Rain… why won’t it just… rain?

I’d ask for a cup of water instead, but I’m nearly certain I’d get a sarcastic mug of tree sap or something. I don’t want the liquid for quenching my thirst, though that would also be pleasant, but instead to wash the blood out of my mouth. For all the good Energy is at healing, it doesn’t give a shit about blood. Consequently, my mouth is full of the taste of blood, the smell suffuses my nose, and it’s the second most agonizing part of the torture.

The first, of course, being the vines in my body.

After doing something to my insides that somehow hurt enough to make me pass out while causing almost no damage to my actual Health, the torturer left me alone. Though not being actively tortured is nice, whatever the creature did made it so every heartbeat throbs my entire body. Every movement feels stiff and sharp pain lances from the offending appendage if I move it too far. I have fears over what happened, and I really fucking hope I’m wrong.

My attention shifts to the small golden bracelet still affixed to my wrist, and I start to mold its shape. The interrogator had tried to remove it, but stopped when I spared it a lie about how it, like my sword, is cursed and can’t be removed. The pain it felt when trying to tug the band off aided my story enough that it simply made some notes before lashing me several more times for ‘impertinence’.

I’d insult how effective its methods were, but my composure nearly broke many times during the… something… that it did to me. The only thing that saved me was joining Kaythe in my inner world to escape. I couldn’t truly escape, and I forced myself to check my Health frequently, but… I’m unwilling to feel something like that for the hours it went on for. Not when I have any choice. Night fell while I was spending time within, and the sociopathic creature had left at some point. I curse myself quietly for not keeping track of it better, but it’s too late to do more than regret. I have time and I need to use it.

The blade is as sharp as I can make it. Though I believe I could make it as sharp as one atom across, I lack the fine control over it as of yet, so I can just make a very sharp blade. More than enough to cut through the vines holding me to the wall. However, the process is slow and time consuming because I’m cutting by shifting the shape back and forth to slowly saw away at the restraints. I consider using ridges on the blade to better tear it apart, but think better of it. Can’t let the cuts be too noticeable.I get almost three quarters of the way through the cutting before a noise at the entrance alerts me and I quickly form the bracelet back into shape.The torturer enters again, carrying the same notebook as before.

“We are… acquainted now. You may… begin.”

“You- grk…” Trying again through gritted teeth, I manage to force out: “Should have started with that.”

“Why? Now… you defy me? Good. Very good.”

It produces a new whip, different than the one made of vines from before, and twirls it lazily for several moments before bringing it around with a crack that resonates my chest for a moment. Instead of bouncing off after inflicting the wound, several barbed hooks on the end gouge my skin and hold the end there.

“We will be… answering questions… experimentally.” It makes a noise like a breathy chuckle before ripping the whip, and a chunk of flesh, off me.

I bite down hard enough to crack one of my molars, stifling the scream. I try to heal, but something is wrong… I look down and I can only widen my eyes in horror at the near perfect replica of my vasculature made of roots… still sticking… out of my body.

That’s what it did. It knew I would try to escape and anchored me by… by….

My mind stops working correctly, and once the screaming starts, I can’t stop it. Of all the things it did, nothing was new or horrible enough to break me. Even the act of putting them there wasn’t as bad because I didn’t know what it was doing… but now… now… I can feel them inside me, moving with every breath, waving in my blood with every pulse of my unceasing heart. I need to get out. NOW-

Everything vanishes. The pain, the sight, the disgusting feeling lingers like a phantom sensation… but nothing causes it anymore. I open my eyes aga-... eye. I open my eye, and find myself in a tree, in a forest. A familiar forest.

“Worry no longer, Predator. Rest for as long as you need. I will persevere.”

He switched with me.

“Kaythe, no, you can’t-”

“The choice is yours, Predator, but I ask for this chance! I could not guard you before, but I can do this. I must!

I didn’t know he could supplant me as well. He’s right, I can feel the ability to resurface. To take the reigns again. But…

I take a deep, ragged breath. Even the unfamiliar, alien body feels nicer than my own right now. Cathids can’t laugh, but if they could, I would. The relief is so stark, so stunning, that I feel euphoria just by comparison.

I hate the idea of Kaythe going through what I just did, but, as my thinking clears, I realize he won’t. It isn’t his body, so the mental aspect of the torture won’t be as strong. We’ve disconnected mind and body. Still, that wound was deep. As much as I’d like to stalk that Salamander and destress for a bit, Kaythe doesn’t know how to use Energy. Certainly not as well as I do, anyway, so I’ll have to heal.

The act of raising my awareness out of the imaginary soulscape is almost the same as fulling taking control again, but much more throttled. It’s like forcing yourself not to surface all the way when you have your lungs full of air; you have to constantly control it and keep yourself away. Slowly, I lose my awareness of the forest and gain… something. Instead of the whole body view I’m used to, I have one strand of Light along with… a number of runes. Self runes. I have exactly ten of them. The same number Kaythe uses up when I bring him into existence. The part of me he’s allowed to use…

I gather the whisps of golden Energy as they are created from the runes, managing their position with intent and converting them to green. It’s like being on the scene, at ground level in the battlefield that is my body. Instead of the commander, overhead view, I’m like a squad leader… and maybe that’s why I can see the Self runes so easily. Their ‘tiny’ pulses are now strong reverberations from my perspective.

