Chapter Text
Blood. The world was made of blood and pain, and the Butcher was going to drown.
It rushed into his mouth, his nose. He couldn't tell which direction was up anymore, if there even was an up. Time slowed to a horrific crawl, allowing him to experience each and every root and piece of shrapnel that shredded through his body. His face felt like it was being torn in half. He wanted to scream, but all he heard was an inhuman, guttural growl and the snap of his own bones splintering.
The blood—was it his, now?—flooded his eyes and ears while he writhed in helpless agony. His final comfort was that the black box would live, and the fucking eel would not. I'll see you in hell, bitch.
Ṋ̶̡̨̨̧̡̳͇͔͖̤͐͊̌͐̈Ò̵̧̖̹̥͚͍̙͈̲̼̲̂̽̒́̍́̅̍̈́̑̃̈̓͋͠͠͝͝͝.̵̙̪̼̺̑́́̅̽̾̿̇̽͋̇̉̓͘͝͝͝͠.
The single word rattled through his bones, but the sound did not exist. It was not of this world, not meant for human comprehension. Inescapable dread wrapped around his throat, and for an instant, his mind's eye was filled with the vastness of a universe. Multiple universes. All through a pinhole torn by an insatiable being of Death, a Death that was too large and gluttonous to squeeze through the cracks and drink the starlight just beyond its reach. He saw the doorway it could reach. He saw a mangled body explode into pieces at the bottom of an ocean of blood. He saw Death enter the pieces of his body and pull them back together, sealing the gaps with the blood of a trillion humans. A trillion gods of their own making.
Fuck, please, no! Please, not like this!
But Death did not answer. Then the vision was gone, and the Butcher's heart stopped.
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Ryland Grace was not what you might call the reckless type.
He was deeply content to stay in his biodome and watch the light reflect off his artificial ocean while he worked on his lesson plan. For his class of middle-school-adjacent Eridians. On an alien planet lightyears upon lightyears away from Earth. Without any definitive way to replenish his food source.
Okay, well, maybe he took a few risks every now and then. When the cause was right, or lives were on the line, or something.
So when the ocean turned red and an unsettling metallic scent filled the air, Grace leapt to his feet without a second thought and ran to the water's edge, reacting on pure instinct. Only once he arrived did it occur to him that Eridians did not, in fact, bleed red.
Suddenly less sure of himself, he peered into the waves for a body, an animal, something, but it was no use. He couldn't see much of anything beyond the disturbingly red liquid. It didn't help that the origin point of the—no, it couldn't be blood—contaminant was a few meters out from shore, where the water deepened.
It made no logical sense. But the primal part of his brain that had been wired to react to humans in danger screamed at him to check again, so he took a deep breath, steeled his nerves, and waded in.
When he dove beneath the surface, he found scraps of metal and... a body.
The body could maybe be humanoid if he squinted. It wasn't thrashing, which meant it had to be unconscious or dead, but if it was dead... since it wasn't floating yet, it had to be recent. Not that it was much of a comfort.
The water was becoming more and more opaque by the second, and Grace was more and more sure that it was blood, based on the large tendrils snaking out of every orifice of the body, so he took it up in his arms before he could chicken out and swam for the surface.
It was ridiculously heavy. In his already weakened state, he ended up more dragging it than carrying it. But eventually, he made it back to shore with the creature in tow. "Help!" he called out, relying on the Eridians' uncanny hearing. "Help!"
He finally took a good look at whatever he had just saved. And nearly gagged.
It had what looked like two legs, horribly scarred in an almost Frankenstein manner. Then there was a torso full of metal shards and spikes like a pincushion. Then one arm, shockingly human looking. There may have once been a second arm, but now it was just a stump, bleeding freely. And the face...
The right side was an amalgamation of crimson flesh and long, sharp teeth, bleeding at the corners. Like a mouth had emerged forcefully, or been torn into it. It was monstrous.
The entire body was red and covered in and scales and bumps, but it still had enough of a human shape for Grace's pulse to race. Monster—alien or no, he still felt a responsibility to try and save it. He placed his hands under its arms—well, one arm and one stump—and tugged desperately, but it was so much heavier on land than in water. "Help!" he cried again, voice cracking with exertion.
This time, he received an answering chirp. An Eridian was on the other side of the biodome and wanted to know what the problem was, peering through the small window in the door anxiously.
"Get Rocky!" he called back. "I think I found an alien, but I can't—can't lift—"
He stumbled and had to let go of the alien as a coughing fit overtook him. Darn malnutrition.
"Grace stay, will find Rocky," the Eridian said before disappearing.
Once the coughing subsided, Grace dropped to his knees and tried to do chest compressions on the creature. He vaguely remembered that was what you did for cardiac arrest, but he wasn't sure what happened when the person's heart stopped beating period, or where the alien's heart was even located. Still, it gave him something to do with his hands, and it was better than leaving the creature for dead, anyway.
He felt its ribs crack under the third compression and cringed. He knew that was supposed to happen, and it confirmed the creature was closer to human, but it still made his stomach turn. He kept going anyway.
Should he do mouth to mouth? He only considered it for a second before catching sight of all the blood and teeth again. Nope, no way. Chest compressions would have to be good enough.
It only took a few minutes for Rocky to appear in his xenonite exosuit. "Grace safe? Grace okay?"
"Rocky!" He could've cried with relief. "Yeah, yeah, I'm okay, but you gotta help me get this person to Armando. Please."
Rocky chittered in concern but didn't waste any more time, pushing the creature while Grace pulled. Someway, somehow, they managed to get it inside and onto a bed, where Armando swiftly took over. Grace watched as the robot attempted to resuscitate the alien. His chest felt tight as it lurched once, twice, three times—on the fourth shock, a heartbeat miraculously appeared, weak but still there. He grabbed Rocky excitedly.
"He's alive, Rock! Well, I don't know if it's a he yet, but—you know what I mean. We did it!"
Rocky chirped incredulously but didn't disagree. Grace took the win as it was and left Armando to work.
Sometime around midnight, when Grace should've been asleep but wasn't, a crash sounded from the living room where Armando and the alien were set up. The noise was followed by a low growl. Grace's blood froze, but he grabbed a nearby book as a possible weapon and strode across the room, ready for anything. He should've known better, of course the alien would be hostile, just his luck—
He stopped dead in the hallway. A man was clinging to the doorframe for support, covered in bandages and tubes. Naked. Grace's eyes shot up to the man's mutilated face as his own cheeks reddened.
Not seeming to care, the alien spat out a mouthful of something dark and muttered, "Where the fuck am I?"
It was in English.