.kcab emac uoY

.raen era uoy nehw sehtirw dna seslup ti woh ,uoy rof smriuqs ecalp siht woh ees dluohs uoY

.ti nees reve ev'I sa regae sA .uoy rof yrgnuh s'tI

.uoy sevol ecalp sihT .leef ot esrow struh dna ,ees ot struH .struh tI

.siht ekil gniht a yb devol eb ot naht sdlrow eht lla ni efas ssel elttil fo kniht nac I

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The blood in my veins pulses, alive and real. It dances to the beat of a heart that's malformed, weaker than anything human and yet louder, stranger, and the way it dances speaks of syncopation, improvisation, outright jazz. The Bloodling dances, and it makes me dance with it, every vein in my body moving to the tune of my steps.

My hand pulses, alive and real. Its many joints squirm and twist, moving like gears of an impossible machine as different implements roil within them. Scalpels, knives, pliers, something not unlike a screwdriver, and more besides. The Glove moves as I will, and as it wills, and I feel it respond, sending impulses of nerve and tendon up my arm as I walk.

They are not the only parts of me that are-and-are-not me. I have not been walking idly.

Two additional limbs echo out from my shoulders, breaching past them in the form of newfound Twitching Limbs, black and twisted centipedes of flesh and form. The shape of my silhouette has changed, draped as it is in something like a cloak, woven into my skin and against my own fibers. My legs are supported by additional scaffolding, holding me up and moving me with more grace than a Fleshling's form should allow.

The Glove has done much for me here.

I can feel it, tickling the back of my mind. My SYNCHRONICITY, whispering to me words that aren't words, showing me glimpses of what could-should-might be.

I don't know what this game does to me, and I don't care anymore. I'm done. I'm past that. It alters me, profoundly, even if that alterations comes first and foremost from placing me in a mind that is not my mind.

Except it is my mind. Because it's me. Because I'm here.

And the Glove responds to those whispers, desperately, eagerly. Something not unlike a synchronicity all of its own. The thoughts in my mind dance, filled with possibility, altered by the game-like mechanics of this place, and those thoughts whisper-sing down through my limbs and to my hands, like a compulsion, a desire turned to physical manifestation. I want to create. I want to build, and I know how- and the Glove knows how, even moreso.

And the Glove is me. Or a part of me, maybe.

So I walk. And I harvest. And I build.

The Twitching Limbs I have now make the originals look like the bad prototypes they were. The random assortment of twitching digits have been refined, cut open and woven about each other, reducing the need for the disfiguring acids of the Sludgelings. They look more like actual arms, appearing to be a wicker-man's messy, insectile cousin in framework, and I've crafted a series of levers within them. Push and pull have designated "muscle groups", the woven material of the limbs making them longer than my original ones and capable of bending in far more ways, all with far less material.

It didn't stop there, of course. Adding Twitching Digits to my legs allowed me to provide an upgraded framework there as well, a biological exosuit that allows me to better stand upright and put weight on my legs. It's not a colossal upgrade, but if and when I find the need to run, it won't be the shambling, animalistic thing that comes in-built with the Fleshling's design.

Above it, dangling off of me as I walk, is a carpet of flesh, wrapped like a mix of robes and armor and filled with shards from the bone-trees. I've built myself a second layer of skin, woven it out of the purple-red hair that takes the place of grass in these hills, and embedded it into my own flesh in patches.

It hurt. A lot.

It also helped me prove to myself that the pain won't stop me, if I know I'm going to live.

So equipped with my upgrades and a toga-like cloak of camouflage and armor both, I keep walking to the "south". Towards the grey.

I pause, and then duck down into some grasses as I hear a familiar sound pass me by.

Rolling along the ground, as orb-like as ever, goes a meatball.

The damn things are still cute, in spite of what they are. Like little roly-poly bugs, but sillier and grosser at once, pulsing to launch themselves in one direction or another.

