Chapter Text
Prologue:
Taylor:
I can practically feel their eyes burning into the back of my skull. The sniggering, the barely hidden whispers. My first day back, they hadn't done anything, and I didn't think they would. The locker was still fresh in everyone's minds, but I knew they were just waiting for the opportunity.
The bell rang, the screeching alarm making my head pound, to go with the sudden noise of everyone getting up, and conversations starting to batter down the walls of my skull as wave after wave of sound reached every insect in my range.
I closed my eyes. Counting backwards, counting the pulses I could feel in my temples as the blood was pumped through my body and pain threatened to drill straight through my forehead.
Any other time they would have pounced. Like vultures on a carcass.
But it was only my first day back, and, the Locker was still too fresh. Even they had to show some patience if they wanted to avoid desensitizing me to it.
So I had some peace, enough peace to settle back in, and not even need to worry about them waiting in the hallway to ambush me either.
Finally, my senses got used to the elevated noise level again, my heart beating against my chest slowed, the blood quickening through my veins calmed and I was able to gather all of my belongings in peace before I stood up and began walking.
The halls were empty. Most of the students I had tagged were already gathering in the cafeteria, getting ready to eat the slop that was Winslow's food.
I already had a sandwich and water bottle packed and in my backpack. The less I needed to interact or even be in the same room with any of these people, the better.
I turned to the left, ready to head out towards the bleachers overlooking the track field to have my lunch. They were empty, and despite already having a shitty day because it was Winslow, it was still nice out. And I even managed to slip past the few people still in the halls along the way, unnoticed. No need to risk them giving word to the bitches three.
I sat down, letting out a breath of not quite relief, even though the tension uncoiled from my shoulders. The bugs around me let me know the coast was clear for now. So I took the time to actually enjoy my lunch as I unwrapped the PB&J and bit into it.
It was good.
I hadn't even taken my second bite… when the world went to hell.
The shadow just… appeared over me, over the whole city. The noontime sun dimmed. I looked up out of reflex, wondering if a cloud had snuck up on me somehow.
It hadn't.
My jaw dropped and my sandwich slipped from numb fingers. I could hear people beginning to scream out in the city and the streets.
The thing over our heads was… alive. Writhing tentacles at the front and a shell like body in the back. It looked like the size of a sports stadium in the sky, dwarfing the surrounding buildings I could see. Purple, organic and pulsing with energy as it sailed through the skies The tentacles along its front twisted and bent, coiling down and seemingly even more emerging from the front of its shell.
It… It had to be some bio-tinker creation… Or maybe, maybe something like-
"GET INSIDE!" Charles, one of the janitors, shouted suddenly, bringing my eyes to him. He was sprinting up the hill, towards the school, waving his arms in the air at me, ushering me towards the doors.
Behind him, descending down into the streets, that thing let loose a forest of tentacles. Like the long tongued brushes on a car wash they passed over every building, every street and alley.
As the tentacles came into range, the people I had tagged with bugs were disappearing.
Panic gripped me, my whole body shaking in fear as I turned and ran, just like Charles had urged.
We ran towards the building. I could feel him, a fly on his jacket; his longer strides slowly letting him close the distance as we both ran for all we were worth. But a second later I felt him disappear behind me. His screams abruptly cut off.
I could feel it at my back, I could feel it catching up, and I pumped my legs as fast as I could manage, sprinting for all I was worth.
I crashed through the door, no doubt bruising my shoulder and my entire side as the heavy door slammed inward.
People were shambling out of classrooms and their lunch places, wondering what all the noise was about, wondering why I was running.
I didn't answer their confused questions and jeers, I didn't dare slow down, I just kept running, feet pounding down the halls, sneakers squeaking as I felt the outer walls of the school, the bugs hiding between them vanish.
Then I heard when those Tentacles broke through.
That was when I realized… They didn't need to touch someone, just be near them. The bugs had vanished before the wall broke!
Then the screaming started.
Just like that, one by one by one- I could feel everyone disappearing.
I could measure how close the monster was by that, and my panic only grew as I tried to run even faster.
I passed Julia in the halls, her confused face the last thing I saw of her before she screamed and evaporated from my senses completely.
I felt my bugs, the ones I'd used to tag everyone in the school that I needed to look out for. Madison, Emma, Sophia, Gladly, Knott, even Blackwell.
Like someone plucking strings, I felt it all unravelling, felt them all vanish.
My chest hurt, my legs were screaming, every fiber of my body wanted to fall down and crawl but I could still feel it behind me. I was still in danger.
I felt the ground shaking beneath me, the building crumbling around me.
I rounded the corner at full tilt. I was moving so fast that my feet slid and I slammed my already bruised shoulder into the wall before I staggered onward.
And then I saw the end of the hall, a solid wall of brick staring me in the face as my conscious mind understood, in a brief moment of clarity as the panic dissipated, that I'd run myself into a corner.
But I still kept running, kept trying to eke out that little bit of distance, hoping against hope.
I never made it.
One second I was running, and in the next-
I was gasping for air, screaming, my body stuffed into a tiny coffin as the panic came roaring back all over again.
