05. Curiosity

The maelstrom swirled around her.

She was flipping and spinning with the current, round and round without end. Ethereal images collided with her. She felt caloused hands stroke her hair, the warmth spread through her, centering her focus. The storm may as well have been a gentle breeze to her. With those hands cradling her, she felt like she could do anything.

A glowing crystal orb materialized above her. She stared into its blue-white glow, her vision growing foggy and blurry as tears streamed down past her ears. A tinge of frustration welled up inside her and she wiped the tears from her face.

She paused.

She looked at her hand, flipping it around in wonder. It was no longer stiff and numb, but it moved smoothly. As she tested the joints and fine motor skills, she nearly started to tear up again. Her hand felt sore, it buzzed with static every time she moved, as if a swarm of ants crawled below the skin each time the slightest movement was taken, but she welcomed the sensation. Her second hand was identical. Excited, she swung her legs off the table to get a better look at her body.

In her excitement, her intestines spilled out onto the cobblestone floor...

Earsplitting screams punctuated her panicked gasps as she grabbed hold of the edge of the table, but was dragged down by the weight of her legs, unsupported by her abdominal muscles. Her bare legs slapped the ground atop her disgorged organs, and her head slammed into the floor. She was beside herself, clawing her way out of the bloody mess and watching in horror as the legs, only connected to her via her hips and spine, contorted and kicked and pushed every which way. She didnt register that they were simply responding to the instinctive signals her brain was sending, she clawed backwards a few feet screaming hysterically staring at her gruesomely stained lower half as her legs followed her kicking spastically every which way before she fainted.

***

A glowing crystal orb materialized above her. She stared into its blue-white glow, dazed and disoriented. She felt exhausted, like her body was being slowly crushed in quick sand. She attempted to move her hand but it was pinned in place. Confused, she raised her head up and tried to see past her chest. Her arms and legs were shackled and bolted to the table, and sleeping beside her was the mysterious man. He seemed to have cleaned up, only to be covered in fresh viscera again. She craned her head for a better view, before the memories of her manic break down erupted to the forefront of her consciousness. The panic, her body falling apart, the grotesque mess she made... all of it was still there. It was not a dream. The mysterious man had secured her to the table and piled up all of her spilled innards in a large bowl beside her before laying his head in the cleanest spot on the table.

He was snoring.

She laid her head back down, sure that even her undead body would be flush red with blood and embarassment even in its current state. She couldnt explain in words why she was mortified, only that she was. After all the work he had done, she so clumsily made a mess of herself worthy of a warzone. Her bare skin didnt help matters either, and she definitely didn't have any good preconceptions about necromancy either...

She stopped on that thought. Most people would consider her a monster now. She looked at her face in the mirror beside her... her eyes had filled in. She noticed that her eyes no longer felt like they were caked with dust or sand, she remembered the tears from before... the light caught in just the right way to accent her vibrant blue green irises. Her lips, she couldnt remember what they looked like before, distracted as she was with other things... but they were soft and full now. Her face it seems was quite carefully treated, as opposed to the rest of her body which, in hind sight, may have more to do with her own clumsiness than her caretakers.

She leaned forward and studied her ravaged body. Now that she knew what to expect, she could temper her reaction, but she still felt her head grow light and dizzy at the sight.

Her stomach was peeled open, she expected blood red splatter everywhere, but she realised, this wasnt the slashes of combat you would see in nature from wild beasts, or from weapons in war... the cuts were meticulous, strings and clips of varying design and size were holding together or tying off a haphazard mix of sacks and tubes... she had no idea what most of these things did, but she assumed they were important... she was fascinated by the mix of colors... yellows and blues and greys. She recognised blood vessels, but was surprised by the size of them within her body, hollowed tubes wider than her fingers.

'Surely those arent human arteries right? They're so much bigger than the ones in my arms and legs...'

She kept studying the macabre display that was her anatomy. She took notice that she wasnt even aware of her own breathing until she saw her chest rising and falling in rhythm. She saw that her heart was surprisingly still disconnected from the mass, it was not the shape she expected, and indeed, she could only guess what it was due to the blood vessels poking out from it. Clearly there was no point pumping blood in a body so riddled with holes... she wondered what crazy magic the man had used to grant her even this much consciousness. No normal human could otherwise be alive with such traumas.

She laid back down, her curiosity satisfied for the moment. The blue-white glow of the crystal overhead was her only company. She decided to sleep, rather than wake her caretaker early.