Apoptosis

Alice woke up only a few moments after reading the enigmatic words in her mental chamber.

She stood up, coughing out a bit more water as she looked around in confusion, the pool she was now walking in still dark despite the undulating waves breaking its previously still surface.

“Oh, ship”. She said, crouching down to look more closely at the water, first gently moving the fluid with her hand and soon splashing it around, trying to force a reaction from the usually shimmering particles. Alas, not a single glimmer came out of the perfectly normal waters.

For a while she stood there, repeatedly slapping her hand on her nape as she tried to understand why the pool was suddenly and severely light-free.

Then, the realization came, her eyes widening as she instinctually activated her own inner light, letting the glow wash over stone and water alike.

“Did I consume every single one of them? What the heck?” she exclaimed “How did it happen?”. She only had to think about it for a few seconds for the question to receive an answer.

“If every glimmer focused on a single neural cell then the fact that they were all used up shouldn’t surprise me. More the opposite really. How were those particles enough? Did they have the same effect the shrieker’s core had on my hearing? Some kind of cascade effect? And what were those new notifications? Did I really upgrade my class?”.

Every question she asked made her pose more questions, her mind jumping from one to the other as she tried to comprehend all those sudden changes happening to and around her.

It took the girl a few minutes to finally calm down, taking a seat on her usual stone seat as she labored to tie back her bone necklace and the tiny core it held.

The extremely difficult work of tying a knot behind her neck with only one hand actually did wonders to ground her and force her to collect herself, even the cramps she got to her fingers when she finally managed to secure it felt like they were worth it.

“One step at a time Alice” she ordered, placing the palm of her hand on her bare sternum.

Taking a deep breath, she closed her eyes and dived straight into her well, passing through the thin barrier that, now straining a bit, kept her magical energy contained.

She easily broke through the veil and let the power wash over the nearby cells, their inner membranes lighting up as the power soaked into them. She opened her senses to her entire body, feeling it breathe, pump and produce, sensing the myriad of signals sent to her brain and easily focusing on one or the other.

Alice focused her attention on her left leg where the twin stab wounds, caused by the Jumping spiderling fangs sinking deep in her calf, had scabbed over and were healing, already looking like a week-old injury.

The site, however, was still inflamed and sent painful fits every time she moved, the skin growing tight over the bores, and the muscle beneath contracting unpleasantly whenever she took a step.

Concerned, she looked more closely, easily noticing the raised, scarred tissue forming on her skin, awkwardly stretching the preexisting dermis and epidermis that had managed to seal the two lesions.

Beneath the scarring, the problems didn’t end. While she noticed and appreciated the lack of venom around the area, probably consumed by the surrounding mutated cells before it could spread too far, she also took note of the slightly darkened fibers of muscle that seemed to be having some problems regenerating normally, the cells barely producing more tissue even under the effect of her new regenerative skill.

This might take a while; I don’t even know how I managed to walk semi-normally with the muscles in this condition.

Zeroing in on the area, she started from the most difficult part; inspecting the torn and severed fibers in the muscle and, while heavily relying on her Basic Biomagical Instincts skill, gradually starting to order the cells to shut down from within.

Alice forced each cell to release some previously dormant proteins that, sped up by the magical energy now suffusing the entire muscle, managed to decompose the cell from within without provoking any form of inflammation or worse, necrosis, only leaving small packets of nutrients soon absorbed and consumed by the muscle nearby.

After cleaning up a first site, the power redirected Alice’s attention towards a tiny, unresponsive cell lodged between the larger myocyte cells that made up the muscle itself.

Once focused on it, Alice kept carefully prodding and coaxing until, after a little bit of time, it decided to come out of its slumber and started rapidly producing more of itself in the empty cavity left by the now dead myocytes.

Over the course of one hour, the entire area had been completely renewed, the muscle still sore but reacting much more fluidly to her contractions.

Smiling slightly in her trance, she went and did it for the rest of her damaged fibers.

As soon as she was done with the internal issues, her attention went to the external condition of the dermis.

As she had previously noticed, the body had rapidly closed up the wound, using her newfound regenerative ability which, however, had only done the strict necessary, stopping its action once the skin felt ‘whole’ again.

The system hadn’t noticed the way the dermis had stretched to close the wound quicker and with less expense of materials, and now the entire side of her calf felt painfully tight every time her muscles moved underneath the skin.

To solve her issue, she really could think of only one quick solution.

