His objections were threefold:
- To what end? My blood would flow through his pipes until it reached a water reservoir where it would dilute beyond my control.
- His dripping represented a constant trickling flow that would work against my efforts, making the pointless plan even harder.
- It was very rude and personal, especially when I hadn’t even bought him a drink.
We both chuckled at that last one, but he was right. There was no way out through the pipes.
There was another hope, though.
The Cleansing Flame Formations were designed to be remotely triggered so they could purge a cell of a failed experiment or an uncooperative prisoner. I’d been lucky enough that none of the former tests they put me through failed, and smart enough to be cooperative. Obey or die wasn’t much of a choice, but it was one, and I made my decision.
People might call me a coward, but at least I’m alive to hear the insult.
Drippy’s idea was that if I could heal from snapping my fist almost clear off my wrist, then perhaps I could heal from something more intense.
Something like fire.
I felt a certain sense of panic as I threaded my blood into one of the formation’s openings in the wall. We used a horizontal entry point, rather than the flame spitters in the ground, since that would give me more control over the blood — I still hadn’t conquered gravity. My blood flowed as I eased it deeper into the tube, doing everything I could to keep it under my control as the distance increased.
“You are my blood,” I whispered. “You belong to me.”
“Drip.”
“Exactly.”
The formation tube was shorter than I expected, maybe four feet, but that made sense considering how thick the walls between the other cells were. At last, my blood reached something and could flow no further.
My connection shivered as something wrestled with my control over the blood at the end of the tube. I couldn’t feel what it was exactly, but it told me I had found what I wanted.
The formation plate.
This was truly the moment to do or die.
Maybe do and die.
If I said I wasn’t scared, I’d be a liar.
“Drip.”
“I’m not scared.”
“Drip.”
“I’m not… but you’re sure this will work?”
“Drip.”
I took a deep breath.
“It’s been real, Drippy. See you on the other side.”
“Drip, drip.”
With a grin I could barely hold, I pushed my blood harder against the formation plate. The distance made it difficult, but as a minute dripped by, the pressure built, and a tiny click rang through my cell with grim inevitability.
The moment the plate depressed and the circuit closed, the Cleansing Flame Formation roared to life.
White hot light flushed down the tube and instantly incinerated my blood. I’d felt no pain when punching the glass, but having my blood destroyed made me scream. So, coincidentally, my mouth was open when the flames poured out of the opening and into the back of my jaw.
Instantly, my scream died off into a hissing choke as omni-directional flames scoured the flesh from my body. Nothing else had hurt, but this was agony. I ran around my cell, but the fire was everywhere.
My mind stopped.
After nine seconds, the flames cut off, and my charred skeleton fell to the glowing floor.
“Drip, hiss, drip, hiss.”
“Shut up, Drippy.”
My voice stunned me.
It didn’t sound quite the same. It was pained and distant, slightly echoing as though I stood alone in a vast hall, but it was my voice.
I could speak?
I could speak!
Wait… I was conscious?
I was alive!
Heat rippled above the floor, and the formation nozzles glowed with heat, but the grey stone drank it up, and the air slowly cooled.
Pain shuddered through my bones as I crawled forward and forced myself upright. Each movement caused little twitches and shudders as I tried to avoid the throbbing agony.
I sat beside Drippy and placed my hand under his flow. Detecting my presence, he poured cooling water over my charred and smoking bones. The steam was delightful.
I laughed, got onto my knees, and dunked my skull under his stream. More steam filled the cell and fogged the window as I washed the charred bits from my blackened skeleton.
The pain faded into a background ache, as though my entire body was a sore tooth and not the horrifying escapee of a failed cremation.
“Drip.”
“I can’t explain it either, Drippy,” I said. “I guess… I’m more than just my blood?”
The flames blasted away my tongue and throat, so I couldn’t explain where my voice came from. I had no eyes or ears, either, so I couldn't figure out how I both saw and heard Drippy.
However, having no nose still meant I couldn’t smell whatever I smelled like. Despite the gristly horror of the last few days, I was glad that little fact wasn’t stacked onto my reality.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
It might have been the grain that broke the ox’s back.
As it was, I counted down the five minutes after the flames with anticipation. My timing was perfect, and when I hit zero, my cell door swung open.
It was standard operating procedure. Whenever someone was uncooperative or their experiment was unsuccessful, they were purged so the cultivators could prepare the cell for a new inmate.
I’d seen it carried out countless times before, and I silently thanked the heavens nobody changed protocol while I was unconscious.
Another thing I knew was that only the weakest of the cultivators were made to handle the burned remains. It was some kind of punishment.
But I stopped focusing on the past.
There wouldn’t be long between the flames dying and the cultivators coming to my room. Time was of the essence.
I lay back down on the ground, waiting eagerly, barely able to keep my bones still. I needed to be ready to grab at whatever cultivator was unlucky enough to come and collect my remains.
I stifled a chuckle.
Time for the cultivators to reap what they had sown!
An hour passed.
“Drip.”
“I think you’re right.”
Nobody was coming.
Nobody had come all week. The cell block was empty, the halls were dead. This wasn’t neglect; it was abandonment. But that opened up another question: why?
A mystery, but less important than the question of how I could escape. I stood, dusted myself off, and noticed a few muscle fibres strung across my wrists. They were bright red and wriggling, and when I touched them, there was a distant sensation not unlike finding a splinter.
Under my eyes, another strand formed and spread across my shins.
“Looks like I’m coming back,” I said with a skeleton’s impressive grin. “How do you like that, Drippy? Nothing can stop me now!"
I cackled, and it felt good, but as the laughter died, the reality remained.
