When someone says “I’ll give you the world”, what is the worth of the world? A lifetime of wealth? Of comfort? Of safety?

It is a thing that cannot be possessed, and so, has no value. Or so, it would seem.

Technology was not the be-all, end-all that it was meant to be. In fact, it led to the state of the world as it is. Similarly, magic was a tool of conquest, discovery, and power. But power inevitably leads to ruin. In order to survive, the pursuits of magic and technology had to be abandoned, and so, what remains is a broken world plagued by monsters in all forms; human, drakyk, fairy, and the colossi. Evil hides in the shadows of the survivors, while the colossi prowl the world.

It’s how she ended up where she’s at now. Lykha is a fairly young fairy, imbued from birth with some of the highest available magical power any living being has ever been known to possess. She’s about the height of a human infant, though with adult human female features. This makes her rather easy to fit into specially designed capsules favored by despots, adventurers, and sorcerers hoping to capture one of exactly the type of flying, magical beings like her.

Lykha scratches listlessly on the inner surface of the capsule she’s trapped in. It blocks her basic magical abilities, and the biggest irony of her magical wish-granting ability is that she can not grant her own wish. This has always been strange to her, since she chooses to grant the wish of anyone making a wish of her, which is why fairies have to be trapped to begin with. Often, the ultimatums of torture or death come up, forcing fairies to grant their captor’s wish against their culture’s mandate not to.

Lykha never got the chance to refuse or grant a wish. Her captor had been deliberating intensely since he caught her. He blew it off rather often, fearful of making a hasty wish and “wasting” his wish. Of course, this is always a risk. Fairies grant the wishes as they interpret their meaning, so a carelessly worded wish, even without malicious intent of the fairy, can lead to disastrous results.

Her captor was a technology pirate stalking the desert for discarded technology with his horde of minions, and basically living as lords of their own little kingdom of the great open desert.

And, in his fear of “wasting” his captured fairy’s one wish, which could have been virtually anything, he died a gruesome death that he could have wished away with his dying breath. Lykha didn’t get a good look at it, but the sand exploded around them, and many of his minions fell. Then, as her captor was trying to figure out what to do in his panic, Lykha found her capsule lying in the sand as he screamed in the distance; his arm still holding her capsule where it fell with her.

And now, she’s stranded in the desert.

Trapped in a capsule that blocks her basic magic.

With no food or water.

In the desert.

She’s pretty sure her last droplets of sweat evaporated hours ago, being the second day of her helpless isolation in the middle of a desert. Her saving grace from the freezing night’s cold was the fact that her capsule is mostly submerged in the sand. But, it’s still hot during the day, especially when the scorching sun is beaming down directly on her, and her throat is on fire, while her enraged stomach growls demandingly at her.

She’s pretty well reserved to her fate. She’s not sure if she did something to deserve this end, but there’s nothing she can do to stop it. Her capsule is too submerged to be easily spotted by anyone, and she doesn’t even really want to be found. Her rescuer will just keep her in the capsule until her wish is spent, and she becomes a useless, tiny being.

No one from her captor’s party is alive, so there’s no one looking for any of them, least of all her. It’s a miserable way to go, but what can she do? She could scream her lungs out of her body, and no one will come.

Lykha sighs, drawing circles on the glass capsule. Dying of dehydration, starvation, and heat exhaustion is extremely boring.

Swish… Swish… Swish…

She clicks her tongue, trying to remember stories, or songs, or something. But, she can’t distract herself from the burning pain in her throat. Even if she could, she wouldn’t be able to sing it anyways.

Swish… Swish… Swish…

Something pokes at her mind, and she pauses her thoughts. Did she hear something? Did she see something? Why does she feel alert all of a sudden?

Swish… Swish… Swish…

Can it be? It sounds right. It’s just the right pacing for footsteps. Better yet, they’re getting closer. Humanoid bipedal footsteps are approaching through the sand.

Lykha’s heart races. She was wrong! She doesn’t want to die! She wants to live! She wants to see the world! She wants to meet people! She wants to experience experiences and meet someone to start a family with! All of the things she can be proud of that she can earn for herself! She still has hope! She can return to her people a happy fairy!

“Hey! Hey! Over here! Please! I’m over here! Hey!”

Swish… Swish… Swish… … … Silence. The footsteps have stopped.

“Here! I’m in the sand! Please! Help me! I’m trapped!”

Still nothing. Can the person not hear her? Her voice is breaking, but she feels like she’s getting some decent volume. The capsule isn’t sealed so she can breathe -that is, until she’s completely buried in sand, of course-, so the sound should get out okay.

