Ch. 91 - Hides

Hides

The first thing she did after crawling back into the small, room that had been excavated by the marmots was sealing back the outside access once more to avoid being ambushed while she was hunting.

After that, Alice proceeded to gradually enlarge the tunnel through which the first marmot had managed to reach her, using the Lumen to make a hole that was quite a bit wider than her body and that would allow her access to the few chambers she had sensed beneath while mapping the complex with her glimmers.

At the same time, she made sure to listen for any sound that might reveal the presence of the rest of the animals or, if she was unlucky, of any dangerous creature that could share the nest with the furry rodents.

Thankfully, by the time the passage was wide enough, Alice was quite sure that the only creatures inhabiting the place were the remaining members of the marmot family, the scratching sound of their short, taloned paws echoing from somewhere underneath.

Despite that, she didn’t let herself become too complacent, working as silently as possible and always clutching her knife in case she was attacked, the spear forgotten on the ground, unusable in such a tight environment.

No more than ten minutes since she had started working, Alice proceeded to leave the first chamber and began crawling through the somewhat short tunnel she had widened to push deeper into the nest, soon finding herself in an empty, smaller antechamber that sported two different openings that would lead deeper in, forcing her to stop and make a decision on which route she wanted to take.

Ignoring the anxious feeling caused by the tight place, she gradually slowed her breath and took a moment to inspect the area, using all her senses to make sure she would be making the right decision.

With her enhanced eyes, she used the tiniest glow of her own luminescence to inspect the ground, observing the scratches that had been etched into the solid, compacted earth by the hard nails of the animals, the entire floor covered in hundreds of those lines but surprisingly devoid of hair or feces.

It didn’t take her long to find a reason when, upon approaching the leftmost opening, her nostrils caught a powerful waft of excrements coming from there, immediately causing her to lose interest in that particular path.

Either a communal toilet or something I don’t care to find out she told herself as she silently made it collapse with the help of the glimmers, using the particles to muffle the sound of falling debris before proceeding to enlarge the other path, its smell of fur and old grass, along with the closer-than-before sounds, much more promising than the previous one.

She was about halfway through her work when, unexpectedly, Basil slithered out of her dress and, with a barely audible hiss in her direction, started moving through the passage, barely avoiding her hand when she tried to catch it before it could escape.

Dammit, I hope you know what you are doing,she muttered in her mind as she sped up her digging efforts while the tiny reptile disappeared in the complete darkness in front of her.

To her dismay, the path she had chosen was much longer than the previous ones and the tiny reptile had long disappeared before she could even reach its halfway point, the tunnel too long for her to be able to keep digging without moving in.

Therefore, Alice crawled even deeper, using her hands and knees to push her body forward, forcing herself to ignore the way her breath echoed in the tight space, the air she was breathing much warmer and staler than she was used to.

Fifteen minutes had passed since her cold-blooded companion had disappeared and she had just reached the spot where she would be able to keep working on widening the passage when she suddenly started hearing a muffled sound of clattering rocks somewhere below while, at the same time, the ground she was lying on started feeling softer than before.

Before she could stop her digging, the Lumen under her control unexpectedly punched through the floor of the tunnel ahead of her, causing the entire area she was laying on to collapse, bringing her down with it.

She barely had the time to experience the sensation of falling before she belly flopped on something hard and quite unforgiving, the air escaping her lungs while she lost her control on the Lumen, causing them to start shining brightly all around her, illuminating a quite large room occupied by an entire clan of marmots that had been blissfully living their simple lives up until that point, the dozen or so rodents freezing at the same time to stare at the dusty human that had slammed through the ceiling of their main room.

Before she could react in any way, Basil, who had instead taken the longer and safer path, and had slithered unseen in the chamber, decided that that would be the most propitious moment to attack, tensing its lithe, green body and latching on the anterior leg of the largest marmot it could see, pumping its body full of its paralytic venom and causing the moment of startled silence to crumble like the dirt she had been crawling through, the rodent literally screamed in pain and fear and then attempted to escape through the couple of other openings together with the rest of its kin.

To their consternation, however, Alice had finally managed to recover from the surprise and immediately rushed to pursue them, using the coiled muscles of her thighs to burn through the couple of meters separating her from the slowest members of the small colony and managing to grasp the hind legs of two of them by dropping her knife on the ground, immediately regretting it when the terrified and surprisingly strong animals started literally pulling her along with them.

Before she could even attempt to disable them, the two large rodents had rushed into one of the openings and managed to get her stuck halfway through before finding their escape impossible.

