Will today be the day our heroes finally feel the sun on their face? Will the sun have the same face as them?

Find out when the exciting adventures of the nudist mystery team continue in:

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Chapter 4: The Obsidian Garden

Day 35 Continued

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“Light!” Harper wandered a few feet away before returning to us, he was so excited. I’m sure we were all grinning like idiots in the dark. Now able to maneuver as long as there was some small amount of light, I took up carrying Wolf as Harper guided us along. We had no idea where we were, but the presence of light, however faint, was encouraging. The stone here seemed to be volcanic, so reflective obsidian might allow light to travel quite far, but light was light. Harper’s ability to see at all meant that somewhere nearby was either an exit or lamp of some kind. Given how far we’d come since leaving the facility, I had to believe it wasn’t just another hallway.

Every few minutes we’d take a break. I would rest my back from the weight of carrying Wolf, who had at least as much muscle weight as I did, while Harper would try and pinpoint the direction in which the light was strongest. Rabbit offered to take Wolf every time we stopped, but I declined. He was wasting away after most of two days without food and the painful acid usage. Just walking was enough of an ordeal until we found provisions. These slow periods of start and stop went on for ten or so cycles before I thought I detected some of the light myself. We’d been in the dark so long it was another minute before I was sure I wasn’t hallucinating. Slowly we approached a rock face, glowing gently blue green. Perspective was difficult with only one point of reference. The wall could have been ten feet high and steps away or miles high and a day’s travel. The truth was somewhere in between. After maybe another 3 rest stops we approached a wall maybe twenty times my own height. We were mere feet away before I realized the wall hadn’t been glowing after all. It was obsidian. I knew because as we got close I could see my figure in the natural glass. I could see a green movement within the glass, so subtle I might have missed it if it hadn’t been the first thing I saw all day. I stared entranced, and a moment later Harper squeeked. He had seen it too.

“What is it? An animal?” Rabbit whispered.

“No, the movement is too regular. If I didn’t know better, I’d say…”

“Doc, is that a plant?” I was transfixed. I wanted so much to believe it was. But how? Cave plants had no reason to be green, green was the color of the chlorophyll. There hadn’t been sun down here since the dawn of time. I stared again. It certainly did look like a distant plant, or plants. But how could plants exist behind a natural wall of glass? Was this rock wall man made? A barrier of some sort to camouflage the facility? Rabbit approached closer to the wall, reached out to touch it. As he did so, his reflection moved in front of the greenery, and I realized again how young we really were. The answer was obvious.

“Turn around.” The obsidian wasn’t acting as glass, it was a mirror. We assumed the light was in front of us because we hadn’t seen another source of light as we approached. When we turned, there was an obvious entrance to a cave within the cave, built into the underside of a ridge we’d gone over on our way to the wall. I could feel the excitement of our companions, but as tired and hungry as I was, I held them back from running ahead.

“We need to be careful. That area is within the greater cavern, even lower than here, and with another layer of rock above it. That means that that isn’t sunlight we’re seeing. It could be man made, or natural, but it’s not the exit and we can’t assume it’s safe.” Harper nodded, and his newly changed eyes reflected the blue green light with a reddish tint. In the dim light his glowing eyes were more than a bit eerie. I had Rabbit carry Wolf for this last stretch. He was in a bad way, but I wanted to have my poison ready in case we found anything hostile, and I couldn’t risk accidentally touching him. With me in the lead now that I could guide myself, we slowly approached the light.

The door was only as tall as my outstretched arm, and wide enough that the three of us with Wolf could walk through side by side. The green we saw in the distance was part of a copse of very ordinary looking coniferous bushes or small trees that were planted firmly in a thick blue moss seemed to cover the area. It glowed faintly, and between the moss and the reflective obsidian walls it seemed we had found the source of the light. I didn’t know if it was safe, in fact strange had never been safe so far. But Wolf was out cold, and we needed food and rest or we would die. Maybe there would be berries. I didn’t know how to test for poison if there were. Harper stepped onto the glowing carpet, and I followed. It was sort of warm, like walking on a thick carpet of hair that was still attached to a head. I didn’t want to entertain that thought. We kept moving, and when we were surrounded by bushes I rubbed my poison off on the ground and helped Rabbit set Wolf on the moss. I lay down myself and sighed, happy simply to be still for the moment. Even in this light Harper had to squint a little from his new sensitivity to light. I already had a plan for that, but there was no reason to stress his body before we even found any real light.

“Let’s get some sleep.” Harper yawned as he said it. I nodded from the floor. This place seemed nice enough, unless it was the end of the world I could care less. It was warm and soft and I was a walking corpse after carrying Wolf all day on an empty stomach.

“Your poison killed the moss” Rabbit was lying on his back with his head turned towards me. A few feet from him a circle of moss was no longer glowing, and had become a light blue gray. Some distant part of me had something to say about that, but I drifted away before I could make sense of it.

