Trial of Impulse
The moment your fingers graze the rusted iron of the ring, the air shudders. From the shadows, a swarm erupts: a writhing, black tide of crawling, biting things. They surge over your body, their countless tiny mandibles tearing at skin, burrowing into hair and sleeves, nipping at flesh. Pain flashes, hot and jagged, then spreads like fire through your veins. Each sting lances deep, leaving trails of throbbing ache that pulse in rhythm with your hammering heartbeat.
Your limbs jerk uncontrollably. Every flinch, every desperate swat, only makes them multiply, biting harder, burrowing faster. They slip under your clothing, wriggle into every crease, every hair, and for a moment you feel your very skin isn’t yours - it belongs to the swarm. The forest around you is gone. The village is gone. The ring is gone. Only the swarm remains - an extention of yourself now and a living shadow pressing into every nerve, every pore.
Your senses fray. Pain, cold, wetness, itching, stinging; all fuse together in a maddening cacophony. The thrum of your own blood is deafening. You can hear their tiny clicks and squeals, feel them skitter under your ribs and along your spine, burrowing like a tide of needles and fire. The world behind you has vanished, swallowed whole, leaving only this writhing nightmare and the primal scream rising from your chest.
The swarm bites with precision. Your limbs jerk of their own accord as roots twist beneath your feet and holes gape like waiting maws. The forest tilts and buckles around you. You stumble blindly, teeth gritted against the sting that pulses through your veins. Darkness yawns behind you, relentless and patient.
And then the world shifts. The ground gives way. You plunge headlong into a slick, unyielding pit. Pain flashes in every nerve as you tumble, the echo of the world above fading into nothing. There is no pause, no choice, only a fall that seems never-ending.
Pain screams along your arms and chest, but you force yourself to still, to observe, to reason. Suddenly, a faint shimmer catches your eye through the chaos: a glint of water, cool and reflective, rippling faintly under the ghostly light. A chance.
You dive beneath the surface. The swarm’s bites are dulled by the water, muted to distant, frantic scratches. Pressure wraps around you, tight and unyielding, cocooning you in its suffocating embrace. Your lungs burn as you kick and drift, eyes straining through the dark ripples. The swarm cannot reach you here, but the water does not forgive. You are suspended between the chaos above and the suffocating quiet below.
All written content is original, drawn from myth, memory, and madness.
All images are generated via Midjourney using custom prompts by the author, unless otherwise stated.
So much fun! I already have an idea for something like this.
Yay! I can't wait to see what you'll come up with :) Glad you liked it!