Sela’s screams echoed through her mind as her feet were swallowed by the molten jaws of a lava slug. The unbearable pain seared through her body, and she clawed at her face, the unbidden compulsion distorting it into a twisted mask of agony. The creature pulled her deeper into its smoldering maw, and she watched in horror as her flesh and bone disintegrated into ash. The burning saliva crept upward, devouring her inch by inch. Reaching her chest, the eye stalks bent close, peering into hers with dull curiosity. It pulled her further in, tightening around her throat—its relentless consumption almost complete. Only her head remained, yet death never came, dancing tantalizingly close but always out of reach.
It was only one torment of many. When the slug released her, the scene shifted, and she became something unrecognizable, her body contorted with grotesque appendages and deformities. Thick, writhing worms sprouted from her, their segmented bodies crawling and twisting over her flesh. Their eyeless heads opened into maws of jagged teeth, slithering inside her, eating their way through her body, forcing her to choke and gag as they climbed upward through her throat or entered her mouth and pushed downward and out, a never-ending cycle of suffocation and invasion.
She could beg for death, but she knew it would not come. She was forced to endure, trapped in an endless cascade of horrors, each one more alien and cruel than the last. Yet none of them terrified her as much as the dream of home.
In this dream, she stood on a great cliff overlooking Astiria. The night was warm and tranquil, the stars glittering like distant promises. Below her, the Demana she loved worked and played, laughing as they moved through their lives. Family, friends, and her parents—all of them were there, happy and content. They waved at her, smiling, calling out her name as if she were still among them.
But she wasn’t. She stood frozen, unable to descend the cliff or join them. She screamed for them to hear her, to understand her pain and longing, but they only waved and wished her well, their smiles unbroken. They could not see her torment. She was a ghost in their perfect lives, trapped in eternal isolation.
The dream played out over eons, and her body aged before her eyes. As time wore on, her youthful form withered, her skin sagged, and her face lined with deep cracks. Dark spots and warty growths consumed her, and her hair thinned and grayed. After an endless stretch, her hands crumbled into brittle shards, and her body collapsed into itself like a statue worn down by time. And still, she stood on the cliff, watching the world she longed to be part of, watching her home slip further away with every passing moment.
The longing was unbearable. She would have welcomed the grotesque visions over this—this endless ache for what she could never have again. This dream, this cruel distortion of hope, was worse than death. It hollowed her out, leaving her an empty, unfulfilled, and broken vessel.
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The Spider Queen let her mind seep into the girl’s consciousness. Each thought was a venomous thread weaving through the fragile tapestry of her sanity. The dark thoughts entered like poison in a wound, slow and deliberate, following the pulse of the girl’s weak, desperate heart. The effect was immediate—a trembling ripple that spread through the shallows of her mind, then crashed like a massive wave upon the crumbling shores of her reason.
The cocoon convulsed as the girl’s body bucked and writhed, caught in a grotesque dance of pain and panic. Her movements delighted the Queen. Each spasm was a triumph, each tortured gasp a symphony played for her alone. When the girl’s convulsions stilled, her limbs limp in brief reprieve, the Queen’s glee deepened. She knew it would begin again—a cycle unbroken until the mind fractured completely.
The Queen extended her tongue, a long, glistening appendage, and dragged it along the length of the cocoon. The body within arched violently away, straining against the silken prison as though it might escape her touch. But there was no escape. The tongue slid from the tips of the feet to the base of the neck, curling around the head as she pulled the cocoon closer, cradling it like a mother with her child. She released her hold, letting the girl swing in a slow, gentle arc—a rhythmic pendulum of torment. Each time the cocoon returned, a flick of her tongue pushed it back towards the opposite wall. It was a game, maintaining the steady momentum, the twisted act of a predator toying with its prey.
The girl was her child—a chrysalis incubating the transformation she had birthed and nurtured. The cocoon was her womb; within it, she would birth something new, something darker. The mind inside was no longer the one she had arrived with; now, it belonged to the Queen, and every thought and dream was meticulously corrupted and reshaped in her image.
“The taste of your unraveling is exquisite,” the Queen hissed, her voice dripping with twisted ecstasy. She laughed, a shrill, broken sound that echoed through the cavern and into the girl’s splintered psyche. “Do you feel it, little one? The darkness wrapping itself around you, filling you? It will never let go.”
She licked the cocoon again, slower this time, savoring how the girl’s pulse raced in futile terror. Each swing brought the cocoon back into her embrace, and she pushed it away again, the rhythm hypnotic, lulling the girl’s mind into submission. The images she embedded were dark and inescapable—twisted vistas, impossible shapes, memories stolen and remade into horrors. Every scream the girl would have cried remained locked inside her, fueling the metamorphosis.
The Queen’s eyes gleamed, multifaceted and hungry. “You’ll thank me, you know,” she murmured, her voice sweet and venomous. “When the last slivers of you are gone. When the torment ends, you will become… perfect. My child. My creation. The rest of them will see what I’ve made from you and bow before my genius.”
The Queen cackled again, a sound that seemed to ripple through the air, unsettling even the skittering Arrakians that lingered at the edge of the chamber. She reveled in the moment, her madness spilling out unchecked as she continued her grotesque work.
