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Lucien had known that the process of becoming Cognouza Incarnate would not be entirely painless. He had learned the hard lesson that nothing worth anything ever comes without a cost back in the Orders, and now, he’s more than familiar with shedding his very life’s essence for a bit of power, for a bit of control.
But fucking hells, this transformation process really does bloody hurt.
It doesn’t help that he’s still recovering from a rather brutal battle against the Mighty Nein: while he had visibly surprised and viciously shaken the party with his Neo-Somnovem form, they had also managed to wear him down over time with their coordinated efforts. Finally, hurt and impatient, he had been pushed—he refuses to call it a retreat, much less a forced one—to accelerate his plans, and now, he lies in wait within the fleshy cocoon that will metamorphize him into his final, ultimate form.
Lucien Tavelle has felt like a caterpillar his whole life, anticipating with bated breath when it would be his turn to transform and be able to live up to his full, fated potential. Today, it’s finally time to burst into life as a butterfly, with wings so bright they’ll blind the world.
He can feel them just beneath the fragile barrier of skin on his back, bony blades ready to emerge from between his own shoulder blades. As he senses the thin skin splitting, he knows inherently that his wings will spread so wide and take him so high that he will finally be able to rise above and beyond all of those who have attempted to grind him into the dirt and dust. From his own damn parents to all of Shadycreek Run to the Claret Orders to Aldreda to Vess DeRogna to the Mighty Nein to the Somnovem themselves, there have been many people who have wished to see him fall, to serve the final blow to his already bleeding body. But he’s going to show them. He’s going to show them all that he has always been higher than them.
To any weaker soul, the unnatural cracking and squelching noises would have been concerning. To anyone less used to pain, the agony of each bone stretching and each muscle contorting and each inch of skin joining with the living city around him would have been unbearable. To anyone besides Lucien, the invasion of thousands of ancient minds pressing in on his own would have driven them past the point of madness. But the sensations only take him higher. Higher and higher until he can no longer see the ground below. Higher and higher and higher until the dreams living inside his brain for so long finally surround his body.
The cocoon bursts just as he feels the Mighty Nein enter the Aether Crux. It’s a novel sensation: he can feel their feet move across the ground as if they’re walking across the surface of his own skin. He can feel the red eyes on their bodies like the other end of strings attached to his hands, ready to be pulled with a twitch of his fingers.
His horns rise out of the broken cocoon first. He can see the Nein now with his own eyes, but he doesn’t need this pair of red eyes to observe them anymore. Just as his shoulders crest into view, his wings fling outwards and expand to their full height. Six sharp, clawed ends between the pair, featherless and flesh-covered and—to anyone who beholds them—fucking terrifying.
It should hurt. His body has stretched beyond the normal limits of a mortal body. He is taller, wider, larger. His wings have broken through every layer of flesh between his ribcage and his skin. He can feel the organic conglomerate of Cognouza twisting around his legs, engulfing his lower body until he can no longer separate himself from it. With the multitude of screams echoing through the back of his mind, his horn-adorned skull taking the brunt behind the full force of The Pattern exposed, his thoughts should have shattered like red-stained glass.
It should really fucking hurt. But Lucien is above pain now. And soon, everything on Exandria will be above pain just like him.
The only thing left to do is stomp out the group of little mortals that crawl below his boots and over his skin like so many ants—
Ants… worms… insects… dirt… he can’t breathe… he’s underground… there’s dirt all around him… underneath his fingernails… in his mouth… suffocating him… he can’t breathe… he can’t breathe he can’t breathe he can’t fucking breathe—
The memories assault Lucien’s mind from within, providing a (painful) reminder that, no matter how much his physical (and mortal) body has changed, he is not yet quite above death.