Ch. 92 - Hill

I've gone missing again. Great. I really wanted to deny it but it seems like my yearly depressive episode is on full swing and being all alone isn't helping. Can you call it depression? I don't know. All I know is that I've literally spent 4 days looking at my computer and finding myself unable to write or even check on the site. I've always suffered from anxiety and I always have some times when I feel worse. I would have preferred not talking about it but I can't avoid it now that I have you guys.

I'm truly doing my best. Sometimes it's  just hard. I literally had to force myself to write and it got better but sometimes it seems impossible.

I understand if you are angry and everything but I can't avoid it. I'm also literally unable to read the comments because I'm too anxious lol, same with Discord. 

Hill

After laying the fur coat to dry out in the sun near the spear, Alice proceeded to head down the steep hill and started searching the woods surrounding it for fuel, picking up the smaller, drier twigs on the ground before approaching the actual trees and starting to snap off their lower boughs, her enhanced muscles allowing her to easily break the forearm-thick branches that would have once required her to have a saw or an axe at the very least.

After a couple of hours of work, and a number of trips to carry the wood back up the hill, she started finally butchering the meat of marmots, using her knife to cut away nerves and connective tissues while separating the main parts of the animals before skewering them on long and straight sticks that she had harvested and cleaned for the occasion.

Once everything was prepared, Alice finally looked into a better way to start the fire.

While she knew that she could easily create it by continuously rolling a stick against a flatter piece of bark or wood, she also knew that it was a tedious and painful process that always left her with incredibly sore hands afterwards, even if she continuously healed them while working; she really wanted to attempt something new.

What if I used those like a magnifying lens? She thought to herself as she stared at some of the crystals that perfectly reflected the rays of sunshine from their spots in the grass, even if some, like the one she had been using as a backrest, were far too large to be useful, others were instead small enough that they would probably work well for her goal.

Approaching a cluster of smaller, cucumber-sized ones, she dropped on her knees and gently touched one of them, sending a small amount of her energy towards it to make sure it wasn’t like the shard that she had observed near the wisteria, her uncertainty melting when the crystal proved to be completely inert; whatever its nature, it was completely different from the other one.

Whatever has caused the crystal waterfall probably caused these ones to appear. I really wonder what it was, she thought as she wrapped her hands around the closest one, careful not to cut herself on the sharp edges while she started pulling on the glassy material.

For a few seconds, the object didn’t seem to budge but, after she exerted just a bit more force, it started finally sliding out, revealing that the part that had been underground was probably twice as long as the one visible, a pointed, dagger-like shape that left a deep and narrow opening in the layer of grass and dirt and revealed a smoother and much harder material that lay underneath.

At first, curiosity wanted her to keep exploring whatever was underneath the soil but, after a bit of self-convincing, she forced herself to at least start the fire, reminding herself that, while the layer of glimmers on the meat kept most of the bacteria at bay by consuming them, her food had already been out in the open for a while and that it would take even longer to cook properly and safely. She didn’t want to waste the food she had worked hard to obtain.

“It’s not going anywhere,” she told herself as she moved away from the interesting divot in the earth and towards the smaller pile of dry moss and crushed leaves that would be her fire starter, attempting to use the translucent piece of crystal in her hands to concentrate the light in one spot.

Sadly for her, after more than fifteen minutes of failures, she was forced to accept that the irregularly shaped shard was not going to work well enough and tossed it to the side with a huff, immediately starting to light the fire the old-fashioned way.

Thankfully, while her skin was still quickly getting sore as she worked, her enhanced muscles allowed her a much quicker and steady progression, so much so, actually, that an annoyed Basil quickly slid away from her to go and rest under the sun, coiling over the fur cloak in a small, scaled heap.

Nonetheless, the stick she was rolling between her palms moving so fast that it didn’t take long for smoke to appear on the larger piece she was using as a base, at which point she simply let go of the small twig and transferred the few smoldering coals onto the small ball of moss, feeding it oxygen with her breath until she saw the first glimpses of white smoke and heard the crackling of the first flames as they started consuming the dead plant matter.

A few minutes later, a small fire was happily crackling on the ground in front of her and steadily growing hotter and larger as she added bigger pieces of wood, the heat thankfully drying out the green lymph and resin inside of them without too many difficulties, the smoke being produced a welcome sight despite the breeze that seemed to be constantly pushing it in her direction.

As soon as she stopped coughing and crying and the bonfire seemed ready, Alice proceeded to plant the skewers into the ground all around the fire, making it so that they meat would stand over the heat and wood smoke without having to be supported by her own hands, basically forming a very rough trellis that granted a slower but more gradual cooking time, something she hoped would help the meat dry out and cure a bit, so that she could maybe keep it as a stockpile instead of being forced to eat it all in one go and count on her body to turn it into fat.

Not that that wouldn’t be a good idea. It’s just that I would prefer not to go hungry instead. I’ll still do it if the food keeps getting bad though, it’s not like I can get fat without desiring so.