I thrashed, I howled, I begged!
Not again!
Not again!
Not again!
Not again!Not again!Notagain!Notagain!Notagain!Notagain!
My mind reached, for anything, everything and I felt pulses answering me back; recognition, confusion, alarm, and then hostility.
Something pushed against my mind and I clawed and scraped and bit and stabbed and screamed at it. I beat my fists bloody against the glass of the locker they'd stuffed me in until I was restrained, filth and slime and mucus holding me down as I screamed.
I don't remember the thing that stood over me. I don't remember it reaching down, a squirming, wriggling worm in its clawed hand.
I don't even remember it slipping behind my eye.
All I remember, as I fell unconscious… was the hope… the fervent desperate hope… That if I was destined to wake up inside of this locker again… that I just wouldn't wake up at all.
—
But I did wake up. And when I did my body sang with pain, every muscle, every bone, every hair follicle, all of it hurt.
I pried open my eyes, the dried tears having formed a crusty layer around my eyelids. The fleshy coffin I'd been stuffed in had been thrown open, its door clear across the way, lying in the sand as waters lapped just a short ways down towards the shoreline.
My vision blurred and when I tried to move the throbbing distant pain became sharp and agonizing. My whole body seized up up as I gasped and fell forward, face planting onto the beach. The air was knocked right out of me again as slime and mucus cascaded out of the pod.
My body began to curl, almost fetal like as the pain pulsed through me. I just lay there for a moment, breathing. The sand was warm, and the red splash of my blood across the sand let me know there was a cut somewhere on my head.
I looked, my right arm was broken, twisted all the way around… I don't think my leg looked much better.
I looked away from my twisted and broken limbs towards the waters not too far away. And I began crawling towards it. Dragging my mangled body with my one usable arm.
One thought dominated my mind.
Get this filth off of me.
That was it. That was all. If I was going to die, I didn't want to die stinking of tampons and old blood.
Inch by painful inch, yard by bloody yard I dragged myself towards that shoreline.
I'm not sure how long it took me to reach the waters' edge. Maybe a minute. Maybe an hour. Maybe a whole day.
The tideline couldn't have been more than twenty feet from where I'd started.
Might as well have been a mile.
When I got there I almost drowned.
Face down as I was, weak as I was, it took me longer than I'm comfortable admitting to understand that the deeper I went the harder it was to keep my nose above the gently lapping waves.
And as I turned around, every pain and every needle of agony made itself known again.
But I still managed to roll over my back and hair splashing into the shallows as I stared up at clear blue skies.
I closed my eyes.
Only reason I'm probably still alive was because the tide was so gentle that day. I passed out to the lapping waves, the sound of water, the kiss of the sun on my cheek.
When I next woke it was to the sight of someone hovering over me. I felt warm, dry sand beneath me, and a head of brown hair cast a shadow over my sunburnt face.
"Please be alive." Madison sobbed, her eyes red and puffy as she stared at me. "Please, please be alive."
"The fuck do you want?" I wanted to say, but my mouth felt like it was stuffed with cotton balls and my thoughts were swimming through sludge.
With a pulse like I'd just taken a punch I felt my mind collide with hers.
I saw flashes, snippets of her past.
Her fifth birthday, when her mother gave her the puppy, Chance.
Her crying when her Father got mad at her when she nearly burned the kitchen down when she was nine.
Her satisfaction when she wheedled her way out of trouble in Gladly's class after blowing spitballs in my hair.
Her past, her thoughts, flooded my mind, coming more clearly and more vividly than anything I had thought since I'd woken up.
And then I saw her beginning to see mine, a chaotic jumble of distant past and recent present.
No.
I recoiled, pulling away, physically and mentally. Wrenching the connection shut, tearing it apart through sheer force of will. I saw her flinch, like she was in real pain, but I didn't care. I didn't need her seeing anything to use against me later.
But after the pain was gone, even with the absurdity, the confusion, her relief was clear enough. "Oh thank God!" she cried.
I felt our minds pulse again, clarity and coherency coming back to my addled wits… and became acutely aware… of a scratching behind my eye.
I remembered the ship, people vanishing in plumes of ash and dust as it passed over the school.
More worms were coming closer, wriggling, sensing connections, proximity, urging their hosts to come nearer and using the noise as a convenient excuse.
"Taylor?"
Madison's voice wavered uncertainly. I wasn't really sure I had the strength to answer her, and even if I did, I might've been too dazed to really use my voice.
But I tried, croaking out a rasping warning. "Someone's coming." My throat felt dry as bonemeal and I coughed, every racking breath feeling like agony across my chest, my shattered arm sending slivers of pain through my nerves with every jostling movement.
Madison's eyes widened and she stood up, looking around, I didn't have the energy to tell her they were coming from our right. Three of them. The worms in their heads were pulsing in tandem with ours.
"Hey! Hey, over-" I saw Madison freeze, her whole body going stiff, and even if I hadn't seen her reaction, the wave of fear her worm let off told me well enough.
I turned my head and I felt my own shock cut down to the quick.
What. The. Fuck?
—
Durge
They were children.
Their clothes were odd, but they were indeed human children.
