She had been walking for a while now and her claws were getting swore, the light had been weak to begin with and as she walked through the empty tunnels there wasn’t much to see other than the occasional plant life that grew in surprisingly dark places for plants.
“Alright. If I want to follow my half-formed plan than I can’t do it looking like a deformed crab!”
She had noticed that here exoskeleton had hardened since she was born which was expected but she was feeling unnaturally hungry and there was an odd bump at the back of her body that felt awfully warm, “I guess these are the changes the queen was talking about. Not point in worrying about them for now.”. as the light got brighter it let here see more of her body, red tinted she had six sharp claws to forward facing mandibles and beady bug eyes.
“Well, it’s not as bad as I thought at least. I think it’s growing on me, pun intended.”
“…well if I can’t fly (for now) then can I climb?”, She began to stretch each leg out at a time and was both surprised by the ease and movement range of each, she tried to roll into a ball with partial success until she got tangled up, after a few moments of writhing she managed to untangle herself and quickly pretend it never happened. She finally turned to the nearest wall and attempted to climb to her surprise she managed it easily.
“This is great! I think I could climb the roof like a ‘spider’ from terra!”, She climbed up and did just that…for all of three seconds before falling back down with a hard “thump!”.
“Ouch! That’ll definitely leave a mark.” She quickly righted herself after a few moments the pain from the fall was gone but something was quit right, “ahh!” she felt like she was being stabbed, the previously dull ache from the nub had turned into a painful burning sensation it was all she could do to flip upside down as to not wander about and flail her legs around, “what in the love of space!” as the pain reached a crescendo and then “shlee!” and she fell on the ground heaving breaths.
After a few minutes of heavy breathing, she finally began to flip over and inspected the nub, “oh, wait if that was… you better be worth it.” She grumbled as she looked at her new tail that had burst out of the nub and was tipped with a rather sharp stinger, she instinctively knew was poisonous, “this at least explains the pain” she grumbled as she continued her walk while swinging it around.
“If my archived memories aren’t mistaken, I look like a ‘face hugger’ from those human entertainment ‘films”’ the memories implanted in her (and presumably her siblings) had many accounts of humans watching moving images on large rectangular devices, most hadn’t been of interest to the swarm except for a show called ‘aliens’ which they felt oddly explained their situation (if very loosely) and some colonies even had a small reward for any drone who could stay hidden long enough to record some of it to swarm memory, even drones need a little entertainment and many of the forms in the show had been taken into consideration and some (more reasonable) even tried out for a while. Sadly, most of them hadn’t panned out, “turns out having acid for blood wasn’t healthy. Who would have guessed?”.
Stolen novel; please report.
As she kept walking, she walked through the quiet tunnel she began she jerked to a stop at a sound cutting through the stillness.
“What was that?” she began to still ad listen to her surrounding more intently, there was a quiet yet rhythmic thumping that was coming her way.
“Thump, thump, thump, thump.”
An instinct so deeply embedded she didn’t even register it at first kicked in an she turned and ran. “No! this can’t be happening. Humans! Here! How!” she quickly climbed a nearby wall using her new tail to hold a few rocks over her carapace and hoped they wouldn’t notice.
/////////
Eagen, Markus and Jackson were slowly wandering through the cave for a few minutes now occasionally stopping when one of the heard or saw something. Usually, Jackson…mostly Jackson.
“Would you stop jumping at every. Little. Sound!”
Jackson for his part quickly straightened and tried (and failed) to play it off.
“This place is awful, with a mana pulse like that I accepted to see walking plants or giant bugs! But this place is worse! It’s so quiet it’s unnatural.”
Eagen had to give him a point there even with the torch they couldn’t see far into it and it was far to quiet, a regular cavern would be teeming with creature’s rogue golems, rift kin, even a mutant or two hiding out, but no this place was silent.
“Somethings hear. “Markus whispered but they both heard it loud and clear, gradually slowing there pace as to not attract anything’s attention as they whispered to each other.
“Behind us on the top left corner.”
“I go Infront, Markus, arrow fire, Jackson shields.” Eagen said as they all turned and got into position. Eagen had expected a lot of things, but a small scorpion looking creature was not one of them. He also did not expect it to through a rock at him and ran.
“…”
They were momentarily stunned by the odd display before being snapped out of it by Jackson asking the question on all their minds.
“Do we run after it?”
“…generally, monsters are too, well monstrous, and Dum to run away. Unless there really high level or being controlled by something else.” Eagen added after collecting his thoughts.
“But it ran towards the exit.” added Markus who had just realized they had been turned around.
“…we should check the cave out first then we’ll burn that bridge when we get to it.”
/////////
Thea was…a lot of things, terrified of the humans they had encountered, surprised by the ingenuity of the little drone, worried that there’d be more, but mostly just happy that the little drone escaped alive.
When they had first encountered the humans, she had instinctively lashed out but quickly realized that they both couldn’t see her and that she couldn’t touch them (or anything really) which meant she was more or less a bystander to the whole ordeal unable to bless the little drone twice as the time limit had seemingly not runout yet, Luckily the humans seem to not have chased them.
Something was off about them though; they were not wearing any armor she was familiar with and they hadn’t been carrying any guns. She was in another universe, and from what she understood of the core minds the close a universe is to another the more similar they are and the easier it is to access them. Could they have gone to a universe with more primitive humans? Mabey. But she only saw a couple she shouldn’t make hasty generalizations.
Either way they were going to find out in time.
“Hopefully things will turn out better this time. As much as I hate them, I can’t fault this world’s inhabitants for something they (possibly) didn’t do, if we’re lucky things might turn for the better.” Probably not. “That was ‘face hugger’ appearance, gave them a good scare by the looks on their faces.” Thea thought with a tad bit of glee in her voice.