Ch 14

“Oh, oh oh! So, whats that?” Casimer asked, zipping across the ground in a cradle of dirt, extending a tentacle towards a tree at the edge of the campsite.

“That's a desert-” Melchsee said, patience wearing thin as the tree was sucked down into the ground with the sound of snapping wood, the branches bending and splintering apart, before vanishing entirely. She was reminded of a wood chipper, and made a mental note to revisit the thought later.

“Oh, I see,” Casimer said, pondering his latest meal, then shining with clear yellow light and filling the air with the sound of vibration as the same tree was meticulously reconstructed several feet away from it's original location. “That one was sort of. . . bland. Peaceful,” he said, voice considerably calmer. Underground, some distance away, an enhanced grasshopper mouse was overwhelmed by a pack of scorpions. He felt the mammalian rush of energy fill him as he devoured the mouse's mind, emotions and the ghostly imprint it's death left behind on the world.

“Oh! What's this?” Casimer asked, voice hyperactive and on edge as he zipped across the ground and up to the top of the moss covered pyramid, which promptly had the moss absorbed from it, leaving it a bare pyramid of jagged mountain rock.

“That was. . . Don't worry about that,” Melchsee said “Do you mind covering that back up?”

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“What? Oh, sure!” Casimer said, a pink glow surrounding the gem as the structure was once again coated in moss. Over the last several days, Casimer had tripled in size, resembling a dried plum more than a raisin at this point, his color lightening from purple-black to a more clear dark purple. His changes in physical appearance were nothing compared to the transformation his mental attitude had undergone.

“Hmmm,” he said, before three sequoia trees burst from the side of the mountainside, nearly horizontal for several seconds before breaking at the base and tumbling down the steep terrain, creating a trail of devastation in their wake. “Ha!” Casimer exclaimed, gem bouncing off of it's cushion of dirt.

“I think you should hold off on doing that again,” Melchsee said, sensing in his thoughts that he planned to topple sequoia trees down the mountain for the next foreseeable future.

“Ok!” he responded, zipping around the campsite like a hyperactive rodent. Casimer, while operating the bug dungeon had felt nothing but unending cold and bland insect minds, and it had driven him to near madness. High in the air, in green glowing letters was written 'The Oasis Dungeon', and below it was a tiny pond that glowed, ice around its edges, The great crystal pillar that fed the pond occasionally flashing with contained lightning.

Then, Casimer felt the strangest emotion of all. It came from neither Melchsee, or the grasshopper mice, or even the bugs. It seemed to be coming from his own being, a sensation somewhere between an urge and an observation. Mentally, he grabbed hold of Melchsee and brought her attention away from the devastation on the hillside.

“Is there more to life than this?” Casimer asked, and having vocalized the emotion, felt the realness of it even more strongly. It was as though he unfolded, expanding inside of himself, growing until he could no longer fit.

"There must be," he continued, a weird quiver of inhuman emotion in his voice that shook the ground, and his influence began to seep deeply into the soil and the air, saturating it like water through paper.