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The distress is there before the awareness. The scream bifurcated by the transition sounds high-pitched and yet somehow not altogether human, but is clearly his, as if the state he'd just woken from were running largely on instinct, enamoured by its animalistic existence. Hoarse. There's something hoarse about it.
Something has grabbed a hold of him with distinctly too many limbs - sharp claws pinch against his skin through the thin fabric of his clothes, crushing his wrists to the tiles and his legs by the calves to the ground. Impossibly long fingers have wrapped around his head, the back of his skull pressed against the alien palm, those tips nipping at his forehead, pulling his head back, off the ground, effortlessly.
From the corner of his eye he can see only a slab of darkness as the source of all of this, disconcertingly sharp-edged, politely suggesting that perhaps the darkness was all there was to the creature, there was no further texture - and teeth, white, in his fleeting impression of them undecided whether they arranged to form a vaguely canine or shark-like maw. But the eyes are the worst part. With the light off, the only light comes from those eyes, those swerving incandescent pinpricks.
It's clear that the creature cannot be seeing him through those - and yet equally clear that he's got other priorities than to ponder that. Adrenaline's punched him in the gut and is dragging its own claws through the coils. 'How did I get here?' is an important question, just as 'How am I only really aware of this now? Is this some waking-world, manifested nightmare?', but both pale relative to the instincts screaming at him to fight, to twist free, to save himself, to run, run, run!
But it's too late for that.
Awake. That's how it feels, as if suddenly waking up from a half-remembered dream, though with the scenario unfolding into clarity around him he's not quite managing to convince himself this isn't some vivid nightmare. Escape. He has to escape. The details and their meaning can wait until later, right now he has to flee from whatever this is and get as far away as possible.
His first instinct is to try and curl up, get at least some of his limbs free from this… whatever it is. Maybe if he can get his head free, or one of his legs…? He takes a deep breath, and then a second, and then, hoping to catch his captor off-guard with the motion, he twists to the right, attempting to jerk his right leg upwards and twist his head out of the creature's grasp, straining against the grip on his wrist.
His hair and scalp protest at the treatment, but thankfully enough of the strands are caught in the creature's grasp as not to sting. His leg spasms from the attempt to wrench it around, smothered by an inhuman strength, muscle fibres aching from the futile strain. The creature pulls his head further back, his spine protesting in alarm, a deep-seated panic lancing through his gut at being handled like this. The talons gripping his arms seem to branch out or otherwise multiply, leaving shallow, bloodless furrows in his skin as the grip expands. A moment later, two sharp tips each pierce through his skin. Adrian's instinctive wince turns to a howl as they widen to a small finger's width within the puncture wound, lightly splitting his skin, stabbing agony through his senses. Mid-howl, something slips between his teeth, grasping at his jaw as if his assailant were pondering to tear it off, two claws stinging on the underside of it, three or more scratching across his tongue and forcing themselves past his gag reflex, into his windpipe, sealing his breath into his lungs.
His leg doesn't even budge, held in place by an impossible strength, his efforts rewarded only with muscle strain. He lets out a cry of pained desperation as his head is pulled further back, panic writhing in his gut. Something's happening to his arms, the creature's grip… expanding, somehow, in some way that shouldn't be possible. None of this should be possible. He can't make sense of the creature pinning him down, its body seemingly made of darkness, the maw of far too many sharp teeth, the baleful glow from its pinprick eyes. He's woken up into a nightmare; that's the only thing that even comes close to making sense.
His thoughts are cut short before they can adequately grapple with that, twin sharp punctures in each of his wrists dragging his attention to them, a hiss turned into a howl of pain as the claws bury themselves into his flesh, eyes squeezing shut in an attempt to block the pain out. Then there's a hand grasping his lower jaw, a spike of intense fear coupling with the pain at the mental image of it wrenching his jaw free; but then the digits are scratching back against his tongue, into his throat, his howl cut off mid-breath. His eyes shoot wide open, staring ahead; his body spasms in the monster's grip, pain and terror and panic mixing together. He's going to die.
Like wax, the tasteless talons in his mouth seem to melt and remould, settling against his tongue and teeth, spreading outward in the same stroke as downward, until the substance comes to rest as an unwelcome, alien sensation against his vocal chords, making his body struggle against it in instinct, spasming motions bearing some semblance to retching. Then the pressure shifts outward, splitting down the middle, letting air in, while keeping him firmly muted.
With that complete, the pain in his arms expands under his skin, for a moment giving him the impression that the amorphous creature with the incandescent eyes might be trying to scissor his skin apart from the inside - but that never comes. Instead, pins and needles slowly spread through his fingers, a sensation with only the meaning of discomfort to his animal mind. If his rational mind had a moment to shine, it would be now, to question what might be causing the sensation and to reason that his blood was draining out of him through those puncture wounds, still hot pain with frayed aching fibres at the edges, dominating his perception.
His body rebels against the substance flowing into his throat, instincts alternating between trying to swallow and trying to retch, but unable to do either. Then it settles into his vocal cords, pressing against them, hardening and then hollowing, letting him breathe again, with difficulty. He spasms, attepting to cough the construct out, then tries to scream – resulting in only a painful buzzing in his throat and a heavy exhale.
