∗ ∗ ∗
Aoi awoke…if that's what you'd call it.
Tic tic tic tic tic
Hours or days had passed, yet he was sure that it probably was dusk, judging from the symphony of frog calls filling the humid air. His stomach empty, but merely the thought of food would surely cause more retching. Luckily, the inside of his head was cavernous, his thoughts were sparing, if any.
Huh..
His arms were profound but unoccupied as they lay before him, one atop the other, vacant. Aches throughout his body, anatomical locations he hadn't previously imagined could ache, but against all odds his body felt strong. He felt strong as he reflexively made fists with his hands, a display of his might.
I can feel my hand.
Tic tic tic tic tic
Aoi's eyes opened but his body reached the conclusion first. There was no cold, hard, comically oversized, brilliantly blue, beautiful, exoskeleton within his embrace to sap the heat from his skin. No uncomfortable spreading prickling sensation ravaged his fingers and arm. His friend was not there to slow the circulation of blood to his left hand. His friend had left him.
He was alone, again.
The amphitheatre was hollow and washed in the strange ultraviolet miasma of dusk. The foreboding loch itself, deep black but for the golden phantoms reflecting off its surface.
I mean the trip was a lot for me also—
"Too much, even…so I get it."
pisss..
"I'm dying."
Tic tic tic tic tic
Maybe he had a family, or a pincerella at home
"No way! Two pin-sirs waiting for y–."
Aoi looked back over his shoulder as he conferred with a ghost…
∗ ∗ ∗
He was thoughtlessly walking through the uncanny, now decidedly confirmed, twilight hours. A weighted, stalking fog obfuscated the forest floor. Not yet dark, but not wholly lit; an hour of suspension.
I've had enough rainbows and sunshine anyway..
Penitent, he bit down on his lip at the irony of the thought.
He would surely arrive at his makeshift camp at the hut under the coffee tree, all the while passing by all the usual attractions; the clearing, the moras, tree upon tree, thicket after thicket, tediously…eventually.
And avoiding that freaky Necropilis.
Tic tic tic tic tic
The similarity of the jungle bled into abject ambiguity, the familiarity he had so arrogantly designed as commonplace was absent, almost entirely. The steady marching lines of leaf-cutter ants were missing. The trail he was attempting to traverse was nowhere to be found. As he was ushered through, the wilds wound itself around him and darkened with each step.
Rumble
Wonder what he's up to..
Aoi felt peaceful, if not a little despondent. The thought of his friend deciding to move on while he was sleeping– without so much as a goodbye! After everything they went through together!– to live some delightfully grand Beetle Bwah life, evoked ethical complications…when it came to their friendship.
Drip Drip Drip
Maybe I just don't want to be a—
"Ahhhh"
He opened his mouth and threw his head back, instead thinking of only how simple this was, as a method of drinking water. How natural and simple it was to drink the rain as it was falling from the sky — rainwater from the rainforest. Direct to consumer.
–aaamazing
Crash
The lightning some distance away added a flair of drama and bass to the chorus of rain drops pitter-pattering on the canopy as they fell.
Tic tic tic tic tic
Then again he was a wild beetle..
Sweet relief came in pearls, splashing a fresh mountain dew across his tongue.
Tic tic tic tic tic…peep peep peep
No way he loved me
The rain had summoned the entire army of frogs, as they gathered to croon one another through the forest during the night's rainfall.
Drip drip drip drip.
A cluster of pale yellow-green lit as candles in the fog. Aoi moved in closer to inspect. Glowing steady as if lit by magic.
Mycena luxaeterna
"Oooooh."
The gleam of the bio-luminescent fungi danced up what looked to be a thick clear string, sparkling reflections of the yellow light upward. Attached to a tree above and held suspended; two giant terracotta slugs wrapping their bodies around each other in midair.
Sarinsula plebeia…mating pair..hanging swinging connected by shiny goo..
Aoi was flush.
They can frigg themselves so I imagine this is purely pleasure
He bit his lip.
As bizarre as it was, the two giant slugs were hanging as one, they were mating and if you were to squint they'd be about the same size as those dick and balls were.
Big..hanging..heavy and hairy..
He could only think of his experience with the strange, engorged, "dick and balls" from the Yagé's educational hallucinations. Was that supposed to be him? Were those to be his junks final form?
Drip drip drip drip dip
There was another very real, very probable, well, possible explanation as to whose penis that could've been.
