Rain.
Rain dominated the Southland. Its sweltering jungles and stinking swamps were doused with it almost daily, serving to swell the rivers and streams that cut through it like veins. In the Far South, the rainforests were choked with rainwater that swirled and stagnated, leaving peat marshes and serving to turn the rainforests into ever greater mazes of confusion and chaos. Rain permeated into everything; culture, daily routines, hunting, even war. It was the Southland's life blood.
Today the rain was pouring down in buckets. The many colors of pikmin that inhabitated the Near South found their jungles and marshes drowning in water. At times like this they would retreat into their villages and their dry huts, where they could find comforting fires and good food. Most pikmin would not set foot outside on a day like this, until the rain had at least stopped coming down.
But not Celltic. He found that the best hunting was when the creatures of the jungle came out to bask in the rain, knowing that they would be relatively safe from hunters. There were drawbacks of course; he could not use his bow in the rain, for it hampered the sinew string and ruined accuracy. His senses were dulled as well, but Celltic took no notice of this, for he loved a challenge. And besides that, he found the steady rain relaxing, almost pleasurable.
The young green pikmin was prowling now, his camaflouged jungle cloak protecting him from the weather. Water streamed over his face like a refreshing bath, pouring down the rainproofed fabric of his hood. He carried a bundle of spears over his left shoulder, not tipped but fire hardened, and another in his hand ready to throw. He was ascending higher into the jungle, up what had once been a cliff face in some forgotten age, but was now a tangled mess of rain-slicked rocks and scattered patches of foliage. Here Celltic hunted Switherbugs for their meat, a task that required speed, cunning and strength, something which he possessed in abundance, or so he at least liked to think.
There was less foliage to keep the rain away now, and it was driving down hard into Celltic's face. He brought his stem down and let his bud divert the falling water. Steadily he climbed, hopping deftly from rock to rock, wary of falling but relaxed at the same time. His bare feet went slap slap as he went, moving from one patch of trees to another until they thinned out almost entirely. Celltic was very high up now, several hundred feet off the jungle floor. Still, the trees of the jungle stretched more than a hundred feet into the air in most places, and were very thick.
Quite suddenly, Celltic came across a pile of boulder and a short cliff. He changed his course and scrambled up onto a slick boulder, then tossed his bundle of spears onto the ledges over his head. After that it was easy enough to grip the vines that grew thick here, and pull himself up the cliff.
Shouldering his spears, Celltic looked around. The rain was slowing rapidly, and after a few minutes it became a lazy sprinkle. Visibility increased exponentially until Celltic could see for miles around. He continued to move up after that, until he came to what appeared to be a giant mouth in the Southland mountain.
The mouth of the mountain was huge, stretching nearly fifty feet up into the air. Tumbled down pillars of rock lay strewn and scattered between large slabs of stone and low walls. An ancient wall, tipped here and there by battlements that had been worn by time until they were round and smooth, stood before Celltic as if it were guarding the entrance to the mouth of the cave systems. It almost appeared like they were teeth, old and useless in the mouth of an ancient monster, but ready to bite and destroy nonetheless. Above the cavernous mouth the mountain continued, covered in twisted plant life and gnarled trees.
Without hesitating or hurrying, Celltic pulled himself through a low spot in the four foot wall. He knew what it was; he had visited here often. It was Southwatch, where centuries ago Samovar the Great had built his fortress. The climb to the top had been much steeper then, as the path Celltic had taken was a sheer cliff in those days and the stronghold was accessible only by hidden footpaths and secret entrances from behind. Samovar had used this fortress as a base from which to launch attacks on the black pikmin, to drive them out of the South. It had been taken in a great battle, one in which the black pikmin attacked from without with their armies, and from within with their underground monsters. But that was too long ago to matter anymore, and even the ghosts were long gone.
The first cavern was badly lit, its entrance long ago smashed. A large split in the rock marked where Samovar had once built his doors, only half of which remained opened. Up above, Celltic could still see where the defenders of Southwatch had honeycombed the rock of the surrounding cliffs, creating boltholes and small rooms from which to fight back against their enemies. Most of the entrances were gone, others sealed off, and many were overgrown with hanging vines and hunched trees. The few that remained appeared to be dead eyes that glared out at the Southland, but most of these were too small to enter.
