Darkness pulsed and wrapped around him in great throbbing waves. The endless black expanse spun him as it cradled him and he slid, directionless, across the midnight Ether. The rhythmic churn of his heartbeat vibrated in time with the flow as the lightless ocean surrounding him pushed him on.
An indeterminate time passed until Moth found his footing and the world opened around him. The land was black featureless dirt, hard and cold beneath his bare feet. There was a barely discernible break on the horizon where land met sky, a sky the color of the infinite space between worlds.
He looked down, and his eyes struggled to focus as he tried to find his body. He couldn't quite see
himself so much as...an echo of what he was. It was like his eyes were trying to discern him as he used to be, as he could have been, as he was at that time, and how he would be in the future, all at once. His arm felt weird. No matter how much he struggled to see it, something pushed his eyes away. It felt like...the way water smelled on hot wet fur. Like the sinews of an animal straining beneath coarse and matted hair. Like staring into a pitch black alley and feeling it stare right back. His heart beat louder in his ears.
The sound surrounded him, and he noticed a metallic edge to it. Like the clicking of gears in a massive clock. A warm breeze swept across the empty plain just then, tousling his hair and...
Oh. He was naked. So it was one of
those dreams.
His arm began to burn. It was slow, starting at his hand and creeping past his wrist and up to his elbow. It felt like he was holding his hand in front of a bonfire and slowly reaching in.
Hurts, huh?The voice startled him and he looked around and noticed a figure approaching. Shadows ran together across the black earth beneath the black sky and formed a black figure roughly the same size and shape as him. There was nothing else discernible about it until it opened its shimmering golden-pink eyes.
Hey buddy. Feels like a bitch, huh? Yeah, you're changing now and there's nothing that can stop it. You'll die eventually, but you have a while to go before that. Not much you can do but wait for it. You can fight it if you want, maybe prolong the inevitable a bit. Anyway, I was wondering when you'd finally notice me. I was there the first time you blacked out this morning, you know. Kinda slipped in when shit went crazy. Couldn't get your attention. But now...Without moving through the space between, the eyes were suddenly nearly touching Moth's own.
Boo....
Darkness, and silence, and nothing.
Warmth, on his cheek.
The sound of metal gears clicking in time like a heartbeat.
"C'mon, twerps, let's go!" the robot hollered in a very human voice. A rune was etched into its chest -- this robot was enchanted. "Is this everyone? Move it! Comin' through! Go down, go down down down! I'll take this guy, run faster!"
Moth peeled himself from the drool that stuck his face to the robot's back. He felt the world shudder every few seconds as a blaster tore through the crowd of screaming, howling, roaring creatures that were attempting to surround them. BRA-KOOM. BRA-KOOM. He was nearly upside-down and blood was rushing to his head and pounding in his ears and making the world spin. Moth risked a glance as the robot that held him spun and fired its massive gun. "Tidal wave" came to mind as the Grit swarmed towards them in a million colors, the parts of hundreds of animals--real and imaginary--divided between them. The wave parted, and one soared up, nearly scraping the high ceiling of the cafeteria.
It was entirely insectoid, a combination of several mantis types taken to an extreme. It had the large head and bulbous glistening eyes of a leaf mantis, the top of its thorax spreading out like a cape in semblance of a flower mantis' body. Like a leaf mantis and orchid mantis, plant-like appendages sprang from along its body in a brilliant rainbow and fluttered as it soared, it's massive forelegs and curving abdominal segment sprouting the deadly spines of a flower mantis. The beast roared in a chittering screech and flourished wings, delicate and shimmering like intricate stained glass and humming like a turbine engine as it dove.
Half of Moth was enthralled by its beauty and practically fell in love. The other half nearly shat himself in terror.
