Re: The Gradual Massacre (GBS2G4) [Round 4: Misty Swamp]
07-26-2011, 08:22 PM
Originally posted on MSPA by Godbot.
As Algernon pressed on further into the forest, the boardwalk dwindled away into a few planks laid across the mossy ground, marking approximately where the path was supposed to be. He had already known about this from the last trip into Holly's village, but as long as he followed the path, he didn't get lost. In retrospect, it seemed like as long as there was a route for him to follow, he would get to his destination without too much trouble from the fog, even if it was just a vague impression of a path.
But last time, the boards hadn't been eaten away about a hundred feet after the boardwalk ended.
Algernon had to stop and think, but only for a moment. Galatea's warning had been clear: Don't stray off the path. But even if the shoddy trail of boards and bones was gone, he still knew the route pretty well. Sure, he had to get off the boardwalk, he reasoned, but as long as he took the route he had taken last time, he'd still be following the path. As he took a step off ragged, rotted edge of the last board, the fog moved in to curl around his ankles.
How hard could it be?
.
.
.
The next thing Algernon was aware of was something heavy prodding his head. He groaned and let his head loll to one side. What did he do to deserve this? Go away.
“Go away,” he must have mumbled, because someone hissed 'he is still alive,' and dragged him to his feet. He leaned against the tree and tried to go back to sleep. Had he been sleeping? It occurred to him that he didn't know.
He'd just blacked out. Had he made something with his memories?
“Where am I,” he started to ask, but that was obvious. He was in the swamp. It just seemed like the appropriate thing to ask after being woken up by a stranger. He settled for “How long was I out?”
“Hyu are Algernon, yes? Hyu have not been seen in village for days,” said the-
Okay, hold on.
After a moment's consideration, Algernon decided the thing talking to him rather resembled some kind of lobster centaur. The lower half of its body was unmistakably the crawly, segmented body of a giant aquatic crustacean, and its brownish carapace continued upwards to form a human-shaped torso that was similarly plated in reddish-brown. Its mandibles rippled as it spoke.
“Ve vere not expectink to see hyu, Mr. Algernon,” said the lobster centaur in some kind of Russian accent. “Ve are lookink for large insects. Hyu have been pronounced missink, maybe dead. One of several. My name is Azaz.”
Another person mentioning those monster bugs. Everyone kept talking about how the bugs had only appeared recently. Just how bad were they, if everyone knew about them the minute they showed up?
“That's- that's great, comrade,” Algernon answered, still sort of staring. Azaz was carrying a harpoon crossbow. Did they make those? And how did it pull the trigger with those big claws?
Whatever its deal was, its friends were gathering. Algernon recognized the hundred-armed man from before, along with a techie-looking fellow with some kind of metal chest plate and a variety of holographic HUDs floating around him and what appeared to be a miniature shark with the legs of a dog. It growled at him, and he immediately pressed his back against the tree again. They introduced themselves as Redmont and Voxel, respectively.
“And that's Howitzer,” Voxel smiled. “He bites.”
Azaz shot him a look the way only a lobster could. “Are hyu vell?” it asked Algernon. “Have hyu seen any insects?”
“I'm not sure,” admitted Algernon. “I feel fine, I guess. But I don't remember what happened out here.” He paused. “You said I've been out for days, right?”
The adventurer-types looked at each other. Redmont shrugged. It was a truly wondrous sight. They agreed that a few days sounded about right. “Four or five,” added Voxel.
Algernon swore quietly. Those bugs certainly would have found their way to the next villages, by now. “Why are you looking for them? The bugs, I mean.”
“Ve have not seen bugs for few days,” admitted Azaz. “Ve vere hopink bugs had moved on.”
Fair enough. “I need to get to Fernwood,” said Algernon. “Which way do I...?”
Voxel cleared his throat. “The boardwalk from Kerosene to Fernwood was eaten away about a week ago. You can only get through this fog if you know where you want to go -”
“I know,” interrupted Algernon.
