Dive

“You have talked to your mom and she has accepted my request? Nice”.

Alice was sitting on a bundle of silk in a dripping cave, staring at a delicately embroidered web hanging from the wall, looking at those same figures, signs and shapes she and Skitter had agreed upon after weeks of trials and misunderstandings.

It was still a work in progress, as it took far too long for the spider to work on each web and she had quite a few issues with her own artistic skills.

Despite the many problems, with the help of good old-fashioned pointing and over the course of a couple of very painful hours— as her migraine kept trying to split her head in two— Alice had initiated a sort of conversation with Skitter and the larger spider.

For one, she had learned the big one was female, some sort of upper caste in their somewhat primitive form of society, closely related to the Queen herself, most likely a daughter.

She seemed quite at odds with Skitter, frequently hissing at him and causing the other, more subservient, spiders to quickly move away from the tiny male who, instead, didn’t seem too bothered by the fact, often snapping back as it skittered around the place.

She also had a name, impossible to translate or understand obviously, and when she had ‘said’ it, it resembled a metal spoon in a blender.

She had thusly decided to call her Eleanor after a very bossy girl that had been her classmate in elementary school.

Eleanor had apparently been sent by the Queen herself to escort her to her lair, a huge nest far deeper in the system of caves, and it was evident that she was extremely keen on completing her duty as soon as possible.

“Not yet” Alice had instantly answered, shaking her head and pushing away from her a pebble on the ground in the sign that had come to mean ‘no’ in their made-up language “I need a bit more time to get better and to finish some things”. That answer had caused Eleanor to bristle in what— Alice was sure— was indignation and Skitter to hiss in annoyance.

The girl had then spent the next hour arguing with the two arachnids, both trying to persuade her in following them at that very moment.

Despite all their prodding and cajoling, she had been adamant. Not only did she want to clean herself up and finally inspect the remaining wounds; Alice also had other reasons she had decided not to share with the larger spider.

First among all, she wanted to experiment once more with the Lumen-glimmers, the request of The Whispering Mother still fresh in her mind.

After a few more minutes of discussion, Eleanor accepted her proposal, allowing her to go back to her base under heavy guard from the swarm, which would protect the access and interior as she worked and healed.

She also managed to ask them for a few screechlings to eat and skin for pelts, the leather necessary for another, larger wineskin to hold the glimmering water she was positive would be useful in the healing process.

When the tiring, overlong conversation ended, Alice stood up on her feet and was instantly surrounded by the Spear Spiders. Eleanor was first in line, acting as the vanguard as they streamed out of the cave, following the corridors towards the exit.

They walked out in the wide expanse, moving through the now contested territory of the nest and into the central no man’s land. As she walked, Alice looked at the few remains on the ground, the signs of the huge battle that had taken place only a day before, now barely showing in the scattered pieces of cracked exoskeleton and the deep grooves on the stone floor.

Everything else, down to the blood on the ground, had been thoroughly consumed while she slept.

To her chagrin, her bodyguards were far from silent, their plinking legs announcing their presence to everything around them. Soon, millipedes and wasps were rushing them head on, while bombardier beetles tried to shower them in acid, and particularly stupid screechlings crashed on them from the stalactites on the ceiling.

The swarm reacted in kind, Eleanor easily cutting through the buzzing wasps while the smaller males snared the beetles in silk and pierced through the tough plates of the millipedes.

In the meanwhile, Alice caught the dazed or dead screechlings on the ground, shaking her head at the sight of their caved skulls after impacting the hard body of the large female Spear Spider.

My god. They really are dumb.

She kept picking them up as if they were ripe golden chanterelles while they slowly moved towards the ladder.

When they finally reached the first of the slick steps of the ledge that lead towards her base, the previously hopeful attackers had decided to retreat from the fight, their throngs almost destroyed after the assault while Alice’s group was pretty much undamaged, mainly thanks to the spiders’ cooperation and Eleanor impressive capability of smashing things into paste.

Moving her attention to her surroundings, she clicked her tongue in annoyance upon noticing the loose lines of silk hanging wetly on the rock, the small fragments of bone an obvious clue of what had happened. She had clearly underestimated the level of hunger of the cave’s inhabitants.

