Chapter Text
A/N: (No romance or smut or anything. Just an idea I had of ‘how did the hunter transform into the squid baby’ and wanted to expand on it. Also a bit of fodder while I write more fics, sorry if I take a while, catching up on school work.)
You're floating.
Your sense of touch is the first thing to return to you. What you can touch is a thick viscous liquid that encases the entire area around you. It almost feels like you're encased in some sort of jello, perhaps a vat of jello or some other thing.
It’s warm wherever you are, uncomfortably so, it feels almost suffocating. Speaking of suffocating, you don’t know how but you breathe perfectly fine. In and out, in and out, you breathe as if you're out in an open field taking in all its available oxygen.
How are you breathing? You're not sure and your hazy mind doesn’t care to think much about it, all that matters is that you're breathing and seemingly alive. The thick liquid you're in shouldn’t be able to let you breathe but your mind doesn’t register that.
The next sense to come to you is your sense of smell. This sense didn’t matter much, you tried to smell your surroundings but the liquid prevented you. You only caught a faint whiff of a moon-lit scent, the familiar smell of metal from blood, and another smell that you couldn’t put your hand on, the only way you could describe it, was fleshy.
Trying to smell anything in this… this prison was impossible, as the thick liquid would get stuck in your nose, causing you to sneeze it out on reflex and shake your whole body in consequence. But you tried anyway, trying to hold onto that strange moon scent you swore you had smelt before.
Hearing is the next sense to be granted clarity, although there wasn't much to hear. Bubbles popped in your ears and floated past your head, occasionally brushing against your warm body. You strain your ears to hear anything else and you hear it.
Bump….
Bump….
Bump…
What sounded like a heartbeat, one that wasn’t yours, rang into your ears. It was loud enough to pierce through the thick jell. It sounded almost strange, not like the average human's heartbeat but more like an imitation, a fake.
Your sense of sight was hardly restored to you as you tried your hardest to peel open your eyes only to find them shut by something. You struggled to move your arm and hand to feel over your face, grazing over what felt like thick slime.
Oddly, this doesn’t send much panic through you. You're much too tired to panic about this strange goo, to panic about anything when you have much more important things to worry about, like.. like..
What did you have to worry about? You're sure you needed to do something, something very important and imperative to get done as fast as possible. You don’t know what it is but the need to do it is nagging at you. But first, you need to get out of this strange prison.
Trying to move was a hassle, even just moving your finger felt like trying to move a mountain, you were just so terribly tired and exhausted. Your right hand grazes against your flesh and you realise you're entirely naked, bare as the day you were born.
Feeling around for any semblance of clothing, you come across your stomach and eventually your belly button, where something long and slimy is attached to it and leading down to somewhere in the prison.
It’s bumpy and rigid as you weakly grasp onto it. You try to pull, tug at it, anything to get it off but it’s firmly planted onto your skin and your strength is comparable to that of a newborns. Even just pulling it by the slightest makes you even more tired.
Suddenly, your entire prison shakes and moves but only for a moment. Bubbles burst past your ears and body as you’re steadied back into the centre. Whatever you’re in, is moving and clearly alive. It’s not a prison made of bars and metal. It’s a prison of organic flesh, you're inside something.
Kicking out your legs with a burst of energy, you find that the confines of wherever you're exactly in, stretch in accordance to any squirming. Your feet feel the ‘walls’ of the prison and graze over what is clearly veins and bumpy muscle.
You note it’s useless to kick and bring your tired legs back in. Perhaps you could scope out the area and find a weak spot or an opening, if only you could open your eyes.
Reaching up again, you feel the thick slime coating your eyes and try to wipe it off but only finding it sticking to your hands and still covering your eyes. You try again, this time, your right eye is cleared just slightly from the muck and you slowly open it.
Blackness is what greets you, at first you thought you had either gone blind or your eye was somehow still shut but blinking rapidly confirms your eye was open, and putting your hand out in front of you confirms you are not blind.
Straining your neck to look around doesn’t help much, the only thing in this ever expansive darkness is small specks of glowing white, a lot like stars but mulled as if behind some thin layer of skin. You fully expected to see red, purple and other fleshy colours but not this.
So far, there seemed to be no places for you to possibly escape from this bizarre situation as you twist and turn, tangling the strange cord attached to your stomach around you. Everything was strange and wrong, yet eerily calming as if you were being cradled by whatever was outside your confines.
The heat of your prison had become a warm comfortable blanket instead of a suffocating one, causing you significant less distress. Whatever it was outside, it knew of your conniptions inside and was making an effort to calm you.
What felt like strange hands held the fleshy confines of your prisons as something, darker than the darkness itself, wrapped around the protective sheet of flesh to protect it further. You doubted whatever you were in needed protection. Who or what would find you? Wherever you were.
You look at your hand again and reel back in shock. Your hand, specifically your fingers, were being melted into each other. It wasn’t painful or really felt like anything, only fuzzy and tingly, like you hit your funny bone. Your skin was taking on a slimy, dark tone which reminded you a lot of a squid.
Your hand was no more after just a few minutes, being melted entirely into a pitch black, blob of sorts that had already begun to merge into your body. You reach up your other hand and notice its slow decay has started as well but something else was bothering you, a tingling sensation just below your nose.
Using your free, unmelted hand you felt around and you could feel what felt like tiny tentacles beginning to burst and ripple under your skin, specifically around your mouth. You would scream, if you had the energy to do it, if you even had the mouth to do it. While you were distracted with your hand, you never noticed your mouth had melted shut.
