It's Over, You're safe now

[Headful_of_Eyeballs]

You're tired, so god damn tired. It feels like the last time you slept was centuries ago, even though it's only been 2 days.
You flop onto the cheap motel bed, not even bothering to wipe [HIS] blood off of your hands- You can just take a shower when you wake up anyways. 
You open your journal to write down the madness you just experienced, but before you can, you realize you haven't even brushed your hair since you escaped that cellar- On second thought, you should probably take that shower after all.

You slump off the bed, hobble over to the bathroom, and look into the mirror, taking mental note of your features
What species are you?
What's Your gender?
What's the name on your lanyard?
And what mark reminds you of your captivity?

[aeshihowl]

slime-based feline, bigender, Spice, and stars

[skinstealer]

species: reanimated construct
gender: a mess
name: something scribbled out
mark: a particularly nasty botched seam on your chest

[ThreadLurkingComorant]

What species are you?  Some kind of fuzzy snake.
What's Your gender? Whatever is right in the moment.
What's the name on your lanyard? Sunny, not too sure it's *my* name though.
And what mark reminds you of your captivity? A brand with occult symbol, something most would see as magical as card tricks.

[knux400]

Species: some sort of reptile, modified with prosthetics and implants to the point of being unrecognizable
Gender: too tired to figure it out right now
Name: none, only a serial number
Mark: a bar code on my right thigh

[Briffit]

Species: Velvet worm.
Gender: Transmasc.
Name: "Loverboy". Eugh.
Mark: The name of your ex-girlfriend, written in cursive on your forearm. You got matching tattoos once. That was so long ago.

[Headful_of_Eyeballs]

You look into the mirror, wiping a bit of stray ooze away from your eyes
You see a pastel blue slime cat looking back at you, eyes bloodshot from staying up late for days on end.

the lanyard draped over your neck shakes slightly, the name "Sunny" printed on it chipped and scratched from the constant running. You know it's not yours, you never even had a name to begin with, but it still feels just as significant to you as it did when you snatched it off that dying guard when you first escaped.

You pick up a half used tube of toothpaste, squirting some onto a rag before rubbing it across your teeth. You're not sure where the toothbrush is, but judging by the state the rest of your room is in, you probably don't want to know.

you spit into the sink, before gingerly throwing off your lanyard, revealing the arcane symbol seared onto your neck. It stings just looking at it, but you still have to clean it, or your powers will stop working again. After finding a box of cotton swabs, you carefully wipe the excess gunk away from the sigil, already feeling the strength starting to come back to your body.


Your mind is still a bit hazy, but you’re more then lucid enough to scribble down a few things in your journal.
Do you remember the Alchemist that reanimated you?
Are you aware of your past life?
And why did the Brotherhood seal you, the magnum opus of their quest for resurrection, away in the basement?

[aeshihowl]

we remember bits and pieces, but it feels like the important things are hiding in fog.
we are.
we refused to play by their rules.

[Briffit]

The alchemist was a novice at best, a young jerboa with stars in their eyes. You were found among autumn leaves; they took pity on your broken body and brought you to the innermost chamber. It was by their clumsy hands and pilfered charms that you were reborn as something new.

Your past life is something you wish you could forget. You were happy once. You played in a grand orchestra, and you were deeply in love.

Then everything changed.

You were sealed away because you weren't yet ready. You had to grow. If you had stayed any longer, they would have begun forming within you. You swear you still feel strange tickles beneath your membrane.

[Headful_of_Eyeballs]

Of course, how could you forget?

Your name was Spice, you were a cat and you lived out of an apartment in southern Lyris with your Girlfriend.
You were a electrician by trade, but member of the local orchestra whenever you had the time.
Things were happy: you were happy- at least until [HE] took notice of you.

It started subtle at first; a missing item here, a concerning comment on your SNS there- but it only got worse with time.
Your dirty clothes started going missing before you could wash them, you always felt like you were being watched, and your girlfriend was being hounded by dozens of messages on her phone every day- each one telling her to dump you.

Eventually, unable to deal with the stress and harassment, she caved and broke up with you; leaving you alone.
Exactly what [HE] wanted.

What happened next is extremely blurry, partially from the resurrection process, but mostly because you blocked it all out. But regardless of how it happened; you ended up dead in the lowlands less then 2 months after [HE] started stalking you


You don’t really remember the alchemist that revived you though.
The best thing you have to go off is a memo you downloaded off of one of the academies’ flash drives. Apparently he was a junior researcher, extremely dedicated to their cause of finding a way to revive people. He found your rotting corpse half-buried in a pile of leaves, and decided to try the first actual resurrection on what was essentially a pile of congealed people goop.
 
It worked, but instead of bringing the original you back from the dead, he had just brought life to your gelatinous remains; imbuing you with the leftover magic that was supposed to heal your fatal wounds.



