Sky

The words were already in their spot when she realized she was in the black void of her mind.

You have reached Level 27 in the Biomancer of Symbiosis Class.

You have changed your bones to be as resilient as yourself, able to ignore the blows of your enemies and proceed forward. You have learned the skill Enhanced Body: Bones. Your bones will heal quicker and you’ll also be able to temporarily strengthen your skeletal system against particularly hard impacts.

I wonder why it gave it to me now… Did I need to prove it was actually sturdy enough? Or did my bones assimilate enough calcium molecules for the changes to start working?

I hate not knowing. Dammit.

Alice floated in her mind room, moving around the new fiery words that had appeared in front of her eyes and staring at the blazing wall of glyphs they, together with the previous ones, created as a whole.

Oh well, it doesn’t matter right now. I can’t believe my power has grown so much in just a bit more than a month.

Wait… how much time did actually pass?

The young woman had just started counting the number of times she had slept since finding herself in the glowing pool when, from outside of her mind-room and in the actual cave she was resting in, something far too large for her liking suddenly buzzed just a few centimeters away from her ear, an almost physical hitch running down her spine when she felt the horrible thrum of chitinous wings shaking the air beside her head.

Accordingly, the normally gentle tug on her consciousness that usually accompanied her awakening came back much stronger than before and forcefully ejected her out of the mind room and into the real world.

Startled, she immediately sat up, one of her hands pushing against the wet and somewhat soft surface she had been resting upon while the other moved randomly around her head, trying to scare away the insectile invader that was sure to be coming for a tasty human morsel.

Her hand, however, hit nothing in its wild flailing and, just as her post-awakening confusion started fading away, her ears began catching the all-encompassing hum of countless swarms buzzing all around her.

For just a moment, as her consciousness readjusted to the feeling of a corporeal body, Alice wondered where the heck she had decided to fall asleep, her eyelids so perfectly glued together that she couldn’t open them straight away.

Then, just as she managed to finally brush away the sleep and dried blood from her eyes, everything came back to her.

I have crossed an entire fungal forest, fought against a bunch of tadpoles with legs and killed their incredibly ugly frog parent to get to the pile of rubble that is supposed to bring me to the outside world. She reminded herself as she stared at the massive toad carcass she had been using as a temporary bed, at the platinum weapon that still lay embedded in its pulped brain, and at the pile of dead amphibian larvae just a few meters away slowly being consumed by the jointed efforts of a lot of insects and of a few razorblood clams, the entire surface of the carcasses covered in a shivering mass of chitinous legs and wings.

Yup, that sounds about right.

As she slept, quite a few things seemed to have happened, the most evident of which was the veritable invasion of the airspace above the lake by most of the swarms that normally flew over the fungal forest, the bodies of the countless insects they were composed of almost obscuring the rays of sunlight that were now shining down on her face.

It was clear that some time had passed since the death of the toad and despite the huge amounts of creatures that could be seen busily picking at the dead tadpoles, most of the swarms seemed content to just hover around, sometimes swooping towards her but always retreating before they could actually come into contact with her body.

When she looked around, she immediately found out why.

All over the monster’s wide back, coated in the same purplish blood she was caked in, lay entire piles of those creatures that had elected to try and take an early bite of the dead toad’s flesh. Their segmented legs were crumpled up, their wings were splayed and from their simple mouths and abdomens seeped their fluidified insides. They were all dead, killed by the toxins that her body was continuously working to consume, the poison powerful enough to be actually draining a part of her magical energy.

Even now, more of the arthropods attempted to land and gnaw at the corpse, dying just as their kins had done a moment before.

“Damn, it must be some really fricking powerful poison for it to have this effect,” she muttered, a wince appearing on her face when her tongue touched the incredibly bitter substance that had also coated her lips.

“Eww. Dishgushting.” She said as she tried to spit away the taste, soon resorting to a small amount of Lumen she swished around her mouth, having them consume the unpleasant flavor.

“But I guess I can wait a bit before cleaning myself up. Just think of it as a bug spray of really terrible quality. Extra chunky.” She told herself with a disgusted grimace as she extracted and tossed away one of the said chunks from her hair before getting up on her feet with a small huff, swaying a bit to keep her balance on the loose, slimy hide of the dead toad and taking a couple of unsteady steps to reach what had once been her mace.

She stared silently at the weapon, carelessly batting away at the few creatures that approached her and barely sparing them a glance when they dropped to the ground amid violent—but quickly-ending—convulsions.

