Floating in cold, wet nothingness. Unable to feel, unable to think.

Then came a vibration, a sound that roused her into consciousness.

Glass cracking. Crack. Crack. Snap.

A viscous flood, ripping her half-conscious self into the reality of a shard-covered marble floor.

The pain of impact jolted her into awareness, and she began coughing violently to clear her lungs. Emerald-green liquid still dripping from her nose and mouth, she instinctively reached for one of the narrower glass shards.

“So cold… So hungry...” she thought as she struggled to stand. Bundles of sodden brown hair reached down to her knees, slithering across her bare skin like the tendrils of some abyssal monstrosity. She took her first real breaths, strands of silvery fog escaping with each exhalation. Her eyes drifted across the mosaic of glass spread out before her, a pair of silver eyes staring back at her. She turned to get a better look at her own reflection on the inside of the tank she was floating in only moments prior. A muscular physique, a sharp angled face, and strangely two-toned hair, silvery-white on top and rusty-brown below a certain point. “It could be worse,” a foreign thought sparked in her head.

The sound of bare feet on marble echoed as she began walking, taking in her surroundings, leaving dry spots in the emerald liquid wherever she stepped. Her mind flooded with the feeling of recognition, and yet she didn’t know what she was looking at or where she was. There were dozens of glass tanks up against the wall, identical to hers, with copper pipes snaking from their bases into the floor. Most of them were broken, with tumorous masses of flesh and bone lying before them. The right wall of the chamber was a towering mess of metal pipes, valves and dials, snaking into the floor and ceiling both.

Although she felt curiosity, something in the very back of her mind told her to get out of here, that this place was doomed. Only… There was nothing more than a solid wall, lined with bizarre machinery to her right. She saw a doorway on the far end of the chamber to her left, though it was barely a speck from this far away. “No choice, I guess,” she thought and began walking down the length of the room, taking care not to step on a shard of glass.

Her gaze darted all around as she made her way toward the doorway, a palpable tension ever-present and intensifying with every step she took towards the exit. Gleams of pale-white light reflected off the polished floor and the shards that lay upon it, yet strangely, the emerald liquid that once filled the tubes gave no reflection. Even more up-close, the lumps of flesh that lay in front of the tanks were completely indistinguishable - giant teratomas by any other name. Some had visible eyes and mouths, or even entire limbs sticking out of the main mass. The urge to break into a sprint had become almost overwhelming, but she kept herself calm by counting the tanks as she passed them.

“Thirty-four. Thirty-five. Thirty s-”

Squelch. A tumor-thing had used its sole arm to move itself into her path and grab her calf, squeezing with its seven distended, nailless fingers. Its eleven eyes converged to stare at what it had grabbed, moving up her form with a leery gaze while a pair of toothy mouths turned to perverse grins. At that moment, she knew what she’d need the shank for.

She stabbed straight down, into the creature’s eyes. Glass sank into flesh, tears mixed with ocular fluid spilled onto her fingers, atonal screeching and the chattering of teeth filled her ears. A sharp yank to the right. Guts and blood spilled from the wound, a half-formed ribcage forcing its way out like the unfolding teeth of a bear trap. A sudden halt to the noise, the creature’s grip tightening and then going limp. Still angered, she stomped on the thing and malformed guts burst from the eviscerated skin-sack, its single intact eye popping out of the socket.

A new smell rose as the creature dissolved into more green liquid, skin and soft tissues boiling away, thick ropes of green Fog escaping from the roiling mass to screech-like whistling. It smelled… Herbal. Identical to the emerald liquid. Though some green fluid spilled out of the melting carcass, much of it was being… Absorbed, directly through the skin of her leg. With every passing moment, more of the flesh-blob’s biomass melted away and entered into her body, and with every passing moment, more of her leg turned from pallid-white to light brown, silvery pathways in her skin becoming visible thanks to the contrast. She felt hunger and weakness fading, strength and limberness filling her as if she had just woken from a restful sleep.