The healing process is a little different, requiring much more manipulation, but I’m able to exert fine control over every strand, looping them, curling them, and pulling them tight with alacrity heretofore impossible, even with my focus dedicated to the task.

The wound fills, requiring a small amount of Power to patch up the larger chunks. Now that I’m closer to the stuff I can see more of the veins that run throughout it… and something seems strange. Almost as though the veins might exist in a more literal, biological sense… as they appear to be slowly distending and contracting. Extremely minute movements overall, but...I could swear they’re there.

With the wound dealt with, I spread out, seeking to understand exactly what’s going on. The areas around the hardened vines sticking into my back are constantly starting to die and constantly being regenerated by trace amounts of Energy, and though I detect foreign bodies along my vasculature, they don’t register as lights. They aren’t actively harmful. Yet. However, even attacking them Energetically would do nothing. Hell, it might even infuse them, and that would be useless.

No, I’m going to have to take them out the way they got in… but I can already tell that that’s not going to go well. I’m going to be in a lot of pain.

“Predator… the… is gone…”

Without even replying, I rush to the surface and snap back into my familiar hell. “Kaythe…”

“All… for you… the forest is very nice now.”

“Please rest, and try to forget whatever it did to you.”

“It is good. The Predator and I have suffered together now. We have fought the same battle. We have both won.”

“Yeah Kaythe, yeah we have.”

Without wasting any time, I resume cutting the bonds, and quickly free my right hand. Forming the makeshift knife into a proper one, the second arm comes much faster, and I slowly, carefully sever each of the spines poking through me. I start to bend over to get my feet untied, but the pain of even leaning over slightly momentarily stuns me.

I don’t want to do this.

The exposed parts fall to the ground under my careful cutting.

I don’t want to do this!

Readying my energy, I make a sharp cylinder around the spike and slowly rotated it through my body, sawing off all the root structures attached to it.

I hate this so fucking much.

The spike slides easily out, allowing me to use the moldable Energy weapon to grasp and pull on each of the root structures.

I can’t scream, not now, I have to finish this.

They don’t come cleanly, but they come. Bright red explodes throughout the areas they leave behind, but Energy soothes away the damage quickly.

One down. Closed.

The second is almost worse with so many more remaining, but there’s no half measure.

Nor for the next, the next, or the next after that.

With every lance of pain, agonizing removal of root, and pang of guilt for letting Kaythe suffer for me, I feel something growing in me. A laughter: dark and tantalizing. A laughter that promises nothing and takes everything.

“What’s this? Broken free? A mistake… most grievous…”

The monster’s stoic, slightly bemused expression cracks when I raise my head to greet it.

“I figured it out. I finally… realized.”

“Back against the-”

“I just had to accept it! It was so easy!”

“-warning you… again-”

“Now I just have a few questions.”

CRACK. The force knocks me back, but there’s no pain, just a clinical knowledge of the wound’s presence and how it’s already being fixed. A jagged, gaping wound that would give a normal human a few minutes before they would bleed to death. Hmm.

“Cease, or the next-”

“Of course! I can always count on you to remind me the order of things.” My knife embeds in its chest, slightly off the mark. Injuries… so troublesome… but it serves my purpose.

The creature looks down in shock for a moment before looking back to me with a twisted grin and a barking laughter much like the cracking before a tree falls.

“Trivial… admirable, but tri-” Its face changes from condescending mirth to shock again as it tries to withdraw the Energy knife from its chest and finds it stuck fast.

“Can you feel it? Wriggling through you?” The knife, of course, was only a vector for the true weapon. One that this creature had made the grave mistake of showing me. Small, barbed tendrils of golden metal flow throughout its body, and with every passing second, they become more firmly embedded.

It tugs harder, yelling in pain, before vines erupt from the ground, equal parts spearing my legs and binding them, seeking to climb and entomb me as quickly as possible.

“You want it out?” I heave on the metal strand that connects us, a furnace fueled by explosions of Energy bringing my arms and core to the brink as I whip my tormentor bodily to the other end of the room, where it scatters and impales itself on several devices of unknown use.

Yanking again, I reel it in to my feet. Somewhere along the line, it stopped casting, and the plant weapons became mundane again. A swift strike against the wood piercing my right leg shatters it, but I care little; I can dig the shards out later.

Now, however… “All you had to do…” I begin, placing a foot on his chest, beside the knife. “-was ask.” With a gut wrenching sound of tearing flesh, the metal contraption I had woven around several important feeling organs emerges. The entrails fall to the ground unceremoniously, the knife returning to its normal shape. I hear the laughter again, growing louder as I end the creature’s pitiful attempts at healing itself.

At last it lies still, with only the sound of the sinister laughing to fill the silence.

The only strange thing is how it sounds exactly like mine.