"I hate waking up but this is a whole 'nother level." Groaning to life from where he lay on the ground, Ester clutched his aching head with a dense dizziness webbed across his mind like a tapestry of pain.
Tasting the blood on his lips, Ester cracked his crusted over his eyes open to a veil of darkness pierced by nails made of light.
Ester grimaced as he peeled back his hand which pulled back sticky with what felt like blood.
*Sniff
It smelt like blood as well so it was probably blood.
"Feh" Spitting what tasted like industrial plastic buried underneath industrial waste onto the ground, what few rays of light surrounding him illuminated his circumstances.
The Driller was fucked, that much was clear.
Glass from computer screens littering the ground as large chunks of cave lodged itself into the vehicle, the metal ceiling and walls crumpled and warped underneath the weight as dust fell from above.
With the already low ceiling dipping all the more lower as something large bent it and sectioned off a significant portion of the driller, Ester barely had enough room to crouch his way forwards, and that's if he could find out what was pressing down on his legs
"Ugh." Grunting as he arduously turned to see what it was that was laying on his legs, Ester's eyes widened at the sight of an empty swivel chair warped by a number of fallen computers, trapping his legs in place.
'Eva.'
Finally realizing that the girl that he was holding in his arms before he fell unconscious was nowhere to be seen, Ester twisted his body around and shoved his hands in between the broken Swivel chair and the numerous fallen computers.
Grunting with exertion, the metal let out a squeal of protest before they gave way and tumbled onto the ground, allowing Ester to freely move his legs which he promptly removed from within the confines of the chair.
Releasing his hands and letting the computers pile onto the empty space where his legs were previously lodged and sparking in very short bursts, Ester grunted as he felt the cooling sensation in his legs.
In what little light he could use, he could see that a dark splotch covered his legs, both of them in fact in a numb web of muddled pain.
"Ouch" Flinching in pain as his mind finally realized that there was something wrong with his legs, Ester glanced downwards at his legs before shrugging it off and crawling forwards.
Pain was a familiar person to Ren here, especially since Pain made themselves known when he lost his arm.
So despite how much pain crooned at him from his twice mauled legs, Ester crawled forwards and slowly made his way to the doors through collections of clothes scattered everywhere after the Driller crashed.
Then he realized that the door was most probably warped by the falling rocks and rendered inoperable.
In the off chance that they were still operable, the last vision he had before everything went topsy turvy was them being buried underground, so those doors were not the best choice for escape.
'New goal then, while looking for Eva, find something to patch up my legs before I bleed to death.'
Already feeling light headed from the blood loss messing with his senses, Ester redirected himself from the door and slammed himself right into a wall.
*Thunk
"Ow"
Shaking his head which had suffered from blood loss, unconsciousness, possible head trauma and some definite but mild head trauma, Ester looked up and felt at whatever he had just thunked his head into before realizing what it was.
'Now how did you survive?'
Feeling over the Gravitator which somehow dislodged from its place and tumbled to where it now lay in front of him,.
Thankfully he had put in an absurd amount of protection glyphs into its ward otherwise his headache would be the least of his problems.
Mentally marking at the place where the Gravitator was so that he could pry it out later, Ester dragged himself forwards through dust, metal shards and empty Aether crystals before eventually making his way to the Engine room where Eva was most probably hiding.
With how small the place was and how non bloody it was, the chances of Eva's survival rose with each passing second his chances of survival lowered.
"I might be getting to woozy now cause I swear that door wasn't upside down." Rapidly shaking his head to rid himself of the sensation of weights pressing against his eyes, Ester stared at the doorway to the engine which hung from the ceiling...
'Which I now realize is actually the ground.'
Recalling how they had flipped over earlier before he woke up in empty darkness, Ester glanced back at the Gravitator, his mental map slowly scrawling over the place with familiarity.
'And if I'm remembering it right, then the place where the Gravitator is lodged in is where the ventilations systems are...'
Coughing into the ground, Ester wiped his sticky lips as he crawled backwards.
'You better repay me for this later Eva.'
---
As it turns out, being delirious from blood loss and being unable to use his legs wasn't doing him any favors when he was trying to pry the Gravitator out of the hole that it had found itself stuck in.
Especially when he observed the edges of the Gravitator and noticed how they were properly lodged into the vent hole.
Biting into the bandage and ripping it off, Ester spat out the chunk of brown fabric onto the ground as he clipped the bandage together with a sharp shard he picked up somewhere.
The blood loss was still making him delirious, but it would stay the way it was with this countermeasure put in place.
'Maybe...'
Still feeling the threat of his eyes closing, Ester had the premonition that the next time he closed his eyes for a long period of time, it was probably going to be the last time he ever closed them.
Biting his lip and realizing that he wasn't able to distinguish the taste of the new blood from the old, Ester settled for pinching his arm.
It had a small sobering effect but that was the extent of it.
'...Anyways, I should probably get to prying out the rest of the sheets before I die from blood loss.'
---
Having pried out a good amount of metal sheets to put a bar of metal underneath the Gravitator for leverage and after limply lying across the bar with the grace of a dead weasel, Ester finally removed the gravitator from the hole and was able to sneak into the ventilation systems
Mentally comparing his memories of this place and flipping it round to match the Drillers current situation, Ester's hand roamed across the darkness using what little light stabbed through the holes in the ceiling and felt around.
'Ah. This is our bed.'
Hand catching onto the thin mattress the thickness of his finger and feeling the blankets trapped underneath it, Ester frowned when she was nowhere to be felt.
