Junghyun lasted four days by staying resolutely indoors, eating crackers and protein bars, and drinking bottled water -- take that, everyone who always looked down on her unhealthy eating habits! -- before she had to venture into the screaming wrongness that had replaced the world (and yes, there was a difference; human fuckery wasn't remotely the same as sentient fungus creeping up from her drains, or computer screens that watched and watched and never turned off, or giant flesh-blobs slurping through the streets in a running battle with toothy monsters that might be werewolves, or worst of all, the clear blue sky swooping down to eat people) both to find supplies and to avoid the leaden fog and cobwebs that were starting to gather in the lower and upper corners of her flat.
So of course it wasn't any of those horrors that got her. No, it was the earth itself, pavement crumbling away under her suddenly too-heavy feet and yanking her down into its jagged maw, roaring a tuneless song of weight and heat and pressure until her blood and bones and the compressed air in her lungs couldn't help but hum along.
Junghyun closed her eyes and mouth and waited for the earth to eat her whole.
And waited.
And waited.
And waited, until the waiting itself was more horrible than death could ever be, but when she tried to open her eyes the stones prevented her, and when she tried to speak the mud choked her, and when she tried to move the earth moved with her like a too-tight blanket trapping her in a nightmare bed.
Eventually she went limp in mind and heart as well as body.
That was when the earth let go, and she fell through lightless chasms, down and down and down, striking and scraping from rock to rock like a rag doll flung down a garbage chute, farther than should be possible until the pain and impossibility of it all numbed her once again.
The earth caught her and squeezed, hot and thick and heavy, and Junghyun's tears leaked out to join the mud as she realized there was no escape, never; she was swallowed, she was eaten, and the digestion would last forever.
"Yes," a voice said without breath, vibrations passed from its throat through the stone to her ears without ever touching air. "Now you understand. The earth makes us, the earth unmakes us, the earth is all there is. The surface is an illusion, a twisted, mocking dream from which we wake to the embrace of truth."
"But the sky--" Junghyun tried to say. She coughed, choked. Spoke again, this time exhaling dust instead of breath. "Did I only dream the sky?"
"The sky is a nightmare trying to be born," the stone voice said.
"I saw it eat people," Junghyun said. Her voice was slowing, rasping, as her lungs filled with solid earth instead of fleeting air. "I didn't want to be eaten."
"Don't worry," the stone voice said. "You're with us now. The sky can never touch you again."
The last gasp of air left Junghyun's chest, and she sighed in relief at the perfect, even pressure of earth within and earth without, stable and certain as she had always been meant to be. She turned to face the stone voice, seeing without eyes and hearing without ears, down where all the world was darkness and vibration and the endless roar of molten stone.
"Yes," she said. "I'm with you and you're with me and we're with the earth. The Vast can't reach us. The Eye can't see us. And we will dig until every direction is down."
When the Earth Shall Claim Your Limbs (The Magnus Archives)
So of course it wasn't any of those horrors that got her. No, it was the earth itself, pavement crumbling away under her suddenly too-heavy feet and yanking her down into its jagged maw, roaring a tuneless song of weight and heat and pressure until her blood and bones and the compressed air in her lungs couldn't help but hum along.
Junghyun closed her eyes and mouth and waited for the earth to eat her whole.
And waited.
And waited.
And waited, until the waiting itself was more horrible than death could ever be, but when she tried to open her eyes the stones prevented her, and when she tried to speak the mud choked her, and when she tried to move the earth moved with her like a too-tight blanket trapping her in a nightmare bed.
Eventually she went limp in mind and heart as well as body.
That was when the earth let go, and she fell through lightless chasms, down and down and down, striking and scraping from rock to rock like a rag doll flung down a garbage chute, farther than should be possible until the pain and impossibility of it all numbed her once again.
The earth caught her and squeezed, hot and thick and heavy, and Junghyun's tears leaked out to join the mud as she realized there was no escape, never; she was swallowed, she was eaten, and the digestion would last forever.
"Yes," a voice said without breath, vibrations passed from its throat through the stone to her ears without ever touching air. "Now you understand. The earth makes us, the earth unmakes us, the earth is all there is. The surface is an illusion, a twisted, mocking dream from which we wake to the embrace of truth."
"But the sky--" Junghyun tried to say. She coughed, choked. Spoke again, this time exhaling dust instead of breath. "Did I only dream the sky?"
"The sky is a nightmare trying to be born," the stone voice said.
"I saw it eat people," Junghyun said. Her voice was slowing, rasping, as her lungs filled with solid earth instead of fleeting air. "I didn't want to be eaten."
"Don't worry," the stone voice said. "You're with us now. The sky can never touch you again."
The last gasp of air left Junghyun's chest, and she sighed in relief at the perfect, even pressure of earth within and earth without, stable and certain as she had always been meant to be. She turned to face the stone voice, seeing without eyes and hearing without ears, down where all the world was darkness and vibration and the endless roar of molten stone.
"Yes," she said. "I'm with you and you're with me and we're with the earth. The Vast can't reach us. The Eye can't see us. And we will dig until every direction is down."