Ch. 93 - Beetle

Feeling a lot better today. I think i'll try reading the comments, even if I do feel almost ill doing so.

I hope you will enjoy the chapter. I'll try to pump the next one as quickly as possible, I had to change a bit of the progression but everything should still end the way I envisioned it. Not much longer.

---------------------------------------------------

Beetle

“What the hell am I going to do?” she numbly asked as she watched the huge beetle she had just awakened walk away with most of her belongings and provisions on its back, the sound of felled trees and crushed architecture echoing loudly throughout the crystal dome, accompanied by the outraged screams of the hundreds of birds that had once lived in the small forest at the center of the plains and that had now formed a huge and heterogenous flock that flew around the walking hill that had destroyed their homes, sometimes swooping in to ineffectually peck at it as it relentlessly pushed forward, seemingly heading towards a more open part of the expanse, the bifurcated tree that was its horn creaking loudly all the while.

It took her a while to unfreeze from her dumbfounded trance but when she finally did so, Alice hastily checked herself for any injuries she might not have noticed, finding nothing aside from a few bad bruises that were thankfully non-threatening, her muscles and bones having protected her more squishy organs from most of the damage of the harsh fall.

She was, however, in a very difficult situation, finding herself forced to choose between leaving behind most of the things she had collected during her journey or finding a way to get them back from the massive creature that was unknowingly holding them and her pet.

I’m pretty sure that Basil is going to be clever enough to escape if he needs to but, at the same time, jumping down from such a height might be dangerous and, even if they come back, I’m still going to lose all my stuff.

“I need a plan,” she finally murmured to herself, forcing herself to think back of what had just happened in an effort to glean the best path to tread from the events that had just occurred.

Alice was sure of only one thing; she definitely didn’t want to make it angry at her.

That thing didn’t even notice having a fire lit on its damned back! She exclaimed in her mind as she stared at the small plume of smoke that was still rising from the top of the insect’s carapace, reaching halfway to the crystal dome before being swept away by the winds, It woke up only after I pulled out that crystal from its flesh, and that shard had barely managed to pierce past the shell even if it was as thick as my thigh. I’m definitely not going to be able to fight it head on, even if I wanted to risk it.

And I definitely don’t. she added as an afterthought.

Despite still being shaken by the unexpected encounter, Alice couldn’t help but feel that the creature, unlike most huge monsters she had met throughout the caves, hadn’t been out to get her at all, having clearly chosen to ignore her even after directly staring at her for a while.

Even Maath felt more bloodthirsty than it, and she was literally an intellectual if we think about it.

Is it simply big and somewhat harmless? The way it crushed the crystal I removed from its back tells me that it does possess some kind of intelligence and that makes it more and less dangerous at the same time. I’m sure it saw me back there, I was no more than a couple of meters away from the crystal, there is no chance it didn’t.

Uncertainty filled her mind, her fingers playing with the hilt of her knife as she stared at the tall, lumbering shape moving away from her, the smell of her fire and of the meat still cooking on its coals quickly dissipating in the colder breeze that was now flowing through the gaps in the central woods of the expanse, the felled trees now unable to completely prevent the harsher winds that blew from the only opening in the walls from reaching further into the dome.

Could I get up on its back once again? I think I could jump high enough to reach the edge but what if it attacks me before I get there?

For a moment, doubt filled her mind and menaced to paralyze her again but, after unconsciously touching the empty spot on her arm that had quickly become her snake’s favorite resting spot, Alice forced herself to move, taking the first, incredibly hard steps that would lead her closer to the biggest titan she had ever seen, the simple idea of what she wanted to do capable to drench her back in cold sweat and make her heart hammer in her chest.

“I-I think that I’ll at least see if it’s safe to approach it,” she muttered to herself, her left hand gripping the edge of her dress as she started walking, “if it is, I’m going to wait until the best moment to act, possibly if its asleep or distracted, and if it isn’t then I’ll have to accept that most of my things are lost forever. Either way, I’ll need to book it quickly afterwards since I’m not really looking into getting stomped on. Yes. It can work. Sure.”

Her decision finally taken, a very uncertain Alice started following the huge insect who, while she pondered, had already moved more than a hundred meters away, heading towards a more open part of the expanse and leaving behind a mess of splintered trunks on its wake.