Once that too was done, she finally allowed herself to move back to the hole in the ground, sticking two of her fingers into the dirt and digging around until she touched the hard material underneath, her fingertips pushing against a somewhat warm and incredibly hard material that didn’t give against the pressure of her fingers, acting like stone or metal.

Whatever it was, it seemed to be made of multiple layers and, upon pulling off a few chunks of the dirt and grass that were covering it and cleaning the grime with a bit of Lumen, Alice revealed a very strange upper surface covered in markings, lines and veins that reminded her of old, petrified wood while the divot where the crystal had been embedded into being clearly something that hadn’t grown there naturally.

“Almost like it was planted there,” she murmured as she attempted to push a bit of her magic through the substance and soon discovering that it was pretty much impossible, the small tendril of her magic dissolving against the second layer of the material, unable to proceed deeper in.

Before attempting with a larger amount of her reservoir, however, she elected to see if it was the same everywhere on the hill and approached one of the larger crystals, this one just a bit thicker than her thigh and deeply embedded into the dirt like the others.

Bending her knees, she took a pose not unlike that of a weightlifter and wrapped her arms around the object before starting to pull it off with a grunt, her fingers slightly slipping against the smooth material as her muscles bulged outwards, the skin of her thighs, back and arms growing tight under the pressure until, with a groan of glass scraping against a harder material, the crystal started sliding out, a shiver making the ground tremble under her feet as she finally pulled the thing out of the ground and a small puddle of greenish liquid instantly filled the large hole that had been revealed.

Letting the crystal slam onto the ground with a dull thud, a slightly panting Alice knelt by the small puddle and sniffed at it, finding its smell to be almost vegetal in nature but with something coppery mixed in it, the surface that had been exposed to the oxygen quickly turning a darker hue as she looked at it.

Sinking her finger into the substance, she broke through the thicker upper crust and once again accessed the reservoir containing her warmth, sending a larger tendril of her magic through the liquid and feeling its power seep into it until, after a few moments, she finally felt it reach a threshold and push through, letting her move into what was lying beneath, her eyes widening in surprise and terror while another, deeper rumble shook the terrain for a second time, making her buckle to the side as the thing that had been sleeping under her feet rose from its slumber and a potent magical energy started seeping from the open wound she had been touching, the lymph behaving like blood and sealing the hole in an instant by forming a thick scab over it.

Before she could really react, the tall, forked oak tree that laid in front of the hill and reached halfway its height started suddenly rising with a groan of strained wood, the compact dirt it had been embedded in falling down in large clumps on the ground while the numerous trees around it buckled and swayed as their complex system of intertwined roots was suddenly pulled along, some of the nearest and smallest ones being unearthed and dragged along for a few meters before detaching and falling down once again as the massive horned head of a titanic rhinoceros beetle rose from the ground, revealing two huge compound eyes whose multifaced surface reflected the world around them.

Alice could do nothing but try to hold on as the ground shook one more time and the entire hill buckled to the right side, the left one rising by at least a few meters as the incredible insect moved its six, trunk-like legs for the first time in probably ages, the sturdy limbs somehow able to bear the massive bulk of its main body as it rose from the ground, the tremor clearly shaking the forest and hills around as the titan took its first step through the forest.

The ground it was standing on, however, was much less stable than it had probably expected and with the frightening sound of felled trees and crumbling stone, the interred roof of an ancient building instantly collapsed under the pressure and weight, causing the being to stumble even more than before and, as a result, causing the large piece of crystal she had left on the grass beside her to suddenly move and slam against her chest, making her loose her already uncertain balance and causing her to tumble down the hill with a gasp.

As she rolled, Alice did manage to push away the sharp object before it could injure her but, by the time she succeeded, her tumble was already impossible to halt and she simply fell down the incredibly steep carapace of the creature and dropped the three and a half meters separating it from the ground, landing painfully on her back against the thankfully soft floor of the forest while countless birds and critters that had inhabited the woods fled their rebelling homes.

Her eyes wide open, she could only attempt to regain the air that had been squeezed out of her lungs by the fall as the creature suddenly stopped on its path and turned around just enough that one of its multifaceted eyes could stare at her and at the reflecting piece of crystal that had dropped just a few meters away from her spot.

For the longest time, a paralyzed Alice stared straight into the massive eyes of the beetle, unable to even move under the absolute certainty that, if that creature wanted, she would die, her body not listening to the orders of her brain as her muscles locked in place, almost entombing her in her own body.

Then, just as she was feeling her heart almost implode in her chest, the creature turned around, one of its massive feet moving straight over her and slamming on the barely visible crystal with a sound of crushed glass before continuing on its path that led her further towards the leftmost edge of the forest and away from her, her eyes suddenly glued to the small smoldering bonfire and to the spear and the cloak lying beside it, the plume of smoke growing tinier as the creature moved away, leaving behind a path of broken trees and sunken buildings.

“What the hell am I going to do?” she finally murmured to herself when, half an hour later, she managed to get back up on her feet, the calming pressure of her scaled companion leaving a void around her arm.