By that time, Alice had thankfully managed to access her well of magic and sent a rush of her warmth through the bodies of the creatures, causing them to finally drop down on the ground like marionettes with their wires cut. The damage, however, was already done.

“Dammit,” she first stated when she managed to recover from the events, forcefully closing her eyes not to see the incredibly tight tunnel that was pressing down on her chest, instead accessing the small amount of Lumen she kept in her lower intestines to start easing the tightness around her waist while she attempted to push back with both of her legs and hands, her desire to escape as quickly as possible made even greater by the fact that the nerveless marmots’ bodies had managed to create a furry plug that didn’t let much air pass through the already poorly ventilated passage.

Thankfully, Alice did manage to get unstuck after a few minutes of digging, pushing back into the nest room and spending a few long minutes hyperventilating at the thought of remaining stuck there.

It took her quite a bit to calm down but, as soon as her body had stopped shivering, she proceeded to collect her two trophies and piled them together with the one caught by her snake who, for its part, was comfortably coiled over it.

“Nice work,” she stated before making sure to also destroy any cognitive and pain-sensitive area of the paralyzed beast’s brain, placing it in a vegetative state so that it wouldn’t suffer when she started working on it.

After that, Alice finally looked around her room and it didn’t take her long to notice the yellowy stone floor that poked from beneath the incredibly thick layer of fur that had been created by the creatures over time, the entire surface covered by the material.

The more she looked, the more signs she found, clues that told her of what that place had once been before its walls started crumbling and its ceiling collapsed under the weight of the earth that had covered it.

This was the part of a building, even if it really got messed up by time.

“I wonder how deep this goes,” she wondered aloud as she inspected an old access long covered in dirt, the material so hard and compacted that it resembled actual stone, “I bet every hill is like this one, just old buildings that have long been interred by time.”

She stood there for a few moments, thinking of the way the city had once looked before stirring herself away from those thoughts, instead picking up the first of the three creature and literally tossing it through the hole she had fallen through, repeating it with the remaining ones before picking up Basil and letting it coil around her neck as usual.

“Hold tight little guy,” she said as she bent her knees and jumped, propelling herself through the air and managing to land right into the tunnel ahead, only scrambling a bit to move further in while more of the floor crumbled under her weight, safely reaching a sturdier portion of the ground within a couple of meters.

After that, it was only a matter of crawling all the way back a couple of times, carrying one rodent at a time before finally collapsing in her room, her entire body covered in sweat, dust, and dirt.

“Damn. And I don’t even think these ones are going to be enough… I’ll start using them though, I need to make sure that what I’m planning works before spending more time doing this thing.”

Before that, however, she definitely needed to rest some more.

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A few hours later, a fully-rested Alice sat back up in her room and finally approached the four large marmots she had managed to catch, picking up the smallest one with a grunt and moving it away from the others.

Even if a bit smaller than the rest, the rodent was still as big as a medium-sized dog, its body thick, squat and with short stubby legs that ended in paws with short, hard nails that were probably very useful to dig in the hard ground.

The head of the creature was also quite large, with small round ears and two large and sharp incisors, one on the top and one on the bottom of the mouth, which seemed to be the result of two teeth fusing together over time.

She was glad the animal hadn’t tried to bite her instead of escaping.

After briefly inspecting its outer appearance, Alice proceeded to delve into its system once again, finding herself moving through the powerful muscles and bones of the animal.

And now, let’s see if this was a good idea or if I’ll have to do it the old school way.

Ever since failing to make the most out of the screechlings and the salamander she had managed to catch back in the caves, Alice had spent a long time trying to think of a way to correctly harvest the hides of the creatures she killed and, after much theory crafting in the back of her sleeping mind, she thought she had finally found a way to make it work.

The first thing she did was making sure that the creature was completely insensitive and couldn’t feel pain or even sensations, the only processes still working in its brain those that actually kept it alive.

Only once she was sure that it would be as humane a process as possible did Alice start using her magic to control the body temperature of the animal, raising it as high as she could to force its system to sweat off as much water as it could without dying.

When the creature started suffering from severe dehydration, she made sure that its remaining fluids would keep its important organs working by forcing the cells that composed its skin to donate as much water as they could without dying off.

After that, she proceeded to gradually dissolve the layer of tissue that was directly underneath the hide of the rodent, forcing those cells to reach apoptosis while the outer skin gradually loosened and started getting detached from the rest of the body.

While she did so, Alice continued controlling the beast’s organism, making sure it didn’t die while she was still removing its hide and stopping whenever something seemed wrong in its organs, always taking her time to resolve the issues before continuing with her grisly work.

