**✘ NON-CANON**
An unbidden clarity lurched through Adrian's perception. It was both nothing like waking and the exact same thing, as if reality has shifted up in gear and solidified from previously vague notions. He lay in a funnel, trees at the edge of the unnatural valley drooping curious branches across the hole in the ground. He remembered getting here. He remembered something tearing him down by one ankle, remembered how he had felt about it, distressed and confused, but there had been something inexplicably dulled and subdued about it. Some essential component, simply amiss.
It's all tangles down here, too late to run now. Too late to look for a way to escape. He's caught in the maw of an impossible plant, a metallic jellyfish, vine-like tendrils wrapped tightly about his arms, his legs, his torso. He's on his side, his spine strained, head tugged back, granting it this scenic view of the surreal landscape. Behind the trees is a dark sky, betraying that he must have been here for a while already. An alien ache runs up the inside of his arms - under the skin, literally as inside as conceivable - as if a foreign wire were trying to compete with his blood vessels.
His body is already tired of being afraid, but this clarity is something else. What's going on? What is this thing? What is it doing to him and why? //Fear of the unknown// - that's what's new. He had been fearful of his integrity previously, but everything had seemed so much more expected, so much less mysterious. It seems absurd now, like the most obvious possible question had somehow never occurred to him: **What is going on**?
Somehow, things had gotten worse.
Getting caught in this thing, whatever it was -- **What was it?** -- had obviously been unpleasant. He'd tried to escape -- or he remembered trying to escape -- but since it wasn't obvious what was going on, or how to fix it, and since he'd pretty quickly been immobilized, he'd given up without much of a fight. He'd been afraid -- or he remembered a state he would've called 'fear' -- but it was an animal fear, fear of pain, fear for bodily integrity, nothing like the panic he was feeling now. 'What's happening to me? Why am I here? How can I get out?' So many questions burning in his mind, filling him with panic, but underneath them all is a quieter, deeper one: Why am I only thinking of these questions **now**?
The first thing Adrian does, of course, is try to escape again. Maybe he can wriggle out of these metallic vines, now that he's "awake"? There's something inside his arms, under his skin; he'd have to get it out somehow, but he can barely move. Maybe he can at least twist his head, try to get a better view of what's going on, try to figure something out. 'What is this thing?'
Correction, there is something under **all** of his skin. It's pulsing against the underside of his arms, the gentle motions deeply unpleasant, but the more his proprioception ramps up, pushed along by his budding panic, the more it becomes harrowingly obvious it's threaded through him like a fungal infection. A stray sensation like a phantom itch crawls along his skin, tempting him to tear his skin off as a whole, cleanse himself of the parasite - but even if he were so frantic and insane to do that, the grip on his limbs is too strong. He can't move his head at all, the joints of his spine simply bent back too far as that there was still wiggle room in that direction - he can't see much of anything from this angle, unable to sneak a glance at anything that might reasonably matter. An absurd realisation briefly wells up in his thought, by rights a minor problem: The coils around his limbs are under his clothes, wrapped around the bare skin of upper arms and thighs - he couldn't swear the fabric is still in one piece. A stupid social instinct threatens to touch his mind briefly: //Someone might see him like this//.
The realization that whatever's wormed itself under his arms has already spread throughout the rest of his body -- 'How long have I been stuck here? What is it doing to me?' -- only serves to deepen the sense of wrongness with this entire situation. He has to get out of here, he has to get this **thing** out of him, and he's completely unable to move. He can't even tilt his head in the slightest, leaving his view limited to what's in front of him -- which doesn't help at all.
Adrian's eyes squeeze shut as the realization that he's probably half-naked hits him. Really, brain? Of all the horrible things going on right now you're deciding to focus on **that** one? A soft whine, laced with terror and embarrassment, wriggles out of his throat. 'What am I going to do?'
Slowly he starts to formulate a hint of a plan; maybe he can call for help. Yes, okay, yes, it's going to be extremely socially awkward; he's stuck half-naked in a pit with horrible metal vines around him, but what's more important, his dignity or his life? Some primal part of his brain still resists that notion; it takes him a few deep breaths to try and get himself (relatively) calm. You can do this, Adrian. Someone can help, they can get you someplace with a change of clothes, probably a hospital; then you can go home and forget this ever happened. A few more deep breaths later, he opens his eyes and starts shouting: "Help! Hello, can anyone hear me?"
