Ch. 95 - Face-off

This took a lot longer than expected but I'm already writing the following chapter at least. I'm going to take a couple of hours of break and then go back to Discord. It's the first night I have some time.

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Face-off

The next morning, Alice woke up with a yawn in a much different environment from the one that had surrounded her the previous day, her face scrunching up in confusion when, upon looking around, she found herself in a small and young forest; the glade created by the passage of the rhinoceros beetle the previous day having already disappeared under the mess of new trees and thick underbrush that had grown overnight, the small saplings that had surrounded her the night before being already taller than she was, their fronds hiding most of the sky and preventing the majority of the sunlight from reaching the ground, sending the world in a deep-green penumbra that smelt of humus and lymph.

As she looked around, noticing a few spots she had observed the day before, Alice stretched and worked to reconnect with her physical body as she always did in the mornings, the time spent in her mind-room usually causing her to temporarily forget of the many issues that plagued any living organism, be those the very uncomfortable sleeping position she was forced to bear or the need to pee that she still hadn’t managed to resolve in her body, her expression growing even cloudier when she stumbled on the ‘chains’ that were still tied around her ankles.

“This won’t do,” she angrily stated to her surroundings before stomping towards the spot where her captor was still waiting for her, its massive unblinking eye easily reflecting her whole body on its multiple convex mirrors as she glared at it with a lot more courage than the previous day, her hesitation lasting only a few instants before she took a deep breath and found the guts to speak to the creature once again.

As she slept and took her time to reason and think, in fact, her fear of the massive titan that had captured her had mostly disappeared, the truth of her situation having become evident after a bit of rational reasoning: she simply needed to make it understand her point.

“I still don’t know whether you don’t understand or simply don’t like communicating,” she started, her hands clutching the edges of her dress as if they were an anchor, “but since you are clever enough to entertain the idea of me running away, you will also be clever enough to understand that I’m not going to be your slave. I’ve lived through far too much to become a servant of an overgrown cockroach.” She said, speaking in the language she had learned from Maath while she picked up her restraints with one hand and shook them in the air, the ropes tightening immediately and starting to grow over her feet as they usually did, forcing her to let go with an exasperated groan.

“Yeah, yeah, usual method, if I don’t listen I’ll be bound et cetera, et cetera,” she said, letting them drop on the ground and kicking them away for good measure.

“Well, I don’t care. I won’t be helping you anymore if you keep me tied up, I’m not anyone’s slave and you can’t force me to become one,” she finally concluded, making a show of picking up one of the larger crystals that had been left on the ground from the previous night and waving it in front of its face before letting it drop back on the ground with a plinking sound, sitting down with her arms crossed and a stubborn expression on her face while staring straight into the huge eye looming over her.

I just need to be patient. She reassured herself.

As the hours passed and no movement was perceived, however, her expression slowly changed from stubborn to bored and her butt began hurting as the sun reached its zenith, the morning turning into afternoon with no reaction from the silent titan.

It was already approaching evening when she finally got back up on her feet with a groan and stomped closer once again, a furious glare set on her face and her hands clutched into fists.

“Are you really going to do nothing but wait?” she shouted, “Okay then. I’ll show you who is going to lose first, you literally can’t starve me and I’m going to be able to escape sooner or later, you are the one that will lose their occasion” she ranted, marching back to the cold remains of her bonfire and immediately picking up the handmade cloak she had left bundled up beside it, the garment having been covered in a layer of vegetation while she slept.

When it was in her hands, she made a show of checking how it had dried before actually trying it on, her angered expression turning into one of disgust when the odor coming from the dried pelt finally reached her enhanced nose.

“Fuck if it doesn’t stink,” she gasped, temporarily forgetting of her stubborn kidnapper as she forced herself not to gag, unlatching the clasp that was keeping the cloak closed and laying it down on the ground once again to inspect it better, discovering that, while the drying had worked well enough, the fact that she didn’t have access to the normal reagents used in leatherworking meant that the smell wasn’t going to be particularly pleasant if she didn’t do something about it.

