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CodyLabs — Council of Nightmares
#alien #fanart #fanfiction #monster #mystery #oracle #scifi #shapeshifter #shiftingsands #spaceship #ufo #gravityfalls #dipperpines #wendycorduroy #billcipher
Published: 2018-11-02 07:39:05 +0000 UTC; Views: 4868; Favourites: 87; Downloads: 0
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Shifting Sands: Chapter 4<= Prev | Next =>
Author's Note:
This was the first time I've ever drawn Bill Cipher. Partially because he's just such a boring character to draw, and partially because everybody seems to like to draw him. So this, the first and possibly last time I ever draw him, I wanted to do it RIGHT. Wanted to make him good and eldritch and scary and take up half a friggin page. And I like how it turned out. So yeah. Also he TALKS AND THINKS IN ALL CAPS. WHICH IS CANON, BY THE WAY.
Long ago, before they imprisoned ███████, before these creatures had ever arrived on her world, while she was still with him, something had happened. She never had a way to know before, but now she realized:
She was pregnant.
The scientists hadn’t noticed it yet, but it was only a matter of time. They’d been watching her closely ever since she’d killed Dr. &R/\BJ, and there was no chance the child could escape their scrutiny for long. She could feel the egg growing inside her, taking up space, taking up nutrients, and more of both with every passing day. Soon they would notice. And when she gave birth, then they would do something about it… Take it, kill it, clone it…
She couldn’t let that happen. She had to do something…
Perhaps if she could get out of the tube, she could pass the egg early, and somehow get it inside one of the scientists; then the child could complete the rest of its development away from their testing, then eat him from the inside, and then… No, no, that wouldn’t work. Soon as it burst out, they would just quarantine and take it…
She could begin shapeshifting so rapidly and so frequently that they couldn’t track or detect its growth… No, she’d still have to give birth eventually, and then they’d take it…
No.
No, this is no place to have a child.
So she morphed and slimmed the umbilical link she shared with the child, to limit its nutrients and oxygen. With its growth stunted, her child’s only method of survival was to instinctively form a hardened shell, and go into a state of deep dormancy.
One day, she would break down the shell and allow it to grow again. But not now. Not soon.
For now, her baby would fight for its life, just as she was.
They would survive.
“███████ wake up!” She awoke in the middle of the night to see Dr. cl;**4 rushing into the lab, his breath coming fast and ragged, and a wild smile on his young face. “It’s time, ███████! It’s really time!”
“What? What’s happening?” She sat up.
“A mutiny!” He explained. “A mutiny! It’s finally happening, we’re finally doing it!”
“Really?!?”
“Yes! The metalheads organized it; they’re going to saw through the bulkheads to the bridge, the mice are going to disable the power systems, and it looks like we’ll actually be able to get control from the Captain! ███████, you’re gonna be going home!”
“T-that’s great! What do you need me to do?”
“Uh… Okay.” Dr. cl;**4 reached into his coat and produced an ID card. “Do you think you can mimic Dr. Zlfo]n’s voice and tentacleprints well enough to fool a computer?”
She took on the head scientist’s form, and showed him the patterns on the limbs.
“Wow… Okay, great! Awesome!” Now cl;**4 fished around his lab coat for the key to her containment tube. “There’s a chance that the command crew could improvise the life support systems into a defensive weapon; increasing or decreasing the air temperature and pressure, pumping in toxic gases, forming violent vortices, that sort of thing. But Dr. Zlfo]n has authorization to access the life support controls in sector 18. So it would really help us if you went in there and locked down all the air-handling systems on the ship. Would you do that? I’ll be there to walk you through it…”
“I can do that!”
“Thanks so much, ███████!” He opened the tube.
She killed him.
Then she drug the body with her out of the lab. When she found a quiet place, she cut open his body to examine the muscles and bones and nerves, see how the tentacles were structured and how the ligaments lay with the bones. In short order, she memorized and mimicked these same designs in her own body, so that any future attempts at mimicry would have flawless accuracy. Now that cl;**4’s body had exhausted its usefulness, she sealed it in an airtight storage locker, so that nobody would ever discover what happened to him.
And then, while the mutiny filled the ship with chaos and confusion around her, she began to explore. She traveled the length, breadth, and circumference of the ship, learning the way the engines were laid out, the location of crucial components, the positions of passenger dorms, testing sectors, cargo bays, the routes through and hiding spaces within the network of life support tubes that linked everything… She learned many things.
However, after an hour or so, the sounds of fighting died down and security drones returned to their normal patrols, indicating that the mutiny had been successfully quelled. She returned to her tube as well, locked it shut and destroyed the key, so that there was no evidence that anything ever happened.