“I must have really gone off the deep end yesterday…” she muttered once more, staring at the crater of bone fragments and pulped brain that was the resting spot of her weapon, taking a single breath before gripping its shaft and tearing it away with a nauseatingly wet sound of congealed blood and softened brain matter.

The perfectly crafted mace that had been gifted to her by the Thinkers was now a warped thing resembling a mix between a war hammer and an ice ax, with an incredibly sharp and heavy tip that had very evidently been quite useful for breaking through the thick skull of the creature.

“So I did not imagine this part. I really managed to change it,” she murmured softly as she weighed it in her hands.

On a hunch, she attempted to connect once again to Eisor’s core, trying to feel for the malleable power hidden from view beneath the thick layer of shiny metal, her expression souring when it simply didn’t react, laying inert and still in her hands, a chunk of cold and unfeeling metal.

When she started swinging it around, however, using it to keep away the larger insects, Alice forced herself to think of it as an extension of her own body in the same way it had felt the previous night, during her fight with the tadpoles.

As the minutes passed and she started adjusting to the new weapon’s shape and balance, the young woman also started feeling that connection deepen.

Her magic, which she could now feel constantly flowing through her bones, muscles, and organs, started extending towards the metal that was slowly warming up in her grip, entering it through her fingers wrapped around the shaft and coursing through it before finally coming into contact with the silent metal core embedded in the head and tapping into its partially replenished energy.

She exhaled when it happened, feeling the way the weapon had become a part of her.

As sweat covered her body and her muscles ached from the constant strain, Alice once again felt the wind caressing the hard surface of the strange ax, the weak impacts of the insects’ bodies when it hit them, and their barely warm fluids as they coated its surface.

Everything felt muted as if sensed through a somewhat numb limb, but she could still feel it.

Finally, after reveling in the new stream of sensations, she willed the weapon to change again, feeling the energy leave its silvery core as the metal became fluid and started moving to her bidding, slowly becoming the mace it had been, its six flanges as sharp as the day it had been forged.

“Oh wow”.

Those were the only words she could utter.

“Absolutely disgusting.” Stated the young woman when she finally landed on the actual ground after having climbed down the already rotting carcass of the toad.

It hadn’t been nice. At all.

After deciding to move down the heavily-contested back of the creature, she had been forced to use the gory holes she had carved into the being’s skin as handholds as she moved below, retching every time the already loose skin ripped and showered her in more gore, exposing the strange, pustule-like sphincters where the tadpoles probably used to insert their syringe-like mouthparts.

As she moved downward, the girl also noticed that, while the insects seemed to be particularly susceptible to the poisonous fluids, the streams of spores that constantly floated in the air didn’t have that kind of issue and had already latched onto the free, nutrient-filled ‘ground’ and had started to germinate.

The cycle of life in these caves really was fast.

The moment her feet touched the ground, Alice sprinted towards the place where she had dropped her knife, a sigh of relief escaping her lips when she finally found it after a few long minutes of frantic searching.

For a couple of seconds, she stared at its obsidian blade, inspecting it all over for any sign of damage after the rough treatment it had received during the fight. After all, her flesh could be knit back without many issues while ruining such a tool would be a huge loss for her.

Even if I’d rather like to avoid both. she morosely thought as she stared at the thin and still painful line that traveled across her palm and that reached down to the bone.

Thank god the bones were already reinforced. If they had been normal the knife would have probably cut straight through.

After that, the human girl took her time to recover the rest of her belongings and then approached the corpse once again, producing a large tendril of Lumen out of her mouth and starting to carefully consume a part of the toad, basically using the glowing particles as a cutting tool as she slowly butchered the creature, ignoring the many insects buzzing around her and trusting that the poisonous blood would act as a repellant.

She worked for at least an hour before she managed to find the surprisingly small core that had belonged to the monster, the apricot-sized sphere having laid deeply embedded into one of the two poison-filled sacks that were growing just above the earholes of the toad, its color a light purple which grew a bit darker when she gripped it in her hand, its energy trying to fight her own when the two came into contact.

“You were nothing compared to the millipede,” she told the dismembered creature as she placed the core in her bag, leaving it there as she once again took control of the glimmers and dumped them into the small lake, forming the particles into different luminous tendrils which she then used to illuminate the dark waters.