It's only after long moments of increasing agony in his arms and numbness in his fingers that a part of Adrian notices, with some surprise, that he's still alive, and that this is a bit mysterious. Surely this monster could've killed him five times over by now. Which means either it's deliberately drawing his death out, or it's trying to do something else. Both options sound far too terrifying; if the latter, what is it doing to him? Draining blood? Oh god is this a vampire, does this mean vampires are real? (If it is, it's nothing like any stories he's heard.)
While there is some dizziness beginning to gnaw at his crisp, adrenaline-fueled thoughts, it's only his fingers that seem to be suffering from blood loss. The rest of him seems - while weak in relation to this surreal, amorphous monster - quite fit. Confused, terrified, displaced into a nightmare, but fit, and not starkly waning. Not like someone being hungrily drained of blood by their wrists, at least.
The construct around his head shoves him down onto the tiles, straightening out his spine. A bit of spittle leaks past the not-a-hand in his mouth, forming a hesitant line of drool down his chin, insignificant against the stabwounds in his arms, siphoning his blood away in some way that somehow left enough for him to live. Before he can get used to the pressure-pain, something slashes down his spine in a single, brutal motion, in its descent grating against his bones, parting skin like a scalpel.
If it weren't for the pain and the intense clarity of this entire scene, he'd classify this experience purely as a nightmare – he'd wake up soon, drenched in sweat and heart racing, but otherwise alive and safe. It makes about as much sense as a nightmare, the fear and adrenaline and helplessness, at the whim of a monster that can't possibly be real, built from night terrors, figments of imagination. Maybe this is all an elaborate hallucination. But what would cause it? Why is this happening to him? How much of this is real?
His thoughts are interrupted by the splitting pain of a knife clawing down his spine. Another aborted attempt at a scream, his body pressing against the tiles, trying desperately to evade whatever's doing this to him, all in vain. 'I don't want to die' is the only thought that can manage to get a hold in his mind, all other thoughts scrambled by pain. Hot tears spill from his eyes, scarcely noticed.
It's all he can do not to pass out. A sensation suspended between a gentle, painful wiggle under his skin and against his spine, and a repeated punch into his back, ache flowering outward from the unnatural pressure point, spreads up his spine as the creature handles him. A thought lances through his mind: This is some kind of sick experiment. Maybe it wants to know what happens if it snaps his spine - then what? Instead, an inverted crushing sensation blossoms between two vertebrae between his shoulderblads. For a moment, that's all there is - then, like a paintbrush dipped in water, wiping across a painted canvas, he can feel control of his legs wash away like stripped layers.
At this point, passing out would undoubtedly be a welcome change to the pain burning through his synapses. And yet some part of him still clings to his consciousness, terrified that if he loses it now he'll never get it back again. Why hasn't it killed him yet?! That's clearly where this is going, right? There's no way he's going to survive being handled like this. It's going to snap his spine or rip him to shreds or something, the least it could do is get it over with quickly.
The sensation between his shoulderblades is difficult to place, the cause unclear aside from obviously related to the pressure that's wriggled up his spine. He doesn't have the mental bandwidth to imagine it either. For a few moments he doesn't even notice that he can't feel his legs – or, no, that's not quite right, he can feel them, just not do anything about them – but once the thought's found space in his brain, the mental image unfurls. Paralysis. No, he's definitely not getting out of here alive.
Something about the sensation announcing his loss of control adopts a life of its own. In a lazy ripple, it rolls up along his torso, then eases itself into his arms. A sudden rupture splinters his proprioception, making it difficult for him to tell where the different sources of pain are coming from, how they relate to each other, where his limbs are. A vague hint of fire laps at his displaced fibres. The disconcerting lack of self-cohesion buds into a strange numbness in the back of his skull. It's like something's eating up his nerves, some kind of flame he can only barely feel, like a disembodied fever or some impossible efficient virus.
A few moments after that realization, something inside him moves. Flowing up his spine, spreading out into his arms, devouring his control. It doesn't feel like the creature's claw, but it's hard to tell what it feels like. Something else? Is it even connected to his assailant?
Then, in an instant, his proprioception splits, coming undone like the layers of a sliced onion. He's in pain, that much he's sure of, but 'where' doesn't quite seem like it has meaning. He's pretty sure it's his arms and spine, but only because that's what hurt before. Something inside him is eating away at him, only scarcely noticeable. The back of his skull feels numb. It's in his nerves, it has to be, that's the only thing that makes remote sense, oh god it's going to go into his brain isn't it it's going to –
Like a painless fist full of needles, the numbness slams into the rest of his cognition, the transition curt, palpable out of some strange hesitance. It's as if a chain reaction grasped his mind and converted his thoughts into hard crystals, as if his skull were full of water being flash-frozen. His consciousness shrinks to a pinprick, swallowed up by a black hole.
And then it's gone. It's gone, but he's still thinking. The pain is still registering. There's still a disembodied awareness of his surroundings, of the pinprick eyes, of the impossible darkness wrapped around him. A greater awareness, by some measure, an almost infinitely more numb one in another. Not quite fully there. Not quite fully self. But enough to know that self was missing.
Some of those fragments of pain abruptly relent, replaced with an awkward pressure. It might be his arms. It might be his spine. There's a strange symmetry to it, that much is obvious even without any sense of direction, as if symmetry were a fundamental value to observe, outside of space and time. So maybe it's his arms that are being left alone now?
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