The eel fell to the ground in a heap of black smoke and ashes. It’s body a shell of its former self, gashes and wounds having rent it from the inside out. What little muscle remained atrophied or half eaten. It’s once mighty visage, now the image of decay, of death in a world so cruel.
There was nothing of it that spoke to the monstrous predator of before, there was only the hollow remnant of a thing that had been consumed by flame.
It had become an egg. Half rotted flesh the tomb of something now forgotten. Of another thing that had stepped beyond the first veil and into a greater idea. A grander whole of what could be.
Some called this Metamorphosis. Others evolution.
But in the truest sense it was the advancement of the idea.
The thought of the self and how it functioned. How it needed to function, and how it could be improved. It was the fruit of the only thing that mattered in this realm beyond. The currency of all flesh.
The idea of a perfect.
And the death of that which was not.
*****
Celia burned.
Her flesh was a thing in shift. Her bones in transit. And her mind in a form of agony she had never known. And it burned at her.
It burned, and burned.
But the burn was change. It was the forge of her new self. The crucible that made what came next possible. The foundation for a step the old Celia could’ve never taken. Claws rendering through the old flesh of the now dead leviathan. Peeling it open as she rose up out of it and beyond the cage of its body, out into a world that - for the first time - she felt she had an inkling of an understanding of.
And what she understood was horrible, horrible friction. The guiding force that undercut it all, that made the giants giants and the weak weak.
Celia was neither. She was something in the dark in between. Bereft of the might the titans possessed, and robbed of the cloak weakness granted. Her claws steel strong. Scales barbed in a thousand tiny pinpricks. Her single eye a red hot orange that looked with new vision. Top most layer of her flesh parting into a dress of hard leather, covering her from collar to calf.
Her hair had become a wild mess of vines, thorns, and false colored roses. Each polluting the air with the stench of come and find me. Face marred with slits in scale skin that colored the world in a swirl of scent sounds.
But there was still something about her that bled of the old.
The general shape of her face was still hers enough. Her tangling of vines was still sitting a reddish blonde. Arms still arms and shoulders still shoulders. Frame still human in that way that left no room for mistake for what was supposed to do what. Legs for walking and hands for holding.
She was wide too. Hips flaring out at her waist, extending out beyond the boundaries of her shoulders. A butt of impressive girth mounted onto it, carried up by thighs that were embarrassingly thick. The curve of her frame made even bigger the growing gut she had up front. Big enough that she could scoop up with both of hands. And her breasts were… well bigger, but still properly modest.
All in all, she felt like she had become half of what she had been becoming and half of who she used to be. Obviously not a perfectly even split. And she didn’t know which way she was particularly leaning toward, but compared to all the other options she had rejected, she was satisfied. Felt like enough of herself that she wasn’t at least questioning if she still was Celia. While also not feeling too much like her old self that the prospect of survival seemed like a horribly distant dream.
Which was, in a way, still made her something new.
An older her would have shoved that thought away. But this time, she decided to unpack it. Taking a moment to question if she was OK with this, and if she was, why? Who she had just been was, for all intents and purposes, functionally dead. That she was more a monster than ever before now. Yet still just as questionable human.
She shouldn’t have been ok with this. Yet, she was. And the worst part was that she partially understood it. Just enough to accept it and move on. After all, what sort of newborn scorned their own conception?
Especially when it made them, arguably better than they were before - at least in relation to the grand scheme of survival. Not that she wasn’t going to miss her old self of course. Just like millions still mourned their lost innocence.
So…
That was that, and now Celia was a new thing. Alive, hungry, and very much stranded with no idea as to where she should go. She was also now convinced that touching absolutely anything was now a gamble of life and death.
So was standing as it turned out. As, less than a mile out, she felt something huge rise up out of the ground beneath her feet. It’s ascension out of the ground painting a map of almost the entire area from her. Tremors erupting out from its titanic form like eddies from a tremendous wave. Not-so-little vibrations that painted a half picture of the massive thing for her before it was no longer in contact with the ground at all, and was now airborne.
She saw it pass overhead, a great white beast in the shape of a dragon.
Not the same draconic corpse she had seen crash into the caves from before. But a separate one, it’s wings cut into the shape of stars. And it was headed straight for a singular, lone mountain out in the distance. But as it got closer to the mountain, Celia felt another shift travel through the ground.
Hundreds, upon hundreds of things were moving beneath her feet now, and all in the direction of the mountain. And based off what she was feeling, some of the those things weren’t just simple underground creatures. And almost none of them were the same size or shape. It was less akin to a strange stampede and closer to a rush. Like they were hurrying to get to the mountain as quick as possible. None of them overtly fighting as they went.
Celia’s curiosity was only peaked further when a collection of giant worms erupted out of the ground beside her. Followed by other stranger, and tamer, creatures alike. Each ignoring her as they went on their way.
She couldn’t help but join them. Curiosity pulling at her like a dog on a leash, and justified by the fact that she was at least heading toward a mountain, which she could climb and use to survey the surrounding region, perhaps, to see if the ocean was anywhere close.
And then she’d see if it was the right ocean, she supposed.
But first, getting to the mountain.