The brain begins to form expectations of what it will see when it wakes up far before it begins kicking on. It works in the dark, as it often does, taking information we know exists and filling in the rest as it goes. When you enter a new and large location for the first time, the brain will often spiral into trying to absorb as many details as possible for future reference, leaving you overwhelmed. On the opposite end of the scale, when you wake up, more likely than not you've already woken up that exact spot hundreds of times before. It's familiar, and your brain already knows what to expect, coloring the images for you and preparing them for when your eyes flutter open.
When Voluptas awoke, his mind already knew exactly what to expect; pitch darkness, and the familiar feeling of pressing against nearly every part of his body, like a coffin molded to his exact form and shape and shrunk by a barely noticeable half inch.
Not a single sound could reach him, but his mind strained to latch onto sounds anyway, forcing the steady beat of his heart and flow of his blood into his ears, the only thing reminding him he was alive. Nothing else certainly acted like it; if he held his breath, he could imagine he wasn't a living creature at all, but the earth itself that encompassed him.
For not the first time, he struggled to remember how he came to this new home. He distinctly felt a coil of rope somewhere behind him, wrapped around his hindleg. He had no idea where it led to, what lay at the other end, but it was the only clue as to his identity, or whatever may have been of it before he was sealed in stone.
Because, yes, he was sure it was stone; he must be thousands of miles underground, the weight of the earth literally upon his strong back, facing towards nothing and away from nothing. The tunnel he was locked in had provided him nothing but a peephole placed before his eye, and not even that- more like a pocket to him, a hole with no inside or outside, only the phantom feeling that it was *there*, just up against the fur around his eyelid, providing his glimpse into an inky world identical to the one behind him. He stared through that peephole day in and day out through Celestia knew how many days now, and sometimes he imagined what might lay beyond it, a land of singing ponies or mind wrenching horrors, or worst of all, stone.
He couldn't feel his wings. He tried to convince himself he had never had any.
He often became acutely aware of what he did or didn't have in his eons of silence. Sometimes, his hindleg, twisted to a tautness it shouldn't be able to reach by the rope he had once trusted to save his life. Sometimes it was his tongue, so dry by now it was practically a piece of wood lying in his mouth, preventing him from even screaming. Currently, it was his spine; it was painfully, horribly present in his back, belching horrid signals to his brain to remind him of what no longer existed. The more aware of it he became, the more he hated it, and he would often try to imagine spindly digits punching holes through his back like melting butter, leaving nothing but a smooth needle-wide hole in their wake and wrapping comfortably around his spine, and pulling, and tearing, and creaking, until finally-
He couldn't feel his legs. He tried to convince himself he had never had any.
He wondered what he looked like; surely not a pony anymore, something he could understand. Surely by now he had become something less, a cheap parody, like some greater being had seen his wide and curious eyes and shrunk them into dots covered by folds of dying skin, or seen his short and stumpy muzzle and wrapped their hands around it, twisting it left and right and back and forth like a joystick, cackling and giggling. He could *feel* their hands mangling his nose with glee, and even in his weakened state he thrashed, tear ducts probing his body for any water left to pour forth from his eyes as he begged and pleaded wordlessly, let go of him, don't touch him.
They never stopped touching him. He was a fish in a barrel to them, and their limbs slunk out of every crack in the earth that surrounded him, like millions of insects that broke the surface of his skin, if he even had any left, and slobbered over the fruits inside. He hated them, he wished he had the strength to fight back, to even for a second deny them the pleasure they received from feasting on him, but nothing worked. He couldn't move an inch without contorting his body further and further from what he remembered as a pony, to crease his pelt like paper and collapse his organs into heaps of tissue until he could squeeze through the peephole and see what lay beyond.
There really was nothing beyond that peephole, was there? His mind began formulating in the absence of any other stimulating thought to fill it, and he found a sadistic pleasure in the thought of finding himself beyond the hole- in the exact same hole, staring into his own eye only inches away from himself. When they finally discovered this fact, they would desperately try to escape to the opposite side in the hopes of finding freedom, and in doing so become more desperate, bashing their heads against each other, biting at each other, crabs in a bucket denying themselves escape in madness, and it wouldn't be the spindly and prying fingers that got them, but only their own primal- oh, the thought invigorated him, and he wiggled about measly centimeters back and forth in a deliriously sparse recollection of how joy manifested.
The peephole was full. Light was shining onto him through the tunnel, and he stared into it, barely even recognizing what it was. When it finally registered as the beacon of hope it was, he found himself no longer aware of any part of his body, probing fingers and greedy hands and laughing maws shrinking backwards towards the rope, and he was facing down the most brilliant and blinding light the universe could offer him. He finally saw what lay beyond, nothing but a world of serenity, in whatever form that took- the foundations crumbling, bringing the surface of the earth to him? Some explorer about to unearth a fossil thousands of years old? He didn't care. He needed it, and his eye dilated to take in as many glorious details as it could.
And then he felt his leg for the first time in ages, the mangled and shredded hunk that remained of it. He felt his spine weighed down by the stone that seemed keen to bite him in two. He felt his wings. He felt his face, the gaunt and stretched and mutilated parody of that which had once been a pony. He realized what the light would give him; it would give him life, a beautiful, blinding, deafening, changeling, horrible life. He grew fearful, and in his fear he took desperate action, fueled only by primal fear of the unknown.
He shrank away, forcing himself backwards, slamming himself against the constricting stone with all of his force. It wouldn't budge, but he made it budge, beating it into submission until he felt something give, and could wrench himself down the tooth lined gullet. When the earth accepted his return, it was with hunger, pulling him deeper down its throat with peristalsis that broke his bones and tore his skin, starvation and injury spawned weakness barely registering as he fought to return to the comforting darkness and the world that had convinced him that its hatred was love. In the hall of delusions and stone, his mind convinced himself that the rope had pulled taut at that moment, dragging him away from the wretched and evil light, and back into the eternal slumber he had chosen to reside in, anything compared to the blinding light outside.
The peephole was dark again, or perhaps just out of sight, although he still felt it against the fur around his eyelid. The rope still lay behind him, reaching for nothing. Not a sound could be heard but his own blood, slower now, and in drips rather than streams. His heart fluttered.
Hands slunk back to him as the tunnel rumbled, probing his every crevice, gluttoning themselves on everything inside him and rending bones. If there were hundreds before, there were millions now, reaching up from the depths he had descended into. Memory of his leg faded, his spine felt stronger, and even through the wood filling his mouth he was cackling, hooting and hollering in unimaginable pleasure as soil flowed over his face and he became the earth's foundation.
