Chapter 9: 9. A handy talk
The tongue just talked, with a human-like voice, but still containing a slight echo, an ethereal timbre that made it seem like a voice coming from the underworld.
'I mean, it's a tongue; why am I getting surprised?' A sort of twisted logic took place in Glenn's mind, as he looked absently at the hand.
"Hello? Did you hear my question or...?"
"Uh, yeah, I heard you."
The hand made a fist as if its favorite football team had just scored. The movement itself remained peculiar, with the hand being tugged along by those peculiar strips of flesh. Disgusting, fleshy sounds echoed in the weird room they were in. Glenn tried to glance at the source of the hand, but he could only see a squirming mass of darkness, the sight of the "body" taking a toll on his mind. He felt a sudden pang in his head and heard the equivalent of ten chalks screeching slowly against a chalkboard simultaneously.
The sudden pain made Glenn completely awake, clearing his mind from any of the sleepiness he had. He finally was back in control of his body and able to see correctly. That's also when it hit him how weird this discussion was.
The surroundings revealed themselves—a crimson chamber, where walls and floor were composed of living flesh, oozing with dense, thick blood. The room pulsated rhythmically, mirroring the cadence of the white crystal from earlier. Glenn's nose picked on the smell of the room – a thick smell of blood, even worse than how it was on the battlefield. He could almost taste the air, a metallic tang that made his stomach churn. He touched the ground with his hand, witnessing it in morbid curiosity slowly sinking into the fleshy floor.
"Am I inside the crystal?" Glenn inquired, his voice carrying a mix of curiosity and disbelief. He noticed that his voice was slightly distorted, giving off a strange feeling of distortion. A wave of uneasiness washed over him.
"Yep, well observed," the tongue responded, its words evoking an eerie blend of nonchalance and mockery.
'Wait, did I speak out loud?' Glenn pondered internally.
"Yep," the tongue affirmed.
'And it can read my thoughts?'
"Yep, again," the tongue confirmed, its tone a strange mixture of amusement and satisfaction.
"What the fuck is going on?" Glenn exclaimed, unable to contain his confusion anymore.
"That's the very question I wanted to pose. Are you able to read minds as well?" the tongue retorted with a touch of irony.
"Of course not! What exactly are you, and is this some kind of hell? Did I die?" Glenn's questions tumbled out in quick succession, driven by his confusion.
"Well, firstly, a little courtesy wouldn't hurt. You could have asked for my name. Secondly, critiquing someone else's home, no matter how strange it is, isn't the most polite approach," the tongue replied, maintaining a veneer of authority despite its surreal form.
Glenn took a breath, holding his glabella. He calmed himself down and decided to act as if it were a completely normal situation.
"Okay, so, uh, who are you?"
"Who's asking? I did not invite you here, did I?" the tongue countered.
"I'm Glenn. I guess my last name doesn't matter here anymore. Could you share your identity, please?"
"Finally, some manners," the tongue remarked, followed by a futile attempt by the hand to appear refined, an endeavor mired by its bloody appearance.
"My name is a bit too hard for the likes of humans to understand, so you can just address me as Diamanes."
"Okay, Diamanes, uh, can I ask what you may be?
"I'm a hand," Diamanes replied matter-of-factly.
Glenn found himself momentarily dumbfounded by the simplicity of this revelation, his curiosity pushing him to dig deeper.
"Oh, okay. And…? Any precisions on who's hand or...?"
"Nah. "the hand retorted, abruptly shifting a few centimeters away from Glenn's face.
The black tongue moved maliciously.
"It's your turn to answer my questions." Diamanes declared, his words ringing with an ominous weight.
In response, a sudden pressure bore down on Glenn's shoulders, the previously felt pain in his head returning with greater intensity. It was as if an ancient, forbidden horror was unleashed upon him, threatening the very base of his sanity.
Our protagonist gritted his teeth, determined to suppress any screams or the faintest hint of unconsciousness, struggling to maintain his balance on unsteady legs. When he compared it to how he felt getting eaten alive while being pierced by a spear, it was...way worse. But he didn't have a choice but to shut his mouth.
He knew he wouldn't get any second chances. Not with this demon.
"Hey, not too bad! See, that's why you can't be a human because if you were, you would have died just now!"
Suddenly, the pain that plagued him receded, disappearing swiftly, as if had never existed. The only traces left were in Glenn's mind, who felt even more terrified by this eerie creature.
Diamanes seemed excited to have proved his point, as it was shown with him pointing a dirty and crooked finger toward Glenn like an excited child seeing something new and showing it to his parents.
"Now, explain to me: what kind of abomination are you?" Diamanes posed the query, his tone slightly confused.
Glenn furrowed his brows, attempting to decipher the question."What do you mean, 'what am I?'"
"I mean it literally? Are you a fallen one? Or perhaps something altogether different—a sort of aberration?" The entity questioned.
Glenn showed a hesitant expression, not even understanding the choices that were proposed. A fallen one? An aberration? Where was the 'human' box so he could check it?
'Did getting Isekaied change something in me?' he wondered internally.
"Last I checked, I was human."
Diamanes froze, before cracking its fingers in a disturbing motion.
"Well, uh, it's just that humans are not supposed to be able to enter this place at all."
