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His tea was spilling. Not from a glitch, for once, but from the shaking. He hadn’t been able to keep his hands from shaking for a while now. He didn’t expect it to stop until he reached the 11th floor and was stuffed into some other kind of body. Maybe not even then.
“It’s getting worse.” Rosetta sat down across from him at the kitchen table. The personal space was quiet – the others were all gearing up for their next race. Mordecai kept an eye on the chat while he clutched onto his tea cup with skeletal fingers. Carl and Donut were speaking to the strippers about something driving related. Probably asking who could comfortably drive when Carl couldn’t, since this whole floor was a massive “fuck you” to poor Donut who didn’t have thumbs-
“Mordecai.” Rosetta spoke again and he turned to her. His head – well, his eye, since the brain of this form didn’t really exist in the same realm as the rest of his body – throbbed. It felt like every nerve in his body was being ever so slowly twisted in place, corkscrewing. Even his robes twitched and shuddered around him, although he felt reasonably confident that nobody would see the movement for anything beyond “spooky reaper guy with moving robes.”
“It’s fine, Rosetta.” Mordecai sighed. His insides roiled unpleasantly – another common sensation on this floor – and he shuddered, smoke weaving throughout his bones before slipping out from underneath his hood. He forced himself to take a sip, and the nausea-reducing ginger was sickly on his nonexistent tongue. He still wasn’t entirely sure where the liquid went, since moon reapers typically fed on the life energy of corporeal beings. But shadow mimics liked flesh, which meant there must have been a mouth and digestive track inside of him somewhere-
“You need to tell Carl and Donut.” Rosetta snapped. Her eyes were concerned, though her tone was gruff. “You need to rest.”
“No, I need to keep working.” Mordecai growled at her. “Those kids need me. They need potions. They need-”
“They need to have a manager who isn’t going to collapse on them in the middle of a race.” Rosetta said flatly. “This is not sustainable, Mordecai. This form is breaking you down. You cannot hide in the alchemy room or your personal space forever. Imani would be hounding you if she were not so busy with her own races.”
“It’s fine.” Mordecai tried to sound stoic, but he heard some of his own misery seep through. Gods above he was so tired. “It’s the AI’s chosen form for me on this floor. I can’t change on purpose, I’m stuck like this until we move down. There’s nothing we can- nothing-” The twisting sensation inside of every limb suddenly burned, like someone squeezing each vein, each bone, and violently wrenching it sideways. A gasp tore itself from Mordecai’s mouth as the world spun and he shifted; into what, he had no clue, but the world spun, he shrank and grew, he grew blindingly hot and bitterly cold, he was spinning, spinning, spinning…
When he came back to himself he was on the floor, panting, and Rosetta crouched over him, muttering something to herself. A gentle hand grabbed something soft from her inventory, a piece of clothing perhaps, and slid it between the side of his eye/hood and the floor.
“Imani is on her way.” Rosetta said, and shushed him sternly when Mordecai groaned and attempted to get up. “Do not. Stay still. At this rate we’ll lose you before the next race starts.”
Mordecai wanted to sink into the floor. Shame had never been an unfamiliar companion, but it seemed to haunt him more and more on these floors. Shame that he couldn’t help more, provide more. That he was stuck in saferooms while his family went out and risked death daily, and he watched from the sidelines. Shame that the AI could toy with him like this, manipulate his body, twist it into something that couldn’t even function right.
Mordecai, as he so often did, missed being normal. He missed being himself, his singular body, its strength and stability. Every time he thought he had adjusted over the course of his many long years, the shift always found a way to fuck with him.
He missed the sky.
“I’m here.” Imani’s voice came from somewhere behind him. Mordecai hated how relieved he felt, knowing she was nearby. Knowing that for a little while, she might be able to get this pain to stop. “What’s-”
She stopped. The quiet sound of her footsteps approached him. From his side, Rosetta gracefully stood. “The form the AI put him into on this level is incompatible with his changeling physiology. He’s sick.”
“I knew there was something going on with you.” Imani’s tone was accusatory – worried – and Mordecai sighed. It wasn’t these kids’ job to worry about him. It was his job to worry about them. About their state of being, their health, which is why he really needed to get back to his workstation.
But gods above, he wanted to rest so, so badly. Maybe he could have this, just for a little while.