Day 36

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Without the sun it could have been minutes or hours before I awoke. I came to with a jolt. Rabbit’s words had finished processing. I whispered to Harper and Rabbit and shook shoulders until they were both looking at me.

“Enemy?” Harper looked up at me with a shock, while Rabbit’s eyes darted all around.

“I don’t know yet.” Sure enough, there was a ring of gray where I had wiped my little finger. It had grown to a radius of maybe five feet while we slept.

“You said the moss died, and it has. Rabbit, My poison works by preventing nerves from firing.” Rabbit looked immediately shaken. Harper on the other hand just looked confused. I tried to whisper while struggling to keep my growing sense of unease from reaching my voice.

“Plants don’t have nerves Harper.” My voice was shaking. “Remember in the mirror wall, when we first saw this place. What did we see?”

“The bushes, blowing in the…”

“No wind.”

Slowly, carefully, we approached Wolf and gathered him up between us. I wanted to scream. This was worse than the cloned horror from the hallway. At least it followed the rules of basic human anatomy. This was so different that it might as well have been from another world. My poison seemed to be effective, but it was limited. There was an awful lot of the moss. We were already in this thing’s stomach. Silently we carried Wolf back towards the entrance… Only to find a new wall of moss blocking the way. The Obsidian walls were half covered as well. I noticed a change in the light and slowly the walls started to pulse brighter and softer, like a heartbeat.

“Doc… Is it warmer than it was when we went to sleep?” A stomach. And we had just walked right in.

Rabbit tripped and grabbed a bush to stabilize himself, then let out a scream. His hand came back bloody, cut on what I had taken to be ordinary pine needles. As we watched, the needles sucked in the blood and became a shade darker. The whole copse started to sway more violently. If we couldn’t get out quickly we’d be bludgeoned to death by the boughs. I wet my finger again and secreted some poison. I was running low, and until I ate food this might be it. I wiped it on the wall where I thought the entrance had been, but even as it turned gray more grew in to fill the gaps. Now that it had us it wasn’t letting go. Maybe Rabbit could have helped, but he hadn’t eaten since the escape. There was nothing in his stomach to support the acid. The temperature was continuing to rise, and the plants were swaying in a frenzy. I heard Rabbit yelp once more, and, was that Wolf?

“Yah! Rabbit? Where are we? Doc?”

So Wolf was awake somewhere out here. I bumped into one of the few walls that was still obsidian and narrowly avoided an incoming branch. The needles were hollow, and they were thirsty. I rolled and dodged, unable to see my friends. I was out of ideas. If this continued we’d be baked in the heat and drained by the forest.I sacrificed a hand to the needles to block my core, and heard a crunch as the weight of the thing crushed some bones. For an instant I saw the core of bush, bone white and segmented. I should have known. Nothing is ever just one thing in this place. Nothing is wholesome or good. I backed against the wall again and prepared to sacrifice my other arm for a few more moments of breathe. The bough descended as if in slow motion, and I put up my hand to stop it. Two fingers were crushed, and it drank up the blood. A needle pierced my arm, and I could actually feel my blood pressure drop. Needles pierced every part of my hand and wrist. The last thing I saw was a bloody red parody of a tree, and I fell unconscious.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

Day 37

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I woke up to a hand on my shoulder. I was in terrible pain. How had I survived?

“Who?”

“Wolf. The others are unconscious, but alive. Took me forever to find them.”

“Why can’t I see?”

“All the moss is dead. It was the only light.”

“How did it die?”

“No idea. I wasn’t awake at the end. I thought we were dead.”

I looked back on the end of the fight. What could have changed? Obviously Harper and Rabbit were out too, so who could have helped us? Was there someone else here? I turned my head back and forth and got a splitting headache for my trouble. I was low on blood. Could it have been my blood? But no. It looked like a plant, but this thing had been a predator. Extra oxygen in it’s meal would have been an improvement. Then what? I gingerly inspected the damage to my arms and legs. My legs were in pretty good shape, just a scratch here and a prick there. My right arm was savaged, and at least my pointer and ring finger were broken, possibly the thumb too. My left arm was even worse, and the hand felt like a pincushion. There were puncture wounds all up my wrist, and throughout the hands and fingers. Even the pinky. The dumb thing had sucked up all my poison. If the moss was the skin, it had taken my poison and circulated it straight to it’s heart. I just propped myself up against the wall and closed my useless eyes. Saved by accident and left in the dark, dying of starvation, blood loss and blunt trauma. We had bested the dragon and our reward was the abyss. I had been so strong for so long. Almost my whole life so far was spent striving to improve. I needed be able to save myself. I needed to be able to save my brothers. Now all but four of us were dead or worse, and the survivors were bloody and broken in the dead stomach of a carnivorous glen. Life had not been a good experience, but at least it was short. I could hear Wolf moving around somewhere to my right side, but I didn’t speak. I was going into shock. The stress was catching up to me now that I was out of immediate danger and I began to hyperventilate. I tried to enter meditation but it was quite a while before I managed to calm down. If we ever got out of this my mind would be quite the mess. I finally turned on my side and went to sleep. At least the moss was still soft when it was dead.

