Way of the Slugcat

Out of Sight

Thorns did not remember falling asleep. He had scrambled into the shelter, its gate slamming closed behind him, and collapsed against the wall. He recalled shoving two of the three fruits into his mouth, then sighing wistfully as he listened to the world outside being swallowed by water. The next time he blinked, his surroundings had completely changed.
I... I am dreaming, right? He asked himself as he observed his surroundings. This task proved difficult, as his head seemed stuck in one position. It was looking forwards, eyes resting on the worn paper of an open scroll. In his hand he held a quill. It was one of simple design, a white feather with golden accents laced in between its fibers. Its tip was stained black with ink. To the quill's left, an incense burner smoked the remains of a bundle of sage. To its right, a cup of bitter smelling tea sat untouched.
Thorns tried to speak. His mouth refused to move. He attempted to turn his head to better inspect his hand. Was it still three fingered and white? Alas, he could not see. Something prevented him from comprehending its shape, as some dreams do. He looked again at the burnt bundle of sage, then to the lonely cup of cold tea, and finally back to the quill. It was then that the truth dawned upon him.
"This is my room."
His room, his quill, his cup of tea... good karma, how he hated that tea. He looked over his surroundings with increased awareness. Yes, he remembered burning that sage. He had lit the match and coaxed the flames to life, even though he knew that it would not matter. He was not planning on coming back. He had brewed the tea and left it to sit, even though he knew he would never drink it. And the quill... what had he been doing with the quill? Writing his will? No, there was no one left to write it to. Practicing his verses? No, he had given up on those a long time ago. He believed this cycle to be his last, so why would he bother with anything like that? Unable to recall his intention, Thorns resorted to focusing on the paper itself.
It was blank. He gave it a disappointed frown, then glanced over at his hand again.
"What if I...?"
He placed its ink-stained tip to the paper and willed it to move. He had no idea what he was doing, but continued nonetheless. He drew symbols, the karmic appearances of sin, words and numbers. He thought back to everything he had ever learned and pressed them upon the page with pure intent. Then, the paper began to warp. It sucked his ink into the folds of itself, and Thorns suddenly realized that this scroll was much, much larger than he had thought. More and more pages began to emerge from its singular face, and said singular face began to unroll, to expand, until it took up the entirety of the table. It's perfect, white surface started to change in shade, and then in color. Hues of black and gold swirled around on its surface, in its surface, above and beyond and below everything Thorns had written, understood, and thought. A tinge of fear crept upon his heart as the void beckoned him. It called him not by name, but by spirit. It wanted to accept him.
Thorns dropped the quill. He stood quickly to his feet, hitting the table and knocking the tea to the floor. He turned his back to the scroll and ran, the walls of his little room blurring past him. He reached a door, wrenched it open, and slammed it shut behind him.

The slugcat woke with a start, his heart pounding on the confines of his chest. Every one of his hairs stood on end as he leapt from the shelter floor. His mind spun in circles, attempting to put a name to the feeling he had just experienced. He could hardly comprehend the thoughts that raced through his brain, the questions that he asked himself.
Is this not what you wanted?
"Be quiet..."
Is this not what you are here for?
"Go away."
Why are you afraid?
"Silence!"
It wants you. Do you not want it back?
"SHUT UP!!!"
Thorns let his voice bounce around the shelter for a bit, until it finally died out. His mind went silent, as did his surroundings.
"I can think about this later." He stated. "I-I will think about this... later." With that, the slugcat half heartedly consumed his last pupa fruit and crawled out the shelter door.