Celltic regarded the mouth of the caves with unease. He had been here many times before, even venturing into the caves once or twice, but something told him that all was not right. He knew the stories; of pikmin going in and never coming back out, of luckier explorers who claimed to hear things moving in the dark and of finding gnawed bones piled here and there. Of course, he didn't believe most of them. It was easy to get lost in the caves and even easier to stay lost. The greens who went in and died probably just starved. Everybody knew that the Insectoids created by the black pikmin had died with their masters.
Still, something didn't seem quite right. The wind whispered in the mouth of the caves as if in warning. Celltic approached nevertheless, selecting a spear from his bundle of six and gripping it readily. A haunting moan emanated from the cliffs around him; just the wind, but it spooked him nonetheless.
Carefully, slowly, Celltic eased himself into the entrance, until he was half in and half out of the shadow. The wind circulated in the large cavern before him, almost howling now as if to tell him to leave now and never come back. He continued forward.
A few cautious steps forward later, his throwing arm cocked back in the ready position, Celltic found himself in the center of the cavernous room. It was marked by two large stalagmite pillars, both of which stretched up and into the darkness, presumably to the ceiling. As he stood there, Celltic could hear the incessant sound of dripping water somewhere up above; the stalagmites were wet to the touch.
There were three large corridors on the far side of the cavernous room, and two smaller ones on either side. One of the larger corridors, the one on the far left, was mostly collapsed with only a small portion near the top. It was accessible only by a climb over age-old rubble slippery with "rock sweat". The room itself was humid, and several large clusters of crystals grew deeper back in the middle corridor. The wind continued to howl. But there was nothing in here; other than the wind it was completely silence. Dead.
Celltic relaxed.
Suddenly, something moved in the far left corridor, in the small, jagged entrance atop the rubble pile. Several small rocks skittered to the bottom, clicking against the moist stone before clattering noisely into a puddle of water. Celltic jumped, drawing his arm back to throw his spear, but the thing was already gone. Swallowing, he dashed after it, replacing his spear in the bundle over his shoulder and using his right hand to climb. When he came to the top his legs and the palm of his hand were slimy.
Celltic had to crouch to enter the corridor. He hesitated for only a moment, hastily wiping his hand clean of the slimy moisture and gripping one of his spears. The hardened wooden point held in front of him, the young budling slid through the entrance, and found himself in complete darkness. He paused again, this time to allow his eyes to adjust to the inky blackness; it was darker than the deepest rainforests of the Far South, darker even than a Switherbug breeding pit at midnight. He advanced slowly this time, gripping his spear tightly. Whatever was in these caves, it wasn't catching him off guard.
After a short descent down the smoothed rubble, Celltic dropped into a puddle of icy water that rose all the way to the middle of his shins. He would have to be careful from here on out; he was barefoot, as green pikmin invariably were, and this corridor was a maze of stalagmites, sharp patches of crystals, deep pits, and pools of freezing water that could swallow a pikmin whole. He did not consider turning back.
But despite silently picking his way through the tunnel, and several short pauses to listen for disturbances, Celltic could not detect anything else around him. He wondered briefly if what he had seen was simply some sort of animal, but he discarded the thought almost instantly. No, what he had seen was too big to be a lizard or a rat of some sort, too dangerous looking. What little he had seen of it reminded him of a Switherbug; a large, thin Switherbug. Insectoid, at least to some degree.
Finally, despairing, and unwilling to lose himself in the caves, Celltic turned back. Some length of time later, possibly a minute, possibly an hour, the pikmin slipped from the tunnel, pushing his bundle of spears through ahead of him. As he descended the rubble pile, almost slipping once, he wondered how much time had passed since he entered the cave. It couldn't have been too long; he had gone in just after midday, from what he could tell in the rain, and when he emerged he could see that only about an hour had passed. The rain had stopped completely, and the clouds obscuring the sun were already moving into the Far South; there was a thick fog, and the sky was still dreary with cloud banks, but Celltic could see several villages down below.
Celltic's own village, Etak, was the closest to the mountain. It was still a half-hour journey along twisting jungle paths that the untrained eye could miss, and avoiding the hunting traps, the pitfalls, that usually went unmarked. There would be pikmin out and about now, hunters checking the aforementioned traps or moving into the deeper jungles to hunt Switherbug and Shearwig.
His wet cloak still draped about his shoulders, steaming now in the heat of the South, Celltic began his slow descent down the mountain and back to Etak.