1 - Birth by Glass

The War of Fog is over. Now the true period of strife begins.  

The world's great heroes have slaughtered one another for the ideals of their countries. Amidst the post-war struggle for survival, a towering figure emerges from the Exclusion Zone. She wanders the countryside, exterminating monsters for any payment to be found, evoking the wandering monster-killers from fairy-tales of old.  

A forgotten monster, seeking to bring light to a world gone dark.

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Floating in cold, wet nothingness. Unable to feel, unable to think.

Then came a vibration, a sound that roused her into consciousness. 

Glass cracking. Crack. Crack. Snap.

A viscous flood, ripping her half-conscious self into the reality of a shard-covered marble floor.

The pain of impact jolted her into awareness, and she began coughing violently to clear her lungs. Emerald-green liquid still dripping from her nose and mouth, she instinctively reached for one of the narrower glass shards.

“So cold… So hungry...” she thought as she struggled to stand. Bundles of sodden brown hair reached down to her knees, slithering across her bare skin like the tendrils of some abyssal monstrosity. She took her first real breaths, strands of silvery fog escaping with each exhalation. 

The sound of bare feet on marble echoed as she began walking, taking in her surroundings, leaving dry spots in the emerald liquid wherever she stepped. Her mind flooded with the feeling of recognition, and yet she didn’t know what she was looking at or where she was. There were dozens of glass tanks up against the wall, identical to hers, with copper pipes snaking from their bases into the floor. Most of them were broken, with tumorous masses of flesh and bone lying before them. The right wall of the chamber was a towering mess of metal pipes, valves and dials, snaking into the floor and ceiling both.

Although she felt curiosity, something in the very back of her mind told her to get out of here, that this place was doomed. Only… There was nothing more than a solid wall, lined with bizarre machinery to her right. She saw a doorway on the far end of the chamber to her left, though it was barely a speck from this far away. “No choice, I guess,” she thought and began walking down the length of the room, taking care not to step on a shard of glass.

Her gaze darted all around as she made her way toward the doorway, a palpable tension ever-present and intensifying with every step she took towards the exit. Gleams of pale-white light reflected off the polished floor and the shards that lay upon it, yet strangely, the emerald liquid that once filled the tubes gave no reflection. Even more up-close, the lumps of flesh that lay in front of the tanks were completely indistinguishable - giant teratomas by any other name. Some had visible eyes and mouths, or even entire limbs sticking out of the main mass. The urge to break into a sprint had become almost overwhelming, but she kept herself calm by counting the tanks as she passed them. 

“Thirty-four. Thirty-five. Thirty s-”

Squelch. A tumor-thing had used its sole arm to move itself into her path and grab her calf, squeezing with its seven distended, nailless fingers. Its eleven eyes converged to stare at what it had grabbed, moving up her form with a leery gaze while a pair of toothy mouths turned to perverse grins. At that moment, she knew what she’d need the shank for.