“...but if there isn't a clearly marked path, then walking from Point A to the general location of Point B isn't gonna cut it,” he finished, drawing a little holographic diagram with his fingertip for emphasis. He erased it with a wave of his hand. “It takes a long time to rebuild a route between the villages when you can't just build in a straight line. Even we're using a guide rope that's tied to Kerosene's side.”
“So, the other villages don't know?” Algernon demanded.
“We'd really better go,” muttered Redmont. Azaz nodded.
“Follow rope and hyu vill find way back. Hyu vill not be able to cross swamp, and ve do not know if it is dangerous. Just go back,” it said with finality.
And with that, they were off. Algernon stopped Voxel for the guide rope. Voxel pulled the rope away rudely. “If I lose this rope, we'd all end up like you,” he said. “You can follow it just fine without holding it.” As Algernon made his way off, Voxel called after him. “We found some sort of vehicle nearby. It might be yours.”
And with that, they went their separate ways down the same guide rope. The same lifeline.
---
Redmont reached out with a few colossal arms to brush aside a dead tree. It fell into the swamp, splattering the others with muck.
“Redmont!” barked Voxel as he tried to get his staticky interfaces back under control. The hundred-armed man grinned to himself, and they pressed on. Voxel took everything so seriously. Even if that hadn't been on purpose, he was still pretty fun to mess with.
Voxel waved his hand through his combat interface, canceling unneeded processes and letting it sort itself out. A tiny blinking window remained in front of him. [irregular heat signatures] was written across the top, and below it was a list of coordinates. An unhelpful map showed their general locations.
Voxel nearly dropped his guide rope. “Guys,” he called.
“Vait,” said Azaz. The sharkdog was tugging sharply on its leash, as if trying to attack. Or get away. “Howitzer smells something.”
“Guys,” Voxel repeated. “I'm getting heat signatures all over the place.” His HUDs were full of red icons.
“Shit,” growled Redmont. He took a few steps back to join the others. They turned to guard each other's backs, but the swamp was just as foggy and silent as before. It only gradually occurred to Voxel how little of his surroundings he could actually see.
And then the shrieking started.
It hit them like a wall of pure sound. Voxel's skin crawled horribly. It was indescribable – like his scalp splitting, like razor wire digging into his skin. It hurt. The sound hurt.
Hundreds of wriggling insects the size of rats appeared out of the deep fog, hungry and scared and enraged. Before Voxel could steady his hand enough to fire an energy shot, something smooth and oily slithered across his foot and wrapped around his other ankle. He could feel hundreds of tiny legs brushing against him. He shuddered violently and staggered away, bumping into his companions. Something several feet long, like a horrible snake or a centipede was curled where his feet were. It made eye contact.
This was hell. He didn't need this.
Before either of the others could tell what was going on, Voxel was already frantically running away, stepping on insects and kicking them aside blindly. “Coward!” roared Azaz. He fired his harpoon crossbow, skewering the nearest Ouroborite. “Deserter!”
Voxel kept running, swatting aside brambles and demolishing trees with energy bolts. As long as he kept following the rope, he'd be fine. He'd be fine. The guide rope would lead him back to the village, back to Kerosene, and he'd tell them that there were insects, big ones, horrible ones, and that the others had been eaten. He was telling the truth, too – and someone needed to get out alive, to tell the others. He was doing the right thing, he was doing the right thing and he'd be fine and -
His foot landed in the muck and algae, and he staggered and nearly tripped. His combat interface went staticky again, but just for a moment.
Something brushed against his leg.
Voxel screamed – he couldn't help himself – and splashed through the swampy water to the other side. He rested against a rotten old tree and waited for his heart to stop racing. Oh god, he was a wreck, his friends were dead, and he'd abandoned them, that guy they'd sent off to follow the guide rope had probably been eaten, he really should have stolen that mech instead of letting him take it, this was worse than The Illustrious Contention, at least then everyone was human, or mostly, not those horrible crawling monsters that- that...
Oh god, something chittered. Something was chittering oh god.