In truth, I was some kind of monster. No stories or legends I’d heard explained what monster that might be, but I certainly didn’t feel like a cultivator — though I’m not sure what that would have felt like. More… glowy? Maybe?
To make matters worse, I was hungry.
All the satiation I’d felt over the last week was gone. I needed to eat something, anything, or I would go insane.
My hunger urged me to escape this facility. I’d never seen more than my cell and the surgery room, but I needed to get out.
Though that wasn’t the worst of it.
“Drip.”
“I could…”
“Drip, drip.”
“Just let me say it!”
“Drip, drip, drip.”
I took a deep breath and paused as I realised my lungs were reforming, but then I let it out. Air whistled over my teeth as I gazed down at the only other occupant of the room. The sheets, clothes, and mattress were burned to ash, but Drippy remained.
“I can stay if you want me to,” I said as my hunger gnawed. “You’ve been a loyal companion, and I don’t want you to stay here alone.”
“Drip.”
“You’re just saying that.”
“Drip, drip, drip.”
I nodded, unable to cry without eyes but feeling the emotion rising in me like a storm over the grasslands.
“I’ll never forget you, Drippy.”
“Drip.”
“You… I…"
"Drip."
"You too, buddy.”
I got on my knees and embraced the sink, feeling his drip on my cheek as skin spread across my skull. I’m not sure how long I knelt there, for once his drips didn’t hit the sink. Eventually, I stood.
Without another word, I walked out of my cell.
The familiar corridor stretched out, with cells lining each side. An exit was clearly marked, and I headed that way. I peeked into the cells as I passed, but they held only withered corpses — long dead and desiccated in this lifeless environment.
“Unlucky bastards,” I whispered to myself.
Some of them had even eaten their sheets.
I tried the doors, but they were all locked, and nobody seemed alive — not even with my own stretched definition of the word.
“Drip.”
His encouragement followed me all the way to the exit door. I took the handle in my reforming palm and felt it was unlocked.
“Drip.”
“Thank you,” I whispered, knowing he would hear me.
With fresh tears falling from regrown ducts, I opened the door and exited the hall of cells, and found myself in a vast room formed from cut stone.
The walls, floor, and ceiling were all seamless raw rock lit by a formation in the ceiling. A vague claustrophobia crawled over my still patchy and rapidly regrowing skin as I realised I was underground. In all the years I’d been here, I’d been so worried about cultivators I couldn’t focus on anything else… but now I needed to find a staircase and get to the surface.
The room stirred up painful memories. Even abandoned, I knew it was the surgical chamber. Tables lay in the center of the room, and I remembered how it felt to lie on that cold steel, how it felt as darkness crept in and the masked cultivators leaned over me with silent anticipation.
I closed my eyes and was thankful I had eyelids once more.
Tall shelves lined the walls. Once I woke up in the middle of a vivisection — gutted like a prized pig — as the cultivators took down something from those shelves. The memory was just a fragment, but I supposed it hadn’t been this body.
Maybe that made things better.
The shelves were stocked as though someone had just stepped out, but time had reduced the bundles of dry herbs into dust. Some stoppered bottles remained, and though I recognised the faded characters on the labels, their meanings were unknown to me.
My reformed stomach groaned.
I was suddenly tempted to consume the dust and dregs. Fortunately, I was still rational enough to know that would be a terrible idea.
However, one bottle still called to me.
It was dark blue, hexagonal, and rattled when I shook it. I broke the wax seal and poured the contents onto the counter.
It was a flake of grey stone, almost like flint. It shivered on the counter, vibrating slowly until it pointed at me.
There was something in the air, not a smell, more like a heat, that made me want to touch the rock. There was a strange sensation in my mouth.
It had been so long that it took me a moment to realise I was salivating.
“Are you safe to eat?” I asked the rock.
It shivered on the counter.
“Don’t be coy,” I said. “Because I will eat you.”
The rock shuddered, louder, edging toward me..
“If you say so.”
I picked up the rock and opened my mouth. Before I could swallow it, the rock stopped vibrating and heat rushed through my fingertips, up my arm, and into my brain.
I collapsed like someone scooped the life out of me, but I didn’t feel my body hit the ground, because my mind was transported.
###
I stood on a mountaintop overlooking a vast plain, with clouds wreathing the sky in tumultuous storms. A spire of grey rock pierced the heavens and fell toward the earth. A descending tower twisting through the clouds like a drill.
Fire rose from the great plain below. A billowing inferno that spread the wings of a phoenix as it flew toward the spire.
The explosion rippled through the air and sent rocks flying across the land.
###
I woke with a sour taste in my mouth and another headache.
The rock lay still and inert in my twitching palm, and I had no desire to swallow it anymore.
“You suck,” I said, hurling the rock across the room.
It bounced off the far door, and since nothing else in this room interested me, I awkwardly walked past the rock on my way out. I avoided looking directly at it, and luckily, the rock said nothing to me in return.
We were done with each other.
The next room opened up a staircase that wrapped around the inside of a wide chute. It reminded me of the inside of a silo, only this one was so tall I couldn’t see the top. The walls were carved from natural rock, but polished to a smoothness like glass. For a moment, I stared at the walls. After having seen my own blank cell for so long, the bands of different colored stone were gorgeous.
Just a sample of the outer world!
I hurried up the steps, excited to reach the top.
Cracks split the chute walls where roots had forced their way through, disrupting the lighting formations. Patches of light flickered here and there, broken by stretches of complete darkness. Nothing shone from above.
I passed a line of black metal doors, all sealed — except one, cracked open and inviting as an open street-level window. I didn’t even slow down. Why would I linger when freedom beckoned upstairs?