After an indeterminate period I woke to Wolf’s hand once again on my shoulder.

“Eat this.” He placed a fuzzy substance in my mouth. I had a sinking suspicion I knew what it was.

I tried to spit. I grabbed with my hand and felt a lash of pain in my broken fingers. “Wolf! We have no idea what that thing was made of. It could be poisonous.”

In my mind I added “It could be our brother.”

“It’s fine. I tried it hours ago. It’s no different from the food trough. Nothing but fats, protein and blood.”

If we didn’t eat we would die here. It was that simple. Wolf was still fighting for us. I had been ready to lay down and die. I fought the urge to gag and tried to force some down. It tasted like sweaty, bloody hair. I don’t know what I expected. I ate another bite. Knowing what to expect did not help.

The whole area was beginning to smell like a carcass. We would have to leave soon. We all had open wounds and this place was about to become a microbial feast.

I swallowed heavily. “Are Rabbit and Harper up yet?”

“Yes.” I heard heavy breathing and the sound of retching to my right.In my mind I coined a new battle cry. “Miserable, terrible, awful, but not alone.”

We all forced as much of the moss down as we were able. It was the worst experience of my life, including having my bones broken and blood drained. During a pause I briefly meditated, both to separate myself from the reality of the situation and to remember what light looked like for a little while. To my surprise, My Dust had grown by a visible amount. More was lit up, and there was even more of the unusable dark variety. The meal we had forced down our throats was worth it’s weight in gold. I even managed to force some more down after telling the others about my discovery. For the first time in days I was full, and it was awful.

When it was clear that any more moss would just lead to us losing our hard won lunch, we got ready to move. My hands were useless, but luckily we no longer had anyone we needed to carry. Unfortunately with the cave dead Harper could no longer see, even with his enhanced vision. The moss really had been the only source of light in the area. After some stumbling we came across the entrance, and came once more into the larger cavern. Working from memory, we found the mirror wall and using it as a guide worked our way to the right along it’s surface. I was still queasy, but my strength was recovering faster now that my stomach was full. My enhanced blood meant that I could operate fairly well even before it had fully recovered. It was a great help to have a wall to follow. Not only did it prevent us from getting lost from one another, it supported us when we grew tired and gave us a sense of direction in the giant space. We made better time than we had since entering the cavern, even better than when Harper had been able to see, because we weren’t carrying Wolf.

I was thinking heavily on the moss. I had a suspicion I would be able to affect a change like that and create a source of light for us. I even thought I might have the Dust necessary after our meal earlier. The only problem was our position. We were in a dark, unknown area. We hadn’t seen anything else while in here, but we had kept to the dark and stayed fairly quiet. That forest had been there a while, and it had used light to draw us in. I had to assume it had used it to draw other things before, or it wouldn’t have survived. A chill ran down my spine. Now that I thought about it I was sure I was right. We weren’t alone in here. Whether it was something from the lab or a natural population, this place was alive.

I heard Wolf yell from the front of the line, bringing me out of my thoughts.

“Wet! The wall is wet ahead.” When we got to where he was, I heard a faint dripping. Water? I touched the wall and rubbed it between my fingers. It felt like water. I put it to my tongue and almost moaned.

“It tastes clean. Water! Gather as much as you can!” I would have cried if my tear ducts weren’t bone dry. We sat there for hours, trying to gather enough to satiate our bottomless thirst. I would have killed for something to catch some in for later. Between this and the meal I felt human for the first time in a while. While we worked at the wall I heard Harper breathe in.

“Doc, look up. Light! Golden beautiful light!”

I couldn’t see it at all, but then I didn’t have his vision. Rabbit thought he could see it, but he wasn’t sure. Maybe I could see something reflecting off Harper’s upturned eyes. I couldn’t be sure. I hoped it was a sign we were closer to the surface, that it signaled better things. I just wanted to eat something that I could be sure didn’t have any of my own DNA in it. I was done killing things that had my face. We drank deeply before moving on. Some time later we leaned against the wall and attempted to sleep. Harper didn’t see the light again that day.

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Baby-man bros 1, carnivorous spruce juicers 0. Aren’t you glad they didn’t try the berries?

I had fun with the descriptions for this creature. And we got to see our unflappable hero let someone else pick him up when he fell.

Harper got a lot more play this time which was good. This is an ensemble cast.

If you were wondering why the implanted memories seem to have stopped altogether, it’s all the stress they are working through. most of the memories come to them in their dreams, and right now they are working through a lot of other stimuli. Ever have vivid dreams after finals week or a breakup? We’ll get back to their mysterious creator a little later.

The next two chapters will act as a bridge into the next story arc. Look forward to more weird creatures and new characters, some of which aren’t even related to our heroes! How refreshing will that be? As always comments are appreciated, and thanks for reading!