I took an unnecessarily deep breath and then twisted myself through the small window, making sure to tto the wall deeply and firmly with my tendrils. I fttened myself onto the surface of the wall and began what would hopefully be my final climb. The wind was overwhelming up here, sometimes managing to get between my body and the wall causio nearly lose my grip and fall. Thankfully I mao hold on each time and after an arduous fifteen minutes, I crouched oop of the building in a semi-human form. I still had a bunch of tendrils extending from my hands ao secure me to the building as I finally took a look around. This city was massive. I could probably only see maybe a third or fourth of it but it extended far into the distan either side of me while at my back was the previous sight of the dead wastes at the edge of the city. I was looking towards the tre of the city. Some taller spires were dotting the cityscape but most buildings increased ially with the tallest being the o the very tre, reag high into the atmosphere and its top being hidden behind a cloud of smog. I was in one of the smaller spires poking through the opy of this artificial forest, giving me a better view. I was maybe oh of the way betweey edge and the tral spiral. The city was ugly as hell by the way. The dark exterior of the haphazard buildings not giving it much architectural beauty, nor did I think there was any city pnning involved in it. It looked like people just built atop the previous yer of buildings while making the bare minimum of reinforts so it wouldn't colpse uhe extra weight. It spoke volumes about the sort of people that would build it and the society it would cultivate. The tral spiral robably the main goveral building here, or maybe a pace for the sn if people here had some sort of neo-aristocracy. That should probably be my destination if I wao find out more about this pd whether I could survive here, or I'd o find a way to escape. Maybe there were space whales like in Marvel in this pce, if I ate one of those couldn't I just leisurely wander around space while eating radiation? I gnced back at the dark wastes extending towards the horizon behind me, not a single sign of life out there, nor anything except for the rge pipes carrying god knows what into this city. I only found any corpses in that one room far down from the city's skyli searg through the lower floors of these buildings for simir pces would be such a pain. I wasn't even sure whether I could find anything before I ran out of juibsp;By my t, I could keep going at my current energy ption for about five years, less if I overexert myself or if I o spend energy on healing myself or stuff like that. Soon I might o test out my self-healing capacities if I decided to go for that obnoxious building at the tre, a's be ho if it's a decisioween cheg out a potential futuristic pace or a dystopian slum the choice is much more self-expnatory. If I'm running low I still choose to searore food. Oh wait, corpses would depose by then. Fubsp;I wao check out the better parts of this city though, I might regret it ter but fuck searg for corpses in the underbelly of this shithole. Yeah. I already have an idea for quickly travelliween the rooftops of these buildings, if jumping and hoping for the best be called that. My instincts told me that unless my physical body got obliterated it could be healed back up, even if the only thing remaining tter of gore on the building. Experieng that didn't sound too appealing but it was good to know that it wouldn't be my end. What could even kill me now? An explosive with a high enough yield could probably obliterate me enough but there would still be parts of me left to heal from no? My instincts were much less clear on the bare minimum needed for recovery. A sptter was fine because that was still anic but if I got myself carbohen I was fucked? Let's stay away from fire and explosives then. Also acid and stuff that would melt me down. I focused on the closest building to the spire, its rooftop was maybe 20 meters down and 30 meters away from this one. Humans 't jump that far, I think the lo jump was somewhere around 8 meters with a running start. Luckily I wasn't much of a human even if I was masquerading as one. Surprisingly the thought of not being human anymore didn't make me feel the existential dread I assumed people should feel in this situation. I shook my head, dumb thoughts, I'm thinking far too damned much but what else I do when alone in a ghost city. I might go crazy here, well crazier. Sane people don't feel relief and joy at being a tentacle monster. Sane people don't jump off rooftops either. Now for how to reach the other side. My eldrit wasn't too good for bat as its strength paled in parison to even my huma wasn't built