It wasn't as if she slipped into a different dimension right? The Celestial Pressure was nowhere near the needed amount to form a rift in the Weave.
'Maybe the smog in the sky cleared up when the cave in happened?' Smirking at his own joke which was absurd no matter how he looked at it. How would the clouds in the sky clear up from something that happened on the ground?
'Seriously though Eva. Where are you?'
Crawling forwards and bumping into something in the dark, Ester reached out and groped at whatever it was that he had just bumped into, his hands coming in contact with a slick substance not to dissimilar to blood.
Feeling around the thing he collided against, he realized right as he reached the base.
'Ah.'
It was Eva.
Or a part of her.
Left hand moving to touch the broken limb, Ester let out a trembling sigh.
'That's at least a year of my life gone to waste.'
Picking up the broken limb while balancing on his other, Ester tested the weight of the broken leg in his hands before realizing that outside of being a bit dinged up after the tumble and leaking oil, it was basically fine.
Feeling around for the other leg and finding it soon after his hand brushed across his battery collection, Ester bitterly smiled at the thought of Eva thinking that the Battery collection was his one secret when in fact it was the set of legs hidden behind it.
'...' Feeling around for the rest of the ventilation systems and calling out for Eva before receiving no answer, Ester let out a hollow laugh.
"For fucks sake, where are you?"
---
Climbing out of the ventilation system and grimacing as his legs screamed out their protest of being used as support, Ester collapsed onto the floor/ ceiling thing without a care left in the world.
"Everything hurts kek."
Laughing to himself as his eyes continued to drag themselves closer and closer to oblivion, Ester grimaced as the pain in his thighs intensified, shutting the doors to his eternal sleep.
"..." Staring up at the broken ceiling with his back against the floor, Ester let out another hollow laugh with whatever logic his blood hungry brain could muster. "Where the Void did you disappear off to Eva?"
Pinching his arm and realizing that it wasn't as effective as before, Ester shifted his mind to the Goal he had made ever since the old man bit the gun and shot it into his skull.
"Was it really such an impossible dream Architects? To want to escape this damned trash planet that I was born on?"
Voicing his question into the weave, when no reply came back his way, Ester let out a sigh as if he had expected it.
The Architects would never cast their gaze to such a dirty place after all, nevertheless for some dirty raccoon scavenging whatever they could get their hands on in the mountains of trash.
Void below, they probably never even noticed the raccoon trying to do the impossible and so whatever just happened to him was nothing more than a set of very unfortunate events out of his control.
"...Void stones I might be going insane."
Letting out a slightly crazed laugh, Ester thought he saw Eva's silhouette hanging above him but dismissed it as nothing more than the lack of blood speaking to him
And if he was imagining it right, Eva was currently cursing him out soundlessly with a chunk of metal piercing her throat in a way that should've been fatal.
"So that's how you died? A rod of metal through your throat? I knew you would die from your mouth someday" A harsh laugh ripped through Ester as he laughed at his own joke, the weights pressed heavier against his eyes, his imagination flailing in the air above him.
Seeing Eva shake with rage as she hung above him with tear filled grey eyes and a pair of middle fingers, he chuckled, raising his hand up without any expectations of touching her.
"Fuck you to."
Then she reached downwards and slapped his hand causing a subtle jolt of pain to reach his addled brain.
"..."
[...]
The heavy haze that hung low in his brain was replaced as swiftly as a snap of a finger as Ester hurriedly got up. "OH SHIT!"
---
Letting Eva down from where she hung atop a bundle of wires previously meant to connect the Gravitator before it detached, he ignored the piercing sensations in his legs as he grabbed her hands and pulled her down into a hug.
[!!!]
Hurriedly tapping his back in an attempt to get him to let go, despite how much blood he had lost, Ester still had the presence of mind to release her and look at her worriedly
"Are you okay!?"
[...]
Sarcastically rolling her eyes, she gestured at her neck where a rod of metal ran through it alongside the number of small cuts littering her body.
"Right, I should probably deal with that first."
Raising her neck with his hands, Ester's eyes took in what little light reflected off of her pale body and revealed to him the extent of the damage done to her neck.
"Architects above you were lucky." Muttering underneath his breath, Ester traced the path where the rod took before elaborating. "If the rod entered your neck a bit farther back, you would be paralyzed from the neck down."
He looked at it from a different angle and caught sight of Eva's eyes and grinned at her. "Thankfully, it only took your annoying as void voice."
[...]
"Ow."
Rubbing the place where she had slapped him, Ester tapped at the rod causing Eva to flinch from the ringing sensation rubbing at extremely sensitive places.
Most notably, those places included portions of her spine and throat.
Having observed all those little details from the flinch Eva gave him, Ester let out a sigh and collapsed onto his ass. "You're going to have to deal with the rod breaking apart your neck for now though."
Looking at him questioningly, he gestured to the section of ceiling that had bent downwards and cut off access to the Workbench.
"I got no tools with me, so unless you want to die from lack of oxygen reaching the brain, be my guest."
The weights that had previously disappeared returned with a vengeance.
Woozily shaking his head, Ester spoke to Eva.
"Anyways... I think I'm going to take a nap."
Closing his eyes, Ester barely caught the sensation of his head falling onto Eva's non existent chest as darkness claimed him.
+++
I swear. I get into a flow state near the end of the deadline and when I lose it it's already pass the Deadline and I have to schedule it for tomorrow
Tree