Ch 6

“Eat you? No, you are far too valuable to be eaten.”

“Then let me go already you bitch!” Casimer's voice became an angry buzz, and the space just around the edge of the wrinkled gem began to shimmer and warp, and it phased through her hand and fell to the ground, which rapidly began to move and cover it.

“Well that was hateful language,” she said absently, plucking the gem from the ground again “You're running from a very valuable business opportunity, little dungeon.” Casimer seemed to stop struggling quite as hard when it heard the word 'valuable'. “I doubt you understand very many things, lord knows I just watched you eat nothing but bug brains for months, so I will save us some time. I am Melchsee, and some time before your birth I was. . .” She frowned, looking away for a moment and biting her lip, “Contracted. I was asked to tend to you, in the event you couldn't tend to yourself.”

Casimer's response was to begin shimmering again. A sound which can only be described as 'Bzzt' was his reward, along with a thin wire of electricity that arc'd from the opal in Melchsee's forehead, shorting out his ability to cause trouble.

“Really, you should be showing a little more gratitude. You were basically an automaton this morning, and if I hadn't come in here and shut down your,” she paused and seemed to be searching for a palatable word “operation, you would have remained as such. ”

From her body came a white orb of light, which expanded and enclosed them into a three dimensional video. An ugly, corrupted mountain of slimy stone underneath a sky that looked like a shimmering oil spill. It was full of countless holes that belched green smoke and light, and from them came an endless stream of hellish insects and mutated animals that destroyed and consumed everything in their path.

“Beautiful!” Casimer vocalized, the space around his edges growing black and ugly. “When I have escaped you, I will grow and I will be invincible!”

“No you won't.” Melchsee said flatly, then pointed to the sky, where several streaks of light with smoke trailing behind them rapidly grew brighter, closer. Almost faster than could be believed, the nuclear missiles impacted the mountain and surrounding desert, more than a dozen mushroom clouds sprouting in fire, smoke and radiation. The scene accelerated, several years passing in moments, and when it stopped, all that remained was a radioactive crater where The Bug Dungeon had once stood mighty.

“What. . .” Casimer said, dumbfounded, the black light fading.

“Those are nuclear missiles, the flashiest, go-to weapon human beings, the main inhabitants of this world, have for situations like you. I just saved your life, and I plan on doing a whole lot more for you-AH!” She yelped as Casimer flashed black and flew away from her, landing on the ground.

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“I don't care, I will go deep below their reach” he said, dirt covering him in a rising mound. Melchsee sighed and gracefully lept to the mound, reaching inside of it, then frowning. Her eyes rapidly darted around, then saw a small raised trail of dirt leading to the boss room.

“Fuck,” she whispered to herself, then dodged a thick spray of webbing that coated a fourth of the room in sticky, white silk. From the other room a colossus amalgamation of various insects came shambling in, a chimera with no symmetry, a solid mass of various useful insect parts arranged without any coherent vision. It was enormous relative to the size of the room, inching along like a worm, dozens of spider abdomens across it's body shooting web that coated all surfaces. Random compound eyes scattered across all surfaces were crushed, and bursting as it moved along. Stinging tails and several toad mouths flexed and opened menacingly. Somewhere near the front, though it was hard to determine where the front and back of the creature was, the wrinkled gem Casimer sat, radiating hateful black energy. It was the single most hideous, revolting bug that had ever been upon the Earth. The sight of it would have given the average person a severe case of nausea.

Melchsee floated into the center of the room and swiftly dodged the thick barrage of launched bee stingers, beams of energy, thick spiked tongues and streams of venom that issued forth from Casimer as the grotesque creature squeezed it's body like a sea cucumber and shrieked in rage.

Then, Melchsee began to laugh, eyes wide and bright. She weaved and swooped, her body stretching and contracting in a fluid manner, like her body was just an illusion she could freely manipulate, as she closed the distance between them. She landed on the face, near the exposed gem, gripping the dripping creature with her hands and feet as though embracing it.

“Oh! Oh, Casimer, this is fantastic!” She ripped him from the chitinous nightmare with a wet crunch, and the creature stumbled around a bit before collapsing and breaking apart into motes of light, which were promptly absorbed by Melchsee.

“It is?” Casimer asked, seeming to take an interest in conversation for the first time.

“Oh, Casimer,” Melchsee said, blue eyes still shining brightly “It was very impressive. Crude, mechanically unstable, horrific, but impressive.”

“Heh,” Casimer buzzed, and began to glow a warm, pinkish color. Melchsee looked at him and set the gem down, where it promptly buried itself and began a rapid escape, before stopping.

“Well,” Casimer said “Come on then.”

Melchsee grinned and practically skipped her way along, meeting the stationary mound and then matching pace as it slowly made its way back into the skull chamber. She rubbed her stomach for a moment.

“Got anything to eat around here? I'm starving,” she said casually.

“Funny,” Casimer said, “I was just thinking the same thing.”

Melchsee burst out laughing a maniac laugh as she walked.

“What is it?” he asked. She sighed and shook her head.

“Nothing. It just reminded me of a joke a dear old friend used to tell. Say, are you tired of eating bugs?” Casimer slowed for a moment, then continued on at a steady pace.

“What else is there?”

“Everything. There's everything else but bugs. . . Why don't I help you find out? But before that, we have some very important business to take care of.”

“What kind of business?”

“Well, Casimer, in about twenty minutes, I'm going to die.”