"I didn't think anyone could have survived the crash, let alone ones so young," Shadowheart whispered, moving forward quickly. No doubt ready to heal them. One looked injured enough to warrant it.
"I hope you don't expect us to kiss their boo-boos and tell them bed time stories. We have our own problems." The elf, Astarion, chastised.
"No more than we're doing for you." Shadowheart replied. "You do whinge more than they do, so far at least."
The elf scoffed, rolling his eyes before following after her.
Durge held his silence as he brought up the rear.
He took in the injuries. The scrapes and cuts. The clotting blood, now blackened flakes on their skin. The one standing had scraped her elbow, the angle and width of the tears in her flesh indicating that it had been inside the pod at the time of injury. Soft hands, nary a callous in sight. She was no fighter, not even a worker. Soft meat.
The thinner girl's arm was broken. The cut along her brow… shattered glass. Not deep enough to cause real injury, the skin of the forehead was just so thin and bled oh so much.
She was no fighter either, but he could see things regardless. The guarded posture, the suspicious gaze. This one had wounds deeper than base flesh.
As for her arm, which was obviously broken; the Humerus had been snapped clean in two, and then twisted after the fracture. The pain would have been excruciating, if she'd been conscious for it of course. He knew that they usually passed out long before the first full rotation.
He closed his eyes, pushing the gripping thoughts away. Just why was he so fascinated by their wounds?
Even so, through his own ogling examinations of their various injuries and scrapes, he couldn't help but notice that they were staring wide-eyed at him in return..
"You know it is rude to stare." Astarion chuckled.
One girl, the one on her feet, jumped at the elf's voice.
"S-sorry." She squeaked. "Just… never seen a Case 53 in person."
The terminology made Astarion raise an eyebrow and even Shadowheart paused halfway towards kneeling down to reach the injured girl. "I'm sorry, a what?"
The girl looked startled. "C-case 53? Y-you know, a cape that doesn't look human anymore?"
Astarion stared, then turned to look at Shadowheart."I think this one hit her head. Perhaps she merits your attention more."
Durge felt his tadpole pulse connecting with the girls, urging him to examine, to part the folds of her already confused mind. But he didn't need to.
"The Nautiloid was leaping between the realms to escape the Githyanki," he whispered. "They are likely not from this realm. Ergo, they've never seen a Dragonborn."
"Ahh." Astarion breathed. "Well yes, that was my next guess."
In spite of himself, Durge smirked. "I'm sure."
Shadowheart rolled her eyes, her hands beginning to glow. "Hold still please."
—
Taylor
The woman's hands glowed. I watched her carefully, the worm in her skull letting me read her intent.
"Have you seen other survivors?" she asked.
It was Madison who answered, sobbing. "N… No. I… They were all dead."
I blinked. "All?" I rasped.
She looked at me, offering a shaking nod. "Julia, Greg, Mr. Gladly…" She pointed, up the other side of the beach. "That way…"
All dead…
"I see."
I couldn't say it was a shock, really, but I found myself… not caring. Numb. It'd been a rollercoaster of a day, and even if they hadn't been my favorite people, I should have felt bad… shouldn't I?
With a cold snap something in my arm shifted. The pain filled relief made me gasp as my whole body stiffened, my head craning to look straight up to the sky before the pain ebbed away and I could look down at my arm. My hoodie had been covering the worst of the damage but it looked far straighter than it had a second ago.
It was… healed.
And even my leg was feeling much better.
I looked at the woman, my hand clenching open and closed.
"You're a cape?"
She raised an eyebrow. "I take it that's some of your Planestrider terminology I'm not understanding. So for now let's say yes and worry about the specifics later. Can you walk?"
I took the hand she offered, standing up under my own power.
"Yeah." I said.
"Good." The woman nodded. "Now, I think some introductions are in order."
Madison shuffled from foot to foot. "M-Madison… Madison Clements."
"Astarion." The pale man, who, now that I had the angle to notice, had very pointed ears spoke up. His clothing wouldn't have been out of place in a renaissance fair. He was thin, almost like my Dad but not as tall; his silver hair had to be bleached, no way that color was natural on someone his age.
"Shadowheart." The woman said.
It sure as shit sounded like a Cape name.
She also had pointed ears, though not as prominent as Astarion's. her hair was black, eyes green and now that I cared to look… was that armor on her?!
Just what the hell was going on here?
She was looking at me expectantly. "Taylor." I answered succinctly.
Then I looked towards the… Dragonborn, as he'd called himself. He was pale, almost albino if human standards were anything to go by. His scales chalky white, the only hint of color on him were his red eyes and the smaller, softer scales that were also red. He was huge, probably knocking on seven feet tall, a wall of muscle in silk robes.
And they were spotless too.
Fucking how?
"Hmm." He made a sound. "My head's something of a mess." He said softly. "But I think my name… is Durge."
Odd name, but it was a talking dragon man so who the hell was I to say what was odd right now?
I felt two more worms drawing close and I turned to look towards the treeline, perhaps a second or two before Durge himself did.
That was when Emma and Sophia stumbled out of the underbrush.