Within moments Charlie started feeling the effects of the vitreous fluid.

She swayed on her feet—nearly falling over due to light-headedness. Hunching over, Charlie clapped her hands over her mouth, forcing herself to both stop breathing the poisoned air, and to keep her lunch in her stomach.

Charlie screwed up her eyes to prevent the fluid from leaking in. Not like she would be able to see in such pitch darkness.

In between bouts of dizziness, she cursed her situation. This place was absolutely horrible!

How in the outer gods did bottom feeders reduce her to such a state?!

The fine mist continued drifting down around her, but gradually became thicker—turning into droplets of pure misery that rained on her head and coated her skin.

With a soft whimper Charlie toppled sideways onto the slick eyeball ground and curled into a ball. As the nausea continued assaulting her and the rain became a downpour—she just wanted her suffering to end.

Curses on this frail human body! She had never been subjected to such a wretched experience when she was back in the abyss—and unfortunately sickness seemed very prevalent in this horrible world.

Thrashing in agony, Charlie could barely form a coherent thought.

Clammy skin coated in a layer of acrid smelling fluid. Alone and in the dark, she was tortured by disorientation and a numbness creeping down her limbs.

Charlie lay in a pitiful heap as she was overcome by dizziness and incapacitated with nausea.

Her gorge rose—and Charlie vomited onto the eyeball ground, mixing her foul stomach contents with the viscous film of caustic fluid coating the slimy eyeballs. Even though Charlie couldn't see in the dark nor was she in the state to make observations—she tried to keep away from the thick layer of nausea-inducing substance.

She propped herself up with her trembling arms, each motion plunging her hands into the grime, splashing the foul substance.

However, her shaking arms were numb—and the eyeballs were slick with fluid.

Charlie's arms gave way and she fell face-first into the muck.

The substance splashed into her face, seeping into her nose and slightly open mouth.

It slid down her esophagus and sloshed into her airways. Clogging. Choking. The caustic fluid burned her from the inside out—ravaging her tissues with its cloying acidity.

Charlie convulsed—then fell limp and motionless, laying prone in the thick layer of fluid.

The deluge continued. Even more vitreous fluid poured down to cover the ground, drenching the motionless Charlie and drowning her as the fluid rose inch by inch.

Pooling and climbing. The ocular fluid level rose past Charlie's ears and crept to fully submerge her.

Blanketing. Burying. Charlie was entombed by the viscous liquid and shadowed by the darkness in a gruesome mausoleum.

The only sound was the dripping of the lessening rain. With the prey subdued, the eyeballs stopped rupturing, toning down the deluge into a light drizzle.

Amongst the dripping—rustling could be heard as the eyestalks shifted and started unravelling the massive dome. Piece by piece. Stalk by stalk, the eyeballs pulled away, slumping downwards to pour back into their valleys.

There was a splash.

A crunch of something hard being broken, and the tearing of tissue.

A disturbance within the dome.

The rustling eyestalks stopped moving, and the splashing could clearly be heard in the dark cavern. A sloshing at the bottom of the pool of fluids. Wild thrashing that sent plumes of liquid flying into the air.

Then... it stopped.

The splashing ceased and silence reigned.

As the seconds dragged on, the pool remained undisturbed, and the eyestalks maintained their silent vigil.

Crack.

There was a slosh of liquid being brushed aside as something stirred deep within the darkness. Something that should have been drowned and buried.

A faint giggle disturbed the dead silence—and suddenly there was light in the void.

Two flames of green luminescence shone in the darkness, peering up at the staring eyeballs. The light not only illuminated the glossy surface of the slick eyeballs—but also revealed what had unearthed itself.

They twitched and spread their arms wide. A frozen grin was plastered across their face as they slowly turned around, taking in their surroundings. It was galling to think they were inconvenienced by worthless eldritch beings. These fodder that weren't even fit for consumption managed to torment their body.

They giggled. Black tendrils invisible in the shadows and the opaque fluid poured from underneath their robe. Lengthening and branching into countless needle-thin threads, weaving an intricate pattern that grew larger by the second.

Instead of a disorganized mass of separate threads, created solely for piercing and tearing, the threads were forming an interconnected configuration.

