Bleach White Highlands
I gaze off into the distance, into far off lands… the wilderness flows through me, consuming my soul and mind! The world, so vibrant my eyes are blinded! I MUST CONSUME IT ALL! ACK! THE PURE ECASTACY OF LIFE CANNOT BE DENIED ME! ACK! ALL THE WORLD WILL BOW TO ME, FOR I AM GOD!!!
…but not really, I was just dreaming again. Pretty weird dream, huh?
Anyway, my shivering body just crawled out of a cold wet ditch I was sleeping in, when all around I started to see all the ice covering the cavern in a glistening frost start to melt; off the walls, on the ceiling, to the hard-rock floor where I was at. Right then, I knew I needed to get out of this potentially drowning situation, so I started running down the nearest tunnel, though I guess 6 kph doesn't really count as running.
I kept slipping on the rapidly melting floor (so that's were all the ice was!), the smell of dead things long frozen now finally beginning to rot. I entertained in my head a dark fantasy… me being swept away to lands unknown by the sheer amount of running water pouring down the cavern walls, gasping for breath…
With that thought, I began hopped repeatedly out of the water, hoping to gain more traction in the air than got from wading through the current; all that really happened was me getting mouthfuls of ice-cold water on top of exhausting myself further.
What I was thinking of is, why me? I'm sure other beasts have much less exciting and much better lives than mine, so why me! Why so much suffering being reserved for me-
*KA-CRUNCH!!!*
My body was flung away from the hazardous stream that, at that very moment, became a chunky subzero flood…
I was safe, having been knocked on a ledge by a force like a freight train. Safe to watch the wrath of the wilderness exhibit itself in a flood unlike any I could imagine, mountains of ice torn through to pieces by the fierce, biting tearing waters, like… something. I don't know, I'm no pee-oat. Peot? Close enough.
Anyway, all this is happening before my very eyes, centimeters from my face, when through the water I saw the face of a beast, it's eyes glowing like a burning horse-shaped wood (that's the right teem-ology, aint it?) in the midnight hour. It was a beast of such power… I was glad that I had about ten trillion gallons of raging clashing water separating me from that 6 limbed fury! I'm not sure how long my chilled, scratched, twitching body layed on the ledge I was knocked to; it felt like forever.
Eventually though, I pulled myself up and collapsed in a corner, taking deep breaths and luring to sleep.
When I woke up, there were two things I was aware of: one, I had a splitting headache, and two, the frozen cave I was in was no longer a cave. It was a flowing river, with some rocky outgrowths being the only remnant of the caverns I had spent my morning in. Actually, three things: I had barfed in my sleep, and was hungry as heck!
After lapping up some delicious freshwater from the stream, I set off for the highlands to look for food. On my way up the steep and rocky path, I came across a field of bugs, and snapped managed to snap a few of them down, their green leaf-covered bodies being my nourishment. They didn't taste as good or feel anywhere near as filling as some yummy meat would!
After a few hours, I got the first sign of the trouble I was soon to endure, as I made it to the pinnacle of the plateau, air humid with frost and void of scent.
I saw before me a faded land. The sounds of nature which had accompanied me up the mountain path had silenced; the bugs which I have seen and ate up to this point were gone. No creature walks here, I knew, and why so, I found out as I climbed up the next hill.
A vast plain of white spread across for a far as I could see, with only specks of chrome visible on the far horizon. But this was not snow of any sort, though it radiated an inherit cold like it. This was a land bleached of life, no longer part of the wilderness.
I tried to enter, but simply could not, no matter how hard I tried. I can't continue on with my quest to… do what? All I know is that I want to become King of all Cubivores, and that has something to do with eating.
I turned my head around, heading back down the rocky path, when I saw a slivery shape. It was a bug, but not just an ordinary bug, but one with some meat in it!
I snuck over, crawling through the grass with its sent in my sights, until… CHOMP, down my throat it goes! Tasty as heck! Now, back to my fancy descriptions and whatnot-
Suddenly, a tremor shaked me to my very bones, as the sound of wildlife surged back into my hearing, shocking me from my temporary moment of triumph.
The force choking the earth of its natural beauty yielded a portion of its kingdom, opening up a narrow pathway onward. A small grove of wilderness has been returned to the land, all because of eating that one bug! Maybe, by eating more of them, I can bring more wildernesses back to the land!