They're also prime materials for me to use. Their facsimile-muscle, so close to what I would consider "normal", has ligaments, tendons, muscle fibers and more that I could really, really use.

I stay crouched and wait. And wait. And wait.

Eventually, it passes by, leaving the area entirely, and I let out a little sigh of relief.

They're excellent resources.

They're also, as far as I'm aware, directly tied to my "friend".

I think I could find my way to the computer's den from where I began, heading east and north-ish, but I don't want to. Not yet. Chances are, it'll be able to offer me insight, information, connection, and might even serve as my way back out- I haven't checked with my hands, but I lost the sensation of the headset more than an hour ago.

But it will also ask things of me, and will be a potential threat, and frankly, even if only the good parts were true, I still wouldn't want to see it right now.

I don't want to talk. Talking means thinking, means making abstract plans, means spiraling, and I don't need that right now. I made a plan, and I'm sticking with it. Exploring what the connection means, and how it manifested, is a priority, and talking to eldritch entities that may-or-may-not have my best interests at heart can wait until my next run.

And there will be a next run.

I'm going to go until I die. And then I'm going to see what that EVOLUTION stat does.

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Briefly, I take a look at my character sheet:

{MANIFESTATION OF [00000000]}

GENUS: ESURIATIO AUTONOMIA

SPECIES: FLESHLING

STATS:

ADAPTATION

CANALISATION

EVOLUTION

SYNCHRONICITY

🔺🔺

🔺

🔺

🔺🔺🔺🔺

ORGANS:

CUTANEOUS

FLESHLING SKIN

SKELETAL

FLESHLING BONE

MUSCLE

FLESHLING MUSCLE

FLESHLING TENDON

CIRCULATION

FLESHLING CIRCULATION

FLESHLING PUMP

RESPIRIUM

FLESHLING LUNGS

GLANDULAR

FLESHLING LIVER

FLESHLING ADRENAL

NEUROLOGOS

FLESHLING BRAIN

PARASITIC INFESTORICA

SENSORIA

FLESHLING SENSORIA

DEGUSTATION

CYCLIAL DIGESTER

SKILLS:

SWIPE

GLIMPSE BEYOND

⦽⦽

MUTATIONS:

SKIN-DENSITY I

MULTI-LIMBED I

SYMBIONTS:

DIVINE BLOODLING

THE GLOVE

Writhing Limbs (2)

Dermal Cloak

Twitching Frame (Legs)

My best run yet.

Getting the two mutations was easy, simple. Getting more specific ones will take more, especially since my ADAPTATION stat isn't as high as last time, and the supplies I have are limited. The number of potential mutations are infinite, but until I know what to expose myself to, and how, it'll always be a guessing game.

Still, I sneak along, relying on my modifications to the Fleshling's body to stay mobile and competent. I haven't developed any stealth-based mutations as of yet, but maybe the cloak is picking up the slack, keeping me from needing to adapt in the same way.

It doesn't matter. I'm progressing well. Getting back the Swipe skill has been enough for me to hunt down what I need, and the long, slender club of bones in my "off" hand has been more than suited to the purpose, sharpened points made of Twitching Digits poking out of the sides of it for better impact damage.

If I picture the last thing that killed me in this place, I know that I'm no match for it. But for the starter enemies around me, I've reached the point of overkill.

Which is good. Because I think I'm leaving the starting area.

I look up from where I stand, cresting one more hill and leaning against the bone-tree that grows from it to stare at the valley ahead.

It yawns there, like a cavern ripped open into two sides. I see fog rolling along the edges of it, out into the hills, heavy enough to make the hairs of the fields lilt and curl under the weight of spores and humidity emitted from there.

It's distressingly yonic, like an inversion of a pair of legs, splayed out to present something. The mountains to each side are massive things, clearer up close as titans of craggy bone and enamel, climbing towards an impossible tower above. I wonder, looking at them, if this is how an insect might see a bone emerging from the soil, but I know it can't be. More like if a microbe learned to look up and see a tooth beyond it, sharpened to a point by weather miles above, with twisting trails, rivers of pus and streams of watery blood making a parody of a natural landscape on their massive frames.