And testicles.
Boom
..big testicles..
Thunder roared overhead, an explosion!
However the roar was muffled by the quasi-barrier of the canopy that shielded most of the understorey from the weather. The weather, he gathered, operated wholly outside the safety of the canopy…mostly.
Drip drip drip.
He followed along absentmindedly, still pondering "dick".
Balls..
And "balls", as the jungle swept him along.
In the thicket, merely five or so meters away, he saw something that, at the moment, seemed like it would be better than what had been consuming his thoughts.
"Bw—" He stopped short.
Click click
Whooooshhh.
The rain crashed as buckets poured through the openings in the foliage, splashing on a pretty damn near Bwah-sized creature in the brush. Aoi leapt forward, the possible-Bwah took a step back.
No…too timid
Barely larger than himself, the bear was bespectacled by pale yellow, almost white, fur markings on its face, contrasting with an otherwise deep brown coat, that was typical of its species however…
Tremarctos ornatus…but why does she look so weird?
Aoi studied the bear's bizarre appearance.
She's herbivorous, mostly, and if she were protecting young, she'd stand up tall..
Snip
Her markings were distorted. Her face, twisted in abject horror.
No, she's…cowering
Drop drop drop.
The bear launched herself to run and, quite incongruously for her depiction of urgency, tumbled over herself, then quite gracefully used her momentum to reorient and rush off into the jungle.
A speculating spectator watches the spectacle that is the spectacular spectacled bear
WHOOOOSHHH.
Momentary madness.
The sky was raging.
I get it.. but the irony of a bear running from me–
DROP DROP DROP
PAIN!
Every nerve, synapse, joint, bone, muscle, involuntary or otherwise, WRITHED in agony. Dendrites, axons split, severed, glial cells rendered helpless or destroyed.
Stabbing incisors, or giant knives, a pair of monstrous shears, the fangs of a hellbeast, whatever or whoever his assailant, had ensnared him.
..two
Burning and searing through this leg. He was blinded, completely; the ferocious acid wash flames licking their way through his nervous system. Giant fangs piercing through his left leg. Ripping through flesh, muscle and tendon, scraping against bone. The Achilles severed. Calf muscles shredded—gastrocnemius, soleus, done. His bare bone showing through the fountain of his blood.
PRESSURE.
Vicious and starving, soul crushing, malignant pressure descended upon him. He was no longer being hunted, he was quite literally in the jaws of his indiscernible and calculating stalker.
DROP DROP DROP
The rain crashed like tin, strange and harrowing all around him.
PAIN!
His agony intensified as the swords that pierced his legs slowly began to tug backwards—
PAIN!
—and vibrate forward, opposite to one another. It was tasting him. She was loving this.
PAIN!
"AHHHHHHH!!!!"
He was completely devoured by the flames burning away his nervous system as the two dagger-like, vampiric fangs were slowly pulled from whatever flesh remained of his leg, with malicious undulation, until he was finally released from–
"YAYA HELP ME!! PLEASE.."
The flames ravaging his throat as he wailed, lost to the tempest, unfathomable lengths from its intended recipient.
Drip drip drip drip
The rain swelled around him, falling naturally, once again, against the canopy.
His liver in his throat, chaos reigned in the furies of his mind. Blind still, from the pain, from the fear…
∗ ∗ ∗
She wore deep greens and clean whites. Baggy pants tucked into matching ankle guards, wide enough legs to allow for full range of motion and comfortable combat. A cropped tunic, long sleeved, shoulders cut out, ending just at the edge of her breasts. Barefoot.
The goddess she was.
Her platinum hair, gathered in two very small neat buns, four bright, white gold hairsticks holding each one — labradorite, moonstone, garnet, celestite. Jade and labradorite at her ears. And at the center of her forehead, flush against her skin, one piece of raw moldavite.
A vision.
"Mwah ha ha I am the evil Melon Lord!"
B's cackling broke through the booming rainstorm, fierce as any lightning or thunder, fiercer even.
"FEED ME WATERMELONS AOI!"
Chunks of earth were hurling toward him at blazing speeds, barely perceptible, even from within a few meters.
"SANDIAS!!!"
The storm's charcoal sky, and resulting downpour drastically reduced any and all visibility.
She's trying to kill me.
"You need to be faster Mary, faster. Cast the spell, without thinking, reflexively, it should be well within your ability at this point. What are you pushing three hundred now, fuck?"
Not sure how that adds–
"Destroy the GOD DAMN BOULDERS, MARY!!" Now a disembodied voice — Yaya's. Everywhere. Flung earth, storm howling.
She's loving this
Aoi raised his left hand with a perfunctory flourish. In less than an instant; an array, deep dark and devoid of color yet glowing all the same looped and swirled over itself, creating a harsh, angular, technically stunning, albeit redundant and recursive circle before his outstretched hand.
"Fulgarek!" He grunted.
The colorless light of the array concentrated at its center. A steady, controlled blast burst forward. Precise and powerful it struck the boulder; dead center piercing its exterior.
CRACK!
"Honey, we have already removed the training-wheels and fucking buuuurned them. Ordinary spells of basic human combat, my dear, absolutely have their place in strategy. However, that is not the point of today's lesson, it's WVUL-GA-RAK, not FUL-ga-rek, darling."
The massive fragments of boulder he had broken seconds earlier, technically boulders still themselves, were hurling toward him at top speed.
He steeled himself. The task ahead would take some concentration.
"…You are to be casting spells of destruction, Mary."
They were gathering momentum now. He loosened his hold on the massive pressurized force he so absentmindedly cages and let it breathe… just a fraction.
"The dark of the unknown will frighten only a fool; cast a glow upon the world to discover its secrets – then, and only then, can the wise be informed enough to be truly afraid. Try again my love!" Spoken as if right in his ear.
Oh yeah? Well who said that?...I just need a little more..
The boulders were only a few meters from impact, inevitable.
"Why ask, baby, when you already know?" She cackled into the raging storm.
He loosened his hold yet another hair, careful methodical. The sweat was pooling on his brow, or was that rain? He was dialed in..
"You best succeed Mary, they're here." Right from above his shoulder, how had she never taught him that trick?
Focus! It's sink or swim…
Chaos gather, I am the Oathkeeper. Cleave this world asunder! Dismantle!
A bright white spacious looping lace, delicate and floral, began to slowly breathe itself into life. Glacial, and pure it completed its trails, a spectacular lattice reminiscent of the finest doily inspired flourishes on his favorite of B's dresses; glowing right at the end of his reach.
He sneered his face, looked away and grunted.
"Wvulgarak."
…
The light which left the center of the array— bloomed— taking over the scene as if time had slowed to a crawl, boulders blasted to smithereens. All that lay before him; a blinding and lonely, pure white.
∗ ∗ ∗
Fulgarek (full-gah-rek) the piercing spell, humanity's standard battle spell.
Wvulgarak (wvul-gah-rak) the spell to conjure a force of destruction.
Tic tic tic tic tic
The putrid, horrendous rotting smell of bile hung heavy around his nose. His face was covered, as was the most of the rest of him.
Yaya…
Pain.
How long..
Drip drip drip drip drip
Hut. the tree..
PAIN.
"FUCK!"
So pervasive was his pain that it prevented his ability to rise to his feet. He winced, gripped at a frayed end of his pant leg, which were very nearly shorts at this point anyway, even now shorter from, why were they so–
FUCKING PRIAPISM
And wrapped it around his gnarled leg. Pulling his shirt up and resting it on his shoulders, he balled the fabric up, forced into his mouth and bit as he braced for the pain of walking. Not to muffle any of his near constant screams.
"MFGFGHGh"
His eyes launched from his face. He felt the petechiae crawling into a makeshift cowl. Blood gushing from his leg and the loud booming echo of blood inside his brain rushing to join the sick, maddening, world, and yet it worked, in a sense..
Tic tic tic tic… peep peep peep
Aoi had things he could focus on. Anchors.
Drip drip drip drip drip
The rain against the leaves, the peeping and crooning of varied small species of nocturnal frogs were grounding him. The white river blood rushing in his head and the pain, clearing his mind of all thought. The combination, uniquely hypnotic enough to dull the pain and simultaneously affix his attention fully to the sounds of his environment.
He pressed onward..
Scrape.
His leg dragging through the brush ripping and tearing his remaining flesh from its host.
Thud.
The damaged leg landed on the forest floor, causing him to temporarily seize, he clenched himself.
He could do it. His body was broken, but it was making way.
Drip drip drip drip.
Tic tic ti–
Blindly forging through the jungle's labyrinthine brush and thick fog. Every step and subsequent stumble sent flames through his body, the inside of his head ringing alarm bells. He was all but blind.
Blind huh
Aoi forced his eyes closed.
Drop drop drop drop
Behind me!
Flash! Aoi could see through his lids, he was being lit from behind by the deep cerulean, defensive hexagons of light he had constructed– the aegis spell fully formed. Opening his eyes, but refusing to look back, he tried quickening his pace but his tattered leg caught a vine in the underbrush causing him to stumble forward and, quite incongruously to the moment, fall flat on his face. The wilds were taunting him.
PAIN!
He was straining against the weight, against the pressure of his pursuer. He could only make out two undulating fangs like knives or massive talons surrounded by red trying to force their way through the ever growing number of shining blue hexagons.
"FRIGG!"
He refused to truly look at the beast, absolutely refused. Instead– he focused his attention on his defensive spell. How could you improve upon something so ingenious, well maybe you don't?
I cant let that thing get near me again
∗ ∗ ∗
His pain intensified as he tried standing himself up forcing the defensive technique to collapse in a gorgeous shimmering dust and take along with it the moment's brightest light source.
"Fulgarek"
The circle was constructed so quickly there was barely time for him to perceive its structure, the resulting black burst of concentrated magic shot outward. His purser had vanished, in its stead a mighty tree had been split through the center, half of which fell through the canopy exposing the area surrounding him.
Crrrrrraaaaaashhhhhh.
My fault…fruck
Although a daunting, undoubtedly major component of the canopy had collapsed in the brush a near eruption, there were no animals running or hiding from the tragedy.
Everything but the rain, silent.
Drip drip drip drip.
Aoi was already crying from pain, when his psyche nearly fractured from the irreparable damage he wrought to the jungle.
Ume, please..I'm dead anyway protect this place
As if in support of the damaged tree, a beautiful, reaching, second, entirely distinct tree grew from the earth and stretched outward filling itself with branches and blossoms which held hints of the red before dawn.
His body now an inferno; steam was surely rising off his skin as the rain struck it, because it felt like ice.
Venom
He hadn't realized before then, couldn't analyze or process the symptoms because of the pain. But this.
A neurotoxin…from something that large…
I should be dead already..
He shivered.
I am dead already…
Drip drip drip drip
He pressed on, still biting down on the shirt, a nightmare against the beautiful serene backdrop of the jungle.
Drop drop drop drop
FRIGG right to my right
With a flare the expanse was illuminated in cerulean, crudely constructed "hexagons". Yes, they were poorly formed, and sure, there were plenty of gaps, but they were multiplying endlessly against the horror fighting back at them.
No need to improve on it, just spam that Eldritch nightmare with more and then…
He raised his arm toward his own ingenious, crudely constructed aegis of blue light.
"Fulgarek"
The array raced itself to fruition and forced out a blast which shattered the makeshift magical rampart he had constructed causing a massive percussive force bursting through the area. Dirt, debris and forest floor launched into the air, though mostly the damage had been kept to a minimum.
His hail mary had succeeded.
The pressure dissipated.
Drip drip drip rip drip drip
He stumbled through the brush and thicket. The rain forced itself through the canopy, everything silent save its assault, and his floundering through the forest floor.
Drop drop drop
From the front
He bit down harder on the fabric in his mouth and erected a group of hexagons which immediately began reproducing clones. More and more they occupied an increasing amount of real estate between himself and the terror.
"Fulgarek"
∗ ∗ ∗
BOOM!
The iron that painted the insides of his mouth was not the same iron that had wafted into the air, muted beneath the canopy and rain but nonetheless there.
His pulse quickened.
A flash of blue. An unmistakable iridescent blue-emerald, radiating from the strange ultraviolet light about the forest. The only possible thing in the world that was so big and blue. That blue, the blue with an emerald sheen; his Buddy.
"Bwah! Oh my god! I'M SO HA– WAIT RUN!"
The air had gone chemical, molded rotted fruit, pungent, eye-watering ammonia held hostage by the fog. The smell permeated all, clouding his thoughts and drawing the blood from his head.
Another burst of cerulean, circumjacent. A perfect sphere constructed of spectacularly formed hexagons surrounded Aoi and his big blue friend, an architecture worthy of the greatest painter's touch. The scene was lit valiantly.
"There's a–
Aoi bent down and spewed bile, and probably blood at this point. His stomach was in knots, fever climbing steadily, the pain near astronomical – But he was racked with an intense burning desire, one that superseded his various maladies and ailments.
