Chapter Text
It was a beautiful morning. The sun was just peeking through a gap in the heavy cloud cover, making the still-wet surfaces shine wonderfully. Vines creaked as they swayed in a light breeze, occasionally dragged downwards by perching batflies, clicking and chattering at one another. A small centipede meandered along the ground without care for the nearby lizard eyeing it up.
The groaning of metal and shift of hydraulics startled the centipede and scared off the lizard. Tucked away in a corner, marked by an almost-square symbol, a shelter rumbled open.
Out of it came a strange creature. By its round, dark eyes and pale skin, tacky and shining wet, it could be mistaken for a slugcat if not for the lack of a tail. Its head was spherical save for two protruding metal cylinders on opposite sides, attached to which were two antennae that twitched madly when a drop of moisture fell on them. It was clad in filthy robes that could have once been brightly coloured. On its forehead, a golden cross was emblazoned.
It really was a beautiful morning, Sliver of Straw mused, if she had not already seen it three times over. Once to a lizard, once into a pit after her foot punched straight through the floor, and once pummelled by the rain; her intended route had proven… more difficult than she anticipated. She wasn’t willing to attempt it a fourth time.
She sighed, pulling out a pearl from the cylindrical container she had strapped to her back. With a bit of focus, a projection was drawn from it.
A map. Not of this area, she knew. It wasn’t useful anymore. She really should throw it out.
She tucked it back into her pack.
Once she had it firmly secured so as to not make any unnecessary noise, she hopped onto a nearby pole. Before, she had gone up, as she theorised that it would be quicker to get across this region by travelling above the canopy than to drag her way through the undergrowth.
The structure she was in had seemed a blessed reprieve when she had first come across it. Perhaps it had once been a bridge, or a supporting beam of some grand building, but presently it was more of a rusted arch over the top of the thick forest she had been travelling through for some time. Unfortunately, every other creature seemed to think the same. The place was crawling with predators of all sorts, not to mention the risk of the floor breaking under her feet and sending her careening to yet another death.
It seemed crossing the bridge had been a pipe dream. A pipe dream that wasted valuable time. She had travelled far, but she couldn’t afford to dwell here any longer than she already had. The risk was too great.
With fresh resolve, Silver of Straw descended the pole.
–--
This was debatably worse than the upper path.
Where before she had been a sitting gooieduck to any enterprising predators, now she struggled to move even a quarter of the distance she had been, legs dragging in mud and vines. She was making progress, sure, but not enough. Not nearly enough.
She eyed the trail of disturbed mud and broken twigs behind her. Anyone looking for her (had they started yet, did they know, did they suspect? There was no way to know) would have an easy time of it. She may as well crush some bluefruit into paste and paint a giant target onto her back.
Overcome with helplessness, she sat heavily on a pile of cracked masonry. She pulled out her map pearl, called forth the projection.
Five rectangular shapes, each surrounded by a distant ring; a retaining wall around their facilities. Sliver of Straw traced the path she had taken. South here when she had seen an overseer pass, hiding for a week there, skirting the edges of known territories as she fumbled her way through learning how to use her body. This body.
She traced her path all the way back to its origin point. The digital representation of her former body stood tall in the centre of the group. The land around it was shaded with a pleasant golden colour. In another life, she had thought the fields of wheel flowers around her structure were beautiful. She had longed to walk them herself, but knew it to be an impossibility.
It wasn’t real, of course. Her structure was gone. She had watched it collapse, perched on the roof of a dilapidated cathedral. Had felt the tremors under her hands, had heard the creatures driven to a frenzy, had minded falling chunks of stone for the next three cycles as the aftershocks arrived.
The fields were likely gone, too. She couldn’t imagine they had survived, so close to it.
It was a shame. It was unavoidable. It was still a shame.
She put the pearl away. The next shelter could be anywhere and she couldn’t be wasting time like this. She had spotted the faint glow of an overseer, earlier, and needed to put more distance between it and her.
Well. There was no way back, that much she knew. So the only way was forwards. Continuing down this path she had carved for herself–
Something was different. As she pulled her leg free of a patch of mud, she noticed a footprint not her own. That alone was common, but… this was not a print she recognised. It was not quadrupedal, so it could not be a lizard. Nor did it bear the marks of shifted weight like a scavenger, or the three-toed print of a slugcat.
This print was fairly round, elongated forwards slightly. The front tapered to a round point. She leant down closer, noting how the patterned grooves were deeper at either end, more weight on them. She lifted her own foot. It was smooth, rounder than this print, but… she couldn’t shake the sense of deja vu.
Whatever this creature was, she concluded, it walked like her.
She looked upwards. The clouds were darkening – the cycle would end soon, and the rains with it. She had lingered too long. Whatever creature she had stumbled across, she simply did not have the time to pursue it.
But…
Oh, to hell with it. It probably had a better idea of where to find a shelter than she did. Worst case scenario, she could make better time through here on the next cycle.
She’d had worse ideas.