After thoroughly washing the leg once more and moving a slightly higher amount of white blood cells to her left leg, Alice used her increased powers to fill the pain receptors of the area with hundreds of inhibitory impulses, completely numbing the region around the scarring.

Then, with the help of her sharpest spider fang and a lot of mental preparation, she carefully cut away the layer of tissue, her hand only shaking a bit at the sight of her bloody flesh beneath the skin.

After the small rectangle of skin had been tossed into the pool, she personally ordered her cells to repair the new wound, only using a small amount of blood to coagulate and keeping the leg as tense as she could to force the skin to fill up as much surface as possible.

Soon, it was only a matter of waiting in a very awkward position for the body to do its work and she finally had time to think again.

Okay. This is over thankfully. The regeneration is very useful in a pinch or under strict supervision but I’ll not be able to let it do its work and go take a nap or something. Not looking forward to another operation like this one. Even if the improved power is absolutely great.

Now the real issue is the pool. I cannot believe I used every single particle. I should have been prepared for this! Kept some spares just in case, now I ruined it.

She looked disconsolately at the dark pool, throwing a small pebble within and seeing the round waves propagating on the surface.

She kept playing with the water as she waited for her leg to heal, sometimes unable to resist and poking the congealed blood on the rectangular wound like she used to do back at home every time she had a cut or scrape.

“As if I haven’t seen enough blood in the last few day” she chuckled “I would have even had to drink it if it hadn’t been for…” she trailed off into silence as her eyes grew distant, the sudden realization so incredibly soothing she wasn’t even mad it had taken her so long reaching it.

“Ahahha! The fudging swamp of Dagobah strikes again! And this time in my favor!” she pushed herself up, keeping her leg tensed as she hobbled over to the entrance like a very motivated pirate, crawling up the tunnel and into the antechamber where the guarding spiders were resting.

“Wake up my horrid friends!” she shouted, a few of the Spear Spiders jumping in the air and looking around for enemies before looking at her with obvious reproach “Don’t look at me like that. We have a search and retrieve mission that needs to be finished yesterday”.

Alice kept prodding the uncomprehending spiders as she moved towards the hallway leading to the main cave, from which had just emerged a slightly alarmed Skitter.

“Yo Skitter. Now I am the one to annoy you. We need to go back to the nest” she said, stopping to draw the sign for nest with a piece of silk she uncoiled for the occasion.

She had already entered the passage when behind her echoed some very confused clicks.

Alice had stepped out onto the ledge and was heading toward the silken ladder when, out of nowhere, a powerful metallic spike slammed in the limestone less than a meter in front of her, easily piercing the calcite as if it was dirt and showering her in tiny shards of stone.

She stopped, her heart hammering in her chest, and looked up, only now noticing the gleaming underside of the largest Spear Spider she had ever seen as it moved on the ledge to place herself in front of her. Staring.

“Hi Eleanor.” She whispered, the terror she had just felt finally managing to break through the daze of endorphins her body had kept releasing throughout the ‘operation’ and that had slightly clouded her judgement.

Just as she was abashedly looking at the pissed off Thinker, behind Alice emerged the entire plinking troupe of males which slammed one against the other in order not to crash into the soft twolegs that had caused such a frenzy; in the meanwhile, more screechlings had decided to join the party by launching themselves on the metallic behemoth, their teeth plinking uselessly on her exoskeleton as, slowly, Eleanor moved her multi-eyed face at her level. Glaring.

Alice was looking more and more sheepish as time went on.

A couple of minutes later, the now sobered Biomancer of Symbiosis was sitting down on the ground, a couple of meters into the crevice leading from the main cave to the antechamber, busy explaining her plan to Skitter while Eleanor watched from the opening, her head barely fitting inside the fissure in a quite nightmarish spectacle Alice was very keen on ignoring.

“Okay. For the last time. I need to be escorted back to your nest” she said, pointing at the various spiders clogging the passage and then signing the word for nest.

“I need to go back to where I fought the Jumping… you know what? Just take me to the nest. Please? It’s also to cure your mom… probably” she pleaded.

At that, Eleanor stirred, her large maw leaving the entrance as it clicked to the rest of the swarm, who started trying to surround her, while stuck in the tight hallway.

After a few more clicks and exasperated hisses, the group retraced their steps and headed towards their nest. Their objective? An ugly, makeshift wineskin possibly containing the last Lumen glimmers in the world.

*****

This chapter is officially sponsored by Mars K.! Thank you for your support.