In his dream, he was a Hyena again.
Strange. He hadn't been a Hyena since the servers had gotten shut down.
It felt… good to be back in his old avatar, in the body that he had chosen for himself in the days before everything went wrong.
He looked down at his torso, suddenly glad to see his baseline human anatomy replaced by idealized muscle and digitgrade legs, covered with spotted brown fur.
Perhaps, some part of him dared to hope, this was reality. Maybe it was the other life that had been the nightmare, a reminder of why it was a bad idea to fall asleep while brain-jacked into the Network.
But then… if he was back on the Network, then what in all the worlds was this server?
Thick, impenetrable mists swirled around the Hyena, enveloping the narrow rope-and-plank bridge that creaked and swayed unsteadily beneath his feet.
No other players were in sight, not even an NPC that needed to be beaten in order to progress.
Then suddenly, the bridge began to wobble wildly under his feet, as from behind him there came the rapid-fire rhythmic thunks of something running right for him.
And in his heart, he knew it was the Mantis - the one who had destroyed the only life he'd ever known.
She was coming for him. He had to run.
So he did, galloping away as fast as his clawed legs would carry him.
If he slowed, even for a second, he could hear her chitinous talons clicking on the boards.
Could hear her catching up to him-
-so he kept running.
Already, the Hyena could see the sky and the mists behind him turning a deep, bloody orange, dyed by the flames that he knew were burning his home to the ground.
Ahead of him, there was only the bridge, twisting and forking as it stretched endlessly towards the horizon.
His claws caught in the gap between two planks, tripping him. His sheer speed then sent him sprawling, almost hurtling off the bridge and into the mists below, where a Thing with the voice of a lion continually roared loud enough to shake all of reality.
Desperate to escape his pursuer, the Hyena almost dragged himself off the bridge entirely - but then he remembered:
The Thing Below had sent the Mantis after him.
So he got back up and kept running.
His side ached from the fall, exacerbating the building fatigue from his headlong flight.
But he couldn't stop. Couldn't slow down. Couldn't even look back to see if it was safe to do either.
Because he knew that if he slowed down, then the Mantis would catch him. Knew that if he stopped, she would devour him whole, just like the Cross she bore on her shoulder.
Knew that if he looked back, then he'd see the… Horror that hunted him alongside the Mantis, following after her in slavish devotion.
Different paths laid themselves out before the Hyena, each junction in the bridge offering a different hope for salvation. But, like something out of a horror game, the Mantis appeared at each intersection even while she pursued him from behind, herding him along the path intended by whatever sick developer had designed this experience.
And then suddenly, the bridge stopped - its previously infinite lengths cut short by an unforeseen dead end.
The mists thinned as the Thing Below coiled its unfathomable tendrils, waiting to receive him, almost inviting the Hyena to step off the bridge and simply Fall.
The temptation loomed-
-but no.
Never again.
He had already fallen once, and the Horror that had been born that day hunted him even now, marching in perfect lockstep behind the Mantis.
Accordingly, the Hyena turned, searching for another way-
-the Mantis was there. Blocking the only escape route.
When she had first met him - when she had first deceived him - she had worn the avatar of a short, slight human woman, delicately featured and light brown in complexion.
Her true self stared back at him now.
Shimmering rainbow hair cloaked her entire body, falling to her insectile green ankles in a fashion that somehow failed to hinder her in her pursuit. Lies of love, of pleasure, of security and safety if he would only submit dripped from her fanged, bulging jaws, hissing into steam as they fell into the hellfire that smoldered beneath her boots.
The same fire that, in the distance, consumed the final remnants of the Hyena's home.
And behind the Mantis, locked into her shadow like some NPC follower, there stood the Horror.
In turn, the Hyena felt his feet involuntarily take a step back towards the ledge.
Because it was him.
His face, lips swollen from kissing and neck marked in vivid detail by the Mantis' love-bites. His body as it truly was, not the idealized shape of muscle and fur he had chosen for himself online. His voice, droning insensate praises to the Thing Below and muttering its delirious love for the Mantis.
It was him.
The Horror was him.
Denial and terror boiled inside the Hyena's brain as the Horror began to stride towards him, answering the commanding, infrasonic shriek of the Thing Below.
Suddenly too fast to dodge, it locked forearms with him and shoved. The face of his birth, trying to hurl the face of his choice into the mists that churned beneath the swaying bridge.
At first, the battle was easy. His other self had always been weak, a mask that shielded his inner thoughts when needed and was easily suppressed when the time had passed.
But then it started getting stronger.
Muscle began to shift and grow beneath the Horror's dark brown skin, its jaws bulging, its canines falling out to be replaced by lengthy, baboon-like fangs.
A once ordinary baseline human, turning twisted and feral.
The Hyena felt his claws skid backwards a few centimeters, his grip momentarily lost on the slick, mist-dampened planks.
He didn't want this.
But it was happening all the same.
And behind the Horror, where the Hyena could not reach her, the Mantis too began to change. Her abdomen swelled to grotesque proportions, turning lumpen and lopsided as something moved inside her. Her growth then complete, she squatted deep on the bridge, entire body heaving-
-as that same something clawed its way out from between her legs.