He gets three meagre words into his cry before it's strangled as a thin metallic limb lances between his teeth like a striking serpent, coils coming to press against his tongue, almost slipping past the left side of the wet muscle as it writhes along his gums. The narrow object exerts a surprising force against his jaw, hooked against his teeth, as if some unseen giant were grasping him with an invisible hand and prying his mouth open. To his distress, it doesn't bother to stop - the narrow tip creeps further toward his throat at a pace of lazily trickling water, rippling its way down into his gullet. At the same time, something eases against the back of his neck near the base of his tilted skull, feeling vaguely like a stray finger wandering up between the strands of his hair.
Adrian's first instinct as the tendril invades his mouth is to try and spit it out, followed by a frantic attempt to twist his head away -- which is about as successful as any of his other attempts. As it starts pressing uncomfortably against his jaws, he tries to scream out -- maybe someone will still hear him! -- but that gets strangled down to a hoarse rasp as the metallic creature slips into his throat. There's another brief, aborted attempt to struggle out of his bonds, a pit of despair forming in his gut. He shudders as something traces along the back of his neck, eyes squeezing shut again, a faint whimper caught in his throat. Please let someone have heard him. Please don't let him die here alone.
The pressure against his forehead, having previously faded to neutrality by sheer passage of time, abruptly shifts against his skin, like something reaffirming its grip. Something's about to happen - something beyond the steady trace of the metallic texture against the entire length of his tongue, its short segments clearly palpable, coming with a taste of iron, earth, dust and more iron - but he's not sure what, and he's not sure he wants to know.
He doesn't have to wait long.
As if someone were brandishing a knife against him, pain stabs up the back of his skull //and does not stop//. The sensation lashes up along his scalp like a line drawn with a razor, but with a duller, far more nauseating sensation, as if proprioception extended into a mental image of separating egg shells, syrupy strands suspended between the jagged parting edges. The cracking sound comes with some delay, validating the mental image. Is it splitting his skull open? Dizziness clouds his vision, more than a product of the overwhelming pain, more than a product of the sensation of something easing his skull open-
It can't exactly be what's happening, he's dimly aware that would kill him, but whatever fine distinction one might choose to make, it can't possibly be relevant to him.
The tightening around his forehead, together with the fingertip-like protrusions tracing along his neck, certainly don't bode well for what's about to happen to him. Whatever it is, it can't be good. Whatever's doing this to him can't possibly have his best interests at heart. Why is this happening? What did he ever do to deserve this? Does he even want to know what's about to happen?
Regardless of the answer to that last question, he doesn't have to wait long to find out. A line of impossible fire drags its way up through his skull, drawing the closest thing he can currently manage to a scream of pain out of him. **It's carving his skull open**. Some part of him has to know that's impossible, but he can't shake the mental image it provides, much as he might want to. Fingers curl up into balled fists, nails cutting into his skin; his lungs start to burn from running out of air to scream with even though he needs to keep screaming because his skull is being cracked open like an egg and yep there's the cracking sound. He's dying. He's dying in the most horrible way he can possibly imagine and it **won't stop**. Please, God, make it stop.
His heartbeat seems to rise up from his chest, crowding up into his skull as if it were perhaps tempted to escape out through the thin crack. He's unaware of the tension that's gripping him, every fibre of his body pulled taut, making a difference in millimetres at most - everything is drowned out by the pain behind his eyes, in the back of his skull, as if his head had been struck with a hammer and splintered. An awful sensation, irrelevant amongst the pain, traces along the wound, imagined or real, and then something just... reaches in... and- quiet. The worst of the pain disappears along with his sense of where his limbs are, his sense of touch whispered away. His vision is a mess, but he's not coherent enough to notice, his focus necessarily elsewhere. Something else is missing, but he can't tell what. Something important. Empathy with himself?