But nothing was there – nothing he could see. That almost made it worse. He turned to climb the tree, telling himself that it was to get a better look at the battlefield, not to escape as quickly as possible. The rotted bark stripped away at his touch. The trunk of the tree was filled with deep crevasses, and nestled in each one of them was a bloated red larva -
He staggered backwards in horror and raised his arm. A glowing crosshair centered around his hand as he aimed an energy bolt at the infested tree. Without warning, something large and heavy and wet planted itself on his back. He screamed and tore at what had to be another of the enormous insects, trying to pull it free as it hissed and fluttered its wings. It paused to sink its barbed tail into his lower back, giving Voxel a chance to smack it off. It fell onto its back a few feet away, and he fired an energy bolt at it without a second thought. It burst open, splattering purple liquid everywhere, but he kept firing wildly, directing a few blasts of energy at the tree, but mostly just firing at the insect's carcass. It wasn't until his HUD flashed an [overheat] warning in his face and stopped firing that he realized he'd been screaming again.
He wanted to sink to the ground and curl up, but this wasn't the time for that. He had to get out of here. He needed to get out of here.
He took a few steps forward, but his legs were shaking too much, and he only made it a few feet. He automatically put out a hand to balance himself on what was left of the tree, but he pulled away with revulsion once he noticed. He broke into a run, although his back screamed in protest. The bridge was this way, it was only a little further.
The fog parted, and a clearing opened up before him, filled with water and sunlight streaming down from above -
“VOXEL,” roared Redmont.
Voxel looked up, genuinely startled. His combat interface blinked a red icon in his face. Behind it, Redmont was sunken to one knee, battered and bloody. He tore the violent little insects off with his slightly-less-than-a-hundred remaining arms. He was too exhausted to yell anything else. Azaz and Howitzer lay nearby, torn to pieces.
Was this a trick? Had he gone insane? Voxel lifted his guide rope. At the other end was -
Nothing. Just burned, frayed edges, still smoking from the energy bolt that had severed it.
Numbly, Voxel let the rope fall.
Before it hit the ground, the mutant swarm was upon him.
---
On the other side of the rope, Algernon hauled himself onto the ragged edge of Kerosene's side of the dock. Erm, boardwalk. The trip had been surprisingly short, especially with the help of his brand-new some-sort-of-vehicle. As it turned out, Voxel hadn't been vague; 'some sort of vehicle' described it about as accurately as 'bike with gear and legs,' or 'giant mechanical water strider' if you wanted to squint your eyes and attempt to get specific.
He'd figured out what to do on the way there – the hollow reed he'd found in his pocket was a pretty obvious hint to himself – but he wanted to sit and stall for just a second. Initially, he'd thought the problem of getting through impenetrable fog was impossible, but once he realized that there was no fog in the villages, it occurred to him that there was a way to just avoid the fog entirely. He rolled the reed between his fingertips for a moment.
It wasn't until he realized that he was sitting exactly where he'd started several days ago that he found the drive to slip into the murky, awful water, using the hollow reed as an improvised snorkel.
It could've been worse, he decided as he began to swim. He could've been the one stuck trying to make a bridge underwater.
A few indescribably horrible minutes of swimming, coming back up for fresh air and wishing he'd used his memories to make a proper set of scuba gear later, Algernon was at the other end of the shallow lake. He started to wipe his eyes off with his mucky sleeve and instantly regretted it. Instead, he pulled himself onto the boardwalk, rolled onto his back and slowly blinked away the water in his eyes until he could see clearly.
No guide rope on the railing.
He'd made it.
If he didn't feel like curling up and dying, he might've gotten up and cheered.
He slowly climbed to his feet, bracing himself heavily against the railing. No wonder Azaz had told him not to bother with trying to go to Fernwood. He pulled his shirt off and wrung it out, then started his journey down the boardwalk, vaguely wishing that he still had that water strider mech to do the walking for him.
---
A smallish Ouroborite fluttered its wings and alighted on the edge of the boardwalk. A strong, musky scent trail started here, and stretched into the fog. The pungent smell of the swamp and wet fabric hung around it, but the smell of meat and blood was still there, and it was still fresh. It was immediately snapped up by a much larger Ouroborite that was bloated with extra air sacs and pheromone glands. It shuffled off towards Fernwood, spewing thick purplish gas in its wake.