The Hyena slipped back another few centimeters.
Too fast to see, the resultant larva shambled across the bridge, instantly adhering to and being absorbed by the Horror.
Which only made it stronger.
The Horror's mutations accelerated, spiraling out of control as the Mantis birthed more and more of their deformed, twisted offspring, each of which added their own power to that of their sire. Its braincase shrunk, its brow beetling, falling backwards over the thin line that separated humans from beasts.
And pushing the Hyena back more and more with each step.
"Crucify the old man," it grunted out through a jaw overcrowded with fangs.
The Hyena's back foot slipped into the void-
-and Omondi woke up with a shuddering gasp.
There was nothing to impede him as he bolted upright in bed, for all the blankets were bundled around the still-sleeping form of his posthuman 'wife,' Hui-Ying.
His posthuman captor.
His posthuman enslaver.
She and her people had come out of the stars to subjugate his planet in the name of their God, slaughtering its defenders and almost burning its cities to the ground.
And Omondi had been part of the spoils.
Before the first shot had even been fired, Hui-Ying had marked him as 'her' share of the plunder, her chosen reward for a masterful infiltration job.
A far more visceral kind of 'mark' reannounced its presence on his shoulder as the last dregs of sleep fled from him - the dull ache of a love-bite left by short, sharp fangs.
Those same fangs peeked out from Hui-Ying's bulging jaws even now, her lips flapping as she lightly snored.
A face that had not evolved, but had been designed.
Designed to kill, to savage and maul other sapients when all other weapons had been exhausted.
Omondi's eyes drifted across the rest of her sleeping body. To the mark he'd left on her own skin a scant few hours ago, just barely visible between the sheets snuggled to her chin and the rainbow-dyed hair that now fell to her shoulders.
To the soft gleam of the mantis hairpin on her nightstand.
He wanted to hate her.
Wanted to want to fight back, to find whatever resistance was left hiding in the shadows, to do anything other than this acceptance of his personal occupier.
And he hated himself, because he didn't hate her.
Because he didn't want to fight back.
Because when the fighting was over, and the captives had been divided, he had willingly allowed himself to be married off to Hui-Ying.
Too scared to say no? Maybe. Happy that someone had finally wanted him after years of heart-crushing loneliness? Yes.
He hated himself for that too.
…traitor, Omondi's subconscious spat at him, flagellating what was left of his conscience with the word. Collaborator.
His eyes flashed with memories of nights past, of Hui-Ying giggling under him as he kissed her repeatedly, circumstances forgotten as he allowed himself to simply be happy for once.
The memories soon drowned under a tidal wave of self-loathing.
The sound of his captor grunting in her sleep cut his self-recrimination short, followed shortly by her eyes fluttering open as she squirmed beneath the covers, trying to alleviate some newfound discomfort.
Her eyes caught his, and the man frantically stuffed all his dissidence behind the mental Mask he wore while she was awake. The Mask of a different Omondi, an Omondi who was still sad about the occupation but was… happy with his marriage to Hui-Ying. An Omondi who was still skeptical about her God but was ever so slowly coming around to the concept.
It was getting easier to hide his thoughts behind the Mask these days.
"You're awake too?" Hui-Ying sleepily muttered before a yawn cut her off, lips peeling back over her too-long jaws to further bare her fangs.
"Bad dream," Omondi answered through the now-settled Mask.
"Your son must've felt it too," she said with another yawn, clumsily shucking her blankets aside-
-to reveal her heavily pregnant body.
Growing, undeniable proof of Omondi's treason.
Of his collaboration.
Of his submission to this particular invader.
Another wave of self-hatred threatened to unseat the Mask.
"He's kicking like crazy right now," the gene-modded woman spoke, seemingly oblivious to his inner turmoil as she sat up herself to lean against his side.
She was smaller than him, designed to fit more easily into transports and into armor.
Or in this case, so very neatly under his arm.
His own body was the one to betray him now, reward hormones chewing into his brain as her pregnancy-enhanced bosom ghosted along the side of his own chest - an entrancing point of softness on her otherwise combat-muscled body.
Wordlessly, Hui-Ying started to paw for one of his hands, softly inching it towards her womb.
Despite it all, Omondi didn't hate his son - only himself for being so weak. He… cared about this child. Wanted what was best for them. And the Mask…
…the Mask was allowed to be excited about fatherhood.
So he also allowed it to comply with the woman's gentle tugging, actively reaching for her abdomen to feel the palpable distortions within.
"He loves you," his wife said simply, nuzzling deeper into Omondi's shoulder.
By accident or yet another strange coincidence of her design, the length of her prognathic jaws put her fangs at his jugular.
Not biting. Not pulling or tearing or anything like that. Simply… there.
"I love him too," Omondi said at last.
He could feel her smile against his neck at that, her breath tickling the nerves there.
He liked it when she did that, despite everything.
"Just like I love you," the Mask suddenly added of its own accord, earning it a giggle and a 'proper' kiss from the girl.
A kiss that Omondi and the Mask both deepened at once, eager to at least ignore their troubles for a while.
And in the back of his mind…
…he heard the desperate scrabble of claws on wood, slipping closer to the edge.