Everything is pounding. His skull won't stop reminding him it exists. Pain is everywhere, never ending. There's something inside him, inside his body, inside his head, reaching around and pulling him apart. He's going to die here. He wishes it would come quickly; that whatever thing this is would just slit his throat and be done with it. But it has other plans, it seems. It's reaching inside, swirling around in his brain; he's not sure whether the sensation's real or not or what's happening or why or please just let it be over and--
The pain's gone. It's gone. It's finally gone. Tears are streaming from his eyes, but he doesn't notice. All his limbs are faintly quivering from strain, but he doesn't notice. For the first time since 'waking up' things seem pretty okay. His body is a wreck, sure, but that hardly matters right now. A few things are missing from him. He should probably be worried about that, but he's not, for some reason. He should probably be worried that he's not worried, but that doesn't seem to bother him either. Things just seem... okay.
There's still something inside him, worming its way through his brain. There's probably some cause for concern in that; maybe it'll take away something important. It's already taken away some important things. But it also took away his pain, which is definitely wonderful. Some part of him is definitely aware that it's probably not great to be entirely devoid of sensing pain, something about ability to tell if you're damaged, but... eh. Who cares. It's just some body and some neural signals; why should he have any preference about what happens to them?
Adrian (he's still Adrian, right?) takes a moment to take stock of his faculties. Curiosity still seems to be intact though. Hunh, strange; was that what he'd been forgetting about for so long? Seems like a silly thing to lose track of, in retrospect. He's still got some sense of self, obviously, or this thread of consciousness wouldn't exist. And he can still see and hear, sort of, if he pays close enough attention to those senses. Pain is gone, fear is gone. Taste doesn't seem to be working; he remembers there's still a metallic thing on his tongue but there's no metallic there. Memory seems okay, but he's not sure how he'd tell if it were missing. Self-empathy's gone, but he doesn't seem to care. He doesn't appear to have any goals at the moment, either; out of curiosity he tries to come up with one, but nothing comes to mind. Enjoying the lack of pain is probably good enough for now.
With his sense of touch subdued, it's hard to tell if the gentle pulsing against the back of his broken skull is a real sensation or only imagined, but what remains of his cognition is undecided whether to consider it soothing or distressing.
Something's moving in his field of vision. There's a soft scraping or tearing sound to go with the motion, resolving after a moment's alignment of his senses to something sliding down the slope, nudging a reluctant avalanche of rubble along it. A half-forgotten instinct listlessly tugs at his attention, strains his battered vision, swimming with dark bands as it is, searching through the waning dusk for shapes recognisable even to his tired mind. It's at the bottom edge of his vision; some kind of creature. There's something familiar about it - like he should be able to identify what it is - but he can't quite grasp the thought. Thin limbs are kicking against the loose stones, seeking purchase against the coarse sand, slipping and sinking each time it looks as if it might have hope. A few more inches lost, then friction pauses the descent. Silent, the creature strains its neck into a stretch, then sweeps its head with fractal horns around slowly to assess the pit with its gaze.
Then it's moving again, disturbing more of the rubble, neither quite ascending nor descending in sum. At one point it looks as if it might make it out, cautiously finding steady footing and gingerly pushing itself up in measured motions, but that, too, fails and it slides down a few metres, almost back to where it began.
Still silent, it sits there, its limbs folded as if it had consciously chosen the spot for a rest, hovering just at the lower edge of his vision. He can tell it's staring across at him for a few moments of what might be uncertainty - watching his breathing, watching the motions of the tendrils that have him encircled - but its interest doesn't last long. The decorative head turns and it glances elsewhere, its own breath steady, betraying no exhaustion.
Whether it's because of the creature's passivity or because the tangles around him are rearranging more of his skull is hard to tell, but first colour then contour bleed out of his perception, smearing into darkness. His broken sense of touch combines the blindness with the hot remnants of his tears against his cheeks, vividly giving him the impression that his eyes have melted out of his skull. Unlikely, of course. More likely something in his neural machinery's broken further. Not long now, no doubt, and there's not going to be anything left of him to ponder how inconvenient that is.