When she was sure nothing else was going to swallow her halfway through, Alice recalled every single particle to her body and then jumped in, letting the fresh water clean-up her body and clothes while she slowly crossed the distance with a steady breaststroke.

She started climbing up on the boulders soon after.

The large rocks had been slowly smoothed out by the continuous passage of water over their surface, which also caused them to be slick with a thick layer of green algae that made every single step treacherous.

Alice really had to thank her lucky star for having managed to climb them in a rush while being targeted by a huge and ugly toad.

Now, however, she had all the time in the world to reach the summit which, in any case, was not too far away from her current position.

The rays of sunlight shined down on her body, warming up her back and making the difficult climb bearable with the promise they brought with them.

She could barely wait.

And it was for that reason that she missed the first few lines that had been etched into the stone.

“What the heck is that?” she asked to herself when she finally caught sight of the shallow but incredibly intricate grooves that had laid barely hidden behind a thin curtain of algae.

She had just stopped to take a small break in order to catch her breath and her foot had slipped and torn away at the algae, exposing the signs on a stroke of luck.

Intrigued, the young woman traced her index finger over the incredibly smooth channels, following their strange, recurring shapes as they snaked through the stone, ending right at the edge of the rock.

To her surprise, Alice suddenly realized that she had already seen them, on a much larger scale, carved all over the extremely tall shaft she had slept in on her first journey towards the nest.

These ones seemed smaller, sure, but undeniably similar to the ones that laid so deep beneath the ground.

What the heck is this. Some kind of creature? Or was it made by someone? It doesn’t seem like a language though, not any I’ve ever seen at least. Maybe it’s a motif? But why create one in a cave infested by fungi?

Even more curious, the young woman started scouring the other boulders beside the one she had been resting upon, soon managing to find a good amount of them with the same kind of signs laying hidden beneath the grime and algae, always on a single side.

An idea started forming in her mind.

Her body filled with a nervous energy thanks to the unexpected discovery, she started climbing anew.

This time, she made sure to completely clear the algae on the surface of the boulders she landed on, exposing more of the grooves when they were there.

By the time she had reached the summit, Alice was staring down at the massive pile of rubble she had scaled, her eyes flitting from one carved boulder to the other, connecting some of their edges until, finally, an incomplete but undeniable image took shape in her brain, realization washing over her like a flood.

It is a gate… or was one at least.

She remained there, thinking of what it could mean until a sudden breeze brushed past her, making her shoulder-length hair sway wildly in the wind and giving goosebumps to her moist skin

Suddenly reminded of where she was, she forced herself to turn away from the pile of rubble and moved towards the opening and what lay beyond it.

It was a large tunnel, traveling upwards at a somewhat stiff incline that caused the water pouring through it to gain enough speed and momentum to be seen as a hindrance for any would-be traveler; strange crystal growths sprouted from the walls and the ground, reflecting and refracting the light that came from the radiant opening that lay less than a hundred meters away, promising sunlight and freedom to the human girl.

“I can come back later for the signs. Or find some more. We’ll see.” She told herself as she stepped into the tunnel, careful not to slip as she started moving past the first crystals, sometimes using them as footholds to keep going, her body hunched to keep her center of gravity as low as possible.

Meter after meter, Alice’s heart started beating faster and her eyes, unaccustomed as they were to the light, became blurry with shimmering tears.

She had walked through about three-fourths of the passage when she found the place where the water came from, a narrow crack in the wall that spewed high-pressure water onto the ground; she barely paid it attention as she dazedly walked to the exit, her pace quickening until it had turned into a run, her chitin soles slapping loudly against the stone.

She almost jumped out of the tunnel and was immediately forced to close her eyes when the powerful rays of sunlight burned through her retinas.

She forced herself to open them, ignoring the pain to stare at the bright blue sky that seemed to be ready to swallow her in its infinity.

Alice was so entranced by the sight that it took her more than a few heartbeats to realize that something was wrong.

For the outside she so desired to reach now lay so close and yet so incredibly far from her.

Alice had found herself standing beneath an enormous crystal dome.

The massive structure, probably more than five hundred meters in diameter was supported by a huge circular wall, filled with countless openings, stairs, and buildings that had been built straight into its surface, giving it a very heterogeneous appearance.

Enclosed within its confines, sprawling below her feet as she stared from high up above, lay the ruins of a city.

She was still trapped.

*****

This chapter is officially sponsored by Elise J., Thank you for your support!