NBB - A sphere's tale - Chapter 10 Entry disallowed

TD18 moved towards a passage between two buildings. A four-story building had collapsed against the one beside it, which was only still standing thanks to being stuck against the collapsed side of the cavern. The thousands of small legs that lifted him had grown stronger, and although he was still far from dexterous, he did feel he could make ten percent turns if he had to now, instead of being limited to almost straight lines unless standing still.

Keeping as quiet as a forty-meter long wyrm that moved as a centipede could, he refrained from shouting for Mutar. It would draw too much attention, and although he preferred finding the skeleton, he would have to locate him another way. So he continued forward along the side of the cavern. The metallic odor around him wasn't as strong as further into the city, showing there was plenty of metal to be found, something he would make use of later.

The vision his smell gave him was only black and yellow, but the occasional glimpse from his eyes showed that the buildings were dusty grey concrete with brown sediment all across. No signs of biological life or unlife were anywhere to be found.

A few hundred meters further, a massive collapsed area blocked his way, forcing him deeper into the city. GD18 moved past a skyscraper that had millennia ago lost all its windows and now looked like a Jenga tower ready to crack when he heard a muted thud. Readying his now much longer, stronger, and barbed tentacles, GD18 moved forward until he heard it again. The sound came from a spot a hundred meters ahead, around an intersection. The turn was ninety degrees, and he moved to the far right of the wide, crumbled road until his sides almost touched the building. Slowing to a crawl, he turned into the bent. A wyrm lay on its side against a building, unmoving and with half of its head caved in.

GD18 stopped, trying to locate the sound of the thud. It seemed to come from inside the wyrm. There was no way for him to turn back, so he continued forward, his side touching the side of the building as he failed to make the full turn. A loud rumble came from the building as he pushed ahead, and cracks appeared in the concrete spreading up and away.

As his tail touched the side and his head finally turned towards the wyrm, a shadowy figure plopped from the hole. It was round with eight long legs and a head with two massive mandibles above a mouth with razor-sharp edges. Two purple-veined eyes stared at GD18, and a soft slurping sound came from the thing, then it rushed forward, skittering like a spider.

Undead Spiderling. The name, combined with minimal information, flashed through GD18's mind.

GD18 forced his body to slow and turn until his mouth was pointed at the spiderling, ready to grab it and swallow it. He wished he could have slowed down time and searched in his database what it was. That was impossible, and he had to do with what he saw. His mind quickly analyzed the spiderling and the situation and immediately noticed something about the hole in the other wyrm. The edges were pushed outwards, not in. The thing had exited it after entering it another way!

By now, the spiderling had almost reached him, seeing to aim straight for his maw!

It's aiming to do what I did. Enter through the mouth and burrow to my core! With the realization came another. Wyrms couldn't close their mouths. The spiderling was ten meters away and jumped forward, drawing its legs close to its body, flying forward like a ball.

GD18s mind went into overdrive as within a moment, he took stock of his possible weapons. He found a solution as the spiderling shot towards the exact middle of his mouth.  A normal wyrm's tentacles couldn't reach there. But he wasn't a normal wyrm. His long tentacles shot forward and wrapped around the spiderling that unwrapped its limbs and began trashing. The first instinct of his tentacles was to draw the spiderling inside and swallow it, but GD18 overpowered the desire and held the thing entangled in the middle of his mouth. His tongues shot forward, and as they did, he realized something else had changed. There was a small eye on each of his two tongues! A dark, fuzzy image came from them, oddly disconnected. GD18 changed the perspective slightly, and suddenly it seemed as if he could watch two external monitor feeds.

The spiderling was biting at one of the tentacles with its mandibles, and white ichor sprayed everywhere while a burst of pain registered with GD18.

He circled around the spiderling with his tongues, quickly locating the weakly protected stomach. The tongues shot forward, the small round mouths opening as they plunged into the spiderling, punching a hole inside easily. The spiderling hissed ones, and then the first of the tongues began chewing on its insides, and it shuddered and fell silent. A moment later, the tongues had found the things mana-orb and ripped it free, dropping it for some of the tentacles to throw down the throat. They commenced ripping the spiderling apart, and eventually, the whole of it was swallowed and gone.

GD18 took stock of what happened, feeling a slight increase in the energy he was generating. The mana-orb was part of the reason, but so was the spiderling. He felt himself grow faster as it slowly digested. He stared at the wyrm and began moving ahead. As soon as he did, the vision from his tongues vanished, and all he had to go by was his smell-o-vision.

So they only provide input if I'm not moving? GD18 stopped close to the other wyrm, his smell completely overwhelmed by the smell of metal. He wondered for a moment if the wyrms were what he had smelled coming up here and not the metal in the buildings. Then he focused on his tongues. The vision from the returned again, and he looked around his own mouth. The tentacles around the outside hid multiple rows of razor-sharp teeth that he knew could bite through stone and even metal. Sticking one of the two tongues outside, he examined how far from his mouth it could go.

Forty feet and a bit, he thought as the tongue reached the maximum range. Moving a bit closer, until he was almost touching the other wyrm, he sent the tongue inside the hole until he reached the mana-orb chamber. It was dark and ripped apart tendrils loosely hung from the sides of the now empty chamber. From the size, it showed it had been just a normal mana-orb, although a large one.