She takes a deep breath and screams as loud as she can, “Please help me! I’m trapped! Please!”

RUMBLLLLLE…

Lykha freezes. The rumble was deep and all-surrounding. It wasn’t a roar; it was the sand shifting. Some sand sprinkles into her capsule as the sand continues to rumble and shift all around, vibrating.

Swish! Swish! Swish! Swish! Swish! Swish!

The footsteps start again, but much faster and away.

“NO! Please don’t leave me! HELLLLLP!”

The sand explodes again in a very familiar way, and Lykha tumbles helplessly around her capsule as it tumbles and rolls in the tumultuous turmoil of the roiling sands. Thankfully, her capsule stays on top of the sand mostly, but she is thrown around helplessly, screaming frantically and doing her best just to survive.

The capsule comes to rest after what feels like ages of turmoil, but all is far from tranquil. The sand around her is still shifting. It’s more slowly now, but it’s as if the sand is sinking away. And, what’s more, walls have ascended from the sand all around, capped with a row of curved and crooked spikes.

It soon becomes clearer what has happened though, when Lykha spots the person kneeling nearby. The figure is armored, with some kind of polearm weapon on his back; one end possessing a sword-like blade, and the other end possessing what looks to be a four-pronged grapnel hook with folding, blade-backed flukes. His armor is extremely simple, quite possibly salvaged or forged from salvaged metals, from his armored chest to his metal-armored boots. His armor has heavy pitting and corrosion, indicating its age and wear.

The warrior -for all intents and purposes- simply maintains his balance as the sand sinks beneath him. Soon, what look to be strangely-formed, bone-like grates in the ground appear as the sand sinks beneath, extending as far as Lykha can see, including beneath herself. She catches glimpses through the bone grating beneath her. The ground -the real ground- is far below her; at least ten yards beyond the maybe three to five yards of bone grating.

Apparent flaps close intermittently below the bone grating, and a rumbling moan fills the air as a humongous eclipse blocks out the scorching sun. These clues are all that Lykha needs to know that she is now trapped by the same thing that killed her captor.

It is a colossus known as a Sand Gryduke.

The ambush predator’s massive underbite is its primary tool of attack, near literally dropping the ground out from under its prey by filtering the sand down while capturing prey in its lower jaw. If that fails, its long, whiplike whiskers -which undoubtedly ended her captor- can snatch up prey attempting to escape.

The eclipse is the monster’s head as the lower jaw sinks underneath its titanic skull and upper jaw. It’ll attempt to swallow all of its prey whole, and “chew” any leftover sand out of its jaws.

Lykha is frozen in fear. She still can’t actually do anything about her predicament in any capacity, save scream or cry for help, but she’s too scared to even do those.

She can feel gravity shift as the sand gryduke lifts its head, and she and the warrior are pulled towards the colossus’s cavernous maw.

Lykha finally screams as her capsule falls into the abyssal void of the titanic monster’s throat, losing consciousness somewhere along the way.

********************************

Drip. Drip. Drip.

Lykha awakens to find her senses flooded. Foul, rotten stench mixed with tangy, acidic-smelling fumes singes her nose. Thick, soupy haze obscures much of her surroundings, which are pitch black aside from the glow of her wings -normally difficult to notice in anything other than darkness-. A thick fog has coated the glass of her capsule, which is floating in a sickly green liquid.

Lykha pinches her nose, gagging on the stench first and foremost. She whimpers as it sinks in where she’s at. She’s in the bowels of a gigantic monster; one of the many that lurk on the surface of the world. Her body tingles from where the liquid has touched her, having partially filled the bottom of her capsule -which thankfully, is buoyant-. Apparently, too many fairy poachers have lost their hard-earned prey to the depths of some body of water or other liquid, and someone decided to make fairy capsules inherently buoyant.

It’s the gryduke’s stomach acids, though, and given time, will dissolve her long before her capsule. Lykha sits up, pondering the newest turn to her unending demise.

Clack! Clack! Spark!

She looks at the brief flash of sparks a couple yards away following the pounding of two objects together. After the second attempt, a fiery glow fills the void with all-too-welcome light. It’s the warrior she saw moments ago, and he’s holding a torch that he just ignited as he surveys his surroundings.

She wonders why he’s not using an electric lantern. Acids and metals are among the most abundant materials in the world; acids from monsters and metals from the ores many of them dig up when tunnelling, and the two ingredients together form the most basic of batteries. Even Lykha knows that. Wood, if anything, is more of a commodity, especially this far out in the desert.