And on matching sides, each of the two mountains ahead has been split, as if digested so as to melt and then pushed apart, sending vast cracks through their frame that even now I see small sludge-creatures and stranger things from higher up the mountains making a home in. An alteration to the geography, leading to a wet and fungal place, which stares back at me like an abyss.

I see the space between the mountains, through a haze of spore and mist. I see the hints, rough-edged and soft, of mushroom caps and fungal moss, growing in shapes of shiitake and cerebellum both.

I inhale, long and slow. Exhale. Feel it in my body, even as the lungs fail to deliver properly, and the body shudders under the weight of oxygenating itself.

Inhale. Exhale.

I've never smoked before, but I almost wish I did. Or drank. Or had something other than this place, something that I could indulge in to be someone or something else as needed.

But all I have is me, and the me that I am now, in this place.

There are many hills before the edge of the mountains, where the alteration to the landscape has torn open the world and allowed watery blood and fungal softness to flourish in the cracks.

The last time I got this close to the mountains, something popped out of the ground and tried to fucking kill me.

I am better prepared than I've ever been, and it will likely still not be enough.

I break off some branches from the tree next to me, chipping off sharpened shards of bone from its trunk, and spend a few minutes with the Glove. I carve channels into the bone, then bleed into them, filling them with a too-bright crimson that pulses with joy at being used. I take digits and twitching organelles woven into my cloak and place them into the seams I make, until they grab each other and glow with vitality from the blood. I use scalpels that never seem to dull all the way to hone razor edges.

I lift another two weapons up to my additional limbs, so that three out of four of my upper body's extensions clutches a tool which with to extend their reach and strike. I hold the spiked club in my "main" hand, able to exert more direct force with it- but each of my Writhing Limbs has now wrapped around something like an aztec sword, flattened staff-things with bladed implements sticking out of the sides of them.

To my surprise, the system pings me, glowing not-static flaring into existence in front of my eyes to reward my creativity.

SYMBIONT ACQUIRED: Writhing Blades

I blink, looking up at the dark tentacle-arms that arch over my shoulders. The "fingers" at the end of each, made of the same Twitching Digits as the rest of them but extended out, fit almost seamlessly into the grooves I've carved, shortening the length of the "hilt". In return, I see some of the blood I poured in flow upwards, against gravity, and wrap around the digits, accepting them and allowing them to extend deeper into the faux-organism I've created.

I… didn't even realize I was doing that. Didn't think I could, or that I'd have pictured it so clearly.

The Glove in my hand twitches, singing up to my mind with all sorts of ideas that are mine now, and have always been, but which never would have formed without it and the modifications that MEAT offers me. I feel the part of my mind that holds my character sheet tingle as I think on my SYNCHRONICITY stat, as high as it's ever been.

I am changed, here.

I am still me. As much as it matters.

With a flex of will, I stretch my additional limbs, and they eagerly respond, whirling along the places where I have cut myself open to attach them. The blades whistle as they cut through the air, the arm-and-a-half span of my Symbionts added to further, and I swear I glimpse some of the bone-shards and digits twitching where they emerge from the blade's spine, chittering against each other like the teeth of a chainsaw.

There's more I can do there. Given time.

That can come later. I have enough to start with, and if I die, then I come back, and try again. I don't actually need to preserve myself here, not beyond a certain point.

That feels… strangely reassuring. And deeply freeing.

My therapist would have a fit if she knew.

I haven't spoken to her in a long time. I think I can barely remember her name. Funny, how someone so important can be in your life for years, and then fade away.

I take in another breath, stretching my neck a bit at the tightness the motion from my new limbs cause.

It's fine. And if it's not… well, the world sucks anyways, and this is the fastest way I can think of to learn as directly as I can.

I get up and head down the hill, towards the fungal valley and the thing which may or may not guard it.

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