In the morning, the tired and weary scientists continued about their ordinary work in a defeated way. Nobody mentioned the mutiny, nobody brought up new plans, nobody stepped out of line once. And nobody asked where cl;**4 was. They must all think that he’d been killed in the fighting, which was just as well, really.
As for her, she’d learned everything her plans required.
Now all she had to do was wait for the prophet’s vision to come true. Once the ship crashed, her designs would come to fruition.
And until then, she and her child would survive.
The months stretched on into years.
Elsewhere in the ship, she sensed tensions rising even further. The mutiny had been broken, but its causes had not. She heard the men speak more and more often of strange nightmares and visions. She watched the scientists lose their tempers and yell at each other over small matters. And sometimes, away down the halls, she heard voices crying out in insane, mad rants. Prophecies they sounded like, prophecies of warning and doom and damnation, like they’d all become prophets themselves in these dark days.
The people around her were getting crazy. And as she paced her tube for the thousandth time, she felt herself joining them, ever so slowly. She played little games with herself now, where she fought imaginary enemies, and sought to outwit them and kill them and devour them. The enemies she imagined for herself were always terrible and deadly, yet she always found a way to win…
This madness– She was imprisoned, even within her cage, imprisoned by the walls of her own mind and sanity, the walls that kept her imagination inside her head, kept insisting on the impossibility of her thoughts and dreams and ideas, limiting her mind and stealing her hope… Late one night, her last thought before sleep was a powerful, burning desire to be free of this prison.
And then, in her dreams, something else entirely appeared.
“WELL HEY THERE, HOURGLASS! WHAT’S NEW WITH YOU? ROUGH LIFE, AM I RIGHT?”
She frowned up at her new visitor. She’d seen many strange creatures before, but nothing at all like this… This was a level beyond and contrary to anything she’d ever imagined. Something different, something illogical, something far, far worse. Something from beyond. “…Who are you?” She asked the visitor.
“WHO, ME? WHY I’M A TALENT SCOUT!”
“…For who?” She frowned.
“FOR ME!”
She thought about that for a moment. “…And what do you want?”
“AHH HAHAHAHAHA I’LL GET RIGHT TO THE POINT THEN! THING IS LADY, I’VE BEEN PUTTING TOGETHER A GANG OF FREAKS AND KILLERS, OUTCASTS FROM ALL THE LANDS OF REALITY, AND WE’RE FIXING TO SET UP A UNIVERSE OF OUR OWN! UNLIMITED POWER, GODLIKE STATUS, THE SHATTERING OF MORTAL SHACKLES, THAT SORT OF THING! IT’S A PARTY TO END ALL PARTIES, ALMOST A BILLION YEARS PROPHECIED! I SAW YOU IN HERE, AND THOUGHT I’D MOSEY ON OVER AND ASK IF YOU’D LIKE TO GET IN ON THE ACTION? YOU’D FIT RIGHT IN, I SWEAR!”
“I see.” She nodded slowly. “…Why me?”
“WHY NOT? HAVE YOU SEEN THE REST OF THE CREW? THOSE SECULAR DULLARDS COULDN’T FIND THEIR CLOACA WITH BOTH TENTILLUM! THEIR LITTLE MINDS COULDN’T HANDLE THREE MINUTES OF THE PARTY I HAVE PLANNED! BUT YOU… YOU’RE A SPECIAL CASE, AIN’T YA, HOURGLASS? IN THE TIME I’VE WATCHED YOU, YOU’VE KILLED EIGHT PEOPLE, HALF-STRANGLED YOUR OWN UNBORN BABY, AND NEVER ONCE TOLD THE TRUTH TO ANYONE! THAT’S THE KINDA BAGGAGE I’M LOOKING FOR IN A BUSINESS PARTNER!”
“Oh…?” He seemed to know quite a lot about her; more than she’d like. So she went along. “And what would a ‘partnership’ involve…?”
“OH, NOT MUCH, AT LEAST FOR NOW! THE QUESTION YOU SHOULD BE ASKING IS WHAT I CAN DO FOR YOU!”
“…And what can you do for me?”
“GIVE YOU FREEDOM!”
“I’ll get out of this tube regardless. I have plans.”
“AND HOW LONG WILL YOURS TAKE? SOONER OR LATER THEY’RE GONNA NOTICE YOUR LITTLE ‘SURPRISE’, AND WHAT’S TO STOP THEM FROM EUTHANIZING ONE OR BOTH OF YOU AT THE FIRST SIGN OF TROUBLE? BUT ME? I’M THE ONE PULLING STRINGS AROUND HERE, GORGEOUS. I COULD KEEP YOU SAFE.”