The flesh, skin, and viscera were gone by this point, leaving only cartilage, bones, and teeth sitting in what little liquid remained. Slowly, ever so slowly, even these began boiling and melting, the herbal smell of green Fog mixing in with the stench of burning bone and keratin. Even still she kept an eye out on the other tumor-things, and after she gave it a bit of thought, it did make sense.

“I came out of a tank that was full of Green, and so did these things…” she pondered, turning her eyes on the nearest flesh-thing. “They melt back into Green after death, yet I absorb it… Therefore-”

Her train of thought was knocked off its rails when the creature she had her eyes on started twitching and gurgling, one of its mouths gaping wide as green spilled out of it and an unnaturally long leg emerged. Soon lurching, gurgling noise echoed throughout the chamber as one after another more of the tumor-things came alive, some dragging themselves across the floor towards her and some throwing their entire mass across the slick floor, screeching every time they landed on a shard of glass.

“How many?” she wondered, counting the moving blobs. Eleven so far, out of forty-five in total. Already she felt the slam of a foot next to hers, the mouth-legged tumor-thing trying to drag itself close enough to bite with one of its other mouths. She grabbed its leg and lifted it up, gutting the creature while it whipped about like a hooked fish. Glass cutting through flesh and cartilage, eyeballs popping and guts spilling, screeching that ended as abruptly as it began. It splashed into the floor and instantly began melting when she let go.

From where she was she could see that the Failures in the direction from which she came weren’t moving directly towards her, but rather towards one particularly developed specimen, standing atop the lower half of a leg and two fully-formed, although stubby arms. It had three noseless faces between its limbs, and atop its mass there gaped a mouth spanning nearly its entire circumference, from which there issued not a screech, but a low, rumbling gurgle.

She observed with some curiosity as a limbless Failure reached the Tripod, pressing itself up against it as its skin began to melt at the point of contact, and within seconds its entire mass was absorbed into the Tripod’s. Liquid visibly sloshed about in the Tripod’s skin-sack, its skin tightening as its limbs became visibly more muscular and its stub leg ripped itself free, extending out into a fully-formed, twitching limb.

With lightning speed, the Tripod leapt up and began sprinting at her, stomping on Failure after Failure and pulling them into its mass as it went. From three limbs to five, to nine, to eleven, a wrecking ball of flesh and mouths barreling down the chamber and collecting a carapace of glass shards as it went.

She took a deep breath, silver Fog pouring from her nostrils with the breath out. The corners of her mouth quirked upward and she was filled with anticipatory exhilaration.

“Just one good gash and it’ll go pop,” she thought. “Just one straight hit and I’ll get crushed.”

Another deep breath in, another deep breath out, wisps of silver Fog snaking around her head. Legs planted wide with the left in front, glass shank in hand, a grin plastered across her face. The Colossal Failure’s mass swiftly approached and she leaned to the side, pivoting on her left foot as she stepped forward. It sank into the Failure’s mass, its edge gliding through the meatbag’s surface as its many limbs grasped and kicked at her and a discordant chorus of screams shuddered from its many biting maws. A flood of guts and blood poured from the hole she had made, the monstrosity’s own mass acting to force its innards out, which boiled and turned to green liquid before they could even touch her.

The deluge of emerald substance flooding forth covered her utterly, green Fog spraying out of the monster’s skin-sack as it deflated and further melted away. The sensation of warmth and life suffused her body once more, the remainder of her skin gaining colour and exposing the metallic, serpentine markings that snaked all across her body. Even still, the chamber’s floor flooded with what Green she didn’t take in, a thin layer of green Fog settling atop it.

Still she heard slithering and screeching, with a few more of the Failures having come alive, pathetically dragging themselves through the Green, so weak they were melting alive. The desire to exterminate them was quickly quenched by the sound of straining metal and grinding stone as the ground shook beneath her feet and the light-crystals flickered.