Many more hours passed as she toiled and Alice couldn’t help but stop feeling the sense of guilt that had plagued the first phases of the process, that sensation of detachment helping her when, just as the last part of the marmot’s skin was finally peeling off from its body, she sent a focused Terminus towards the remaining parts of the brain, sending the rest of the body in a downward spiral that resulted in the quick and painless death of the rodent.

“This was more difficult than I thought it would be,” she admitted afterwards, as she extracted her knife and slid its incredibly sharp tip through along the neck of the carcass, easily parting the hide before simply sliding it off the rest of the tissue to reveal the perfectly flayed muscle underneath.

Once the skin had come off, she quickly enveloped the meat in a very thin layer of glimmers to prevent it from getting contaminated by the dirt she was sitting upon before starting to inspect what really interested her: the hide and fur that now laid in her lap.

Inspecting the pelt, she found its internal side to be warm and somewhat moist but also perfectly serviceable for what she wanted to create; she would only need to place it in the sun to dry once she was done with her creation.

She tried not to think of the actual process as she slowly moved to the next animal.

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The next day, Alice wormed out of the pillaged nest for the last time before pulling out the cleaned carcasses of the marmots and the pile of hides that had covered their bodies, making sure to check her surroundings before starting to look around for the best place for the next step of her process.

The sun shined high in the sky, thankfully clear of the few clouds that had been covering it the previous days, the perfect time for what she wanted to do.

Placing all the materials and objects she possessed on her back; she started slowly moving back towards the forest, religiously avoiding the ring of buildings in its center to instead walk directly towards the large, round and grassy hill that she had spotted so many days before, when she had just emerged under the dome.

She elected to pick that place for a number of reasons, the main one because it offered a very good observation point from which she could spot any creature that was coming towards her before it could reach her.

Secondarily, the place was surrounded by numerous trees that would allow her access to all the wood she could want, giving her a chance to prepare and smoke the carcasses she was carrying while she waited for the hides to dry in the sun that perfectly shined over the place and was reflected on the numerous sharp crystals embedded in its center, the third reason of her decision.

I just need to safely cross the woods now. she thought as she started walking past the first trunks, her pace slow and careful while she listened for any menacing noise, all her cargo ready to drop on the ground at the first sign of danger while her spear remained at the ready, its silvery sheen glinting with the few rays of sunlight that shined past the leaves.

Thankfully, her walk was peaceful and quick, leading her to the edge of the grass-covered hill, on the opposite side of the lone, bifurcated oak tree that towered over the rest of the flora, standing out with its size and uniqueness.

With only a bit of trouble on the steep slopes, Alice soon reached the top of the rise, dropping everything with a huff and simply taking in the scenery for a few minutes, her eyes always attracted by the glinting crystal waterfall covering the portion of vertical city right over the portal that led to the outside.

I wonder what caused it, she asked herself as she averted her eyes from its jagged edges which created a scintillating amalgam of shapes that reflected the light of the sun in countless directions, Maybe a portal? Leading to a place where crystal behaves like water? Definitely cool if it’s true but another reason not to jump in the one near the wisteria, I don’t know what could be expecting me in all that water.

What I’m doing is safer. She convinced herself.

Shaking her head, Alice sat down on the grass with her back against the largest crystal she could see, its size easily twice her own and deeply embedded into the ground; leaving the meat on the side for the moment, she picked up the hides and laid them down in front of her before using the Lumen to delineate a silhouette of the thick, furred cloak she wanted to create.

Once she was sure of the template, Alice activated the thin line of Lumen that delineated the shape and used them to cut through the material, obtaining a number of perfectly cut hides that she only needed to sew together to complete the work.

To do that, she picked up one of the short legs of the marmots and, after clearing it of the flesh and connective tissue, ripped off its femur before bashing it with the butt of her spear and then shaping one of the shards into a thick bone needle that would work well with the pelts.

Once she had that, it was only a matter of creating many thin stripes of hide with the scraps she had obtained during her first cutting and using them as sewing wire for her work.

By the time the sun had reached its zenith, Alice was standing in front of a somewhat misshapen but definitely warm fur cloak that was wide enough to cover her and the silken backpack on her back without any issue and equipped with leather latches that would keep it closed without any need to hold it.

Extremely happy with her work, she finally laid it fur down to dry in the sun and started butchering the four bodies she had carried all the way there.

It was going to be a very busy day but, for once, Alice wasn’t in a huge hurry.