Chimera: The Descent

[shalls]

It's been a full month since I ate — My body was weak and I felt like I had little to no energy. In the last attempt to forage for food in the woods of Back O' Beyond, I was met with a horde of walkers swarming towards my way. I could still remember the smell of the saliva drooling from their rotten jaws as they rushed towards me. I thought it was the end of my life, until an adolescent in a black cloak emerged from the vegetation. She armed herself with an AR, which she produced from deep beneath her cloak, and proceeded to open fire at the walkers without a single shot missed.

As the dozens of walkers started to drop like flies, the unidentified teenager ran out of ammunition and unsheathed her sword. With it, she rushed towards the walkers at a seemingly godlike speed. As her blade clashed against the necks of the undead, I just laid there feeling nothing but a mix of awe and fear. What makes this being what it is? Are the tales real after all? Every sort of question came to raid my mind. Then, as the cloaked teenager finished off the last walker in the horde — she began to strut towards me. What I felt was a mix of gratitude and fear at the same time, but even then, if dying was the only way out from my suffering, then so be it.

"Aren't you thirsty, guy?" — She asked while knelt down to accommodate me. I was too weak to answer, I stuck with verbal language and simply nodded up at her. Immediately thereafter, she inflicted a cut on her wrist, right where her pulse is the strongest, and forced my mouth to open. I was forced to drink her blood, and at the time, my whole body was too starved to process the situation. With my thirst at its height, I chose to drink and relish the liquid, despite knowing it was somebody else's blood. I never knew that it'd change my life from then on.

Minutes after my system was exposed to the blood, my body began to convulse uncontrollably. I couldn't describe it perfectly — the feeling was very vague, but it's very easy to remember what the feeling was like. It resembled the after effects of a very good mushroom trip, mixed with a very high form of anxiety, and a hypochondriac's anxiety of losing oneself from a heart attack caused by the convulsions. I felt very hot and cold at the same time, almost like I caught a very bad flu, and the secretion of sweat all over my body became maximized to the fullest. The creature that gave me her blood to drink took a step back to become the audience, as if standing on guard to protect me as I underwent my transition.

After approximately half an hour of undergoing such a process that resembled a rollercoaster, serenity and calmness entered my mind. I began to feel relaxed, refreshed and my sweat began to clear. When the convulsions ended, it felt like a cigarette after a long day in the work shop, or the couch after standing for five hours straight. It was both a feeling of big relief and peace, as if I was content with my life. Her blood tasted like a drug that's nonexistent within this planet — a drug that I felt in need of my protection and exclusion. As if, I wanted every drop of it mine and for myself only.

From then on, the girl in the black cloak introduced herself to me. "Jacqueline, but my close peers call me Jackie." — She whispered. I answer her back with my name, and an eerie smile resonated from her. I was informed by her that I'm now under her wing, and that I've officially become a subject of the Void. Jacqueline promised me prosperity, good health and a life wherein I would never have to experience hunger or thirst ever again. She promised stability, order, peace and the complete nullification of conflict. To me, her promises sounded nothing but pieces of speech that I felt obligated to listen to — not because I felt owed to her for having saved my life, but more so because I feared what she was capable of.
— Journal, circa 2021