Journey

The swarm moved in the center of the expanse in a tightly packed formation, completely encircling the human girl in its middle.

A large, metallic spider acted as a vanguard, slashing apart those few monsters daring to approach their lines while the rest of her smaller siblings secured the sides and rear.

After crossing the no man’s land, they steered away from the wall teeming with easily startled electric grubs, moving instead closer to the part of the large cavern that housed the infighting nests of millipedes and wasps.

Chillushrith’s large, spiked legs sunk in the calcite, light tremors shaking the ground with every step, agitating the violated neighbors which soon responded by evacuating en masse their burrows and hive, ready to fight their invading foe.

By the time the two armies of defenders had been mobilized, however, the spiders were long gone, their only memory a few well-placed lines of silk that brought a number of wasps down onto the ground, causing them to be consumed by the sea of legs below.

Enraged by their loss, the rest of the droning swarm launched themselves on the millipedes to avenge their perished kindred and, within a few seconds, the blood feud was at full swing, the brief suspension of hostilities completely forgotten along with the spark that had lit the gunpowder keg.

The clutter had already disappeared in their crevice when the teeth-clattering, nauseating drone of the hornets intensified and the crack of broken stone signaled the arrival of the titanic millipede, already bellowing its rage at the murder-bees.

Only once did the girl turn back before she also disappeared in the darkness.

They moved at a fast pace through the dedalus of passages in the abandoned lair; on the walls, the loosely-hanging cobwebs swayed in the breeze caused by their passage.

The cluster passed piles of rubble and long-rotten corpses of spiders on their way, ignoring them both as they progressed further in, and deeper down.

Only when they emerged into a wider tunnel did their pace relent a smidge to allow a gasping Alice to regain her breath.

While her long legs proved effective as a locomotion method, she definitely wasn’t used to quick, long-distance travel.

One or the other? Sure. Both. Fudge that. She thought, her only hand pressing on her kidney as she slowly breathed in and out while walking beside the Spear Spiders.

Her body, once on the soft side of athletic, as she used to describe it, was now definitely on the leaner side, every ounce of fat having melted during the first weeks of residency in the cave. Scabs and small red bruises were evident on the pale skin that had once been pretty much unmarred, save for a few almost faded scars she had acquired when younger and far more stupid.

Her face, had she been able to see it, was a bit gaunt, her pale skin stretching on her cheekbones, giving her a far sharper appearance even with her delicate nose.

She definitely wasn’t malnourished now, the constant diet of raw meat having solved the need for protein, but she had unquestionably skirted the problem for quite a while.

Her eyes, in the meanwhile, while a bit sunken, were still as lively as ever, more actually, now that thin lines of silver had infiltrated her hazel irises, and a shining circle could sometimes be seen in her pupil when she used her newly-obtained darkvision skill.

Alice didn’t think of her appearance as they progressed along the tunnel, using instead her time to check if her new equipment felt comfortable and if the Lumen glimmers contained within her prosthesis weren’t suffering the trip.

Only three hours later, after taking a sudden deviation that led further downwards, did she start actually paying attention to the tunnels they were traversing.

They all seemed to be somewhat rounded, with slick, dripping walls that curved to form a vault on their heads. The ground instead, was far rougher, probably due to the prolonged passage of the metal-tipped legs of the Spear Spiders.

Sometimes, the walls had various distinctly-colored bacterial colonies growing on them, along with molds and slimy mucilage, giving the rock a different color or texture every few meters.

Now that they were in these tunnels, their travel formation had changed, with Eleanor covering the rear while Skitter and a few others scouted ahead, coming back every few minutes to check on them with clicks and hisses.

The clever male and the large female had also gotten into some kind of confrontation the moment they had entered the larger tunnels, with Eleanor loudly hissing and clicking at the much smaller spider for quite a long time. In the meanwhile, she had managed to furtively secure some of her luggage on one of the accompanying spiders, tying on its back the few objects she had elected to bring with her. The creature had watched the process with evident reproach but had then kept on moving forward without voicing any complaint.

I’m starting to like the VIP treatment she had thought.

Already on the first day of their delve deep into the planet’s innards, Alice was able to spot some fairly fascinating views to add to her growing archive of memorable instants.

At one point, they moved through a small cavern completely covered in a squelching yellow slime that shied away from their bodies, moving every time one of them took a step and then returning on the previously occupied surface once they had moved away.