She quickened her pace.

-------------------------------------------------------------

As she moved towards the creature, Alice couldn’t help but observe the calamity that had taken place over the course of just a few minutes, walking around the numerous holes in the ground that had been formed by the beetle’s weight collapsing the ancient ceilings of long-entombed buildings, cracking them open like eggs and revealing forgotten rooms filled with dust, dirt and pieces of destroyed furniture.

To avoid those gaping mouths, she was often forced to push her way through the canopy of the many collapsed trees the creature had left behind, using her enhanced muscles to snap their branches and creating a passage through the leaves, her ears still peeled to catch any menacing sounds over the rhythmic trembling of the creature’s pace.

As the minutes passed, however, the monster’s movements grew slower and she was able to close the distance separating them, gradually starting to perceive a new flow of magical energy that hadn’t been there just a few minutes before, the feeling not unlike the one she had sometimes felt while she was in the company of the Spider Queen but much stronger and wilder than hers, like an invisible fog that got thicker the closer she moved but didn’t seem to be really focused on her, her own magic easily keeping it at bay from her body as she approached the creature who, in the meanwhile, had finally stopped moving, coming to a halt at the leftmost edge of the woods, probably less than a hundred meters away from the massive perimeter wall and the plant-covered city that grew on it.

The lower body of the titan was still hidden from her sight when she decided to start sneaking, her focus on not getting noticed by the creature.

As she slowly pushed herself past the foliage and crawled over the ground, however, Alice started noticing the way the environment around her appeared, her eyes widening when she observed the rapid changes in the plants that surrounded her.

Open-mouthed, Alice observed the aged trunks of the trees that had collapsed just a few minutes before, their vegetal bodies already covered in a plump layer of wet moss that visibly grew by the minute along with a blanket of deep-green ivy that snaked between the quickly-falling leaves that had begun covering the ground, their many greens gradually turning into a brown palette that constantly rustled as weeds and sprouts poked from underneath, some of them growing entire centimeters by the time she had crawled past them.

Touching one of the thicker trunks that lay around her, her hands felt at the warm and much-softer wood underneath as its cellulose and lignin was quickly consumed by the moss, molds and fungi that bloomed in seconds and died just as quickly, the temperature of the area around her growing by at least a few degrees as everything that was vegetal undertook an incredibly rapid cycle of death and regrowth, the natural smell of decomposition filling her nostrils as she moved further towards her goal.

By the time she had managed to reach the large, newly-formed clearing where the rhinoceros beetle now stood, Alice was already surrounded by a small forest of tall saplings that had grown from and over their decomposing parents, helpfully hiding her body as she laid on the ground to observe the massive insect and what it was doing.

There, in the middle of the glade, she watched the titan approach the largest pile of trees it had created, the bottom of its horn impacting the felled wood and releasing another, more focused wave of magical energy that caused the plants to get quickly invaded by smaller saprophytic plants and mosses that quickly started consuming their structure, causing them to start sagging on themselves as they were slowly turned into mulch.

In the meantime, the creature waited for the process to end and Alice observed its shell, almost completely covered in bright green grass; its six limbs, textured by a complex system of lines like the gnarled bark of ancient trees; and its oaken horn, which was now covered in small branches and new leaves when before it had been almost devoid of anything but sparse, emerald-like buds.

After a few minutes, however, the monster finally moved again, getting even closer to the pile and starting to loudly consume it with a complex system of mouth parts that had laid hidden in plain sight under the far more noticeable horn.

It’s herbivorous! She exclaimed in her head before forcing herself to steer her eyes away from the wondrous sight and instead focusing on the much smaller plume of smoke that was still visible on its back, searching for a good path that would allow her to get up on the creature’s back and finally deciding on using one of its thick and squat legs as a stepping stone to reach the carapace itself.

Turning her attention back on the insect, she found it still very concerned with its meal and made up her mind.

It’s now or never. I don’t know whether it’s going to get back to sleep soon or not but right now it’s as good as it gets. She told herself, her fingers clutching her dagger so tightly that her skin had turned completely white under the pressure.