And that was why you were sealed down there, you aren’t even Spice at all anymore- You’re just a liquified corpse with their memories. The inanimate brought to life, not the dead brought back from the grave.

You look at your freshly cleaned teeth, grateful that you at least took care of yourself, but you’re not done yet. As you run yourself a shower, you ask yourself:
What was the name of the academy?
How did you escape it in the first place?
And what was the point when you realized that [HE] became obsessed with you again?

[King-Clod]

Brackenspire Institute of Thaumaturgy and Technology. BITT for short. 

He had a rival in the Institute, Rosslyn Grey. She had a vested interest in his experiment not meeting expectations, I gathered that much. I suspect she jeopardized my resurrection. After I was sealed away, either from guilt, or to get one last jab at Him, she helped get me out of there before washing her hands of me. Not a pleasant woman by any means. But probably the only person I could reach out to now who'd understand.

I can't tell if I'm being paranoid. If the stress from this whole fucked up situation has me seeing things, wanting to see things. But there's a blinking light, in the night, just outside my window. Like something recording.

[aeshihowl]

Magmalia's Academy for the Gifted.

we aren't sure... we think we may have been assisted, but we're not sure by who, or for what reason. We had had many failed attempts at escape, so we were locked down tighter and tighter, in what we called the Dungeon Lab, until we gave up. We don't know how much time passed in that dissociative haze. Then we had... a particularly... bad day. Yeah, we'll call it that. And we thought, fuck it, let's try again. Not like we have anything else to lose. And we were able to escape. It seemed like every guard was distracted, asleep, or absent from their posts; like every camera was turned off and every door was unlocked. Soon we were breathing fresh air, and soon after that we were running, sprinting away from that awful place.

[HE] left a piece of mail on the receptionist's counter, the only marking on the envelope our name and unit number. It was a photo of us at a street vendor, in the thrift store trenchcoat we stole hours after our escape. We had to get some food... We didn't think [HE] would find us so easily, so quickly............ is he tracking us somehow??? Oh gods oh gods oh gods--

[Headful_of_Eyeballs]

[Note: this is the second to last post before we reach the grand finale]
You hold the lanyard in your hands, running your fingers over the embossed "Brackenspire Institute of Thaumaturgy and Technology" text on the top- It still looks like it did on the day you escaped.

Come to think of it, your escape was pretty strange- The cameras were all broken, like somebody smashed them the night before, and you swear you heard doors unlocking infront of your path as you progressed. The guard were almost all absent; the only one you even saw was Summer- gagging as she bled out from a slit throat. A few bags of canned and survival tools were left opened outside your containment cell, seemingly left for you by somebody. It wasn't long until you managed to escape with all the conveniently disabled security systems- but even then, it still felt you were being watched.

Your first few days on the outside were a blur- shambling through the streets, fighting with hobos over leftovers in the trash, desperately trying to mask the stench of decay emanating from your very essence. The first lucky break you ever got is when a nightclub hired you as bouncer- not a well paid job, but still a job nonetheless. Eventually- you managed to scrape enough money to buy a dirt cheap studio apartment to live in.

Life continued on for a time- 3 months at most, until the envelope arrived- photos of Spice's (the person you were '"revived" from) violent demise- the experiment logs from the day you came to life, and a photo of you in the coat you stole the day you escaped. The moment you saw it, you knew that [HE] had found you again.

You stick your hand in the shower again- it's boiling hot, just the way you like it.
You take off your sweater, put the lanyard on the sink, and step inside

As [HIS] blood washes off your membrane, you think back to him, the look in his eyes, and try to envision how a person could possibly end up as twisted as he did
What Species was he?
How did his breath smell as he pinned you to the wall?
Which part of his outfit was taken from Spice's (your) corpse
And what did he say when he finally caught you again?

[Guest]

[He] was a cat, like me. Though he didn't much look like it anymore when he found me.

Rotten meat and mint. Like he was trying to mask the decay with a breath-mint and failed.

Fingerless leather gloves.

I don't know... I couldn't focus clearly enough to make it out. Something about what I was meant to be, I think? What I needed to be?

[aeshihowl]

[HE] was a sparrow, made of barbed wire and sharp feathers. We're surprised [HE] even had blood in [HIS] body for us to wash off. 

[HE] smelled like bleach. Why did [HIS] breath smell like bleach? Was [HE] drinking it? 

[HE] stole our earring. The one we kept wearing even after our ex left with its pair. We couldn't bring ourselves to take it off. That would mean we gave up hope. We don't think she wanted to leave. Maybe-- ...no. We aren't Spice anymore. She wouldn't want us.

[HE] said [HE] wanted to play. Knowing [HIM], if it was actually a game [HE] was talking about, it would be a fucked up one. We didn't really give [HIM] the opportunity to elaborate. The mere sight of [HIS] metallic skin was enough to send us into a rage.