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You do not know it yet, but you currently stand on a threshold. Between sleep and wake. Life and death. To you, there is nothing; only an infinitely-stretching black void. No higher thinking. No pain. No fear. The darkness calls to you in a sweet voice. It promises safety. Comfort.
Sensations start to creep in. Nerves awaken, spindly tendrils twitching all throughout your body as you awaken. Your skin is growing warm. Too warm. Fur pelts covering your body trap the heat against you. But your arms are full of lead; too weak to push any of the furs away. You try kicking your right foot out instead. A thousand stabbing, burning pains envelop the limb. The shock sends a jerk through your whole body. You cry out into the void. Despite the pain, you remain on the threshold. Your brain is stuck deep in a hot, sticky sludge of unwakefulness. You’re barely a person at this moment. Something animal is here.
The heat crashes like waves over your whole body. A constant feeling of burning blooms across your leg, your back, your neck. Trying to move around again, you work up enough strength to thrust an arm out from the furs and into the open air. The temperature, probably comfortable to someone who isn’t about to get dragged into the Ooze, is freezing to you. Muscles begin convulsing. Teeth chatter. You can’t contain your shaking. There are too many sensations for your struggling mind to handle. You’re squirming and whimpering in the dark. The only intelligent thoughts that come to you are: Please. Please let me fall asleep again. Please let me fall asleep. It hurts. It all hurts so bad. Please.
Something out in the darkness speaks. Muffled, to you. Responding as if it heard your thoughts. Maybe you spoke them aloud without realizing. There is no meaning to be gathered from the sounds. Your mind is spinning in your skull. The something comes to stand by your side and leans down. Its breath washes over your skin like a cool night breeze. A fuzzy hand presses against your forehead, also a relief from the heat. You lean into its touch for just a moment before it recedes into the nothingness. Water sloshes and trickles below. A wet rag is set on your head. It’s pleasantly cool. With a flash of bright light, it becomes piercingly cold and stiff. You convulse again and pull your arm back under the covers.
“I cannot imagine the humidity is helping you, hm?” A voice purrs, then turns sour. “Your Silvenar cares not for stone-brick guildhalls and climate-sealed doors. We must live in oversized galls like wasps.”
The voice moves away as it speaks. Objects shuffle about and clink together. A rhythmic sound fills the air: scraping and soft crunching. The grinding of plant material?
The heat begins to subside thanks to the cold rag. Other sensations step into the light. Your skin feels torn open in several places. Gashes throb with every beat of your heart and itch like a fire ant bite. Additionally, your right leg aches bone-deep. The wounds feel wet and sticky; could be blood, could be poultice. Nevertheless, they are all bound in bandages. It hurts. All of it hurts. Y’ffre help me it all-
“Hurts,” you rasp. Your eyes open just a crack. You’re laid out on a cot. A man with a frizzy mane of hair works at a stone bench. A stripy black tail peeks out from the bottom of his robe, twitching. Sunlight blooms through a branch lattice window in the wall of the tree-home. It silhouettes the man’s form.
“Patience. The guild’s stores have run low after you and your neighbors were sent here.”
Neighbors? Somewhere within your sludge-mind, flashes of memory crawl to the surface. Bright white teeth snapping. Horrific, loud cracks and grotesque noises. Your heart picks up speed. You don’t have the mental capacity to deal with that right now. Clenching all your muscles, you concentrate all the energy you have into forcing the memories back below the surface.
Trembling, you prop yourself up on your elbows. Wounds scream as skin is pulled around by the movement. “I... can’t wait.” You’re gasping for air. “Please. It hurts.”
The man tsks . “I cannot do more for you, cub. The rag is all we have for your fever. No herbs are left to cure it or your pain. Your wounds will have to patch themselves, lest I afflict you with magick-sickness to close them. You will be well enough in a month.”
He keeps talking, but you’ve stopped listening. You flop back down on the cot, arms giving out. The heat is rising again. Heart beating even faster. Your teeth grind together as you clench your jaw. Why the fuck isn’t he helping? He’s off in the corner playing around with leaves and twigs while you’re sitting here dying slowly. Another convulsion wracks your body. All you want is to go back to the darkness. The sensationless, mindless void. I can’t take it anymore. I can't.
“Kill me.”
The grinding sound suddenly stops. The man at the window slowly turns, sunlight glinting off of two little glass frames perched on his nose.
“What was that, Arvidir?”
“Kill me. Please.”
He snorts. A laugh? Maybe a sigh? He shakes his head as he comes back to your side. “I understand you are in great pain right now, and that you have had a horrible, horrible past few days.”
He’s mocking you. He doesn’t care about your well-being. You shrink away from him, but the tensing sends a stabbing pain through your shoulders.
“But this will all pass. Your mind and body will heal, and you will live a long, full life like any other Bosmer. The Mages Guild has spent so much time guaranteeing your survival.” Under his breath, he adds, “Plenty of our budget, as well.”