“There’s nothing we can do about it.” Mordecai muttered. Imani knelt by his side and he glanced up at her skeletal face, watching her eyes darken and flicker as she assumedly took in his stats. Mordecai knew he’d had several debuffs hovering over him for some time now, but he’d been ignoring them, hiding himself from the others whenever possible to avoid them being detected. Not even potions could fix this. Not completely.
“You could have at least told somebody so you could take a nap.” Imani sighed. She extended one orange wing over him like a blanket and the bliss, oh gods, the bliss. The warmth of it swept through him in a wave, whisking away pain and tension and inflammation all at once. Mordecai was vaguely aware of him making some kind of undignified noise – a moan, maybe, or a sob – and then both Rosetta and Imani were there, soothing him gently. There was a tenderness there that Mordecai hadn’t felt in forever and for the first time in centuries, he wanted his mother. Wanted to bury himself into her plumage, beak tucked into the curve of neck and wing while she crooned to him. Has it really been so long since someone had touched him gently?
This couldn’t last forever, he knew. Imani had to get to her race, and his kids needed their supplies, and Rosetta would have to head back into town with Tipid to hire more mercenaries. Life would move on, they’d keep fighting, and the pain would return until something on the next floor took over and gave him another weakness to worry about. But for now…
Carl: Hey guys, if you haven’t started prepping for the next race then you probably should get to it soon. I don’t want anybody rushing. Mordecai, are those potions ready for us yet? Also, I might need you to work on something when we get back if that’s alright.
Imani, who’d had one hand on his shoulder and was gently smoothing her thumb over his cloak while her buffs countered the pain in his glitched-out body, paused in her movements. She looked at him, face concerned, a question there. Beside her, Rosetta’s face had become stoney.
Mordecai considered it. Just for a moment. Telling them that he’d send Imani out with what he already had prepped and that he needed to rest before the next batch, just for a few hours. Needed to get some decent sleep that wasn’t broken up with nightmares and flare-ups of agony that had him twitching and glitching out on the ground somewhere. But there was no time. He was needed, and would be there for as long as he was needed, and besides, this form would leave him when they got to the next floor, right?
Mordecai: Yeah, they’re ready. I’ll drop them off in the guildhall in just a few minutes. Keep me posted on what you need so I can get to work on it right away.
Imani closed her eyes and Rosetta sighed, resting a gentle hand on the top of his hood before standing once again and leaving the room. Imani watched her go, then slowly helped him sit up, then stand. His whole body trembled, but once again, he imagined the robes helped to hide it. Smoke continued to spit itself from his bones and seep from underneath his hood.
“Be careful, Mordecai.” Imani said. She gazed up at him sadly, wings still brushing him with their tips. Even so soon after feeling their affects the pain was beginning to creep in. Nausea resumed its sickening dance in the pit of his stomach. “Please. We can’t afford to lose you, and it’s not because we’d miss out on the potions.”
Mordecai blinked, and wondered what kind of tears he’d make as a moon reaper who wasn’t actually a moon reaper, but who had one eye anyway. He settled for reaching out and gently taking one of Imani’s hands in his own skeletal ones, feeling the warmth of her skin rush through his aching bones.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he promised her, and he meant it. If he could put up with centuries of the dungeon, of shifting into monsters, of pulling himself out of a drunken stupor over and over again just to repeat the cycle every decade or so, he could survive a little chronic pain. As if to punish him for the thought, a small glitch rushed through him, rattling his teeth and making his robes flicker through a dozen or so different colors and materials before settling again. Imani squeezed his hand.
She had to go not long after. Mordecai stared at the door where she had gone and thought about the people outside in the guild hall, in the garages. Of Carl and the darkness in his gaze, growing stronger every day. Of Donut as she wiped her paw on every surface without realizing she did so. He thought about Ruby and the changeling kids who couldn’t shift right because of compression sickness, and of Tran and his missing legs, or Tipid and his missing memory.
I’m not going anywhere, he thought again, even as his cells all screamed at being torn apart and mashed back together in a way that was oh-so-wrong. Then Mordecai took a breath, rolled back his shoulders, and carefully made his way to the guild hall, already readying the finished potions he’d crafted inside of his inventory. He’d set them on the main table in the guildhall, notify Carl that they were ready, and get back to work. Hoping that his kids would survive the next race while preparing for every and any eventuality that he could, changeling sickness be damned.
The AI could tear him to pieces if it wished, but he would never, ever let these kids down.