my way up the smooth tunnel that led me here.