“Need to get out. This place will sink into the Sea of Fog soon,” a thought not entirely her own flashed through her head as she passed through the doorway and began her ascent up the long, winding staircase.

On the way up she passed the doorways to perhaps a dozen identical chambers or more, barriers of translucent silver fog preventing entry, the tanks on the other side all empty or shattered. One floor had a wall of seared flesh pressed up against its barrier, an amalgam of all its Failures. Another was full of featureless humanoids, some impaled on the broken edges of their tanks whilst others just lay face-down on the floor.

She didn’t take the time to get a closer look, with the tremors becoming progressively stronger and more frequent as she ascended. She scaled hundreds, thousands of stairs, and with each flight she went faster, driven by a growing sense of impending doom. By the time she reached the uppermost floors, the staircase was quaking in perpetuity.

“I’ll be safe if I reach the ground floor,” another foreign thought intruded. Faster up the stairs. Faster. Faster. Though she didn’t look back, she knew the staircase was being consumed behind her. When she finally leapt through the doorway a sudden wave of buzzing static rushed over her, and as she looked back, she saw the doorway filled with a wall of silvery fog. The Fog dissipated, revealing a slab of solid marble with an occult circle etched into its center, glowing with otherworldly light that soon flickered and faded as well.

The smell of damp air and moss filled her nostrils as she scanned the room. It was an uneven hollow carved out of solid stone, with a metal ladder leading up into a shaft against the wall to the left. In the corner immediately to her right was one of the glass tubes, pristine and empty, and next to it there was a large stone table with a large cloth draped over it, as well as two shelves carved into the wall above it. “Could use something to cover myself with,” she thought, approaching the table and yanking the cloth away, wrapping it around herself like a large cloak. It was barely longer than her hair, but it would have to do. What the fabric had been covering momentarily grabbed her attention away from the ladder - it was some sort of arm harness, with a heavy wood and metal contraption attached to the gauntlet. What was the word… “A gun,” she remembered, instinctively looking for a powder horn, lead balls and shells. Both these and several loaded cartridges were to be found in the lower shelf, right next to a strangely intriguing marble tablet, bearing a bizarre pattern of carved lines and symbols. She let go of her shank, placing it on the table and reaching for the tablet.

Buzzing static filled her fingertips when she picked it up, small wisps of Fog rising from the tablet. The carved pattern flickered and began to glow white, a single word manifesting just above the tablet’s surface.

SCANNING

It remained like this for some time, long enough that she almost put the tablet down, but something in the back of her head told her to just wait. Soon enough, the buzzing sensation faded and the word faded, replaced by a statement and a question.

NO RECORD FOUND PLEASE ENTER NAME

“Alce-” the intrusive thought flashed in her head again, but before it could finish, a different name popped into her head.

“Zelsys.”

NAME ZELSYS SEX FEMALE SPECIES UNRECOGNIZED FORCE C+ PRECISION B- HARDNESS C- AETHER C TRAITS>

Out of curiosity, she tried swiping her hand through the projection, as if to turn a page in a book. The projection flickered and a new one appeared, fading in from the right as if a page had been turned.

TRAITS Survivor’s Instinct Fog-breathing Osmotic Essentia Absorption Metabolic Alkahest A swipe to the left took her back to the first projection, while another swipe to the left showed a third projection.

FOG STORAGE PUT INTO STORAGE BROWSE STORAGE ATTRIBUTES> TRAITS>>

“Some sort of arcane utility device,” she thought, tapping on PUT INTO STORAGE. The projection was seemingly blown away by a vortex of silvery fog that rose from the tablet, as wide as the tablet was tall. Zelsys took one of the unloaded shells and dropped it in, watching it vanish into the vortex. A few seconds passed with nothing happening, before the vortex abruptly dissipated. The storage menu projection returned, the same as it had been. She tapped on BROWSE STORAGE, and sure enough, the projection flickered to change into a different one - a label at the top, and a single blue line in the very center of the tablet.