It was only when she attempted to sheathe the weapon back in the bandolier that she finally noticed what had been happening without her knowledge all over her body, each one of her limbs having been tied down to the ground by a number of roots and ivy tendrils that had been growing around her, moving unnoticed between the numerous plants that were constantly blooming and dying in the area.

“Fuck,” she whispered, instantly checking if the massive creature had noticed or heard her but thankfully finding it still focused on its food.

A bit calmer, she started pushing against the restraints, finding them strong but not enough to contain her enhanced strength.

Taking a deep breath, she started pushing herself upwards, feeling the earth give under her hands and the plants snap against a pressure they couldn’t sustain, sometimes not before cutting into her soft skin and forcing her to heal the wounds as she pushed herself to her feet.

When the final root had snapped off, Alice felt a sudden pause in the strange sounds of the beetle, freezing in place for a few seconds and only taking a silent sigh of relief when the creature went back to eating a few seconds later, seemingly unaware of her presence.

Moving as silently and quickly as she could through the very open clearing, Alice quickly reached the strange hind leg of the creature and grasped one of the many protrusions that covered it, using it as the first handhold that would allow her to reach her personal summit, cringing every time the titan moved slightly or stopped eating for a few seconds but otherwise moving as quickly as she could, finally reaching one of the more ‘horizontal’ segments of the limb and, after steadying her heart for a second or two, bending her knees and jumping the remaining distance before hastily grappling at the grass covering the beast’s shell in order not to fall back down.

Shit, Shit, Shit. She repeated in her head as she kept on moving, the path gradually becoming easier as the steepness decreased and it didn’t force her to use the grass as security, allowing her to reach the crystal-covered summit in less than five minutes of crawling.

Once there, her heart missed a beat when she didn’t immediately see the familiar shape of Basil, only to be forcefully restarted by the soft hiss that reached her ears just a few seconds later, the tiny green snake having somehow climbed over the larger crystal and having laid there as she searched around, its bright, purple eyes staring at her all the while.

“Come on, we need to get the heck out of here little guy,” she hissed back, grasping the small snake between her fingers and hastily picking up everything she could as it slid to its usual spot, even stopping to pick up the pieces of meat that hadn’t fallen down on the ground or in the fire and opening her bag to stick them in, her mouth opening in surprise when she found what had happened to the round seed she had left in there, the plant it belonged to having sprouted and wrapped around the glowing ellipsoid and some of her looted jewels with its roots, its dark-green leaves seemingly using the soft light to grow in her bag.

I’ll think about it later, she told herself, closing the bag and instead using the other side of the silken rope to tie her provisions outside along with her somewhat dried cloak, placing everything on her back before finally picking up her spear and its silvery core which, in the meanwhile, had started being covered by some of the grass around it.

Ripping away the green blades, Alice finally picked it up and started walking back down, this time using her heels to slow down her descent as her upper limbs were too busy carrying everything else to be of use.

“Hold on now,” she muttered to the snake coiled around her arm as they finally reached the edge, her stomach doing a somersault as she simply bent her knees and jumped the few meters that separated her from the ground, a dull thud shaking the ground when her feet impacted the soft humus covering it, most of the force dispersing throughout the mulchy material but some of it moving back through her limbs in a harmless wave that nonetheless managed to make her knees bend slightly.

Seconds later, she was once again on the move, her legs pushing her quickly through the glade, away from the massive monster still eating behind her back, less than a few meters away from the edge of the glade and it’s perceived safety.

A single step separated her from the thicket of new trees when an explosion of large roots suddenly erupted from the ground all around her, quickly wrapping themselves against her ankles and calves and causing her to slam face first on the ground, thankfully avoiding both of her weapons’ blades from piercing her body even if she took a mouthful of dirt as a result, her ears catching the startled hiss of Basil as the vegetal tendrils continued wrapping around her legs, ignoring her frantic attempts to rip them away before they could completely trap her.

For every root she managed to rip off, two more took its place as the sound of ‘chewed’ wood suddenly stopped and a tremble shook the ground she was laying upon.

“Oh, I’m so fucked,” she whispered after finally spitting out the warm soil she had been forced to taste, turning just around to observe the vegetal titan slowly approaching her.