Now with objective less vague, I leaped my way down the steep rocky path, small insects being stirred by my presence. My hunger got me snapping at them, but these bugs could fly, and fled too fast and to high for me to follow, even from the power of my new yellow form.
With dejection, I continued onward, when suddenly, I started coughing uncontrollably. Since when did a pig cough? I got over it, but I noticed that I felt noticeably weaker, and my belly felt totally empty, the hunger feeling like it was snapping me in half! Still, I pressed onward, still hoping to find food.
Of course, as I realized with searing certainty, if I wanted to find insects of other beasts to eat, I could have just stayed by the river, where any sensible animal (not me) would have gone without a second thought!
As I was thinking this, I ran straight into a wall of brush, I yelped and cringed, expecting pain, but instead, saw the sight of a strange box. It looked like it was made out of grass and leaves crudely but tightly made. On it was some weird looking claw marks that looked like gnarled trees… I head butted the box, thinking that that "Duh! It's a trap!" when inside I found more of those silver bugs! I quickly ate them up before they could run away, tasting the taste of meat as they went down my throat.
Suddenly (I really have to stop using that word), the sound of splashing drew my attention. Spurting out of a hole in a wall, was a trickle of sparkling water, and below it, resting, was… some beast, I couldn't see that far.
A ribbity roar reberveated through my eardrums as I turned around and stood face to face with the mystery beast, the slimy animal gazing down at me with big marble eyes, his pale blue skin dripping with fluid.
The source of the beast's stature came from his not one, not… what comes after one? One/half? Whatever the point of it is, that guy had two pieces of meat on his body! And it looked a lot tougher than any one limb, even if I was the one with the darker meat.
The blueocyte backed away from me, I laughed: this big blue guy was afraid of me? But then I realized. He was backing up for a stronger attack.
I leapt to the side, taking evasive action, but my form lacked speed, and I was knocked unconscious. I came to only when I had half my leg in his mouth, the spit already beginning to drip onto my back.
I managed, somehow to violently squirm my way out of its mouth, his teeth taking a piece of me with him.
I tried my best to shrug off the injury; still, I was bleeding, and blood loss, on top of my empty stomach and dizzy spells turned out to be the end of me, as the last thing I ever saw was those cold jaws clamping on my throat…
THE END
Alright, I didn't die. It's called "suspense", ever heard of it?
Anyway, in the end, I was able to sink my flesh into the 'clyte's lower limb, and ripped me off a piece. The maraca-shaped monster breathed its last breath as I ripped off and swallowed the flabby meat, and began the now no longer painful transformation to another form.
The yellow, striped limb that I've been sporting up to this point receded into me, and was reabsorbed by my body, while the new limb grew out below me in a different shade than the one before; a pale blue, smooth and leathery.
I was pissed that I didn't grow two limbs; shouldn't I be able to, with me being (unfortunately) having to do this each time I want a decent meal? But the posses only affect the color and placement of the new limb, and did not extend to creating new ones.
Blue blood flowing through my vines (OK, before you chide me, look, there both a kind of stringy stuff, one's got wood in it, and the other has blood; they're interchangeable!) I noticed my body was flabbier, giving me a feeling of overall weakness.
This new pale form was not as strong as my previous one; my senses, however, became extra-sharp! That twig way over there, that scuffle of green, that groundbug trying to burrow under? I could see it all, with super-high detail! Unfortunately, I had to rub my chin raw just to move two feet. But that bleeding wound? Gone like it was never there! All and all, an ok trade-off for a weaker bod… I guess…
I wandered for 2 days afterward, scraping through the dead brush and clouds of insects, looking for more silver bugs and meat.
And there were plenty of insects, with all the starved corpses' strewn everywhere, just now beginning to rot. I wandered into them a while back; I was hoping for survivors (and likewise fresh meat), so headed deeper up the mountains, which I would not have done if it hadn't been 2 days since my last real meal.
By the time I reached the first corpse, the cube-moon was waning into nothingness, and the square of light in the sky was rising.