Skitter instantly saw the problem, soon climbing on the ledge and carefully weaving, together with a few of his kindred, a new silken ladder that she soon started climbing.

Panting a bit after the exertion, Alice finally entered the familiar crevice together with Skitter and a few others, the rest remaining outside with a surly Eleanor hissing to herself in the silence.

Entering the tight passage leading to her home was a strange experience after the days spent fighting and struggling waist deep in blood and innards.

Alice’s pace was uncertain as she progressed further into the silent corridor, her body tense as if expecting another attack.

None came when she stepped in the untouched antechamber, her eyes moving from the few stalagmites remaining on the ground to the walled opening that lead to the submerged well where the Cave Salamander had lived.

For a brief moment, Alice thought about tearing down the wall and checking the passage once more, but she soon changed her mind, her eyes moving to the opening that would lead her to the glowing pool.

Already, Skitter and some of its siblings seemed to be moving towards the round passage, probably to check it for foes, but a quick word from her stopped them on their tracks.

“I’ll go alone from here” she said and signed, pushing away a pebble while she pointed at the entrance.

Skitter tried to push forward, to follow her as she was moving down the passage but she was quick to prevent it.

“No. You’ll wait too buddy. Can’t have you see what I’m trying to do. Not until I really meet your mom and I’m sure I’m not trying to heal some kind of scourge that will wipe out humanity or something”.

After a bit of back and forth, the clever male finally backed down, hissing in irritation as it retreated to the back of the antechamber.

Carrying with her the many screechlings she had collected, the young woman finally entered her base.

The usually glowing pool was dark, its unperturbed waters reflecting her own light with their mirror-like surface. On the wall to her right, she could see the lone grub she had captured busy eating through the limestone, a slight shine of crystallized material near its eyeless head.

She slowly walked toward the pool, ignoring the painful throbs coming from her calf, gradually disrobing of the tattered rags that still remained on her body, untying the carved bone ‘choker’ from her neck and placing it in the overflowing bowl of water she had painfully ground in the stalagmite stump so many days before, together with the larger, shadowy one she had carried all the way home; the two cores she had acquired sitting one beside the other.

Completely naked, she only shivered a bit upon stepping into the cold liquid of the basin, the shimmering waves caused by her entrance propagating on the previously placid surface, filling the space with a soft green light that shined on her body, mixing with her own glow and eating away any shadow lingering on her form.

She got on her knees, slowly submerging her head in the water, letting the fluid soak her matted hair as the glimmers got to work on the gore she was encrusted in.

Rivulets of water flowed down her face, forming clear lines on the grime, a hint of her true skin already showing under the dry blood.

After her head and face felt clean, she moved to her torso and arms, scrubbing carefully around the nasty bruises she had acquired and once again submerging the parts she couldn’t reach with her left hand, letting the magic of the pond do its work.

Gradually, the Italian girl regained her usual appearance in a process that more than a bath, reminded of rebirth. With each splash of the cool liquid on her body, Alice Desare brought back a bit more of what, to her, meant to be human; as the layer of ichor was consumed by the Lumen globules in the water, she thought back at the girl she once was.

When she finally reached her legs, together with blood and dirt, in the water fell warm tears, streaming from her eyes and down her cheeks until, finally, they dropped in the radiant water below, first a few droplets, then a flood; an ocean of fear and pain and weariness streaming out of her body, consumed by the cleansing water.

Alice wept for herself; to remain sane and to move further down her path. She wept to live another day.

The moment passed.

Tired, the girl sat down in the deepest part of the pool, her chin on her knees as the water that was now up to her breasts suddenly felt a bit warmer on her acclimated body.

In the coruscating light, Alice silently finished scrubbing herself clean, letting the organisms eat away the final specks of filth as she, now spotless, lowered herself in the water, feeling her body start floating once more.

Why wait? She asked herself.

Not finding an answer, she took a deep breath and went underneath, her eyes wide open as many tiny shining particles swam past her in the clear liquid.

Holding her breath, she sunk deep within herself, feeling the connection to every single cell in her body, sensing them die and be born every instant, living their own existences with the single purpose of keeping her alive. She moved with them, flowing through herself as she followed the most complex system of pathways known to nature, seeing views no other person in her world would ever be able to.