A massive weaving that slowly grew to cover the inside of the cavern. And yet it was nearly invisible with only a faint green glow to serve as illumination.

But then the eyeballs caught a tinge of red. The tendrils were all tinted with crimson. Tracing the lines of blood down the web of threads revealed a pure red tendril buried in their head. A finger-width tendril had punched through the side of their head and was sucking up the blood to create the prodigious tapestry.

With a giggle they jerked—then swept an arm to gesture at themselves. In the dim light it was nearly impossible to make out the figure, but there were plenty of eyes to see.

"We don't like what you did to us. That had hurt."

Spinning around, they smiled at the eyeballs looked at them from behind. They tapped a finger against the tendril jutting out of their head.

"Look at what you made us do to free ourselves. We were planning on just leaving... but for annoying us, we prepared a little present for you."

Gesturing upwards at the misshapen tapestry, their eyes glowed with a blinding intensity, bathing the cavern in a green radiance and throwing the crooked web of threads into high relief.

Red and black twinned together to form a delicate series of glyphs. Numerous black sigils forming a circle, ringing another circle of sigils that were a shade redder. Ever closer to the center, the more convoluted and red the design, with sigils placed in front and behind or even through other sigils.

They all ringed a blood red glyph.

A glyph that caused the eyestalks to squirm and the eyestalks to rustle.

From one moment to the next, the dome started collapsing inwards, with thousands of eyestalks pouring down to attack the configuration.

They watched with a frozen smile as the eyestalks tried tearing down the web of threads only to fail and fail again.

Eyeballs that touched the threads ruptured instantaneously, showering the ground with vitreous fluids, and yet they remained unaffected through the rain that was splattering over their face and even landing in their unblinking eyes.

The stalks fared even worse, since every attempt to wind around the configuration resulted in the stalks being severed and dropping to the pool below.

"Oh. Do you want to play with me instead?"

They cheerfully asked as the eyestalks switched targets and tried to bury them under a mountain of vegetation.

They didn't even bother moving as black tendrils flowed from their sleeves and formed numerous threads that diced the eyestalks—scattering the shreds far away from the girl patiently standing thigh-deep in an opaque fluid.

"You aren't really fun, are you?"

Cocking their head, they twitched and looked around at the one-sided slaughter. And the configuration wasn't even finished—much less active.

Shaking their head, they spotted stalks approaching the configuration. Except unlike the stalks carrying eyeballs, these ones were shot through with veins of a black substance and grasping fragments of the walnut shell.

Shards of mottled green and brown slashed at the configuration, only to be halted by black tendrils seizing the dark veined stalks. However, instead of contemptuously severing the vines, the tendrils had to strain as they twinned around the stalks and held them in place.

More of the dark veined stalks slithered through the cavern's walls, floor, and ceiling—each tipped with a piece of shell and headed towards the web of threads.

Numerous tendrils grappled with the stalks—and with a thought the tendrils shielding them from the mountain of eyestalks were diverted to protecting the misshapen pattern.

They were buried. Eyeballs smashed into them and ruptured while stalks jabbed into their body or grabbed their limbs. Underneath the squelching and ripping, they were pulled apart.

Stalks had lanced through their ribcage and was mincing their internal organs. With each rip, a mangled limb came off, bruised and crushed with the occasional peek of white bone.

Even their smiling head came off, and yet the green luminescence never stopped shining. When the stalks jabbed into their eyes and ripped out the tattered remains, their eye sockets shone with the same baleful light.

The swarm of dark veined stalks were proving to be too numerous. A few slipped in between the black tendrils and tore rending shreds down the width of the configuration. Severing the delicately interwoven threads, ripping the pattern into tatters and turning the sigils into a mockery of the previous tapestry.

But the sigils flowed back into place almost before the green and brown mottled shells had finished slicing. Their severed head gazed at the spectacle with gouged eye sockets and the exact same frozen smile.

It was almost as if they were laughing at the scene, regardless of the horrendous state of their body.

The tapestry was completed.

And the blood red glyph pulsed.

It pulsed with flashes of vibrant crimson, slowly flashing faster, like the beat of a human heart entering a run.