“What do you want from me in return?”
“HEYHEYHEY I WASN’T THROUGH WITH MY HALF YET! FREEDOM FROM THIS TUBE IS ONLY THE FIRST STEP! THE REST INVOLVES FREEDOM FROM YOUR OWN LINEAR DESTINY! FREEDOM FROM FINITY! FREEDOM FROM SANITY AND LOGIC ITSELF! IMAGINE SINGULAR POWER TO SHAPE AND FOLD A FACTORIAL NUMBER OF DIMENSIONS! INFLUENCE OVER TIME, AND THE POWER TO MAKE ANYONE WHO EVER WRONGED YOU SUFFER FOR ETERNITY! ALL AT THE SNAP OF A FINGER!”
“That’s what you want to do for me?”
“I DON’T THINK I STUTTERED PRINCESS! I’M OFFERING YOU GODDESSHOOD ON A PLATTER, AND ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS PROMISE ME ONE ITTY-BITTY FAVOR! HOW’S IT SOUND?”
The being extended his hand. It sparkled with cold flame.
“…Are you hitting on me?”
“THAT WOULD BE A HOOT, WOULDN’T IT!”
She considered this for a moment, then extended her own hand. “Very well.” She agreed. “Ensure the safety of me and my child, and then give me the power of a god. In return, I promise to be your ally for eternity, and do anything you ask.”
“IT’S A DEAL!!!”
But just before the deal was sealed, the being snatched his hand away. The cold fire extinguished, and he floated off, as his eye probed her carefully and slowly.
“YOU KNOW WHAT LADY? DEAL’S OFF! I CAN TELL WHEN I’M BEING LIED TO.”
“Hmm?”
“TIME GETS AWAY FROM YOU, HOURGLASS! ENJOY THE CRASH!”
And she woke up.
What an odd dream.
Later that day, it finally happened: they discovered her child. They didn’t kill it, or take it, or harm it, but they ran their tests, and they gave into paranoid ramblings as they spent the rest of the day yelling at each other.
And she realized that sanity wasn’t a prison. Sanity was a fortress. Sanity was the strength she needed to stand on her own, and their madness was a wallowing pit of weakness which she regarded from a higher ground. Sanity was another step on the road she took to goddesshood in her own insidious way. She didn’t need to hoodwink some eldritch horror. She was indestructible. She was strong. She was ███████. She needed no one else.
Life goes on. Survival goes on. And they would do it alone.
“███████, you asked for me?”
“Oracle, there is a being here. A being in my dreams. Do you know of what I speak?”
The oracle’s eyes darkened. “I do.”
“What do you know of it?”
The oracle hesitated. And when she spoke, it was with a haunting, slow tone of voice. “Sixty degrees that come in threes. Watches from within birch trees. Saw his own dimension burn, misses home and can’t return. Says he’s happy, he’s a liar; blame the arson for the fire. If he wants to shirk the blame, he’ll have to invoke its name. One way to absolve his crime, a different form, a different time…”
The lyric hung in the air, when for a moment it seemed as if all the crazy echoing sounds in the ship grew still and quiet to listen. ███████ considered the words, then smiled and asked rhetorically. “Is there anything more charming than an inscrutable mystery?”
To which the oracle answered with a gentle smile, her voice once again casual. “There is not.”
She chuckled, and crossed her arms. “…Will this… Being… Be the cause of the ship’s destruction?”
“Not the cause, but I do not doubt he plays a part in its instigation…” The oracle shrugged. “We have entered his territory. He has been given a certain power over us.”
“A power which can be broken by sanity.” ███████ pointed out.
“A power which feeds on insanity.” The oracle corrected her. “But may only be broken by prayer. You are more defenseless than you know…” The oracle turned to exit the lab, but turned and spoke over her shoulder before she crossed the threshold. “It is not too late for the Captain to turn back. And it is not too late for you.”
“…Why should I believe you?” She blurted. “God would surely not be stupid enough to trust me with something as dangerous as truth.”
“He loves you too much to offer you less. You have only to bow and be healed.”
“I shall never bow.”
“And I am stupid enough to hope.”
And the oracle left.
“I shall not bow.” She solemnly promised herself again, in the silence that followed her absence. “I shall survive.”
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Comments: 4
Haha Bill is an amazing character! I love how much detail you put into it, all the arms give off a super creepy vibe
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Thank you kindly! Yeah, I may not like Bill as much as some of the others, but he's as creepy as all of them put together, so I tried to do him justice. Glad you like it!
👍: 0 ⏩: 0