Dead Space: Awakening

Isaac looked around to find himself in a vast, white space. Around him, millions upon millions of different creatures stared at him. Beyond his line of sight, billions more were cheering his name. The one thing he felt at that point in time, was pure solace.

Then, something spoke.

"Thank you, Isaac."

The Engineer looked before him to see the familiar form of the crystal tree from the Marker's cave before him. It emitted a powerful aura, almost beaming with the sheer force of life itself. Powers of unknown magnitudes warped around it as all of this space's dimensions seemed to hone in on it alone.

"Wha... what's going on?" Isaac managed, feeling almost alien hearing himself speak.

"Simple, our dear engineer."

Isaac tried to turn his field of vision around to see where the voice had come from, but could move before the serpentine form of Discord appeared before him.

"I see you're doing much better now," he said with a genuine smile.

The Engineer tried to form some kind of sentence, but only managed to make small sounds.

"I know, you're exhausted. Well, I suppose I need to catch you up a bit with what all," Discord waved his appendages around, "that was, what this is, and what will be."

A snap echoed through the fabric of reality itself as Isaac felt himself being pulled through several barriers that no mortal should have any thought of crossing. Around him, the scenery changed to that of a dark tomb. The entire space filled with a multitude of lights before a soft red light blinked from within the center coffin.

"I... Isaac?"

Isaac focused on the yellow form of Fluttershy instantly.

"Fl-Flutter... shy?" his own voice echoed from the tomb.

The pegasus shot towards the tomb and began to strike at the top layer. Fluttershy's hooves began to grind against the stoney surface of the ground as she tried to move the heavy cover of Isaac's would-be grave.

"HELP!" she shouted. "SOMEPONY! ANYPONY!"

Fluttershy pulled back her front hooves and slammed them against the side of the tomb's cover once more, this time flapping her wings in an effort to move the slab. Inside, Isaac could be heard coughing harshly. As the images played out, Isaac found himself coughing as well, in sync with the event. Even now, he could feel the iron-flavored liquid splatter against his throat.

"Isaac, don't die again! Please!" Fluttershy begged as tears flowed down her face.

As Fluttershy continued to push against the stone slab, Isaac could feel his lungs fill up with blood as the numb sensation of his previous wounds began to resurface in his senses.

"We already lost you once!" Fluttershy shouted as she simply began to pound on the stone slab with her delicate hooves. "Don't go now! Come back!"

An almost alien sensation occurred in Isaac's left side. A spark went down from his head to his arm-stub, and jumped off onto something that felt somewhat distant. The second he felt it, a surge of energy cascaded over the slab for a fraction of a second before it went flying into the ceiling.

Fluttershy backpedaled from the burst and stared wide-eyed at the slab as it simply stuck itself into the roof of the tomb. After three whole seconds, Fluttershy broke away from the phenomenon and rushed over to peer into the coffin. Both her and Isaac looked in horror at what they say.

Isaac's face was almost pure white, his veins standing out like someone drew on him with blue paint. His breaths were shallow and few, barely noticeable. However, what shocked Isaac, or rather the slightly more conscious one, was the fact that his severed arm was arcing electricity between itself and the stump where it was once attached.

The normally timid pegasus wasted no time as she reached in and hefted the Engineer upwards. Surprisingly, she managed to get his upper body out of the coffin before Princess Luna came into the tomb.

"Fluttershy, I heard your-" Luna stopped mid-sentence as she saw what was happening.

"He's alive, Princess!" Fluttershy managed to shout. "He needs help, fast!"

Luna nodded once before she ignited her horn and in a flash of blue light, both ponies and Isaac were gone.

"You've been in a coma for a few months, now," Discord explained. "They still don't know or why you came back, but right now, it's completely secret. Quite hush-hush if I ever saw it."

Another snap that penetrated all laws of physics echoed through Isaac's barely functional mind as he felt several cold sensations run across his body before his mind threatened to lose what little awareness he had left in him.

"But I know. Do you remember the Tree of Harmony, Isaac?"

Isaac attempted to answer. Nothing happened.

"I'll assume you tried to say, 'yes'. Anyways, when you destroyed the Marker, the leftover energy didn't simply fade into nothingness. The Elements of Harmony, however, attempted to purify the power that it gathered. When it concentrated on the Tree of Harmony... well, how do I put this? When the Elements were being brought to the Marker, Necromorphs may have already started gathering bodies. No less than a Hundred, I guarantee, but regardless, those souls were still pulled from their bodies. When the Marker was destroyed, it left those souls wandering aimlessly with a massive collection of Harmonic and life-based energies. In your most basic terms, it pulled together those lost souls and constructed a consciousness around the power of the Tree. They didn't know what they were doing, and after enduring so much pain and loss, not to mention the insanity the Marker drove them to, the result was... not the most stable of entities."

Discord began to fade away as Isaac's senses were assaulted by a blinding light.

"Long story short, welcome back to the world of the living, Isaac."

After feeling so close to actual calmness, pain erupted through the Engineer's body as Isaac Clarke breathed once more.