As the greenhouse's iron frame yields to the embrace of mutant vines and the swelling weight of vegetal blisters, it releases its strain in reverberant groans and slow metallic shrieks that scrape the upper limits of perception. Within it, the pit boils with life. Beyond it, the city writhes.
Fabric hangs down, barely drifting in the stillness, barely concealing the body that wears it—a body stretched long, taller even than Lazar, skin twisting in woven strips, brown hair gone lank down the neck, garments draping loose. The ichor of corruption slips down the long feet, drools from the toes in oily black threads, drops silent to stone at pit's edge, where the cups and corals of greyish lichens emerge, their spores impelled to grow.
"Done?" Whispers of a staggered echo drift, overlapping, preceding. The voice—the voice of his friend, layered in voltaic distortion—falls to purling depths: "No."
It turns to see him, eyes like embers in a helm. When it speaks, the face doesn't move.
"Your emergence is at hand," it says, and beckons with arachnoid fingers, Come.
what if bug instead (oblique spoilers for Arcane s2)
Fabric hangs down, barely drifting in the stillness, barely concealing the body that wears it—a body stretched long, taller even than Lazar, skin twisting in woven strips, brown hair gone lank down the neck, garments draping loose. The ichor of corruption slips down the long feet, drools from the toes in oily black threads, drops silent to stone at pit's edge, where the cups and corals of greyish lichens emerge, their spores impelled to grow.
"Done?" Whispers of a staggered echo drift, overlapping, preceding. The voice—the voice of his friend, layered in voltaic distortion—falls to purling depths: "No."
It turns to see him, eyes like embers in a helm. When it speaks, the face doesn't move.
"Your emergence is at hand," it says, and beckons with arachnoid fingers, Come.