Despite all of his anticipation of further dissolution, the opposite happens. As if something had struck a kaleidoscope directly into his mind, splinters of colour burn themselves into his perception. There's more to it that just //vision// - a vivid synaesthesia meshes the perception into his disoriented sense of touch. The busy outlines of the trees become apparent to him against the dark background, more readily visible than before, as if there were more light to go around, and at a distance feel almost velvety in touch. The hard edge of the pit has the quality of a blade's pressure. The cascading sand comes with a warm and smooth impression. The creature with its fractal horns, vividly alive even though it's sitting there so passively, feels like another heartbeat and vaguely like a caress and the scratching of nails at the same time, both welcoming and dangerous. The worst of it is that the feeling is at a distance - as if he's abruptly expanded and the world consisted in parts of him, in parts of foreign matter, albeit selectively so.
Something about this state feels like he should be able to manipulate it to escape, but he can't think how. There's a half-formed instinct he's never had, just out of conscious reach.
Despite the fresh clarity, it takes him a moment to become aware of the silhouette perched on the edge of the pit. That's all it is - a silhouette. It appears not so much a shadow of something as the complete absence of light, as if someone had cut out a piece of the world in the shape of something resembling a cat, then forgotten to fill the hole with even so much as a sliver of air. The edge of it is apparent as vivid retinal burn, slivers of confused colour, each of which strikes against him like someone's breath. An empty shape. Empty but for its eyes, that is - two narrow pinpricks of light hovering where eyes should be.
When it moves, it becomes apparent that it's a creature of its own, not just a fleeting flaw in space-time. Moreso, it's a creature of flux, morphing from that simple silhouette into something more like a panther with an unrealistic set of talons, almost as if its forepaws were caught halfway between a human hand and the hooked, retractable claws more befitting for a feline. The creature not far from him struggles to its feet, evidently seeing the surreal predator just as vividly, snorting and swerving its head, panting softly as it tries to rise against the stubborn dust. Desperation manages to make it rise - but not for long. Something lashes forward, catching the creature against one limb. An audible **crack** is followed by a sound midway between a bellow and a moan - then the panther-like creature has one paw on one antler, the other against the creature's face, and its jaws locked around branches of the other antler, steadily pulling the creature's head to the ground.
It looks like an entirely effortless display on side of the solidified shadow, as if all of the other creature's muscle mass mattered naught, even though it's transparently more //real// than its assailant. The head touches against the ground, legs kicking increasingly uselessly against the sand; then the shadow's maw relents from the antler, briefly slipping out thin, serpentine, unshaded pink tongue to lap at the antler's outline, before //inhaling// the previously so impressive cranial structure. It's the only word that adequately describes what he's seeing - with a soft crinkling sound, the structure is coming apart into something much like dust, evaporating into the direction of the predator holding it.
It's an impressive trick for as long as it's only the antler disappearing - as it begins to affect the captive creature's face, pulling skin from a bloody skull, it becomes significantly less pleasant to watch. A broken, terrified sound is the last thing the furred creature utters before half its skull and part of its neck disappear. A few listless pumps of its heart spill blood from the wound before the rest of its body gives up even instinctual function.
And it's over.
The panther pushes back from its kill, regarding it with an almost human scrutiny, as if to check that all was in order - then glances across to he-who-was-Adrian. Nothing about those pinprick eyes betrays a direction of gaze, but the silhouette of its head has moved to an unmistakable focus.
Something's moving nearby -- the sound makes sense to him before the sight of it does, scratchy and rustling. A shape, somewhat recognizable -- not human, for certain, an animal of some sort? Familiar. Not that the word is coming to him; it's probably lost by now. That's a shame.
Whatever it's called, it looks like it's trying to get out of this hole. ...Funny, he was trying to get out of this hole earlier, too. After a few attempts, it seems to give up, settling into its spot near the side of the wall, turning its antlered skull towards him for a bit. Hello weird animal thing, guess we're stuck in this hole together. You're probably doing better than I am though. You're not getting disassembled.
More things start bleeding out of his skull. Color starts going missing, then shapes, until his vision is more like a fuzzy mess of gray splotches. Despite the lack of pain, and the relative lack of fear, the entire situation still feels frustrating. It would be nice if this thing would hurry up and finish pulling him apart, since that seems to be what it wants. Not long until there's no more... Adrian, was it? He thinks so. Not long until there's no more Adrian left.