The strange goo that you once wiped off your eye had begun to drip and seal it shut again, sealing you off into the unknown once more. Whatever was happening to your body, it was far beyond your control and just barely beyond your limit for comprehension.
Well, if you can’t do anything about it, why try? The gentle swaying cradle of your prison had begun to lull you back to the dreamless sleep you had woken up from just minutes ago. All you wanted to do by now was sleep, yes, sleep would be excellent. In sleep, you didn’t need to worry about what was happening outside or to your body.
Soon enough, your mind slips back into its unconscious form. Unknowing of the transformation taking place to its body.
————-
Outside, the Moon Presence cradles the lunar womb it had created specifically for you. The moon acting as its womb to hold a child, what soon to be its child to be exact.
As a great one, it could never have a child of its own accord and its former surrogate child was taken from it, by you. Yet it held no resentment, no anger, it only saw another child for it to take. Yearning never stops.
With its first child, it never attempted to transform him. But you were different, you had defied it when it tried to take you into its embrace. You had fought against it with all your might and almost, almost brought it down.
It knew then and there, that you were perfect and far too dangerous to keep as your human, mortal form. It was no true hassle to take your consciousness and make you fall into an artificial slumber, one long enough for the transformation to be complete.
But even then, you had woken up in the cradle and it had to lull you back to sleep. You were truly worthy of becoming a great one yourself in the Moon Presence, ‘eyes’ if anyone could call the holes in its face that.
The Moon Presence wouldn’t take care of your infant form, it didn’t know how to, but all it knows is that it wants a child. It knows that the artificial life in the dream will take care of you, that’s what her new purpose would be.
The only thing it would do, is let your new childhood begin and come back for you occasionally as you grow. It watches your shrinking form inside the lunar light, watching as your legs and arms merge together and your head transforms into a strange tentacled mass.
You were in your perfect, new form now. Now, the Moon Presence finally has what it always wanted, its eternal duty for yearning now done. Slowly, the Moon Presence’s clawed hand phases through the thin skin of the womb and gently wraps around you.
It knows to be gentle with you, you are fragile and young now. It slowly takes its hand out, leaving a hole in the skin to allow you out with it. The thick liquid that was once held within the womb spilled out, falling onto the pristine white flowers below and land with a sizzling sound, eating the organic life.
You writhe in your new mothers hold, not really understanding what’s going on and all the new senses available to you. You can hear so many things, so many things you never knew or can’t describe what they sound like. You felt so many new things, indescribably strange things. The worst part of it all, you could feel your memories slipping.
You try to hold onto your old bodies memories, the memories of Alfred, the memories of the Doll, the memories of Eileen, the memories of the old man…who? What was his name? All you could remember of the sad old man was the glint of a scythe and eventually a cry of defeat.
You try to keep your memories alive, remember The Executioner, The Crow, the fake woman in the dream. The one with a pretty dress and pretty face, and a pretty personality. Slowly, she disintegrates in your mind.
Eventually, every face you ever beheld had melted into a mush of indescribable mass. Every word spoken to you, turned into a messy jumble. All these new senses and feeling the painful thievery of your past self causes you to do the only thing you can do, squirm and try to wail.
The Moon Presence watches as you squirm and try to wiggle out of its hold. It’s the only thing that can hear your otherwise silent crying, nothing else but it and others like it would ever hear your wailing. It brings its arms closer to its toothy chest and rocks you gently, responding to your cries and trying to calm you down.
Unfortunately, it knows that the Doll wouldn’t be able to hear your screams or cries for help but it also knows that soon, you wouldn’t cry or scream anymore. You’d have no reason too, once all your memories are gone, you’d only ever know of being a Great One, you’d never know of your hunters past or your friends and enemies.
The Moon Presence slowly floats out of the flowering fields with you in its arms, slowly calming. Its ‘face’ holes move slightly as it calls over the being of its creation, the Doll. It remembers when its previous child asked for life, and it gave him it, he didn’t like it but it never understood why.
The Doll slowly walks on the stone pathway, coming face to face with the Moon Presence. She isn’t scared of it, she doesn’t know fear.
“Ah, the hunter.” She remarks as she notices the small squid-like creature In the Moon Presences arms as it holds out its hands to her, offering for the squid to be taken by the Doll.
The Doll wraps her hands around the squid, you, and brings you into her gentle hold. You don’t struggle anymore, you only sniffle before going silent and feeling around whatever was holding you with your tentacles. You can only ‘see’ with the tentacles as you had no eyes, or more accurately you had no idea yet how to see without eyes.
You feel cold hands run across your new body and the feeling of something important leaving, something that you didn’t want to leave, like wanting your mother. You wriggle a bit in the Dolls hold and she holds firmly onto you so she doesn’t drop you.
“Oh, Hunter.” She coos as she misinterprets your wriggling as discomfort of the cold. In the dream, it is quite cold without a direct sun and it’s quite cold now because of the events that transpired just a mere hour ago. Just an hour ago you were human, her moon-lit hunter. But now, you're an infant, a great one in your childhood's beginning.
“Are you cold?” She asks, unknowing if you understand her or if she would ever understand you. She takes your small wriggle as a ‘yes’ and wraps the shawl that was around her shoulders, around your body. The Doll doesn’t know if that would be good enough to warm you. She'll use her body to warm you if she could, but she doesn't have the warm blood to do so.
You don’t wriggle anymore, the warmth of the shawl is quite nice. You don't have anything to worry about now, the only thing you can ‘think’ of is things you never knew existed and how you’ll spend every minute. You only want your new mother, and soon you’ll be old enough to traverse into the realm she resides but for now, you simply enjoy the shawl and the hold of the artificial life.