And since I’m stuck here for the moment, I’m going to finish all my preparations for when I manage to get out of this damned dome while I have the beetle’s protection. There are things I still need to do after all.

That thought in mind, she began planning once again, using her captivity to her advantage.

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Since the night was rapidly approaching, Alice set to work right away, leaving the smelly cloak on the ground and beginning to search her surroundings for something that would help her mask the horrible stench, using the last rays of sunshine to walk from plant to plant, sampling countless leaves, roots, flowers, and even fruits and berries before finding something that finally seemed to work, her winner being the small and odorous leaves of a barely-noticeable bush, their smell reminding her of a mix of mint and lemon that, she discovered, worked extremely well on the hide, easily masking the previous smell on the small spot she applied them to.

The cloak is damned big though, she realized as she stared at the size of the plant she had managed to find, I think I’ll need to find a way to make the most out of the leaves since there aren’t that many.

Thus, after harvesting most of the branches from the plant, she carried them close to her temporary camp and began creating a new bonfire for the night, the process and movements having already become automatic for her, even if her hands still smarted and sometimes even bled afterwards.

Nonetheless, as soon as the first flickering flames appeared through the moss, she placed the cloak as close to the fire as possible to make use of its light and warmth as she worked, and then picked up the first handful of leaves, hesitating for a just a second before stuffing them in her mouth like she had once seen in an old documentary and beginning to chew on the bitter plant, her teeth shredding the cellular walls of the vegetable and allowing the odorous lymph to escape and mix with her own saliva until, after a few minutes of chewing, she was left with a dark-green mush that she liberally applied to the leather in front of her, watching the pigmented liquid seep into the material and mask its previous smell.

It was deep into the night when she finally finished, her mouth and hands having been stained green by the very unpleasant work while the inside of her mouth felt incredibly dry from the copious tannins that had been contained in the leaves, even her jaw feeling sore despite her enhanced muscles aiding the work.

Despite all that, it was with an expression of utter satisfaction that Alice gingerly picked up her finished cloak and moved her hand over the thick fur on the exterior before touching the darker, drying leather that was now refreshingly perfumed, its previous smell barely perceptible under the mint and lemon of her treatment.

“From tomorrow onward, I’m going to be sleeping on something softer!” she giddily exclaimed, patting the garment with one of her hands before finally beginning to clean herself of the grime that was still covering her, her Lumen doing quick work of most of the particles and pigments while she prepared to lay down and rest, her head pressed against her silken sack that contained most of her belongings.

The next day, she would finish the rest of her equipment.

And by then, the beetle might finally understand that I’m being serious. If it doesn’t, I’ll really have to find a way to escape before it can catch me again.

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The next day, Alice woke up with the first lights, her ears already filled with the calls of the birds that had begun repopulating the forest, their songs echoing through the trunks of the new trees that, despite looking a bit thicker than before, had seemingly stopped growing at the same incredible pace, the magical energy permeating the place having slightly diminished, its invisible flow feeling calmer and slower.

There must be a limit to what it can do, she briefly pondered as she sat up, her mind already churning after having spent the entire night thinking of what she wanted to do and prepare for her escape, the things she looked forward to obtaining so many more than what she would be able to carry and travel with.

Despite that, the true answer to her conundrum had come quickly to her mind, even if she knew that it would mean a lot of hard work to make it happen.

It doesn’t matter if it’s going to be hard; I’ve been hating the fact that I only have one rope for a while now. Everything else is secondary.

After deciding on the focus of her work, she spent a bit more time thinking on how to proceed while she ate her breakfast, her eyes growing unfocused as she thoughtlessly gulped down one of the sweet-tasting fruits she now had available by the dozen, her entire attention on some old memories that had suddenly resurfaced from the depths of her brain.