...And yet, that's not what happens next. Something comes back, or, gets added in? There's color again, but it's different this time; texture's in there too. He can **feel** things. The trees at the top of the hole have a rough texture to them, the soil is cool, and seems to stretch out into the edges of his perception. There's something magnificent about the creature stuck in the hole with him, bright colors dancing around its outline, warm and inviting, the sound of a heartbeat that isn't his. **Alive**.
It's extremely disorienting, feeling like he's touching the landscape all around him, embedded in the universe in a different way than before, not quite as localized. His senses are all wrong, there are instincts buried somewhere in him that feel misaligned, alien. Somehow it feels like he should be able to get out of here, like he's not in any real danger, like if he just figured out how to twist himself in the right direction he could escape, but he's not sure how that's possible. He's also not sure whether he wants to, yet.
...There's something else here, too. Not in him but outside. Not the antlerhead either (he'll remember the name eventually). Something perched at the edge of the pit, but nothing's there. Literally nothing, like someone punched out a cat-shaped hole in space. And gave it tiny stars for eyes. Then the nothing shifts -- or something, the word for it doesn't exist -- its shape changing into some bizarre pantheresque hybrid. Antlerhead sees it too, and starts to flee -- you can do it, antlerhead! -- but somehow it gets caught; there's a sound of pain as something cracks, then the shadow is on top of it.
What happens next is hard to describe. The shadow thing seems to be licking at the antler, and then it just starts... dissolving. Like it's getting inhaled, turned to dust at an alarming rate. Then it starts happening to the creature's face. An awful, broken cry spills out of the beast before half its skull is gone. Then the rest of its head and neck are gone, blood's everywhere, the warm outlines sucked into that void in space, its fur damp with blood, heartbeat silent.
And then it turns its attention to him.
Maybe now would be a good time for him to start figuring out how to escape.
In smooth, predatory motions, the surreal feline eases itself into a stride toward him, its gaze seeming fixed on him - though where its actual attention is is anyone's guess. It doesn't take long before it's hovering over him, peering at his face. For a moment, that's all it does - leer at his restrained shape from a few inches distance, as if perhaps waiting for him to react to its presence in a more dramatic way than just by staring at it with wide eyes - then the face distorts, pulling back invisible lips from a frightening array of white, perfectly three-dimensional teeth, puncturing the chill of its visual presence with a faint sensation of needles not nearly distant enough.
The all too humanoid hands reach forward, one palm setting down against his face, partly covering his eyes, thumb hooked against the metallic tendril lodged in his gullet, the other talon curling to grasp at his shoulder. Something warm sets against his bare, stretched throat, a whispered sensation like a kiss, followed by the touch of what might be a dry tongue creasing along the outlines of his larynx.
Then his muted sense of touch reports a light tickling sensation against the centre of his throat, slowly unravelling outward, leaving an alien numbness behind. As the process stops, the gentle tickling sensation morphs into a light burn - and immediately forces him to cough as drops of blood trickle against the walls of his trachea. //There's a hole in his throat//.
The silhouette hovering over him laps at the edge of the small wound with its dry tongue, a subdued sound like a purr rumbling from its simulacrum of a body, and for a brief instant, he can feel that thin band against the inside of his trachea as if it were lapping up the stray, thin rivulets of blood. Adrian's body is not impressed, stemming itself against its restraints out of raw instinct, getting nowhere as it had all previous times, and a vicious, hideous sounding coughing fit grips him, air escaping largely through the new orifice rather than through his mouth. //Fuck//.
The creature pushes back after a few minutes, in the same motion tugging at the tendril in his mouth - it traces along his tongue on the way out, feeling so much more like a parasite that was trying its best to stay deeply lodged inside him, writhing slightly as it's forced to let go. He can't see, but he's not sure it didn't take one of his inner organs with it - with how everything is coming apart, that would fit the theme, after all.