The rag isn’t working as well as it had before. The heat is boiling your brain. The room is spinning. It hurts to think. Where am I? Who’s this? Who’s he talking about? I wanna go home. I wanna see my friends again. I wanna be safe. I don’t wanna hurt anyone. A dozen ideas float by in the stream of consciousness. The only thing that escapes you is an incoherent babble. You’re fighting tooth and nail through the fog, to no avail. You need to latch onto something. Pull yourself out. Your mind and body will heal... you and your neighbors... your wounds will have to patch themselves...
Something is rising to the surface again. There’s a figure standing in the fog.
“What... happened?” Your voice trembles.
The mage’s eyebrows pull close to one another. His big, blue-green feline eyes scan you. Trying to pick you apart. “Do you not remember?”
You shake your head. The movement is painfully disorienting. The world sounds like your ears are plugged.
“Hm. Well, your little village was attacked. A werewolf pack, they say. One caught you and nearly swallowed you whole.”
Freezing cold ripples down your body. Screams erupt from the swampy pool of memory. You’re running. The others told you to run. But you stopped. Someone else is there; an older man, the village trader. You put yourself in his place. The beast, large enough to eclipse the sun, pins you down. The deafening roar, the raking claws, the teeth --
“Be glad your father saw. He brought you to us.”
You kick and scream at the beast. It catches one foot in its maw and clamps down with a crack . Shadows flood your vision. You’re still fighting, but you can't keep up for long. The werewolf sinks its teeth into your neck. Someone is shouting, screaming their throat raw. When the wolf draws back to look, an arrow sinks deep into its eye socket.
“We ended up having to amputate your leg. It was far too damaged. If you kept it, it could have killed you from blood loss or infection. It was the best choice to save your life.”
Your heart is threatening to burst out from your ribcage. The memories are far hazier here. Hands, touching every part of your body. Holding you down as you cry and thrash against them. Someone barks orders. A belt is wrapped tight around your dying leg. A fuzzy hand touches your head with a flash of light. You fall into darkness.
You think back to when you first awoke. Your leg screaming out in pain as you tried to kick it out. You’re clenching your jaw until your teeth creak against each other. You don’t want to look. You can’t look. If you don’t look, it won’t be real. You won’t be in more pain.
But you have to, don’t you?
You swallow hard. Eyes closed. You prop yourself up again and slowly tilt your head to look down at your body.
And you open your eyes.
On the left, the full form of a leg sits under the furs. On the right, only down to the thigh. But you still feel it. Your shin, your foot. The air is on fire. Shaking, you reach one hand out to feel the empty space. Nothing. Tears well in your eyes. You clench your other hand so hard that your nails puncture the skin of your palms.
“Why?” You croak. “Why’d you take it? Why did you--”
The mage’s long ears suddenly turn downwards. His hand shoots out to your chest, light bursting from his palm.
“It is best if you rest now, cub.”
You try to flail away from his touch, but your muscles turn to stone. The heat in your body calms, but doesn’t relent. Your eyes are heavy. So heavy. You’re falling back into unconsciousness. You got what you wanted.
You’re dragging yourself through the shadowy muck. It grasps at you with tendril hands, desperately clawing at you and trying to pull you in. Fighting against it, the matter around you begins solidifying. The tendrils recede. Color flows into them as they dance. Grass. You try to push yourself up, but the sludge that still clings to you is heavy. You keep crawling.
The grass is beaten down into a dusty footpath. Blurry outlines of sky-scraping trees surround you. In the distance, a little hamlet of tree-homes. It’s familiar. It’s alien. Scars and dark stains mar the earth. You keep crawling.
You near a dark pool next to a crumbling stone wall. The earth here is upturned, marked with dents and gashes. An arrow, broken in half, bobs in the pool. A little meaty lump is skewered on the tip. A trail of black hobbles away from the scene into the jungle. You can’t stop. You keep crawling.
Coming to the edge of the pool, your nose is assaulted by the acrid smell of metal and too-old meat. Your fingertips brush the edge. Warm and slimy. You want to draw away, but your body refuses to comply. The substance stains your fingers deep red. Your hand slips further into the pool. Every alarm is ringing within your center of instinct, begging for your limbs to cooperate. But even your heart and lungs ignore the sound; beating and breathing steady. Your dark-painted hand grips the earth, liquid squelching and oozing between your fingers. You keep crawling. As you’re dragged forward, you can see your vague form mirrored in the black pool. The substance covers your chest as you pull yourself in, reflection muddied by your movement. The reflection shifts and contorts as it comes to a still. It’s so much clearer than before. Almost real. The instinctual part of you begs and screams for you to get out of there, banging against the walls of your mind.
You look down into the pool.
The face of a wolf looks back.
Bursting from the pool, the wolf’s jaws open unnaturally wide, swallowing you whole.
There is nothing. Only an infinitely-stretching black void.