As Basil slithered through the brush around her, Alice spent her time remembering her childhood, particularly what she had learnt during one of the many summer camps she had been sent to because her parents had to work during the summer, only coming back to reality when her pet suddenly gulped down a large bug that had been crossing their path.

“Nice job!” she congratulated while picking up the snake, the reptile hissing softly in her ear after managing to slither up to her neck and coiling around it like a warm, living necklace.

A small smile on her face, Alice finally got up on her feet and extracted her knife from the sheath on her chest, her other hand immediately going to grasp one of the many weeds that grew between the trees, the one she chose looking somewhat like a nettle with a bluish hue to its leaves and without the stinging barbs to protect it from predators.

After cutting it at the base, she closely inspected the sturdy stem with both her touch and sight, a small smile of satisfaction blooming on her lips when she discovered that the thin outer layer of the plant could be easily torn off from the rest of the stem, rewarding her with a long piece of wet fiber that resisted decently well when she pulled on its extremities, snapping only after a few seconds of strain.

“Perfect,” she whispered with a smile; her survival camp in Tuscany was going to be useful for the first time in her life.

Before she could begin her rope-weaving operation, however, Alice had to get the raw materials, which meant picking every single weed of that kind that she could find, pulling her bindings along until they couldn’t stretch any longer and walking in a circle around the massive bug, only returning to her base whenever she was carrying too many but always going back for more afterwards.

Only after having collected a pile as tall as she was did she finally sit down beside it, using her past experiences in the summer camp to begin cleaning them, squashing the stems between two of her fingers until they were flat, opening them up, and then reaching for one of the two extremities to pull off the thin layer of fibers that, like bark on a tree, was protecting the interior of the weed.

As soon as the small string was in her hands, she would quickly discard the rest and then place it to dry, along with the others, over one of the numerous low branches of the nearby trees, the bundles growing more and more as the hours passed and she kept working.

To top it all, the fibers she extracted seemed to be less affected by the titan’s magic than the rest of the nettles which, once she threw them on the discarded pile, started quickly decaying, becoming the perfect ground for more of their kind to sprout, allowing her to reduce her harvesting runs thanks to the presence of her resources close at hand.

As the hours passed and the bundles of fibers dried up, Alice was finally able to begin the real crafting, something she had began dreading the more of the plants she processed.

Nonetheless, as soon as the last plant was tossed in the warm pile of mulch that was decaying a few meters away from her, she finally approached the first of the bundles she had created and, upon making sure that it had managed to dry enough, she sat down on the ground and began braiding the fibers between themselves, using the same method she had once used with the weak skin of the screechlings to create a long and thin thread with a decent tensile strength that only snapped after quite a bit of pressure on her part.

Certainly not my silken cord, she thought, but this is only the start.

Reassuring herself, she quickly went and took the second bundle, the sun slowly dropping past the edge of the dome as she continued her work in the weak light of her small bonfire.

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“Dammit,” she swore, hissing to herself as she sent more of her magic towards the tip of her fingers and watched the bleeding sores they were covered in slowly grow yet another thin layer of skin, the last one of a seemingly infinite series of them.

Ignored in front of her lay the results of an entire night of braiding, dozens of long and thin vegetal threads, each one perfectly coiled and ready to be tied and braided once again into larger ropes that would be able to bear a lot more weight than the smaller ones, possibly even her own enhanced body if she kept working as well as she had been.

All that progress, however, had not been achieved without effort, her hands and fingers having been literally flayed by the surprisingly-rough plant fibers brushing against her skin over and over again, with some portions of the ropes having been literally died red with her blood as a result, her skin too delicate to prevent the blisters from forming on her fingertips and her healing not quick enough to heal them before they opened up and spewed out her blood.

“This is the last time I’m suffering because of this. There is no reason not to get it on par with the rest of my body,” she muttered under her breath, her teary eyes narrowed as she stared at the unimproved dermis that covered her muscles, the skin far too thin to prevent her from getting constantly injured in that dangerous environment, that simple fact evident in the numerous pale spots that covered her limbs, revealing every place where the sharp barbs of the eel had sunk into her flesh just a few days before.