Somehow the shape in front of him is refusing to register as real, despite what he just saw it do. Like it's a shadow cast by something, even though nothing could possibly be casting it. There's no texture to it at all, the edges giving only the vaguest hints of ...frayed fabric? It doesn't quite feel like that, but it's the closest thing his frayed mind can match it to. Or maybe its unreality is **because** of what he just saw it do -- nothing real could possibly do that. Nothing real is allowed to do that. Maybe it's a hallucination brought on by whatever's happening inside his skull. He'd desperately like it to be that, especially now that it's decided to approach him.
Okay, maybe things are still going to be okay, he attempts to reassure himself. Look, it already ate, and didn't even finish its meal, surely it's not going to do anything to-- Oh hello teeth. Hello teeth as sharp as knives and so many of them and so very, very real. Funny how fear still seems to be a thing in his shattered skull. It would be kind of nice if that went away. His eyes squeeze shut in instinct as the hand covers part of his face, impossibly real. Something else grasps at his shoulder. This is the part where he dies, isn't it? What just happened to antlerface over there is exactly what's going to happen to him.
He's not sure whether to consider it fortunate that his fears aren't realized; instead there's a strange sensation wriggling against his throat, difficult to place, until he starts coughing up blood. Through a new hole in his throat. Oh lovely, just what he needed, more holes in his body. Like he didn't have enough of those already. His body is spasming, lungs instinctively trying to clear themselves of blood to make room for air, the limited motion only likely to make the damage worse. A deep nausea grips him as the thing effortlessly drags the tendril out of his mouth, feeling vaguely like it's taking something important with it. Wouldn't be the first thing. Probably wouldn't be the last either.
He's torn between desperately wanting to escape and desperately wanting to have his life snuffed out, now -- preferably quickly. He might even welcome getting dissolved at this point, if it weren't for how he saw the antlered creature handle it. He tries to speak, maybe beg for mercy in one form or another, but that only causes another awful coughing fit. Something about the creature in front of him feels vaguely familiar in a way he can't fathom, like maybe he could reason with it and convince it to leave him alone, but that doesn't make sense. And he can't really reason with it if he can't talk. And he can't escape if he can't move, much as it feels like he ought to be able to.
A dark, texture-less flank drifts past his vision moments after the creature lets go of him, revealing an exaggeratedly long tail drifting behind it, curved as if in expression of confidence. Something brushes against his skin near his hip, reminiscent of a nudge from a muzzle - then the passing touch disappears again. The tip of the tail dances at the edge of his vision a little longer, then disappears.
A mundane silence descends upon the landscape. Soundlessly, blood from the slain creature runs down the slope of the pit a bit further away from him.
Adrian's throat is aching, an unpleasant tension lining the skin around the wound. At least the coughing from blood has stopped. He can sense that his body is trying to do itself a misguided favour by producing slime along his trachea, which causes softer coughs at irregular, distant intervals, but at least the blood flow was quick to stop.
Just as his lungs threaten to become complacent about the new status quo, a sensation like fire ripples up along his right arm. For the first instant, that's the only granularity he can sense; then a richer texture of pain offers itself to his perception, reminding him how pain feels, granting him the impression that his skin is being peeled back from his muscles and the muscles dislodged from his bones. The alarming sensation does more than rob him of coherent thought - after two seconds it's grown to his shoulder and washes down across his chest. The pain of his skull flares back up, jolted back into existence, and-
His consciousness evaporates.
There's something else much like one standing in for it for a few seconds, a rudimentary sense more raw proprioception than anything relating to //conscious thought//. Physically, this body still exists. There are pieces to this body that belong together. They're not a boundary definition, though, that stretches along the landscape. They are not a sense of self. This body is just a fact.
When the body's senses crowd back together around a pinprick, coalescing into self-perception by overlap, the point lies between the body's shoulderblades. The pain of its skull is real, but not important. The bindings it's caught in are real, but not important. Both are transient for different reasons. It can knit itself together if it wishes. It can bleed past the coils, or simply jerk pass them - they are not confining in all directions.
