Chapter Text
Cold. So, so cold.
Did he leave the AC on? He was too tired to go change it now. He reached around him to pull his blanket over him. His body didn't respond. He tried again, dirt crunching beneath his limbs. Who put dirt on his bed?
"Armando," He called out, but received no reply. Actually, he didn't even hear himself speak. Sleep paralysis? Wouldn't be the first time.
He'd often awaken to several fuzzy, shadowy figures around his bed, holding him down, a rag pressed to his mouth as a sharp pain pierced his neck.
Not this time. Even if the figures were there, he couldn't see anything.
He tried again, this time willing a strange humming noise from his body. The noise echoed through the earth, bouncing off objects around him. He can see the shapes around him. Why the hell can he see the shapes around him? Well, it wasn't really "see", more like "sense". He could tell they were there. Why could he tell they were there?
He must still be dreaming. He had to be.
He opened his eyes.
At least, he tried to. Okay, now he was starting to panic. He tried to move his legs. The earth crunched and again, he could see the area around him. It looked like fuzz with some larger shapes mixed in, but that made no sense. He was supposed to be in his bed. He felt something heavy around his body, holding it in shapeless prison. His limbs weren't struggling to move because he was tired; they were being crushed under the weight of something. Soil? Rock?
He was more than awake now. More than aware of the pressing weight against his chest, against his arms and his limbs. He did not like this in the slightest. His chest tightened and his breathing staggered, the earth above him shifting. What the hell was that noise?
That's you.
Something inside him said. He was humming, or making some sort of jumbled scramble of notes.
What the hell was going on?
He had to get out of there, wherever 'there' was.
He forced his arms to move, earth shifting around him as he dug. He was buried alive. They buried him alive. He'd read horror stories about this, but never in a million years did he think that it would happen to him. Did they not check his vitals? The human body is noisy; how could they not hear his heart beating or his organs churning? Rocky constantly complained about the noise; other Eridians would have had to have been just as aware of the squelching and pumping and the digesting, right? He dug and kicked and pushed at the earth around him. There was something above him. Something large. How the hell did he know that? He pushed for the empty space, wilding swinging his limbs to push him further above the ground. The object tilted.
His hand shot through the earth, cold air shocking his hand. It was FREEZING, but it was better than being in the ground. His lungs burned from the fresh air as he dragged himself up from the dirt, the sound of Eridians screaming nearby dully hammering in his tired head. Makes sense; he would scream too if he saw someone clawing their way up from the ground. Except, he didn't see anyone nearby. See? Sense? He was in too much pain to tell. He was in pain?
Everything hurt. Correction; everything burned. He was being incinerated. The screaming that he had heard earlier was coming from him.
He writhed and struggled to stand, every bone in his body yelling at him to make it stop, to do something. It hurt to breathe. The cracks in the statue screamed as large chunks of rock fell away from it and clattered against his body. The statue was collapsing, and he needed to escape it's path of collision before it-
BOOM.