Ground

The muscular, red-lipped monkey let go of the bloodied face of its underling, leaving it panting and wheezing at its feet, where it belonged.

He-His muscles hurt after growing so much in so little time and he couldn’t help but feel rage and hatred at the fact, despite it being a sign of his growth and new position at the top of the clan’s hierarchy.

It wasn’t worth it now, not after the attack.

He now sat on one of the larger branches of the great tree that was his kingdom, irately observing its meager following as they ambled in the proximity, staring at him without the same mix of fear, envy and admiration that he had once felt when he was one of the brood carriers, their expressions shrewd and calculating despite their submissive movements, already thinking of how to supplant him.

He was well aware that he hadn’t gained his role normally, he had simply been lucky enough to find the right morsels in the discarded remains of the previous leaders, swallowing their hormone-filled organs and initiating the changes that he had once so desired, his role changing with its body as a result.

He hadn’t obtained the alpha role by himself and everyone knew it, it was all its fault, the glowing ambusher that had attacked them and killed them like they were prey.

The one that had scarred his face.

His blood red lips curled up to reveal its sharp teeth, hatred once again boiling in his brain, motivating his every action.

And now they had lost it because the one that was supposed to follow it had instead decided to play with one of the furry things they normally ate. Because he didn’t elicit the same fear and respect of the previous leaders. He had to make sure they would understand.

He kicked its head once again, smiling when he heard the keening sound its action had caused.

He was preparing to kick it again when the non-nest at the base of the large tree suddenly lit up with a bright and white light that moved past the broken ceiling and, for just a few minutes, illuminated the deep and painful scar on his face as it stretched into an expression of eagerness and bloodlust.

He was sure he had found it again. It was only a matter of finding the right moment to exact his revenge, he wanted it to scream.

As the light below disappeared, a deep hoot echoed between the wisteria’s boughs.

On the ground floor of the domed building, the light returned before she could really observe the source of the power, her blurry eyes only catching a few details of the object before it once again became a rippling mass of light and magical energy and she was forced to back away, shielding her seared retinas and distancing herself from the torrent of magical energy that was hammering against her body, constantly trying to overpower her own well of warmth.

When she was far enough away to ignore the magical energy, Alice stared wordlessly at the beam of light that was now perfectly hitting the fragment embedded in the air a few meters away, unable to process what she had seen, the answer too unbelievable to be true despite all the clues pointing in that direction.

It was not a core. It’s impossible. Nothing could carry something that massive. That thing was larger than Chillushrith.

She paced around the room, repeatedly glancing between the flickering fragment, the rift in space and the shimmering hole in the ground, finally stopping after having come to a conclusion, her expression hard as if set in stone.

“It doesn’t really matter what it is anyway. Maath said that the rifts in space appear randomly and rarely but maybe, if I could get in there then I could control it. It’s the greatest chance to go home I’ve found ever since coming here. I just need to find a way in.”

Pushing forward once again, she hurriedly lifted up the large chunk of wood she had removed a few minutes before and placed it back in front of the hole, blocking the light that had been acting like a flare up until that point and once again enshrouding the inside of the building with a blanket of darkness, only the pink and golden light of the fading sunset reaching the root-covered ground of the building, informing her that the night was quickly approaching.

When all the excitement of her discoveries started to fade, Alice found herself feeling all the sore tiredness from the climb and the following exploration, her body pleading a moment of repose after the feats it had achieved.

She yawned as she picked up the mace she had dropped on the ground and quickly stepped towards a large opening in the wall that she had overlooked before, her attention too focused on the tree and the floating shard to notice the large entrance or the many smaller doors that littered the lower walls, most of them clearly leading to the same kind of rooms she had explored on the upper floors.

The large door, however, was different; probably twice her height, it opened into another part of the structure, a wide and airy atrium that led to the outside through an even larger entrance.

The entire ceiling of the area was composed by a series of overlapping and irregular waves of stone, each one slightly distanced from the other so that the sun could shine through the gaps between them, the natural light painting the entire ceiling in a warm yellow that would have made it look like an inverted sand dune of the Sahara desert if it weren’t for the many climbing plants using the nooks and crannies as supports in order to reach the precious sunlight, their vegetal curtains hiding the seamless ways the design melded with the rest of the structure.

Alice marveled at the strange architecture as she walked, observing with wonder in her eyes at those remnants of a civilization while she slowly crossed the empty hall, the roots of the wisteria still crisscrossing the floor she was walking on, sometimes causing her to stumble on the uneven ground, too busy staring at the ceiling to pay attention to her feet.

When she finally stepped out in the open, she found herself standing in a sea of tall, swaying grasses, the last rays of crimson sunlight landing on the small, gentle hills and the numerous ruined buildings that still poked out of the ground like the bows of wrecked ship, revealing details of what the city must have been in an ancient past.

Sometimes, one of the rays fell on the few pieces of crystal that lay embedded throughout the plains, their smooth surface glinting in the fading light of the evening.

It was eerily beautiful.

Growing on the hills and between the rubble, Alice saw some of the small and twisted trees she had spotted on her first day in the ruined city, observing the small maples whose palmate leaves rustled in the surprisingly cold and strong wind that made her shiver in her quite thin dress, her bare legs instantly covered in goosebumps.