fhting. Its purpose was to assimite and analyze anic matter but it was also nearly weightless, could I turn myself into a kite or something simir? The winds up here would make it annoying but maybe it could work. I crawled over to the side of the building, still seg my body to the rooftop with my tendrils and gnced down into the gapih between the buildings. Damn, couldn't these people build bridges or something? Something to ect two buildings to secure them? Not that I was an architect, maybe eg them would be problematic but e on. I liked arcologies much more than haphazard hive cities in my sci-fi settings. I readied myself, breathing in deeply then I let it out through my nose. The muscles in my legs tightened like a coiled spring and I flooded them with energy, reinf them and pushing them to the limit. The muscles expahe muscles tracted and the energy fuelled them beyond what my huma could provide. I must have looked quite horrifying, the upper body of a girl and the legs of a giant on steroids. My body glove proved its worth as it didn't rip or tear but expanded along with my muscles, stig to me like a sed skin. I let my coiled muscles release and shot off the roof like a bullet, well I felt like a bullet, with the wind whipping my hair around and trying to rip my head off at this speed. I released a bunch of tendrils out of my body to make up for my promised eyesight. It proved to be a good decision as I realised I was already closing in on my targeted building, I wasn't going to make it. I was steadily losing my momentum as the initial acceleration bled out of me when I was only fifteeers away from my starting point, only five more meters to go but I could already see myself plummeting like a rock before reag it. My previous kite idea didn't even e to my mind as I twisted my form into a white blob in a panid shot out tendrils towards the building. The first few were a miss, they only scraped against the wall, ripping out ks but failed to grip onto it. The third was close but I lost my grip on the wall when I tried to pull myself in. By the time the fourth and fifth reached the wall I reached the apex of my jump, soon I would start falling but I mao calm myself and the tendrils carefully carved out only enough of the wall to gain a steady grip on it. I would have sighed in relief if I had either lungs or a mouth. Thankfully I didn't have those aher did I have the moment which came in especially handy when I got spttered on the wall. My tendrils still held and I didn't feel any pain but the sensation of going from a spherical form to aint wasn't too good. No part of my body got snapped off thankfully, so I didn't even lose any energy from this act. The jump would be better, I didn't know how but I could perfect this. I verted most of my spttered body bato energy and pulled the rest up with the two tendrils gripping the wall for dear life. , I proceeded to crawl up the wall like an octopus with an additional six tendrils to make sure I didn't fall. I knew I wouldn't die even if I fell to the dark depths but it would be an enormous pain to make it back up here. Once I made my way onto the rooftop I reformed my human body and sat down, panting hard. It hit me then, while my clothes were still on me as I held onto them inside my body when I transformed I fot about my bag. I gloomily gowards the edge, towards the darkhat ate my loot. Sighing again I id down on the roof, this one had raised edges so while like this the winds weren't that bad and it wasn't a protruding spire like the previous one so the wind currents got broken on nearby buildings too. I could have just unched my tendrils over to the roof and pulled myself along. I khat but that wasn't cool, a part of me wahe adrenalin and thrill of jumping off the rooftop but the first one vanished from my body as soon as I transformed. Turns out eldritch shapeshifters don't need adrenalin and simir stuff to fun, nor any other chemical or hormohat form is cold, my thinking grows cold and calcuted too while I'm in it. It helped now as it mao calm me down enough to tto the wall but it was somewhat ing, I thought it wouldn't ge me too much as I could also think freely while I was only a soul, why would being in a body now influence me? I stared up at the dark grey sky which for a moment gave was f the stars hidden behind the stant smog. Unfamiliar stars, not that I was much of an astrologist but the distant yellowish moon halfeeking out from the smog curtain was unmistakably different from Earth's moon. I closed my eyes and sighed once more. Different world, different me. P3t1

  TBH I think this chapter came out a bit shit but I'm posting it anyway. Enjoy?Also, anyone knows how the hell putting images into a chapter on cribblehub works? I 't seem to ma.