Ouroborous appeared from nowhere, screeching and chittering and gathering onto the path and flowing towards Fernwood and the scents of hundreds of beings as one vicious, mindless body.
As Algernon pressed on further into the forest, the boardwalk dwindled away into a few planks laid across the mossy ground, marking approximately where the path was supposed to be. He had already known about this from the last trip into Holly's village, but as long as he followed the path, he didn't get lost. In retrospect, it seemed like as long as there was a route for him to follow, he would get to his destination without too much trouble from the fog, even if it was just a vague impression of a path.
But last time, the boards hadn't been eaten away about a hundred feet after the boardwalk ended.
Algernon had to stop and think, but only for a moment. Galatea's warning had been clear: Don't stray off the path. But even if the shoddy trail of boards and bones was gone, he still knew the route pretty well. Sure, he had to get off the boardwalk, he reasoned, but as long as he took the route he had taken last time, he'd still be following the path. As he took a step off ragged, rotted edge of the last board, the fog moved in to curl around his ankles.
How hard could it be?
.
.
.
The next thing Algernon was aware of was something heavy prodding his head. He groaned and let his head loll to one side. What did he do to deserve this? Go away.
“Go away,” he must have mumbled, because someone hissed 'he is still alive,' and dragged him to his feet. He leaned against the tree and tried to go back to sleep. Had he been sleeping? It occurred to him that he didn't know.
He'd just blacked out. Had he made something with his memories?
“Where am I,” he started to ask, but that was obvious. He was in the swamp. It just seemed like the appropriate thing to ask after being woken up by a stranger. He settled for “How long was I out?”
“Hyu are Algernon, yes? Hyu have not been seen in village for days,” said the-
Okay, hold on.
After a moment's consideration, Algernon decided the thing talking to him rather resembled some kind of lobster centaur. The lower half of its body was unmistakably the crawly, segmented body of a giant aquatic crustacean, and its brownish carapace continued upwards to form a human-shaped torso that was similarly plated in reddish-brown. Its mandibles rippled as it spoke.
“Ve vere not expectink to see hyu, Mr. Algernon,” said the lobster centaur in some kind of Russian accent. “Ve are lookink for large insects. Hyu have been pronounced missink, maybe dead. One of several. My name is Azaz.”
Another person mentioning those monster bugs. Everyone kept talking about how the bugs had only appeared recently. Just how bad were they, if everyone knew about them the minute they showed up?
“That's- that's great, comrade,” Algernon answered, still sort of staring. Azaz was carrying a harpoon crossbow. Did they make those? And how did it pull the trigger with those big claws?
Whatever its deal was, its friends were gathering. Algernon recognized the hundred-armed man from before, along with a techie-looking fellow with some kind of metal chest plate and a variety of holographic HUDs floating around him and what appeared to be a miniature shark with the legs of a dog. It growled at him, and he immediately pressed his back against the tree again. They introduced themselves as Redmont and Voxel, respectively.
“And that's Howitzer,” Voxel smiled. “He bites.”
Azaz shot him a look the way only a lobster could. “Are hyu vell?” it asked Algernon. “Have hyu seen any insects?”
“I'm not sure,” admitted Algernon. “I feel fine, I guess. But I don't remember what happened out here.” He paused. “You said I've been out for days, right?”
The adventurer-types looked at each other. Redmont shrugged. It was a truly wondrous sight. They agreed that a few days sounded about right. “Four or five,” added Voxel.
Algernon swore quietly. Those bugs certainly would have found their way to the next villages, by now. “Why are you looking for them? The bugs, I mean.”
“Ve have not seen bugs for few days,” admitted Azaz. “Ve vere hopink bugs had moved on.”
Fair enough. “I need to get to Fernwood,” said Algernon. “Which way do I...?”
Voxel cleared his throat. “The boardwalk from Kerosene to Fernwood was eaten away about a week ago. You can only get through this fog if you know where you want to go -”
“I know,” interrupted Algernon.
“...but if there isn't a clearly marked path, then walking from Point A to the general location of Point B isn't gonna cut it,” he finished, drawing a little holographic diagram with his fingertip for emphasis. He erased it with a wave of his hand. “It takes a long time to rebuild a route between the villages when you can't just build in a straight line. Even we're using a guide rope that's tied to Kerosene's side.”