“I need to improve it while I’m still somewhat safe in the beetle’s presence,” she said as she gently moved her digits over Basil smooth scales, the tiny snake still sleeping in the early morning light, “as soon as I manage to get away from it I’ll have to be vigilant once again and I won’t have much time to play with myself,” a chuckle escaping her lips and smoothing her frown when her mind caught up to her tongue.

Still giggling to herself, she finished repairing her wounds before picking up the smaller ropes one more time, sighing under her breath as she began braiding once again, this time more slowly and carefully while she let her mind wander away from that repetitive task, instead working hard to find ways to improve her body.

“The easiest way would probably be to simply make it thicker; it wouldn’t require a lot of effort and I would be done in just a few hours; it might be good enough to avoid some scrapes at the very least,” she spoke conversationally to the small reptile on her lap while her long fingers expertly began the first few centimeters of a rope as thick as two of her fingers put together.

“At the same time, If I really have to waste time and resources on it, I’d rather get the best and then forget about it for a while[FB1] ,” she said, stopping her braiding for a second as her eyes grew unfocused once again, “What I would really love,” she suddenly admitted, “would be what that damned Rocktopus had that allowed it to change color. If I hadn’t killed it so quickly I’d have been able to make it work, I bet it.”

“Alas, that is out of my possibilities right now,” she finally sighed after a few more seconds of pondering, soon resuming her work once again.

“Since camouflage is not on the menu, I guess that the next best option would be to copy that subcutaneous armor the eel had, or at least adapt it to my body without ruining my appearance too much, I’d rather not have that ugly sagging skin if I have to be honest. Yes, I think I’m going to go with that and maybe a few other things if I manage.”

Her decision taken, as she placed one thin rope over the other, keeping the threads as tight as she could, a part of Alice’s consciousness started sinking into her body to observe the multiple layers of tissue that covered and protected her organism, trying to get a feel for the many structures they were composed of while she thought on how to implement those much needed changes without compromising the rest, the hours passing quickly as she sometimes stopped to make some experiments, thickening the skin or using different biological materials she had available to create what she wanted.

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The sun was at its zenith and the rope was already longer than her body when she was finally content with her project, suddenly getting up on her feet with a small huff and quickly moving to the small amount of smoked marmot meat that she had managed to harvest from the remains of her bonfire, the strips of flesh having weathered surprisingly well thanks to the low amount of moisture they contained.

She had obviously hoped to keep them for her time out of the dome but, to her dismay, the enhancement of her epidermis would require a decent amount of proteins that she simply didn’t have access to at the moment, the area of the forest she was relegated to being almost devoid of larger animals, the only creatures still frequenting it the bugs she definitely didn’t want to eat and some small birds that she couldn’t hope to reliably catch and that wouldn’t offer her much nutritional value either way.

“I can get some more right before I cross the gates,” she promised herself as she took the first bite of the jerky, chewing on the leathery food and feeling its smoky flavor coat her tongue.

Honestly not too bad, she thought as she swallowed and walked towards the rhinoceros beetle, moving through the underbrush until she emerged in front of the huge unblinking eye that she had gotten used to, sparing it only a glance before laying down with her back against its smooth, glass-like surface.

“I hope you won’t mind keeping an eye on me while I work,” she said, now using another form of attack to stir the creature awake.

When even puns didn’t work, Alice chuckled to herself and raised the small snake up to her eyes, smiling when Basil raised its pointed head and stared at her with its large purple eyes.

“Keep watch will you? Bite me if something happens, I don’t know if you understand but it’s worth a try,”

After that, she let the small snake coil back around her upper arm and finally delved deep into her body, sinking into the largest organ of her body, its surface beginning to glow as her magic began changing its structures.

Over her, the beetle’s short antennae suddenly twitched, a barely perceptible rumble shaking its massive body while a loud hooting sound echoed from farther into the forest.