[Unitopia, Eastern Continent]
The newfound sensation was something the man could not take his mind away from. It was truly miraculous in nature, and made even more so by the contrasting horror of the wasteland around.
The ghostly voices whispered their fury, leaking their strength into his soul with every syllable. Making it firmer, more real. Before, he could barely twitch a finger and did not even dare to think of what happened to his lower limbs. All he could remember before the blackness of unconsciousness was a loud explosion, voices, a burning, searing pain that spared no surface of his body.
And then awakening to a crushing weight. The feeling in everything below his chest was gone, leaving only hollowness in its wake. Before, that hollowness was a reflection of the hopelessness in his mind. Now, though, it served as merely the next hurdle for him to cross.
The next hill to crest. And his journey on the ascent was going surprisingly well. The unholy shriek of the vulture cut short had triggered a flashback of his, and eventually allowed him to sense the...mutation...he had undergone. But it was also indicative of a more immediate threat.
'I am not alone here'
Something else was out there. Many somethings, perhaps. Somethings that did not like sharing their prey with others. He shut his eyes in an attempt to block out the involuntary visions, horrors of the war. After all, this may have been his last battle, but it was far from his first. And this war was truly a terrible one.
In all, his experience only heightened his urgency, as he kept imagining the worst case scenarios. Some view war as the engine of progress, and there is no disputing that. However, it is also a vassal of the cruelty of man, eagerly following his commands in order to inflict the most damage on the enemy.
Progress merely accelerated that cruelty. It was only after wars are over, that their advancements may be of help to society. In the thick, bloody fog of the war itself, only horrors abounded.
Mechanical, biological...other. For the sole purpose of killing. He was one of those advancements, a cog in a great and terrible machine barely more than a meat grinder. A disposable cog. A cog that had transformed in the incandescent heat of battle and been smelted into something new.
His new form had not yet been elucidated, but it would be a mere tool no longer, wielded by inept and greedy hands.
'Well, if I make it out of here alive, that is.'
The man clenched his fists, feeling the strange power of his soul suffuse them.
'Perhaps my chances of that may be higher than I had thought.'
Another shriek sounded out across the plains, closer than the first. A few vultures took to the skies, deeming the half-rotted carcasses not worth the threat of whatever it was they saw.
His view was still restricted, his limbs pinned under bodies and rubble, only a small patch of sky visible to him. Abruptly, his view of the cloudless sky and the blue sun was blocked. A shadow cast itself on his face as two beady red eyes shone balefully, set into the face of a grotesque abomination of machinery and flesh.
'Vultures'
He swore under his breath.
They called them vultures because of how similar their behaviours were to those animals, but no-one knew where they truly came from. There was no uniformity to their shapes, only their actions of following behind great armies and feasting on the remnants of their clashes - both flesh and metal.
Hideous chimeras who flew ungainly, as though their very existence was a constant struggle. The one looking down on him seemed to be one of the more orthodox types. A sharp metal beak almost a metre long set into a face made of exposed muscle tissue and wiring. Its red eyes were mechanical and he could make out a faintly corrupted logo of some corporation deep in the pupil.
'Whatever it once was, it's something new now. Mutated'
Its eyes scanned over him with a strangely detached intelligence. He held his breath, hoping that it would not be worth the effort of getting at him for the Vulture.
'Damn, if only I had a weapon, any weapon. Or even my arms'
Or even just time. He had a feeling that it wouldn't be long before his soul would have strengthened enough for him to throw off the rubble with ease. Although that may also have been wishful thinking.
'Whatever. I'd be damned if after all this, a Vulture is what takes me out'
As if the world had heard his thoughts, the Vulture locked its scanning eyes onto his sooty face at that moment. It opened its beak and its mechanical neck pulsed ominously before letting out a deafening shriek. The noise pierced his ears, feeling as though iron spikes had been nailed right through them. He opened his mouth, but no sound came out.
Or was it that all the sound had already been taken up?
His vision began swimming as his senses became jumbled, the ground and skies swaying nauseously. Mercifully, the Vulture closed its beak and the noise came to an end. But it did not grant him the chance to bask in the blissful silence for long.
Without waiting for him to recover, it raised its head before launching its beak down at him. It pierced through the helmet of the soldier who's half-rotted face rested directly above his, before darting back, pieces of, something, in his beak.
The man's heart was racing, perspiration covering his face, as he struggled mightily to break free. But the iron and flesh bonds that chained him would not be broken so easily. The ghostly whispered continued, unabated, as though mocking his predicament. The bright sky was cloudless and free, as though mocking his misfortune. The Vulture watched down that small crack in the rubble with amusement in its inhuman eyes, laughing at him silently.
The face of the soldier above him had lost its skull, leaving only part of the upper jaw and lower jaw, frozen in a face of rictus grin.