The hand caressed an imaginary chin, pondering this puzzling situation. In all of his centuries of existence, never had he met such...strange creature. Even less one that could stand proudly in front of him. Hmm...
"And I'm curious about something. What is this "Isekai" thing you just thought of?"
Oh shit.
Opening his mouth, he was suddenly silenced by a fleshy finger pushing on his lips. Glenn's eyes widened, unable to stop themselves from staring at the filthiness of the finger. It had a smell of rotten meat, as well as death. It was two very distinctive smells. He couldn't explain how, but he knew that there were those two, very different smells.
"Don't bother; I can just read your mind."
The hand stopped moving for a while, and flicked his fingers, exclaiming loudly.
"Oh, so you're a Fallen One?"
"I am?"
Glenn looked at Diamanes in disbelief. He didn't remember falling from anywhere; he was even very close to the ground when he woke up.
"Yeah, starting from now, you are. I'm too lazy to try and understand your circumstances, so it will be easier to just say that you're a Fallen One."
"And only Fallen Ones were supposed to be able to enter this place, so it's safe to say that you are one of them."
Hearing that, he figured that it might be better to not bother himself with what he was for now, and just act like he agreed with the demon. Trying to prove a point would bring anything good to him right now.
If he understood everything well, the people and monsters who fell from the Rift were called that, so maybe it would indeed be quite true to call himself that.
He still swore to himself that he would find the truth one day about what happened to him. Glenn wanted to understand what or who stole his peaceful life and threw him into this hell of a world, and why did he have to suffer what he went through.
"Sooo, what should I do with you? I feel like just killing you would be a waste, as you are a special kind of being."
Diamanes persisted in his contemplation, muttering unintelligible words and tracing circles in the air, all the while being pulled along by the flesh filaments, resembling a marionette doll in a macabre puppet spectacle.
Glenn might have laughed in incomprehension at the nonsensical spectacle if it weren't for the deep shock and horror he felt each time he remembered the pressure and pain the monster applied to him earlier.
Trying to pull himself together, Glenn attentively listened to the mutterings of the entity, but he could only understand some confusing bits and pieces. It didn't seem to make much sense, besides for a few words.
"Perhaps… It could work, since... Yeah, technically he could... "
The hand stopped his movements and slowly came back to Glenn, hovering above the ground. He stood at eye level, and the palm opened towards our protagonist's face, the mouth in it forming a sardonic rictus.
The tongue began talking with a suave tone. The young man got the distinctive sensation of a snake slipping around his body, slowly capturing him. But what could he do, anyway?
"I have a proposition for you."
Glenn looked at Diamanes, hoping he wouldn't have to sell his soul to survive this unfortunate encounter.
He couldn't help but notice the creature's mouth—an unsettlingly perfect set of teeth, an unnatural feature that left him uneasy. These teeth were the only things that appeared human and were so clean that they almost shone in the unnatural light of the fleshy chamber.
Diamanes smiled widely, taking the whole palm, and with a voice increasingly louder and less and less human-like, began proposing his deal:
"As you guessed, I am not an average existence, or "monster". I can give you power that you can't even imagine-"
"Wait, why would I want power? Why would I take such a shady deal?"
Glenn interrupted Diamanes's buildup, feeling like he had to clarify. With an embarrassed expression, he apologetically opened his arms.
"I just want to understand why I came into this world and figure out how to go back to my home!"
For the first time since the beginning of this encounter, Diamanes was dumbfounded.
'What kind of cojones does this guy have to interrupt me in my generous proposition?'
Sighing, he tried to put himself back in his mood and scratched a non-existent head.
"Alright, I'll change the deal. Don't say I didn't try!"
Glenn felt the pressure and pain from earlier come back once again, making him fall to his knees. This time he couldn't hold it back, and a scream of pain escaped his mouth.
"I'll give you two choices."
Holding his head in his hands, he could barely focus on what the demon was saying. A sound could be heard thumping in the background, with the same tempo as a heart, with the difference that with each beat, it got louder and faster. He could feel his heart racing, even missing a few tempos.
"Firstly, I could just kill you now, and it's over for you."
Screams and screeches began to resound in Glenn's ears, the cries of a thousand souls echoing in his head. Small rivers of blood started to escape every orifice on his face. The torture was unbearable. He began to think of his family, his mother and sister probably waiting for him on Earth. What... What did he do to deserve that?
"Secondly, you accept my deal, and I become a part of you."
Diamanes' voice was distorted, similar to a vinyl record that spun in random directions on a turntable. Glenn wondered if he would ever see his family again, whether he was going to survive this encounter or not, and what could he do to survive right now.
"I'll give you five full seconds to choose. How generous, right?"
The demon's mouth got wider and wider, encompassing Glenn's whole body. Saliva could be seen dripping in large amounts from the gigantic mouth. Even in this enlarged state, Diamanes maintained a wicked and avaricious grin.
Having even a hard time thinking, Glenn tried his best to open his mouth and answer, but the pain made him lose his grasp on reality. His consciousness was fading, and the last thing he could hear was the unidentified thumping sounds coupled with the demon counting down to zero.
His eyes closed, darkness seizing him. A last sound accompanied him, a malicious voice that exclaimed multiple times the same, mocking phrase, echoing in Glenn's mind.
"That's a deal!"
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone