Enjoy today's chapter.
Chapter 33
The climb was stupidly simple, and I had no trouble reaching the top.
What I took issue with was what I found up there.
It was as if some giant had taken an ice cream scoop to the ground and removed a large, bowl-shaped chunk out of the land, and filled the space with boiling blood.
No joke -- it looked like a boiling lake of blood, spanned by a narrow rock formation.
I thought back ... Orion had told me that there was a beast here. What were his words? There was a hideous inhabitant that made it a point to stop all the intruders it could.
Hoo boy.
But there was no sign of anyone having set foot here in a long while. So what’s the fuss?
I began trotting across the long bridge. And wouldn’t you know? The ground began to shake. An earthquake! What a time for it ... the bridge would probably crumble underneath me. So I hurried up a bit.
And the boiling blood began to rise.
It looks like I was crossing over a volcano. Active, no less.
I walked a bit faster. The lava or blood or whatever didn’t look like it was rising too quickly, so I wasn’t really very worried...
Until it all rose up at once down by the other end. It took on a shape that I almost recognized ... it looked to have a head like a glukkon ... but it had four waving arms, almost like thick whips.
As the shaking subsided, the thing’s features clarified, and it revealed itself to not be a glukkon of any kind ... I guess. It climbed out of the boiling lake and clung to the stone bridge, as if for dear life. Fiery drops of liquid fall off it and back into the lake.
And it began to speak in my mind.
TURN BACK, it said. Its voice in my mind was terrifying, and it made me shudder to hear it. But I wasn’t backing down to this thing. I had a quest, after all. I could probably take it.
COME NO FURTHER IF YOU VALUE LIFE.
Well, maybe I couldn’t take it, but maybe Cicatrize could. Cicatrize the scrab.
I quickly contacted Nine, the young mudokon with my Scrab Flash power. The beast didn’t look ready to attack, but I felt I needed to hurry anyway. We held a brief chat, catching up on things, and he gave me the power.
So I chanted, and became the scrab.
The scrab mind instantly screamed at this beast, knowing it was a CHALLENGER. I welcomed the fearlessness and power the transformation brought.
I reared back my scrab head and unleashed a deadly howl, releasing some genetic catalyst in the scrab body, rearing it for a fight. THE SHREDDING POWER had awoken within me.
I charged full speed at the enemy, and when I was still a few yards away...
It toppled back into the boiling lake of blood, making almost no sound. It was creepy to my mudokon mind, but it enraged the scrab. I had a hard time keeping it from getting carried away and jumping in after it.
When I had control again, I turned my attention to the far end of the bridge. I would have turned back to normal then, but ... the urge to SHRED something was too great.
So I galloped across and unleashed my scrab fury on the first thing I saw: a tree. It was old and withered, and looked ready to fall over and die.
Bad choice.
As soon as I regained my natural body, a mudokon spirit climbed from the earth where the tree had stood. It actually looked like it was struggling up out of some crumbling hole. When it stood, I expected it to greet me with a warm “Hello!” and maybe a “Follow me to the Totem!”
What I got was:
“You have destroyed the Memorial Tree of the Great Clog! ... what’s your problem, you schmuck? Don’t you have any respect for the dead of the forest?”
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