FOG STORAGE 1x Shell Casing

A tap on Shell Casing. The options Retrieve/Cancel popped up next to it, and upon pressing Retrieve the vortex returned, the casing slowly rising out of it and then clattering onto the tablet. Arcane as the device was, its operation was rather simple. One after another she took the empty casings, activating the PUT INTO STORAGE once again and dropping them into the vortex one after another. She put the powder horn and two of the five loaded shells into storage as well, and then took to learning how the gun operated.

It was attached to an armored sleeve, one which fit easily with some adjustment of the straps, and seemed to somehow suction itself to the skin once attached, barely shifting around at all as she maneuvered her left arm to try and get a feel for how it limited mobility. A metal lever that was attached to the back of the gun sat just about in her palm, though it wouldn’t budge. “Some elbow stiffness, lots of extra weight on the forearm…” she muttered, carefully working what she knew to be the bolt handle. With a swift backwards yank and a loud mechanical clack the bolt popped open, the lever’s grip moving to below her wrist alongside it.

The cartridge fit snugly into the chamber, its base bearing a small etched symbol in the center. A forward push, another clack, and a twist to the right to lock the mechanism. The lever again sat in her palm, but it was no longer locked in place. It offered up significant resistance to a downward bend of the wrist, but with some effort it gave way with a satisfying click. Zelsys dared not push any further, aware that working the mechanism any further would likely result in a thunderous blast and a wayward ball of lead ricocheting off the walls. She relaxed her wrist, and the lever popped back into place just below her palm, close enough to reach if she bent her wrist but far enough to not stop her from using her hand.

She looked over the shelves again trying to find something, anything else that could be of use. “Mortar and pestle… Empty bottles... Bandages… No clothes? Seriously?” she thought, sighing as she reached for each item in turn and stored it in the Tablet, including the shank. The only thing she didn’t store just yet was the huge roll of linen bandages, which she used to fashion rudimentary undergarments, going on to wrap her lower legs for at least some foot protection, as well as her left arm to a degree that concealed the gun. Her still-damp hair was too long to not get tangled, thus she also went to the effort of braiding it, tying up the resulting braids with more bandages.

Once all that was done she used the remainder of the bandage to wrap the Tablet and tie it to her waist, put her cloak back on, and began the long climb to the surface. The ladder stretched for hundreds of meters upward, with naught but a speck of light at the end of the shaft to suggest it led to daylight. And long, the climb was.

Left. Right. Left. Right.

For what seemed like eternity, the only thing to keep her company became the monotonous sound of her own hands and feet on metal rungs. The shaft’s damp interior was illuminated by sporadic, flickering light-crystals, whose milky-white uniform glow did little to counteract the monotonicity of the climb.

Left. Right. Left. Right.

The mouth of the shaft approaching, Zelsys began to climb faster. The sound of whipping wind. The smell of fresh air, and… Something else. Smoke, but not that which rises from a wood fire. It was the foul, sulfurous stench of coal smoke, barely present, but noticeable. As she neared the top, a realization dawned - the ladder ended a solid half-meter before the top of the shaft.

She braced herself, sucking in a short breath. With a sharp exhalation of Fog she threw herself upward, passing through the mouth of the shaft as a familiar static washed over her. She looked back down the shaft, and saw that it was just a basin filled with silver Fog. The wind picked up, blowing the Fog away as the weathered sigil underneath faded. She turned her gaze to the landscape that stretched out beneath her, a gloom-cast sky hanging overhead. The hill whose slope she stood atop was surrounded by dead plants, gnarled leafless trees shook in the wind.

With caution and curiosity Zelsys walked down the hill, looking to and fro to get a bearing on her surroundings. As quickly as she began walking she stopped, captivated by the sight at her back. Far off in the distance, a great wall of dark stone reached into the sky and past the clouds, its scope so grand that she couldn’t even estimate how far away it was, just that its base was past the horizon. It stretched off far into the horizon in both directions, a barely-noticeable concave bend to its shape.