His tongue bit a chunk from the wyrm, its teeth easily ripping apart the thick plates of the other wyrm. From the pressure and the resistance, he could make out that he wouldn't have had as easy a time if he had still been a normal wyrm. As his instinctive behaviors began consuming the wyrm, the energy began increasing until his mana-field was growing with almost twenty per minute.

It took a long time before he had reduced the other wyrm to nothing more than some scraps on the ground. One of the reasons was that he stopped every minute to listen if something was approaching him. When he was finished and began moving again, he felt bloated and stuffed. All of his stomachs were so full they were pressing against his other intestines, making it hard to move. Still, his digestive system was working at full speed, and he could feel the bloat reducing from both his own growth and the absorption of the matter.

GD18 ignored the side roads and continued scouting ahead, looking for a place to hide. An hour later, he was far into the city, sticking to the edges. The bloated feeling had disappeared. He was tracking a thick stench of metal that was slowly wreaking havoc on his sensory input.

Moving out from a road barely wide enough for him to fit, he exited onto a massive square and slowly came to a halt. A dozen dead wyrms lay in the middle, seemingly dragged around a hundred-meter round cocoon. It was deadly quiet for a moment, then a soft hissing came from the top of the cocoon, and a familiar mandible head came out. A spiderling like the first one, crawled out and looked around.

GD18 didn't move, staying perfectly still as he examined the spiderling. It hadn't noticed him yet, and after a moment, it returned back into the cavern.

Poor vision or they move by smell like me, he thought. Or sound, he added, still not moving. If it was sound, that would provide a problem. Picking up a rock with a tentacle, he threw it as far as he could. An old trick, but as it bounced from a wall almost a hundred meters away, it proved still effective.

The spiderling popped its head back out, looked around, even directly at GD18, before finally disappearing back down again.

After a minute, GD18 tried something he hadn't done before. He took a step back. It was ridiculously hard as his body wasn't made for it, and his small legs only really bend forward. Still, calm and collected, he managed it. Every step took almost ten seconds, and every time he had to wait and see if the spiderling came back out. Eventually, he backed up out of the square, and an even longer time later, he was back at the crossing before that one.

As he began slowly moving forward and back to make the turn, a loud explosion came from somewhere in the city behind him. It was followed by rumbling that continued for a while. When it stopped, muted hissing sounds came from the square that held the cocoon, followed by loud ticking that came his way.

GD18 stopped bothering to make the rest of the turn. He smashed his way forward through the corner of the building and into the road beyond. Moving as fast as he could, his long body barreled through the shorter road, crashing through a building ahead of him.

The hissing and ticking from behind was getting closer, barely audible above the slowly crashing building behind him.

"Mutar, where are you," GD18 roared. He knew he was being followed, and that silence wouldn't matter much anymore.  His voice blasted out across the city, and he hoped the undead was still around somewhere. A moment later, an almost equally loud shout came from far to the right, deeper into the city.

"Geed? I am here!"

How does that help? Tell me where here is! GD18 thought as he began turning towards the direction of the shout as good as he could. His head burst through the side of a skyscraper that must have been close to turning to rubble as it began crumbling down atop him instantly. As his headshot out the other end, across another alleyway, and into another building, heavy collisions rocked the back part of his body. An ancient metal beam slammed straight down on his tail, crushing the plated armor and causing a burst of pain from the spot below. A moment later, the energy surplus from the digesting metal rerouted to his tail, and it began regenerating at a rapid rate. GD18 was glad it was being fixed, but not as much that he had no control over it. The energy drain was significant, and he would have preferred saving it.

Three crumbling buildings later, he burst out into an open area, filled with crumbling and broken down highway ramps that led towards the city's main traffic areas. The ceiling of the cave above had collapsed completely, opening up for as far as he could see. And see, he could. His muddy vision, not suited for the dark, showed him a steel grey sky with a yellow orb almost right above him. The sight of the sun confused him immensely, and it should have long since turned into a red dwarf. Still, this wasn't the time to reason about that. His body was regenerating dozens of spots now, and the surplus of energy was draining at a rapid rate. In the open, the overwhelming metal stench of the city began vading, and his vision widened and cleared up.

He raced out onto the ramp, hoping his mediocre calculations proved true and it would hold his mass. It did, and as he rushed up, he saw the left side of the six-lane wide highway was still intact. His yellow smell-o-vision showed weak spots better than eyes could have as he noticed darker spots where there was less stone left. Astonishingly the building behind him didn't crash, and hissing and tapping sounds became audible above the lower rumbling behind it. Orange blurs rushed from the holes in the building and after him. At first, they were gaining on him quickly, but as his speed increased on the flat open area, they began falling behind.

"Geed, I'm coming!"

A loud shout came from a ramp far ahead, and a figure smelling of bone came leaping and rushing his way. It intercepted him just before he got to the ramp, and a moment later, Mutar scampered atop his head.

"You should move faster," the bonewarper said as he moved towards the back and stared at the still chasing spiderlings.

"Why?" GD18 asked, detecting nothing but the spiderlings that were quickly falling behind.

"The big one will come soon."