"You're gonna die here, you know", it spoke to him in a voice he recognised. The voice of a friend. "You're gonna die, to a Vulture. How pathetic!"
Another voice joined him, coming from the side.
"He always was pathetic, you know. Bottom of his class, bottom of the ranking. Always dragging us down."
The voices lost their amusement.
"It's his fault we're dead. He should die too. It's not fair. He should die too."
"Die"
"Die"
"""Die"""
The voices layered over and over until it was so loud he barely even noticed the Vulture letting loose another sonic attack. He only just managed to shift his head in time, its metallic beak lacerating his left cheek as it shot through the remnants skull above him, bursting into bony shards that rained down on him.
"You won't die here. You're already dead"
The voice of that skull managed a final, mirthless laughter, before fading away as its corporeal body was swallowed by the Vulture on the surface.
'I am dead, aren't I. What's the point of struggling so much then?'
His despondent gaze glanced past the Vulture, still hacking down its bony meal, onto the sky. A muffled but distinctly piercing laughter could still be heard behind that blue veil. Those sticky gazes filled with amusement. The blue sun may have outshone them, but it could not hide their malice. The Stars still ridiculed him.
Who was he? Such a prideful vow from such a pathetic insect. Fitting, to be eaten as the carrion he was. To dare interrupt their game.
'Of course. How could I ever forget.'
Spite bubbled up in him, burning away weakness like acid through organic matter. The Vulture seemed to notice this change, cocking its head in an uncanny facsimile of confusion.
"Come on then"
His voice was hoarse and weak, it did not evoke any fear in the Vulture. Not even curiosity passed through its red eyes. Yet, as though acknowledging the man's request, it raised its head and shot downward with blinding speed.
The man roared, straining against the metal and flesh that pinned him down with every fibre of his being. Channeling his spite against the world that hated him into pure adrenaline, injected into his veins.
But to no avail. Those milliseconds seemed to stretch out for an eternity, the warped reflection of his face fixed in an expression of wrath on the steel of the ever-approaching beak. He could make out every wire, every muscle fibre in its face. The unnatural connections that twisted and sparked uncomfortably, as though rebelling against its own state of existence.
He struggled still. His left shoulder popped out of its socket, but all that did was lose his leverage on his left side.
'This is not how it ends'
In a final, desperate bid for survival, he turned to the only thing that could save him. The ghostly whispers. In this peculiar state of bullet time, their words were not slowed, but seemed even faster. The rate of strengthening of his soul, even faster.
'It's not enough. I don't have seconds, let alone days!'
Then a realisation struck him like a lightning bolt.
'The tether! If I can weaken it I could move my soul, unchained!'
He ignored the little voices that shouted at him the idiocy of his actions. Even if he did untether it, surely it would pass through the beak as well? And who's to say he wouldn't just die instantly? He'd be insane to try that!
'Well, I've had a strange feeling recently, that sanity isn't all that it's made out to be'
With that final thought, he threw caution to the wind for the final time. Entering that sublime state, the ghostly whispers grew louder in his ears, as he felt for his soul.
Reaching deeper, into its core, where his heart would be found it. Nothing that could be described, more like a feeling of 'connection'. But for all his effort, he could not remove it. As though it was firmly entrenched in the laws of his very existence.
His reflection in that steel beak was still approaching, close enough to almost feel its hot breath on his face.
He drew back into that soul state with urgency.
'If I cannot remove it, then I'll have to change it'
That seemed to feel more agreeable to his intuition, as though that 'connection' he sensed was permanent but not unchanging. It was subject to 'persuasion'.
And so, letting his instincts guide his actions, he made a change that altered his physiology on the most fundamental level. That 'connection' remained, but instead of a restrictive steel tether, he transformed it into a more elastic one.
The change occurred instantly, spreading like a ripple through his soul. At once, a sense of freedom rushed through him.
With a hysterical grin on his face, he ripped an arm forwards, barely feeling any resistance at the action.
He took less than a second to marvel at the feeling of his soul separating from his body, before fixing his furious gaze on the descending beak.
With a flash, he grabbed it with his arm, bringing his other to help. The strength from the ghostly whispers seemed to coalesce in his soul state's hands and all of a sudden, he could feel that beak. Its cold, hard steel under his unforgiving fingers.
With a triumphant gaze, he clenched his hands into fists, shredding that steel like paper under his spectral fingers.
Abruptly, time resumed its natural course and an intense pain flooded his head. His now elastic tether snapped his soul back into place abruptly, as he just as suddenly lost the ability to resist its pull. The Vulture withdrew with a shriek of pain and launched away, barely sparing a backwards glance.
The pain in his head only grew, and the ghostly whispers did nothing to aid him this time, until his consciousness gave up and he blacked out, casting one last, hateful gaze at the small patch of the heavens above.