Alice singled out, once again like many times before, the mutated cells she had named Lumen in her mind.

From those shining cells she felt breathing and living inside of her, Alice sensed the same alien nature of the pool she was in, an energy that permeated them and promised miracles if harnessed correctly, if she would allow it.

Feeling a nudge from her own well of power, Alice ignored every deep-set instinct of her body and opened her mouth, breathing in the water; letting the cold liquid replace the air in her lungs, spread throughout her system.

At first, she could feel the organs strain and try to push away the invading liquid, almost collapsing when they lost their battle, the fluid displacing any hint of breathable gas from her corpse as large bubbles broke the surface of the pool.

After a single hammering heartbeat, however, she felt the first of the specks hit and fuse with an alveolus, one of the tiny, cup-shaped hollows where oxygen and carbon dioxide are exchanged by the erythrocytes, our red blood cells. The minuscule membrane was the first of many as at first hundreds, then thousands and then even more luminous globules started communing with her cells, amalgamating with them to form something that was more than the sum of their parts.

Like the director of an almost infinite orchestra, Alice set their rhythm and flow as they circulated throughout her body, infecting any cells that had escaped the previous treatments until all that remained was the final bastion of a lost girl’s humanity, her brain.

Taking over the need of oxygen by offering their own energy instead, the Lumens launched themselves into a final assault, breaking down any resistance as they melded with neuron and glial cell alike, moving from synapsis to synapsis like a festering plague, hungry for more.

Only when the last survivor was consumed did they stop, basking in their overwhelming success.

Alice’s lungs contracted, almost squeezing themselves as they ejected the now dark water, forcing her to break the surface in order for her to breathe in pure air which they immediately started robbing of its precious oxygen.

She didn’t notice any of that, as something else had already claimed her mind and attention.

Alice once again swam in the kelp-forest of floating tendrils, their pearlescent hue forming a dazzling pattern of iridescent waves as she delved deep into it, following the delicious compulsion that was curiosity.

A delicate, humming beat oscillated from within the dancing threads of knowledge, inviting her further in, past the smaller lines of ideas and into the wider, more complex braids formed from smaller concepts.

There, between the floating woven fibers of thought, the murmur had become an enticing harmony that lead her forward on her journey.

She found herself in a glade between the swaying metaphysical plants and there, a particular tendril slowly descended to her, its end fraying in its different components as it moved in her direction, as if welcoming her.

Feeling the same impulse from before, Alice extended her own hand towards it, touching the wriggling sprouts and letting them gently coil around her fingers, palm and wrist, each one sending a new wave of information and warmth towards the magical reservoir in her mind, making it swell and grow under the pressure, as her connection with the arcane powers inhabiting the meadow grew deeper and more tangled with her own sense of self.

Over the course of many eternal instants, innumerable biomagical concepts made their way in her brain, offering her new knowledge, ideas and points of view as they settled in the now doubled spring of her power, eagerly feeding her their truths.

As the insight flowed in her mind, Alice placed her attention on the power leading it, picking what to show her and what to keep for itself; pushing up the stream to the spring, she felt the tendril connect with more of its kind, get woven with them to form a thicker, trunk-like chord that brimmed with barely contained information and that also continued on and on, towards something so incredibly bright her own mind felt blinded by its distant presence. She was forced to retreat.

Too weak to withstand the radiance, she accepted the gifts and went back to her projection, still floating in the glade and connected to a fragment of The Whispering Mother. Soon, the vision faded, her mind brought back to the unconscious body floating in the now dark waters, into the void chamber in her head.

Within the silent room, floating in the darkness before her eyes and already vibrating with power, was a new set of radiant inscriptions.

With explorations and experiments, you have impressed The Whispering Mother. The connection has deepened.

The Biomancer Class has become the Biomancer of Symbiosis Class.

The skill Lesser Biomancy has been improved to Biomancy. Your control over living biological matter increases.

The skill Lesser Symbiosis has been advanced to Symbiosis. Your body is the perfect host, the Lumen particles thrive in it and follow your every bidding.

You have reached Level 16 in the Biomancer of Symbiosis Class.

…

Well. That’s new.

*****

This chapter is officially sponsored by Rip W.! Thanks for the support!