IV - ECDYSTEROID
Last Bastion, Tobusekai
"Help!"
"Guard!"
"Oh gods, have you forsaken us?"
"Enkidu!"
Shrieks of terror and desperate pleas for help drowned out Millicent dreams. She awoke, eyes opening slowly as they adjusted to the dim lit hospital room that night. She tugged at her restraints against the hospital bed, pulling up unconsciously as she tried to lean up in her bed to see the commotion. She sighed; no light shone through her window save for a dim glow, one that, as she tilted her head to the side to look outside, observed it was from a large but distant fire in the center of Last Bastion. Buildings were burning. The city was under siege.
Again she tried to lean up in her bed, chains digging into her delicate, but diseased, flesh.
Come to me, Millicent. The words rang clear in her head, even more so than the screams in the hospital. Die so that you may live.
She tugged at her bindings, as if by instinct. Blood dripped down from her wrists as the cuffs dug deeper into her bruised and Rotten flesh. "I..." Millicent tugged again, her face contorted in pain as they bent backwards, snapping like a decayed twig. The room was filled with the crack of bone, tearing sinew, and blood splattering onto her bed. She screamed but the hospital staff, still thrown into a frenzy, did not hear her. She breathed heavily, pressing the stumps of her wrists into the bed sheets to stem the bleeding. Yet there was little blood flow; for months now her arms had decayed to such a point where the blood vessels in them hardly functioned. After the initial snap there was little more than a trickle.
Freed from her restraints, Millicent stood up from the hospital bed, stumbling down as she did. Her body was weak now, far weaker than when she was first hospitalized. But determination blossomed within her as the voice echoed in her mind, urging her to go onward. To the Kaizoku Sea, young girl. It was a dark voice, connected to her mind through unknown means. But despite its darkness, it gave rise to renewed life within her that she had otherwise been without for so very long.
Hours went by. Chaos ensued. Around her buildings burned. Rotten and transformed animals rampaged in the street; some new life, exotic in nature. Creatures she had never laid eyes on before: insects that towered over man, skeletal remains reanimated with growing orange flora about their person. Yet when Millicent limped by these creatures, blood trailing behind her drip by drip, they did not confront her. In fact, some moved aside from her. They kept her path open, urging her down a broken road toward the Kaizoku Sea.
By the time she reached the sea her body was pale, having lost so much blood from a painful trickle. But she endured, knowing not whether she would live or die. Millicent wanted only one thing: to feel again. Since Phetra's invasion, since her infection, she had been far removed from the human experience. She had lost her friends, family, and now her home. The calm ocean waters churned at her feet as she collapsed. Her face fell to its side, waves brushing up against her cheek and filling her mouth with seawater.
You have arrived. At last.
She sighed, consciousness fading into nothingness. She felt at peace. Unbeknownst to her the tides began to sweep her body away, pulling it into the depths below the dark surface.
Fester with me and be reborn.