The dark veined stalks entered a frenzy—slashing and tearing without heed of anything in the way. Slicing though nearby eyestalks, the shell fragments strained toward one target.

Toward the pulsing glyph and its increasing beat.

From beginning till end, the blood red glyph was never touched by any of the shell fragments. The supporting sigils were torn and broken numerous times, but the black tendrils always sought to protect the centerpiece.

Even with the renewed frenzy it was far too late to try damaged the cornerstone of the configuration.

And as the pulsing glyph flashed ever faster—the individual spikes of vibrancy melded into one.

Into one bright glare that suffused the cavern in a piercing red that drowned out the green glow of the eye sockets.

A light so blinding that nothing was visible.

Not the intricate configuration. Not the waist-deep pool of nauseating fluid. And not even the omnipresent eyestalks.

Everything was washed away by the light.

And nothing was left when the light suddenly went out.

Without warning the light snuffed out and the blinding crimson disappeared to reveal calm blue skies.

The massive web of threads now a monochrome black, folded in on itself. Black threads flowed together into tendrils that retracted back to their body.

Or at least what remained of their body.

Shards of bone and scraps of tissue lay strewn across the ground. The most intact body part was the head, which was carved in two and had chunks of their skull missing.

The tendrils unhurriedly scooped up the salvageable flesh and bone—piling them into a heap that was threaded through with back lines. With some squelching and clacking the pieces started coming together.

Muscles layered onto the restructured skeleton, and skin slid into place. Internal organs were unscrambled and shoved back into the mended ribcage. Hair was sewn back onto their scalp, grey matter was dumped into the pieced skull, and flesh was added before the grotesque mass was placed onto the neck stump.

It took a few minutes before they blinked and twitched their fingers. Cocking their head, grey matter nearly poured out of hole in their skull, but they didn't care as they examined at their frayed and broken body.

There were still chunks missing, such as some calf muscles, a shoulder, and a hefty chunk of their heart and lungs.

But those injuries were only temporary.

Bones and flesh were slowly flowing over the mortal wounds, pulled from the meat they had eaten and stored in their bottomless stomach.

Almost as an afterthought, the thoroughly shredded clothes were draped over their reconstructed body, and the scraps of cloth were sewn back together. The missing cloth was repaired from the plant fibers she had eaten, mixed with some of her own black thread.

They giggled with their newly repaired lungs and looked at the battlefield with a pair of fresh eyes.

Sure, they looked bad, but they should see the other guy, who looked way worse.

Well... that assuming there was anything see.

They looked at the barren landscape filled with hills and valleys just as before—except the eyestalks were missing.

There was only soil and stone for a mile in every direction. The loose dirt was being blown by an errant breeze without the constant weight of untold tons of shifting vegetation and roaming eyes.

Stretching out their mended arms clad in their habitual grey robe, they spun around—taking in the vast emptiness.

There were no more stalks. No more eyeballs. And no more walnut shell.

There was only desolation and the absence of the deplorable nuisance.

Although... not everything disappeared.

They glanced at the mass of black ink pooled on the ground that refused to reflect the sunlight.

It was a dark splotch of the abyss that lay in stark contrast with the gritty earth.

Jabbing at the inert patch left no residue on their tendrils, and without any reflection they couldn't tell if there was a ripple. However, splashing it worked—sending a splattering of black onto the nearby soil.

Taking a few tottering steps toward the inert fluid, they merged a few tendrils together and shaped a large scoop. Shoving the razor-edged shovel into the ground, they dug underneath the large puddle and lifted a chunk of dirt and questionable eldritch substance.

Opening their mouth wide, the scoop turned into a funnel and the entire mass of dirt and liquid poured down their throat—disappearing into their bottomless stomach.

Wiping their mouth with their sleeve, they took a last look around before planted their tendrils into the ground and rising into the air.

Within moments they picked out the thin strip of road far into the distance.

They twitched and their lips quirked into a frozen smile.

It was time to go back. Setting off at a loping gait with their numerous tendril legs, they couldn't wait to meet their female human and the old human man.

Striding through the barren devastation, they didn't bother looking at the beautiful sky and clouds.

After all, their task was complete.

Now they had a brand new mission. The task of making a new friend.