“So, the other villages don't know?” Algernon demanded.
“We'd really better go,” muttered Redmont. Azaz nodded.
“Follow rope and hyu vill find way back. Hyu vill not be able to cross swamp, and ve do not know if it is dangerous. Just go back,” it said with finality.
And with that, they were off. Algernon stopped Voxel for the guide rope. Voxel pulled the rope away rudely. “If I lose this rope, we'd all end up like you,” he said. “You can follow it just fine without holding it.” As Algernon made his way off, Voxel called after him. “We found some sort of vehicle nearby. It might be yours.”
And with that, they went their separate ways down the same guide rope. The same lifeline.
---
Redmont reached out with a few colossal arms to brush aside a dead tree. It fell into the swamp, splattering the others with muck.
“Redmont!” barked Voxel as he tried to get his staticky interfaces back under control. The hundred-armed man grinned to himself, and they pressed on. Voxel took everything so seriously. Even if that hadn't been on purpose, he was still pretty fun to mess with.
Voxel waved his hand through his combat interface, canceling unneeded processes and letting it sort itself out. A tiny blinking window remained in front of him. [irregular heat signatures] was written across the top, and below it was a list of coordinates. An unhelpful map showed their general locations.
Voxel nearly dropped his guide rope. “Guys,” he called.
“Vait,” said Azaz. The sharkdog was tugging sharply on its leash, as if trying to attack. Or get away. “Howitzer smells something.”
“Guys,” Voxel repeated. “I'm getting heat signatures all over the place.” His HUDs were full of red icons.
“Shit,” growled Redmont. He took a few steps back to join the others. They turned to guard each other's backs, but the swamp was just as foggy and silent as before. It only gradually occurred to Voxel how little of his surroundings he could actually see.
And then the shrieking started.
It hit them like a wall of pure sound. Voxel's skin crawled horribly. It was indescribable – like his scalp splitting, like razor wire digging into his skin. It hurt. The sound hurt.
Hundreds of wriggling insects the size of rats appeared out of the deep fog, hungry and scared and enraged. Before Voxel could steady his hand enough to fire an energy shot, something smooth and oily slithered across his foot and wrapped around his other ankle. He could feel hundreds of tiny legs brushing against him. He shuddered violently and staggered away, bumping into his companions. Something several feet long, like a horrible snake or a centipede was curled where his feet were. It made eye contact.
This was hell. He didn't need this.
Before either of the others could tell what was going on, Voxel was already frantically running away, stepping on insects and kicking them aside blindly. “Coward!” roared Azaz. He fired his harpoon crossbow, skewering the nearest Ouroborite. “Deserter!”
Voxel kept running, swatting aside brambles and demolishing trees with energy bolts. As long as he kept following the rope, he'd be fine. He'd be fine. The guide rope would lead him back to the village, back to Kerosene, and he'd tell them that there were insects, big ones, horrible ones, and that the others had been eaten. He was telling the truth, too – and someone needed to get out alive, to tell the others. He was doing the right thing, he was doing the right thing and he'd be fine and -
His foot landed in the muck and algae, and he staggered and nearly tripped. His combat interface went staticky again, but just for a moment.
Something brushed against his leg.
Voxel screamed – he couldn't help himself – and splashed through the swampy water to the other side. He rested against a rotten old tree and waited for his heart to stop racing. Oh god, he was a wreck, his friends were dead, and he'd abandoned them, that guy they'd sent off to follow the guide rope had probably been eaten, he really should have stolen that mech instead of letting him take it, this was worse than The Illustrious Contention, at least then everyone was human, or mostly, not those horrible crawling monsters that- that...
Oh god, something chittered. Something was chittering oh god.
