The Kryptonian Tomb (Animated) – Peril – Originally posted from ReinvoVodi on DeviantArt
There is no sun here. There is no sky, no wind, no sound of National City bustling far below. There is only the weight.
I don’t know how long I’ve been awake, or how long I was unconscious before the agonizing burn in my veins finally dragged me back to the surface of my own mind. Time doesn’t exist in this nightmare. There is only the sickening, rhythmic pulsing of the pod around me, and the suffocating pressure of the earth.
I am buried. Submerged up to my neck in a thick, viscous black mud that smells of ozone and rotting copper. It’s heavy—heavier than anything I’ve ever felt on Earth. It presses against my chest with a crushing, unrelenting force, making every shallow breath a desperate battle. But the mud isn’t the worst part. It’s what’s in the mud.
It’s laced with it. The ambient, sickly green glow catches the jagged edges of raw Kryptonite crystals embedded in the sludgy walls of my prison. The radiation surrounds me, soaking into my skin, seeping into my pores. It has stripped me of everything. I am not Supergirl here. I am not the Girl of Steel. I am just Kara, and for the first time since I was a child watching Krypton burn, I feel entirely, horrifyingly fragile. My invulnerability is gone, replaced by a raw, hypersensitive weakness. Every scrape of debris in the mud feels like ground glass against my flesh.
And I cannot move.
Thick, fleshy tentacles—the purplish color of bruised veins and raw, wet muscle—snake through the heavy sludge, wrapping me in a relentless, living straightjacket. They are thick as tree trunks, warm and pulsing with some foul, alien heartbeat. One is coiled securely around my left ankle, another anchoring my right thigh. I can feel them crisscrossing over my abdomen, pulling taut against my ribs, sinking deep into the mud to anchor my torso in place. My arms are pinned violently against my sides, the alien vines wrapped so tightly around my biceps and wrists that my fingers have gone numb.
Even without the Kryptonite stripping my cells of their stored solar energy, I wouldn’t be able to move an inch. The restraints are absolute, designed to lock every joint and immobilize every limb. But combined with the relentless radiation sickness, my own body feels like it weighs a thousand pounds. Between the crushing alien vines and the paralyzing green glow, I am rendered entirely inert. I can’t even twitch a finger in defiance.
But the most violating restraints don’t stop at my limbs. They have completely claimed my face.
Thick coils of the purplish vine wrap tightly across the upper half of my head, pressing down over my eyelids to form a living, squirming blindfold. I can’t even open my eyes; I am trapped in the suffocating darkness of my own skull, left only with the sensations of the horror around me. And the most sickening part of my prison is anchored directly into my nose.
Two thinner, worm-like tendrils—slick with dark, acidic mucus—are plugged deep into both of my nostrils. I can feel them snaking high up into my sinus cavities, a constant, invasive pressure that stretches the cartilage of my nose and makes the center of my face throb with a dull, persistent ache. They leak a thick, blackish slime that constantly drips down onto my upper lip. They squirm slightly with every ragged breath I take, their rough, fleshy texture scraping against my delicate internal tissues. Every inhalation has to be forcibly dragged around their pulsing mass, pulling the nauseating, metallic stench of the Kryptonite mud directly into my brain. The sensation of a foreign, living organism residing inside my head is maddening; it triggers a constant, desperate urge to sneeze, to thrash, to claw at my own face to rip them out. But I am paralyzed. I just have to lie here, entirely robbing me of the last shred of my bodily autonomy.
Whenever I try to struggle, whenever I try to summon even a fraction of the strength that used to let me lift tectonic plates, the tentacles react. They flex and constrict, squeezing the remaining air from my lungs like an anaconda, while the tendrils in my nose swell thickly, reminding me that I belong to them now.
But the physical restraint is nothing compared to the daily terror.
I can hear it before it happens. A wet, tearing, squelching sound from the darkness above my head. The cycle is beginning again.
My heart hammers a frantic, pathetic rhythm against my ribs. No. Please, not again. Rao, please. The tentacles around my throat tighten, forcing my head back, tilting my chin up toward the sickly emerald light bleeding through my fleshy blindfold.
Another appendage drops from the ceiling of the pod. It hovers just above my face, dropping vile, black sludge onto my mud-caked cheeks. My jaw is forced open. I try to thrash, try to turn my head, but the bindings around my skull and throat lock me completely in place. I am entirely at its mercy.
Then, the tentacle descends, pushing aggressively past my lips.
It is carrying them. The eggs. But this time, it’s different. The cluster is heavier, bulging impossibly wide. A wet, tearing noise fills my ears as the fleshy tip of the tentacle splits open like a gaping maw, revealing dozens of perfectly spherical, neon-green orbs. They are shoved violently against my teeth.
The appendage forces the massive cluster into my mouth, packing the glowing Kryptonite eggs so tightly against my cheeks that my jaw pops in protest. A pathetic, muffled groan—half-sob, half-scream—escapes me. The thick black mud from the pod drips off my chin as I am forced to accommodate the massive intrusion. The taste is indescribable—bitter, chalky ash mixed with battery acid. It burns the roof of my mouth, searing my throat as the tentacle pushes deeper, ruthlessly squelching the oversized, pulsating mass down my esophagus.
I gag violently, “Ahhhhh—guh!”, my throat muscles spasming, naturally trying to reject the impossible volume. The alien flora senses my physical resistance. The tentacle inside my mouth twitches, making a wet, sickening, churning noise against my tongue, and immediately, the vines already coiled around my neck tighten in irritated response. They choke me, crushing my windpipe with an angry, punishing flex. At the exact same moment, the tendrils plugged into my nostrils gorge themselves with fluid, expanding to completely block off my nasal passages. My air supply is entirely, completely severed.
Panic surges through my oxygen-starved brain as I suffocate on the glowing sludge. I’m already this weakened, I scream in my own mind, my muffled chokes vibrating uselessly against the thick vines. What more do you want from me? My body betrays me. Swallow, my survival instinct demands, desperate simply to clear the airway. Swallow or die right here. I swallow.
The moment the massive cluster of eggs hits my stomach, the real agony begins. It’s an explosion of liquid fire radiating outward from my core. The concentrated Kryptonite begins to digest, flooding my system with a lethal dose of radiation from the inside out. My blood feels like it’s boiling. My muscles spasm violently against the unyielding vines. A silent scream tears at my throat, but I can’t voice it, choking on the remaining bile and sludgy mud.
The tentacle slowly retracts from my mouth with a final, wet drag against my lips. The vines around my neck loosen a fraction, and the tendrils in my nose slightly deflate, allowing me to take in a ragged, sobbing, whistling breath through my congested sinuses, leaving me trembling and utterly broken.
The green glow in the pod seems to pulse in time with my failing heartbeat. The heavy mud feels colder now, dragging my body temperature down as the overwhelming amount of Kryptonite ravages my cells. I am so tired. The pain is a localized inferno inside my stomach, radiating through my abdomen and chest, rendering me too weak to even keep my mind focused.
I hang there in the dark, suspended in the muck, wrapped in the purplish alien coils. I try to picture Alex’s face. I try to remember the warmth of the yellow sun on my skin. But the memories are fading, washed out by the pain and the suffocating dark. I am a battery being drained to absolute zero, kept alive only to feed this alien ecosystem.
And tomorrow, the tentacle will descend again.
https://www.deviantart.com/reinvovodi/art/The-Kryptonian-Tomb-Animated-1315283568