The wind picked up again, it's cold bite snapping her out of it. “Fuckin’ cold…” she muttered, holding the rough fabric of her makeshift cloak close as she made her way further down the hill and towards the dead forest. The trees were not just dead, they were twisted and deformed, gnarled and intertwined in a way that made it difficult to find a clear path. Even so, she pushed through the gnarled wood, the dead roots rough enough that slipping wasn’t a concern. Minutes turned to hours as she walked, and walked, and walked, until eventually she reached an intersection of trees too dense to walk between.

Presented with the options to go back or go over she chose the latter, taking a breath and lowering herself in preparation to attempt a jump high enough to reach a branch. The silver markings on her legs briefly shone and let off silvery wisps before she jumped. A sharp exhalation, dry wood shattering underfoot and ropes of Fog trailing from the corners of her mouth as she ascended, reaching for a branch. As thick as the branch was it strained and creaked under her weight, a loud crack echoing and wood dust flying when she pulled herself up into the tree.

“Should’ve done that earlier,” she thought, looking out over the dead forest. There was a narrow but clearly visible footpath only a few dozen meters away, just about visible from where she was. She sat in the tree for a short time while she plotted a course towards it through the treetops. Inhale air. Exhale Fog. Jump.

Branches shaking and creaking, the tree she landed on threatened to collapse under her weight, then shattered into kindling when she jumped to the next one. Inhale air, exhale Fog. Jump.

Another tree. Another breath. Zelsys left a trail of broken trees in her wake as she traversed towards her goal, the path. As she neared the path, the sound of people talking grabbed her attention. She finally jumped off onto the dry dirt path, only to feel something briefly yank on her waist as she fell, accompanied by the sound of a branch creaking - the bandage by which she had tied the Tablet got snagged, and by some obnoxious miracle the branch didn’t break, the Tablet hanging out of the tree, having partially slipped out of its wrapping.

She grumbled as she jumped and grabbed it by the exposed portion, and it slipped out of the bandage with little resistance. With a relieved sigh, she turned her gaze in the direction she had heard human voices from, which had now become quieter and were accompanied by three pairs of approaching footsteps. Assuming they had heard her, she walked towards them.

Past one of the many bends of the path she saw them, and they saw her. Two men and a woman. Zelsys immediately assigned them nicknames to better remember them by, based on the first of their features she noticed when she scanned them.

Leading the trio, the man in front grasped a single-edged longblade in one hand and a large glass bottle in the other. It was partially covered in paper talismans and had a piece of cord tying it to his wrist, light-green liquid swirling in the bottom half. She could tell that under all the filth and stubble his skin was white as snow, his hair short and black as coal, his face angular and rough. The way he held himself and his sword made it look like it was just an extension of his arm. The Swordsman.

The two by his side clutched long guns with rust-speckled barrels - the second man’s gun even had a long crack spidering down its stock from the muzzle to the trigger-guard, meticulously-wrapped copper wire holding it together. He kept it trained at Zelsys’ center of mass, one eye twitching and lip trembling so strongly it was visible even through the wiry, dark brown bush of his beard, which was so imposing Zelsys couldn’t help but wonder if he was compensating for the utter lack of any hair on the top of his head. The Wire.

In contrast the woman’s demeanor was far more relaxed, as she didn’t even bother to shoulder her gun, instead just holding it at the ready. Platinum blonde hair, skin just as pale as the other two, and a green eye with two pupils as the centerpiece of her face, the left eye closed shut. From this angle, Zelsys could tell that her gun had no visible loading mechanism. “A muzzle-loader?” she wondered. A strange mask hung around the woman's neck, a tube running from it to some sort of canister on her belt. Spliteye.

The three of them wore identical, filthy uniforms, a lush green hidden under uncountable layers of dirt, and their feet bore armor-plated, knee-high boots, the soles worn down to almost nothing. Thick chest-plates shielded their torsos, the frontmost man’s one covered in dimples and trios of gashes while the other two’s were just dirty and battered in general.