The wind bit at me as fiercely as the swarms of bugs all around this place of death, and there more and more came the higher the sun rose. All around, there was nothing but starved and bloody corpses of once majestic beasts. I saw cadavers of all shapes and sizes, some several times bigger than me, others even smaller than I was. One pair of corpses, their yellow skin soaked with blood long dried, were clenching their jaws at each other's limbs, bloated gangrene eyes locked on each other in a vacant stare. It was clear that they both been killed while trying to kill each other. Several meters away, I saw a massive pile of bones; fresh meat stored for the winter, picked clean, the stinking rot just now setting in.
A dead bluecyote in the center of the pile, its massive serpentine body blocking the way, had its body wrapped in a ring shape. The massive thing had been eating itself to death, having outlived or eaten all the others. Maybe it was just committing suicide.
I was confused at the emotions I was feeling, like bugs buzzing around my head. I willed the imaginary flies away; I had plenty of real ones to be annoyed at! It was then that I threw up again, vomit tinged a slight red. The acidic taste of my guts in my mouth was not helping me at all, so I spit out the bile, and paced through the obstacle course of husks to the plateau due north.
The preserved bodies now numbered far fewer than before, and instead bore the teeth marks of other beasts; instead of the just rotted bodies before, these were picked clean of meat, and the corpse was fresh.
It was really freaking me out, even more than those dead bodies before. I don't know, there's just something so hopeless about something that's been killed by something bigger and stronger than itself. Which led back to me; a pig born from parent's unknown, in a duneland, on a quest to become-
Whoa. I must be getting really hungry, if I'm thinking thoughts this deep! Either that or from blood loss.
Noticing the feel of grass on my limb, I drew away from my deep thoughts and examined the field I had wandered into, surprised at the clear contrast from the last few meters. There were no bodies at all, not even rotted away ones.
Grass and bamboo was growing everywhere, though quite a few branches were snapped off. Bugs blending in with the straws of thistle were busy doing their thing, and, off in the distance, I could smell the aroma of other beasts.
What caught my eye was a small movement of silver. Another one of those metallic bugs? Heading to my right to sneak though a patch of tallgrass, I poked out to take a quick look and spotted again the shining animal.
But it was the farthest thing from a bug possible!
He was huge. A wall of steel, radiating raw frigidity and pure bloodlust, was coupled to a head that seemed to be made up of nothing more than teeth, teeth, and more teeth; the serrated jaws looked like a portal to an evil world. If I had any urine left in me, it probably (sorry, probably) would have been dripping down my leg at this point.
But I didn't really have time to think about it at that point, because I was running for my life. I dove back into the brush, curling myself into a ball after going far enough. But, instead of feeling cold jaws biting at my vitals, I only heard the sounds of nature, decay, and the far-off cries of the chrome beasts. Apparently, my senses were much more accurate than the giant colorless beast.
Abandoning caution, I leapt out of the wall of plants and into the light of the setting sun; right into the path of a grey colored beast. I saw behind him another one of his kind and, straining my vision, I could see the Colorless in the distance… he was facing the other direction, ripping off the limb of some defenseless animal; The two greydons nearby moved eastward, sniffing out the place I was just at and-
[Chromatic aberration detected.]
Oh crap. The Colorless! He spotted me! I got to get out of there!
I flopped like a paperfan in a thunderstorm, feeling his blood-red eyes focused on me. Hey… wait a minute… his approached lessened, gaping slightly as his body tensed. A rocky outcropping hidden by dead weeds made contact with my face. At the same time, a square hit in the stomach by a solid ton of chrome sent me flying upward and outward, colliding with one of the greydons, causing him to scream in pain.
I set my gummy mouth upon his flesh like a… something on a something, using him as a hostage, growling as menacingly as I could. However, all I could manage was a guttural oink. When the other greydon and the colorless behind him ignored my attempts at growls of warning and prepared to leap again, I took my grip off Greydon #1 and leapt out of the way.
That's what I wanted to do, tried to do, NEEDED to do, but, for reasons unknown, some nerve misfarted and (…wait. It's misfired? Oooh… My bad. Totally messed that up.) Now where was I? Great, now I forgot what I was going to say. Oh well. Basically, what happened is that I ate the guy's meat.
As I began ingesting it, time seemed to slow down as the Colorless made the massive leap it was tensing for earlier, toward me, aiming for my oh-so-edible gooey insides. My limb, the pale scaly aquamarine flap, began receding in… and then out, right in front of me, like only three times before.