Down here, the air felt different. It stood unmoving and stale, casually inhabiting the darkened cavern like the air inside of a balloon. His body moved through it easily. It gave no resistance as he slid out of the shelter and raised his nose to sniff the air. The rocks and moss surrounding him smelled damp, yet dusty at the same time. An odd combination of scents indeed, and slightly reminiscent of a place he had once visited. A place deep below the earth, the last place his old body had ever walked. The slugcat suppressed the chills tickling his spine, choosing instead to look around for a way forwards. The cavern roof was extremely close to his head, nearly touching the tips of his ears. In the darkness, little creatures moved about just out of sight. To his left and right the cavern roof rose suddenly, giving way to much more room to move about. Thorns crawled into the open space and turned around.
"What the... what is that?" He muttered. It turns out that the ceiling his ears had brushed against was not connected to the rest of the cave in the slightest. It was a rectangular structure being held off the ground by a couple of... wheels? Were those wheels?
"Oh! Of course, I am an idiot!" It had been so long since Thorns had seen one of these machines that he had almost forgotten what they looked like! It also did not help that the entire thing was bathed in fuzzy darkness. A train car sat above the entrance to the shelter, wedged half-way into a pile of boulders near the wall. Its metal body was hooked to another of its kind further down the path. Another one followed, and another, and then still another. An entire train was parked down here! But why? Judging by the chaotic mess of boulders on the first car it was most likely an accident, Thorns reasoned. Regardless of why the thing was down here, the slugcat found gratitude in its presence. A nice, straight line to follow in a place where he found it difficult to see farther than ten feet. Besides, the train had to have been going somewhere before it broke down. Maybe it could lead him to that somewhere?
"Well... I have nothing better to do." Thorns shrugged. He found a foothold in the side of the car and clambered his way to the top. He was not going to take any chances of getting lost in the dark.
The slugcat merrily continued on his way. Oddly enough, Thorns had never been scared of the dark. The world was just as dangerous at night as it was during the day. Following this logic, this dark cave would be just as dangerous in the light as it was now. Besides, he had spent plenty of hours in dark rooms uploading information into pearls. The only difference now was the fact that he had to find his way to an unknown destination in the dark, and that he shared the space with a host of unknown creatures scuttling around in the shadows.
Thorns paused, both in his train of thought and in his forward momentum.
"On second thought... Maybe I should find a weapon. There has to be a spear somewhere around here..."
The top of the train held no such boons, only lichen and a couple of scraggly weeds. The next time Thorns came across a gap, he peered down into its depths in an attempt to spot something.
Surely there has to be something down there? He reasoned. He leapt to the bottom of the train cars, landing gracefully on four paws, and began sniffing around in the darkness. Nothing extraordinary caught his attention. Any noise that he heard originated from far away, as told by their distant echoes. Then, an unnatural shape under the train caught the slugcat's eye.
"Aha! Come here, you." He ordered as he dropped to his belly and extended a paw towards the spear. Its pointed tip had wedged itself into the ground while the other end was pressed against the roof. As Thorn's paw grasped its body, he found out pretty quickly that it did not want to budge. He tried tugging on it. It barely moved. Wiggling it loose proved to be impossible, as the bar refused to move in any direction. After a few seconds of messing around, the slugcat decided that the best method was to pull until it popped loose. By placing his feet on the train car's wall, he was able to get enough leverage to begin making progress.
"Almost... there... Come on!"
Then, beside the spear, two spots of dull green faded into view. They appeared from the darkness in an elegant fashion, as if a curtain had been swept away from before them. At first they seemed docile, recoiling back into the darkness, if only for a moment. Thorns continued to pull on the spear with slightly more vigor. Whatever this thing was, he did not want to be this close to it. Besides, his weapon was almost free! Just a little more...
The green spots lunged forwards with surprising speed. An angry hissing followed, this one of a kind Thorns had never heard before. It sounded almost like a piece of parchment sliding over a table, with the added aura of malintent. From the darkness, an overwhelming amount of fuzzy appendages sprung forth. A pair of green tipped fangs lead the charge, extended out towards its prey in anticipation of a bite. Thorns startled as this fuzzy monstrosity consumed his vision. His muscles went rigid, his ears fell back, and every hair on his body stood on end. In a desperate burst of energy, the slugcat gave the spear one final, hard tug as the mass of legs and hair fell onto him.
Both creatures tumbled backwards as the spear came loose. The predator, most likely some kind of arachnid, wrapped its hairy legs around Thorns. They held the slugcat tightly in place as it took its fangs and sunk them into his shoulder. A sharp pain shot through his body.
No. No, I am not going down like this.
Thorns rolled backwards and kicked with his legs, making contact with the spider's underside and sending it flying into the wall. With as much haste as he could muster, he sent the spear after it. The soft thunk of its tip piercing the spider's flesh was music to his ears. The arachnid hissed and threw itself back towards Thorns in a blind fury. The slugcat easily dodged its attack, yanking the spear out of its body as it passed, and sending it straight back into its abdomen. A foul smelling liquid spewed from the wound as the weapon made contact, and each of its terrible, hairy limbs finally went still. The slugcat strutted over to his kill, retrieved his weapon, and scampered back up to the train's roof.
It was a couple of seconds before Thorns allowed the previous events to settle in. Suddenly, all of his emotions came rushing back to him. The terror that hit him when he saw the spider's legs emerge from the dark, the absolutely horrid feeling that its fuzzy appendages had induced when they gripped his body, and the sharp pain in his shoulder that had scared him half to death. His heart pounded on the confines of his chest, his breathing escalated to twice its normal rate. His limbs felt tired and limp. The strength with which he had reacted baffled him. It was as if his body had moved by itself in a desperate attempt to keep itself alive. And thank Karma it had.
"N...no. No, no no no no. Never again. Never. Again."
And so Thorns continued, spear gripped tightly in hand, his eyes darting about his darkened surroundings in passive terror.

Darkness
You need not fear the object itself; only what lurks within.