The floor met him, smashing into his nose with a sickening crack and painting itself with the blood that followed. Only then did he wake up, and with a muted cry of pain. Orion grimaced and sat himself up with one hand, the other delicately, and not without some discomfort, clicking the cartilage back into place.
Once the divine anaesthetics had taken their effect, he stood up and drearily looked at the Tenno in front of him. The eye stared back.
A loathing filled him, something so indescribably destructive that even fear itself did not escape him. His hands trembled with the rage that radiated from his chest and out of his fingertips. His fingers dug into his palms, involuntary, and he soon heard the all too refreshing sound of his blood dripping onto the floor. He found himself drawing the sword from its holster and across his palm, bloodying its edge a dark red. It drank, and drank, with such a ravenous thirst, it shook him. Immediately, he snatched his hand away, shivering, and held it still, at the ready.
"Finally awake, hmm? Sweet dreams?" Oculus did not seem too interested in the answer, already beginning to pace by the wall and muttering to himself under cold breaths.
Orion did not bring himself to answer. He needed... release. His bloodied hands gripped the hilt tighter, yet he felt himself slipping.
"Come, let's walk." Oculus started to whistle as he turned on his heel, padding away into the darkened corridor.
Whatever held him back now left him. Orion leapt, crying out in rage, and landed with a heavy thud on the Tenno in front of him. Oculus turned in shock, mouth open in terror, but no scream came out. Orion plunged the broken sword into the Tenno's back and twisted, then ripping it out, spraying his lifeblood across the floor and walls like some sick work of art.
He attacked the neck next, carving deeper and deeper into the muscle tissue and eventually the bone, before slicing through completely. More blood, so much blood, gushed out onto the floor, filling the air with the all too familiar pungent smell of death. Decapitated, the body of Oculus twitched and shuddered weakly, before finally lying still.
Orion keeled over and groaned. He had killed. He expected this hunger, this yearning for slaughter, to cease. It never left him. He had murdered. But still, as he kneeled in a pool of his kin's blood, he felt a void inside. There was something wrong. Incomplete.
The body moved. It twitched and shuffled in momentary spasms under him, before a growth, putrid and infected, began to swell from the blood-caked stump of Oculus' neck. It crept along the aged stone floor, sprouting several fleshy appendages that inched their way to the messily severed head of Oculus. Orion jumped to his feet, sword still in hand, and backed himself into the wall. The growth had now joined with the head, and paled into the chalky colour of skin from diseased yellow and carmine red.
Bones snapped back into place, and the brutal wounds cut into his back sowed themselves shut, leaving naught but a scar. His legs bent themselves forward and stood up, as his spine straightened itself upright with a sickening crack. Orion could not help but shiver.
Its head turned, and stared straight into him. Orion froze. The mouth opened until the jawbone broke from the skull, and kept opening. The skin tore apart with inhuman fragility like the silken webs that lined the hallway.
"That... did not... hurt. You... cannot... hurt us." It spewed the words with the blood that trickled its mouth.
"What are you?" Orion's voice held, but only just. It knew.
"We... were... you." Was it sadness that rode on its vile tongue?
Oculus.
The Tenno has been infested. How horribly wasteful.
Quiet.
The time for mourning is not now, Ash. You must go. You are not safe.
I'm not running. His torment must end.
I have warned you.
Good. Now leave me alone.
No reply came. Orion stole a glance at the Pangolin sword resting on his leg. White, ethereal smoke poured from its edge. More than usual. There was something at play here.
"Become... us."
The voice changed. No longer did it wheeze with the worn rasps of the Oculus, but now purred with the insidiously playful voice of the Saryn.
Orion stifled a jutted breath when he turned round, coming to face whatever, or whoever, it was.
"How can you just leave us, Ash?" It mimicked her, making a wet, squelching noise with its newly carved fleshy mandibles.
It took a step forward. Orion took one back. One forward. One back. The wall met him again.
"We... need."
Wait...
"We?" Fearless he was, but the terror he felt was nothing he could have trained for. It was on a different level. Primal instinct, nothing more, nothing less.
It grinned at him. A hellish groan trembled from its chest, turning into a piercing shriek. Others answered it. Common sense overrode this unwelcome fear, and his legs took flight. He ran, and kept running, as the hallway filled with the lights of a million white eyes.