He looked at his desiccated yet still beautiful friend.
"I'm so sorry.."
He forced his arm toward the monster and kept his gaze on Bwah's lifeless shell.
This monster is evil..
Chaos gather, I am the oathkeeper. Cleave this world asunder! Dismantle!
The gorgeous lace was slow looping, and faint but bright against his face, screwed up in an intense rage he hadn't felt in some time now..
"WV–"
Refusing to look at the monster that lay before his hand, Aoi noticed a large candelabra of waxy leaves and those oh so familiar hollow stems.
Cecropia…a huge one.
His face twisted into a dark smile.
A blue glow took a hold of the space between himself and his fanged pursuer. He forced the self-perpetuating hexagons to exponentially increase their production.
I have an idea
"Fulgarek!"
The spell made contact near instantly and the mass of shining blue exploded before the blackened light, forcing a shockwave bursting from its impact.
Drip drip drip drip
Drip drip drip
Eyes forced closed, listening as hard with all his might he waited.
Drop drop drop
Behind me, perfect
Gather, air and space converge. Cover, lay sweetly upon thy dream. I, the Weaver, cast as web.
"Eiligilthelit" Inspirited, his cursive words galvanized.
He needed to look now. He had to see if his spell was successful in its attempt at befuddling the monster, but he simply and foolishly refused, instead squinting his eyes and looking back through a tiny seam–
Horrors. Its body hairy where it shouldn't be, hard, segmented–
No! That was enough, that was enough
He could make out its general visage. She was in a defensive formation, kicking back and raising her front legs. The spell itself worked both ways, as an effective blurring mechanism preventing it from sensing him, because the spell that had rendered the atmosphere solid had also included with it the fog and dense wild mana, it also effectively obscured the beast from Aoi's vision.
Which he knew was really the superior benefit as the predator surely, barely, used its eyesight while hunting. But rather the hairs on its body most likely picking up the scent and vibration of Aoi. Nonetheless he threw himself past the massive terror, with his eyes fiercely closed and kept launching himself forward.
Feeling the spell cease, and the intense wave of renewed and exponentially more ravenous bloodlust from the monster was working to Aois advantage. He ran for the tree he knew held the most ferocious beasts in this jungle, and yes that included himself and his hellbeast assailant.
Azteca ants. Highly aggressive, territorial arboreal ants, caustic formic acid spray, will take on anything of any size if their home is disturbed..
Ume, please surround us..
Reaching trees sprouted from the earth effectively closing the left and right flanks of Aoi's trajectory. As he had planned his purser was following. Both he and the beast behind him were now in a corridor of blossoming plum trees with only the giant fortress of a tree, housing the most vicious army, the Cecropia ahead. He forced a perfect wall of gapless corruscating azure, honeycombed, defensive magic around the back of the ant's tree and leapt into the momentary gap of the conjured trees to his right. Mid air, he stretched his hand toward the giant tree housing what could only be billions of vicious ants.
"Fulgarek."
The spell was cast so quickly he couldn't even register it happening.
BOOM
A final tree sprouted and grew, closing the gap in the corridor. He had trapped the monster with those ferocious insects. For now.
∗ ∗ ∗
Eiligilthelit (ee-yih-gilth-ee-leess): the spell to render a small portion of the atmosphere solid.
Dizzy, half blind, and drunk from bloodloss, Aoi hurled his body as fast as he could from the haphazard, albeit successful, trap. Refusing to ever look back again, and instead trusting in his own collective knowledge, in this environment, and in the species' ferocity – both the ants' and the monster's.
It would not like being outsmarted.
The ground crumbled underneath him, opening into an unnatural chasm.
Aoi fell.
∗ ∗ ∗
Deeper and deeper, with scarcely the proficiency to witness, his body moved toward an inevitable crash landing.
He was falling, but falling slowly. Through an atmosphere physically thick with stagnant mana, his momentum was eased. The sides of the pit were walls constructed of some unknown metal or mineral, as opposed to rich loam and earth he was expecting. Entrancing teal surges of light ran along what had to be glyphs or runes.
The bright opening through which he fell shrinking and receding.
"Ume.."
Trees grew from the chasm's entrance, fiercely thick roots tangling and snarling working to seal out the world above.
Where was he? The darkness surrounding the corners of his vision took over.
Thud.
He lay mostly unconscious, on an unusually level and polished surface…
∗ ∗ ∗