“Yeah, I think I’m going to stay inside for tonight,” she muttered as she turned around, her arms wrapped around her torso as she moved back to the sheltered building and quickly found a side room that would hopefully serve her well as a temporary base, dropping her belongings inside and making a short trip to collect some of the many dead branches that lay on the ground under the wisteria, soon obtaining a large pile of deadwood which she quickly set on fire near the entrance to let the smoke out, trusting that nothing would be so interested in her to jump through literal flames.

After that, she quickly consumed one of the incredibly sweet fruits she had harvested and then quickly fell asleep as she gently petted the small snake that had coiled around her fingers.

It was still the middle of the night and the fire had turned into a pile of lightly-smoking coals when Alice suddenly woke up with a startled gasp, her right hand already on the silver shaft of her pick as a small shape in her left one constantly coiled around her fingers, sometimes painfully constricting them as it hissed loudly from her grip.

“What?” she said, raising the tiny reptile in front of her face and staring in its purple eyes, another threatening hiss coming from its wide-open mouth.

“Did I grip you too—” she stopped talking when she heard a muffled cough coming from outside, soon followed by the rustling of the large leaves of the upper terrace.

Her blood ran cold at the thought of what could be waiting outside to get her.

For a second, she thought of hiding and waiting it out before her eyes landed on the fire in the entrance, the gently glowing coals a beacon in the darkness of the building.

Whatever it was, it already knew where she to find her.

She hurriedly placed the small snake on her shoulder to free her other hand and then unlatched the opening of her silken sack, searching inside until she found the small glowing ellipsoid she had taken from the monkeys, extracting it and immediately making it roll outside, where it stopped between a couple of roots, its warm and even light illuminating the entire floor and revealing nothing but shadows.

She waited.

For many long minutes, the silence reigned in the building as Alice stood at the ready, her weapons raised and prepared to strike at the first creature that decided to poke its head in her room, straining her ears for the telltale noise of something approaching.

Only after more than half an hour did she once again hear the rustle of leaves and the creaking of the loose and dry bark of the wisteria, some pieces even falling down on the ground, making her flinch at the noise.

Whatever had been up there had probably decided to move away.

Despite that, she still waited for more than an hour before laying down once again, adding even more fuel to the fire and keeping her knife unsheathed and the pick at the ready on her lap.

“Thank you little one,” she finally murmured as she caressed the tiny snake coiled around her neck, too anxious to close her eyes.

“I hope you’ll keep doing these kind of things… Damn… I really hope so,”

The sunrise found a quite tired Alice carefully moving out of the base, her head on a swivel as she repeatedly checked for any ambusher waiting for her to come out, her hand gripping the pick so tightly that it actually hurt.

Unable to find any danger, she quickly picked up her glowing ellipsoid, stuck it into her bag and rushed out of the building, leaving the flickering fragment behind as she stepped into the tall grasses that reached up to her waist, her ears trying to catch any unknown sound over the constant rustle of the stalks against her dress and the random gusts of winds that washed over the expanse and turned her body into a shivering mess of goosebumps.

Only once she was sure that nothing was following her from the domed building did she start walking towards the closest hill, looking for an elevated position to survey the area around her.

She had just managed to reach the top of the rise when a very loud whistle suddenly echoed from a small creature standing on an uneven mound of rubble a few dozen meters away, staring at her with two large eyes that were barely visible through a layer of extremely thick and greenish fur.

Before she could react in any way other than jump in surprise, the marmot-like rodent had already fled in the burrow it had excavated in the ground below, its fluffy behind the last thing that disappeared from her sight.

When she recovered from the scare, Alice made sure to remember where the burrow was located and then proceeded to survey the land that lay beyond the hill, observing the small forest that grew in the middle of the undulating expanse and around the particularly steep mound to the left, right beside the large oak she could see towering over the other trees, its gnarly and bifurcated trunk filled with new green buds and delicate small leaves.

Inside and around the forest, she could barely see the ruins of many large buildings, their partially intact roofs covered by a thick later of dirt and grass that in time, she suddenly realized, would turn them into the same hills she was standing on, the ground slowly reclaiming their corpses.

Her attention, however, was soon taken by what lay beyond the forest, on the opposite side of the dome compared to her position.

There, the vegetation turned sparser, the tall grasses quickly giving way to a tundra of rubble and crystalline growths that grew larger and larger until they reached the side wall and the buildings growing on it, congealing together and forming the massive crystal waterfall that scintillated in the new light, its jagged protrusions almost-completely covering a large portion of the wall, just like the wisteria did on her side.

Almost.

Through her enhanced eyes, Alice could perfectly see the two, untarnished metal doors that lay wide open beneath the crystalfall, partially submerged by the translucent material but still allowing a wild wind to blow through them. constantly sweeping the low-growing sedges, shrubs, rachitic trees and lichens that covered the eroded ruins and grew between the crystals.

She had found her way out.

“That one has become a secondary objective though,” she told to the snake, almost chuckling at the absurdity of her situation, “I’ve managed to find my damned way out and now I have to ignore it because there might be a way home, very funny.”

Taking no notice of the soft hiss she received in reply, she finally started moving again, her pace brisk as she moved towards the larger buildings that silently awaited into the forest, hoping to find a way to reach the spherical room and the source that lay within it.

*****

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