Alice had to force herself from jumping from one spot to the other and disturb it further, after all, she had played enough Dungeons and Dragons to have a deeply imprinted knowledge of yellow oozes and why touching them wasn’t a good idea.

“At least you’re not a Black Pudding.” She had told the snot-colored slime in confidence “I’m still pissed about my dwarven-forged chef knife”.

Even the place where they stopped to rest was awe inspiring: an absurdly tall shaft that, even with her enhanced sight, disappeared in the darkness without revealing its ceiling.

The walls of the bore were also covered in shallow but intricated grooves that sometimes seemed to be moving on their own, making it impossible for her to focus on one place in particular. Tracing her fingers on their surface, she realized they were perfectly smooth, as if made with acid. She wondered what kind of creature would be able to make them, and why.

Alice dreamt of spaghetti that night.

Obviously, not every place was nice; for every beautiful view and amazing formation, there were dozens of bland tunnels, boring rocks or even worse. Once, she had to cross an entire cavern covered in a thick layer of the droppings of a strange creature that seemed to be the lovechild of a leech and a hairless mole.

The hand-sized critter had wrinkled pink skin that seemed to be always sagging on its body and it sometimes squeaked with a horridly shrill tone.

The animal sported two sets of stocky legs ending in stubby recurve talons, but it could also use its suction cup-like tail to grab onto the rock and hang upside down from the ceiling, its small, rounded mouth ready to latch on anything passing beneath it.

The guano it expelled in small jets from two holes placed on its sides had managed to create a perfect environment for a variety of smaller animals and molds that feasted on the smelly substance and then became the meal of the leechrats themselves in a harsh cycle of life and death.

Under her disgusted eyes, the little monsters dropped on anything that moved beneath them, locating their prey through their two beady red eyes. Once they latched onto their game, they bored through skin or shell with four long hollowed out fangs and then started sucking, slowly gorging themselves on the vital fluids of the victim. The more they drank, the more bloated they became, sometimes so much so that they themselves became prey of their smaller kindred.

After they finished their meal, however, they would start producing some prolonged and horrid farting sounds from the inside of their bowels, their wrinkly and sagging skin starting to balloon outwards until, a few minutes later, the creature literally started floating back to the ceiling like the world worst hot-air balloon, ready to latch its suction cup-like tail on the stone before starting to excrete once again.

It was a ruthless and unrelenting micro-environment for the creatures fighting and dying within it, perpetually permeated by the acrid smell of ammonia and decomposition.

After nauseously taking it all in, Alice had to take a deep breath and run through the cave, her teary eyes wide open to avoid the falling leechrats and scurrying insects, always afraid of dropping dead on account of unknown gases or poisons.

After crossing the smelly cave, and following a brief rest to change her footwraps, they proceeded for more than a day before coming upon another interesting view in the variegated underground system of caves.

This time, it was a somewhat large cave with a low hanging ceiling and a wide exit just barely visible in the darkness.

The entire surface of the cave was composed of thousands of dark metallic cubes melding into each other. Sometimes they were as large as a car, easily traversable by the sure-footed clutter, other times, however, they were as small as coins, forming a dangerous game of sharp hedges to walk on, easily able to cause one to break an ankle or split its skin open if not careful on where they stepped. The entirety of the cave was covered in them.

As they first stepped in, she had immediately noticed a change in behavior from the spiders. The eight-legged creatures were now walking slower, less fluidly as they moved across the cavern. Eleanor was ineffectually trying to stoop lower as not to touch the ceiling with her back, every impact causing sparks to jump everywhere, while loud metallic clangs left her ears ringing.

“Magnetism” she murmured, noticing the spike inset in her chelae-prosthesis being slightly attracted to the magnetic metal at her feet. Intrigued, she broke off an almost perfect cube from a smaller formation and slid the apricot-sized piece of magnetite in the folds of the rolled-up futon she carried on her shoulders, before stepping out of the cave’s magnetic field.

Only on the third day of travel, did they meet more living beings. This time, it was a convoy of spiders, probably coming from another satellite nest.

Alice had to repress a shiver at the sight of the many bundles of wrapped-up prey the arachnids were dragging behind them.

It didn’t take long for her and her bodyguards to move forward, leaving behind the allied monsters and their gruesome delivery.

They only stopped again when they first caught sight of the bridge.

*****

This chapter is officially sponsored by Jake C.!