...Somehow, for some reason, the creature seems to be deciding to leave him be for the moment. For a few moments he's left wondering if it's just going to circle in for the kill, but the more time that passes, the less likely that seems. Breathing is difficult, but still possible right now; at least the bleeding has stopped. Things turn quiet. Maybe he's not going to die, after all. Maybe the danger has passed, and--
Suddenly, a sensation he's forgotten about entirely runs up his arms. ...Pain. He'd forgotten what pain felt like, somehow, even though it's been hiding in his nervous system this entire time. Thoughts splinter and come to a screeching halt; his skin is trying to come off and his bones are screaming and his head is pounding and there's a **hole** in his **throat** and how has he not been screaming this entire time. Make it stop, the thought echoes in his skull in a wordless scream. Make it stop. Make it--
It stops.
For a few seconds, there's just some raw sensory data; nothing that could be considered thought. Then things begin to coalesce properly. It exists. There's a body here, and some metallic tendrils, and soil, and sand, and blood, and air. And it. It's currently centered somewhere in the middle of the body, near its heart. The body's damaged, but it's nothing severe. There's information it can access -- memories, mostly, of the body's former host. A human.
After a few moments of reflection, it decides that it doesn't really like being in this place. It gathers up as many of the pieces of the body that it can hold onto, then adjusts their consistency while keeping roughly the same shape, bleeding into the ground beneath it and wriggling free of its artificial bindings. It easily climbs its way up through the soil structure and out of the sinkhole, reforming at the edge of it, body crouched and peering into the hole below it.
Such a curious occurrence, this sudden existence. Confusing, perhaps, but an intriguing mystery. What manner of creature is ve? Human? No, that's not right. Humans couldn't do what ve just did, otherwise Adrian -- the human who used to be here -- would've done so. Something else, then, like the shadowy creature Adrian saw in his last moments? ...no, that doesn't quite feel right either. Although...
Spurned by a sudden urge, ve tugs a rock loose from the earth and examines it curiously. It has a grainy texture to it, probably mostly silicon dioxide and a few other minerals. Ve shrugs after a moment, then slowly starts inhaling it. It's not bad as far as first meals go, honestly. Some twenty seconds later, it's completely gone. ...now what?
From the edge of the conical hole in the ground, it becomes obvious that it's more shallow than the creature that had struggled against the incline earlier and now lay dead in the sand had suggested with its motions. The whole thing looks a bit like a crater, as if something heavy had thrust down into the ground and dissolved matter, then tipped the surroundings into crumbling until a steady equilibrium was reached. There's only about half a square metre of flat surface at the bottom of the resulting funnel, most of which is guesswork given the writhing tentacles that cluster in that focal point.
Ver disappearance seems to have prompted some confusion in the owner of those curving limbs.
The immediate association with the tendrils, now that ve can better see them, is of something metallic, though they don't appear mechanical, offering no visible joints. The surface is uneven, like the sensation in ver throat had suggested of its texture, had suggested segments, but it's more like the bark of an unusual tree than of a machine. At a distance, from vision alone, it feels soft, almost silk-like.
Some instinct in ver suggests that ve can probably easily take it apart and find out what it does, as if the design were wholly intuitive to ver, even though ve does not recall interacting with this machine before, nor any like it.
Some part of verself is... concerned? Afraid? Confused? about ver current state. Adrian would probably be horrified at what he's become, but Adrian's not here any more. Ve's not entirely sure how much of Adrian ve should claim as ver own. Probably the less, the better -- there's too much pain and terror there, leftover from his last moments.
One thing that is certain is that whatever ve is, the metallic structure in front of ver is responsible for the current state of affairs. Or, rather, whatever's controlling it. Knowing more about whatever it was, and whatever it was trying to accomplish, would probably help resolve ver existential confusion. Raw instinct tells ver that ve ought to be able to take it apart and understand it, even though Adrian certainly wouldn't have any idea where to begin. Seems instinct is the best tool ve has at the moment, so ve might as well trust it.
Ve takes a few cautious steps into the sinkhole, human instincts guiding ver arms outward to maintain balance, attention focused on the nest of tendrils at the nadir of the funnel, watching for any sudden motions. Even if it tries to reach out and grab ver, ve could always slip out of its grasp again. And perhaps ve might even have the capacity to claim it the way ve did this body; ve's still getting used to how much control over the environment ve has at the moment.