Extending from my chin was my body limb, now speckled with dark splotches and covered with consistent grey fuzz. The new grey syrupy blood surged into my system, and for a moment, I felt my heart stop. Then accelerate, as the new blood was squirted through me. My muscles and tendons got more buff and toned, and my stomach churned as something began forcing its way out of my mouth.
A supernaturally charged roar emitted from somewhere close, the hallowing noise stiffening my body, and causing the Colorless one to open his eyes wide in fear, and begin turning in the opposite direction; everything still seemed slower than normal, and my vision blurred. Then I realized; the roar was coming from me.
What happened next was something I saw more as a spectator than anything. I jumped on the nearest greydon and bit down on his head, drawing blood and causing him to fling me away.
I landed on my feet, turned on a dime and began whaling on him, until he finally lay unconscious from his internal and external injuries.
Recovering from the wounds I had sustained after snapping up Greydon #2, I then focused on a newly appeared Greydon #3. Our skills were equally matched, being more or less copies, but I proved quicker in the end, tossing dust into the air and into his face. The greydon's senses were blinded by the gravel, as I-
The ground was yanked beneath me as the Colorless held me in his jaws, pinning me down. But I had a trick up my sleeves, or rather, my stomach.
Barf stinged his eyes as I tore at his face, desperate to break free of those evil teeth of death. Escaping the hellish mouth, I strafed the iron monster and leapt for his hind meat, clamping down multiple times on the cold limb containing a small portion of the Wilderness.
No sooner than I broke off a single piece, than a bright light shined in my face as the blood from the colorless flowing at full force sent me reeling! The trapped energy inside flowed into my body; I felt like I was going to explode into a million pieces! Then the energy overflowed, through me, into the earth, restoring it as the unseen/heard/felt flood gushed its way across the highlands, filling the gullies and caverns of lifelessness with plants and worms and bugs of all kinds, flowers blooming with smells and beasts bursting with life!
In the end, snapping out the golden stupor, I returned to my normal self. But as I stood over the dead body of the slain Colorless, I felt a change in my demeanor, undefinable, but still there. An increased sense of potency? Was I still the same person I was before? Did it really-
*"BLLLEEEAAAKKKK!"*
A puddle of vomit spewed onto the dry ground, with some roasted bugs floating on top. Wait, those aren't bugs… ACK! LEECHES! I exploded, running away at hyperspeed, only realizing hours later, at sunset, how much I traveled in those few minutes fleeing those dead …things.
I know now what I gained from it was more than just a cure for leeches.
It was a piece of something legendary, from memories I had never seen nor heard myself. I just didn't figure it out till later.
Hours later, at sunset, I stopped to rest from my long climb down, lapping away at a pool of water, my familiar pig face greeting me like always. The now red cube of light shone only as an edge of ether, the rest of the sun having submerged itself into the earth from where it came.
This reminded me of how long it was since my last meal, given the deepness of my vocabulary. But then-
"Graararrgerrrrgrrr…!"
It was the beast that had tried to kill me earlier, when I was in that cave!
He was standing there, his metallic body causing the last few rays of light beaming down from the sun to ripple off him like flames- Wait, metallic? Oh crap, it's the Colorless! Screw this thesaurusical description; I'm getting out of here! And so I fled until I was sure he wasn't following me.
That colorless meat, man! Caviar of the wild world! I tell you, just remembering it; I can't help but have the old mandibles drop open. Just one bit of this stuff and my belly starts a-dancin'. Not to mention, it's good for the environment. What's weird is, now I'm starting to feel these weird urges. And something to do with belly-dancing? Anyway, now that I've got this meat in me, I can sprint like a racehorse! By the way, I passed wind of some good information. Passed wind? Caught wind? Anyway, I got a phat tip. It wasn't really from anyone, more like a dream, or something like that. Even I can't really describe it. It's got something to do with chicks, that's for certain. Just thinking about it gives me butterflies in my stomach. Is this love? Probably not. But still…
Oh, I wrote another poem!
Although my poor little tummy
Wants to eat something yummy
It's tied up in knots
Cause I've got the hots
With a female, I want to get chummy!
-Piggy
Well, second chapter finally posted. Please read and review, as always!