But nothing was there – nothing he could see. That almost made it worse. He turned to climb the tree, telling himself that it was to get a better look at the battlefield, not to escape as quickly as possible. The rotted bark stripped away at his touch. The trunk of the tree was filled with deep crevasses, and nestled in each one of them was a bloated red larva -
He staggered backwards in horror and raised his arm. A glowing crosshair centered around his hand as he aimed an energy bolt at the infested tree. Without warning, something large and heavy and wet planted itself on his back. He screamed and tore at what had to be another of the enormous insects, trying to pull it free as it hissed and fluttered its wings. It paused to sink its barbed tail into his lower back, giving Voxel a chance to smack it off. It fell onto its back a few feet away, and he fired an energy bolt at it without a second thought. It burst open, splattering purple liquid everywhere, but he kept firing wildly, directing a few blasts of energy at the tree, but mostly just firing at the insect's carcass. It wasn't until his HUD flashed an [overheat] warning in his face and stopped firing that he realized he'd been screaming again.
He wanted to sink to the ground and curl up, but this wasn't the time for that. He had to get out of here. He needed to get out of here.
He took a few steps forward, but his legs were shaking too much, and he only made it a few feet. He automatically put out a hand to balance himself on what was left of the tree, but he pulled away with revulsion once he noticed. He broke into a run, although his back screamed in protest. The bridge was this way, it was only a little further.
The fog parted, and a clearing opened up before him, filled with water and sunlight streaming down from above -
“VOXEL,” roared Redmont.
Voxel looked up, genuinely startled. His combat interface blinked a red icon in his face. Behind it, Redmont was sunken to one knee, battered and bloody. He tore the violent little insects off with his slightly-less-than-a-hundred remaining arms. He was too exhausted to yell anything else. Azaz and Howitzer lay nearby, torn to pieces.
Was this a trick? Had he gone insane? Voxel lifted his guide rope. At the other end was -
Nothing. Just burned, frayed edges, still smoking from the energy bolt that had severed it.
Numbly, Voxel let the rope fall.
Before it hit the ground, the mutant swarm was upon him.
---
On the other side of the rope, Algernon hauled himself onto the ragged edge of Kerosene's side of the dock. Erm, boardwalk. The trip had been surprisingly short, especially with the help of his brand-new some-sort-of-vehicle. As it turned out, Voxel hadn't been vague; 'some sort of vehicle' described it about as accurately as 'bike with gear and legs,' or 'giant mechanical water strider' if you wanted to squint your eyes and attempt to get specific.
He'd figured out what to do on the way there – the hollow reed he'd found in his pocket was a pretty obvious hint to himself – but he wanted to sit and stall for just a second. Initially, he'd thought the problem of getting through impenetrable fog was impossible, but once he realized that there was no fog in the villages, it occurred to him that there was a way to just avoid the fog entirely. He rolled the reed between his fingertips for a moment.
It wasn't until he realized that he was sitting exactly where he'd started several days ago that he found the drive to slip into the murky, awful water, using the hollow reed as an improvised snorkel.
It could've been worse, he decided as he began to swim. He could've been the one stuck trying to make a bridge underwater.
A few indescribably horrible minutes of swimming, coming back up for fresh air and wishing he'd used his memories to make a proper set of scuba gear later, Algernon was at the other end of the shallow lake. He started to wipe his eyes off with his mucky sleeve and instantly regretted it. Instead, he pulled himself onto the boardwalk, rolled onto his back and slowly blinked away the water in his eyes until he could see clearly.
No guide rope on the railing.
He'd made it.
If he didn't feel like curling up and dying, he might've gotten up and cheered.
He slowly climbed to his feet, bracing himself heavily against the railing. No wonder Azaz had told him not to bother with trying to go to Fernwood. He pulled his shirt off and wrung it out, then started his journey down the boardwalk, vaguely wishing that he still had that water strider mech to do the walking for him.
---
A smallish Ouroborite fluttered its wings and alighted on the edge of the boardwalk. A strong, musky scent trail started here, and stretched into the fog. The pungent smell of the swamp and wet fabric hung around it, but the smell of meat and blood was still there, and it was still fresh. It was immediately snapped up by a much larger Ouroborite that was bloated with extra air sacs and pheromone glands. It shuffled off towards Fernwood, spewing thick purplish gas in its wake.
Ouroborous appeared from nowhere, screeching and chittering and gathering onto the path and flowing towards Fernwood and the scents of hundreds of beings as one vicious, mindless body.