Chapter Text
So this is how it ends. The Hunter, the creature. All sounds, all color, it uses all its mouths, all thirteen of them, as it taunts him. Its infinite yellow eyes glow menacingly and all are trained on him as he crawls away desperately. One of its many arms swipes at his form, somehow he manages to see this coming and quickly moves out of the way. Trying to scramble up to run away properly.
He needed to get out of here. A different dimension might throw the Hunter off his trail, but for how long? It's been following him how long?
But nothing ever lasts, not even eternity. He should know: he’s been a part of it since always and forever. He has seen everything, has heard so much, and has feasted and feasted and feasted.
Being feasted upon.
The Hunter will now feast upon his carcass, so it is, so it will always be. There will come a being that will eventually feast upon the Hunter. Although that thought didn’t seem likely as he was desperately trying to hide from the other creature.
Fear racked through his many limbs, swirling and twisting into each other as his many organs were pumping rapidly, trying to heal the bits and pieces that were already consumed.
What could he do?
He heard the disgusting screech of the Hunter, it was close and coming closer still. Yet he waited, still. A plan formulating in his head.
When the eternal yellow glowing eyes were trained upon him once again he dodged the several limbs grabbing at his ever-shifting form and slithered away. Even injured, he was faster than the giant form of the Hunter.
It seems confused, it was not expecting his movement to be this fluid that, he was sure of. It grabs at nothing and its screech reverberates through his being. He shuddered.
He takes its confusion and uses it to his advantage. He slides, and jumps dimensions, neither knowing nor caring where the destination will be.
This isn’t how he does things, running away isn’t his style. He’s falling without any control phasing through different universes at the speed of light. His whole being collapses in on itself, he moves some tendrils through the space he’s falling in, searching and searching.
It takes some time but he finds what he’s looking for. He leaped forward without thinking anymore, slipping himself through a rift blinking out of existence.
Small.
This dimension is tiny, crowded. But it’s too late to go back now and trying to slip through another dimension would mean the Hunter could catch up. Not that he had much of a choice as he can feel himself fading away. The dimension knows he’s an outsider, knows he shouldn’t be here and it’s trying to pull him apart as the Hunter had tried.
With a pang of horror, he realizes he was losing himself. Not just his form and essence, but his omniscient awareness.
His name, He can’t remember his name.
The dimension pulls harder, his essence writhes in pain and he howls. Both in anger and in agony. Quickly trying to search around for something that can stop this pain .
A thought, a mind, reaches out to him completely by accident. He latches on to it desperately and feels it snap under his essence and immensity of his being. He howled in anger, the dimension trying to get rid of him with more urgency. He couldn’t die now , he managed to get away from the Hunter and he would survive .
And that might become true.
He senses two more twines of thought. One seems to be panicking, terrified, and confused. He doesn’t care about that one, it would try to make sense of him like the first one had and it would break. The other one is more interesting, it’s blank and soft and stupid, stupid, stupid enough to allow him to crawl into its mind.
And he does, he swirls in there with his last ounce of energy as his essence spins in on itself to fit and slither in the feeble mind of this creature. It doesn’t respond in any way, shape or form. Its mind a serene nothingness as he closes off his own mind once he’s sure all of his essence that was left has entered the creature. Hoping this wouldn’t be the last time he would be conscious.
It doesn’t last long, he’s ripped from the sleep he forced upon himself by the shifting environment. Wet became dry, warm became cold. There’s a bright light, blinding him and things touching all over his body, holding him and pulling at him.
He screams.
That’s not quite right. The body he inhabits screams. It sounds awful. What kind of casket did he drag himself into ?
Everything is blurry and bright, noises all around him, they were speaking? If so it was some kind of primitive language he couldn’t wrap his exhausted brain around.
They were repeating words, something about the casket?
“It’s a boy, the baby is a boy!”
A baby boy. He wasn’t sure what it meant and it wasn’t important to him. What was important is what he had gotten himself into. A larva from the species of this dimension? What was he supposed to do with this thing? He couldn’t even move the casket's limbs properly.
His casket gets pushed around, clumsily dried off with something itchy, and shoved against a warm body. He craves the touch, no, the baby does. He desperately wishes he could shut off his senses again. He would rest, get better and when he has regained his strength he would leave this casket and horrid dimension behind, it would be a bad dream.
-0-
When the casket woke again much later to find another creature staring down at him. He couldn’t make out any features as the creature seemed to be a big blur, but he doubted that was what it actually looked like. The casket's eyesight seemed to be terribly blurry.
The blurry beast said something in that primitive language he still had trouble understanding. He just stared back at the beast, awaiting its action. It pokes at him with its finger and if it weren’t for the useless body of this casket he would have shown this lesser creature exactly what he thought about its actions. He already missed the days he could swallow stars whole.
He tries to use the casket arms to reach out to the beast and grab at its fingers. He managed to actually hold on to one of them, the casket made some kind of noise at his satisfied response. The beast seemed to enjoy the sound and moved its finger around, the caskets grip quickly loosening out of it.
For a moment, the beast leaned in closer. Good, almost in biting range. It looked up just as suddenly at something else and blabbered out something the casket couldn’t hear. When the beast turned back to stare at him it screamed loudly instead.
He, no, the casket , had soiled itself. This dimension was just getting better and better.
Another taller figure comes into view and is just as blurry as the other beast. He recognizes it as the warm body from before and the craving for its warmth comes back. Why was his casket so attached to this creature? It comes closer and takes his casket out of his soft prison.
It coos at him as it lays him somewhere else, removing the things wrapped around his casket's body and cleans him up. It’s talking to him and he can make out some of the words, it seems to just be talking about him as the taller beast called it ‘accident.’ so he was content with tuning it out.
The beast wrapped him up again after cleaning and held him to its chest. The casket reacted favorably to the contact and made noises on its own. He couldn’t bring himself to mind the contact of this particular creature much. It was very gentle.
“All clean now aren’t we, my little Vanitas?” It said as it rocked his casket softly up and down in its warm embrace.
Vanitas? Was that the name of his casket?”
It wasn’t like he could remember his true name, Vanitas would do.