The warrior checks a crude compass clipped to his broad leather utility pouch belt, and he starts walking away.

“Wait!” Lykha cries out frantically.

The warrior turns, seemingly surprised that he isn’t alone.

“Yes! Me! I’m trapped in here! Please don’t leave me alone!”

The warrior slogs through the nearly-knee-deep stomach contents towards her capsule. He holds the torch close, and the comparatively bright torchlight is nearly blinding, causing Lykha to shield her face.

“Magic, isn’t it?” asks the warrior’s metallic male voice from behind a crudely made and boxy helmet.

“Y-yes! I can’t let myself out. Please! Wherever you’re going, take me with you!”

The warrior stands completely still, as if thinking. How can there even be any debate? She’s in trouble! If he even bothered to walk over, why would he need to consider helping her?

Without saying anything, the warrior reaches down with his free right hand and finds the shoulder strap on the bottom of the capsule. He lifts her up, and the acid drains from the capsule’s holes. He is inspecting something, but it seems to be the strap instead of her this time.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

In the end, he shoulders the strap, still without saying anything, and carries Lykha as he slogs in whatever direction he just decided to go.

Lykha relaxes into a seated position. She’s not dead yet, and something about this warrior puts her at ease. He’s clearly not worried about their predicament, even as his boots steam and hiss slowly from the acid.

The two trek through the foul-smelling living cavern, passing by the last remaining bones of massive creatures, likely paotrusses, one of the most common desert beasts of burden for those living in the free villages and towns scattered about the massive desert. Drips of acid and other liquids fall constantly from the ceiling, echoing through the void. The gryduke must be lying in wait.

One corpse the two pass, however, is familiar to Lykha. It’s a fairly well dressed skeleton wearing a long blue coat with a sand mask around his collar, and his right arm missing. The jacket is the only real defining factor, but it’s a dead giveaway. Lykha hugs herself and shivers at the memory of her once powerful-seeming captor now little more than a skeleton in some hellbeast’s stomach.

“S-So… do… Do you have a way out of here?” asks the fairy nervously.

The warrior replies plainly, “Yes.”

There’s a pause. She was hoping he’d explain better, but then, she never really talked to any other humans or drakyks aside from pleading with her captors to let her go.

“So… um… Y-You know… a compass… doesn’t really help inside a monster, does it?”

“It does.”

“... Wait… It does? How?”

“It’s not showing me north.”

Lykha is growing a little frustrated. She replies, “So, it’s broken? How does that help us?”

The warrior pauses, looking around with his torch. He says more quietly, “It’s showing me exactly what I need.”

The warrior locks the torch into horizontal clips on his left wrist gauntlet as his right hand finds the shaft of his polearm. He says coldly, “Brace yourself.”

“What!? What is-!?”

She doesn’t get to fully ask her question. The warrior whirls, swinging the polearm out with his draw as he spins, and the blade cuts something that shrieks a shrill, nasty whine before splashing into the acid. Whatever it was cries out in a spine-chilling agony as it splashes in its death throes, but the warrior never stops moving. He uses the polearm to vault out of the acid and land on one of the partially intact paotruss corpses. From there, he swings again with a fluid motion, slashing something else fleshy with a squishy crunch. Yet another one of the creatures shrieks and squeals as it falls into the acid with a splash, but still Lykha hasn’t even glimpsed one. She’s too busy trying not to hit her head on her capsule wall.

The fairy manages to find some footing sitting low, bracing her feet and back on opposite sides of the capsule. It’s a bit of a stretch, but she’s able to keep herself stable in the jostling and shaking capsule.

That’s when she gets a good look at the most horrifying thing she’s ever seen. And, she’s currently in the stomach of a horrifyingly big colossus.

The being that just landed on the capsule, and by extension, the warrior’s shoulder, is truly hideous. It has spindly, nobbly legs like a deformed spider, with pinchers on the end of each leg. It’s body is long and segmented, like a silverfish, but with gossamer, whip-like tendrils swirling in the breeze. It has a long tail with a sucker, but with a ring of sharp teeth in it as well, like a leech. She knows this, because the sucker is latched onto her capsule, while the teeth scrape against the glass.

Lykha screams in terror, desperately trying to squirm away from the creature when her panic shuts off the part of her brain that knows she’s trapped. She could defend herself a little with her basic magic, but the capsule deactivates all of her magic. She’s completely helpless.

Several more of the creatures shriek as the warrior dispatches them, and he reaches over his shoulder, not to grab the monster, but to jam his torch into its squishy body. The creature wails, frantically trying to flop away with violent, spastic motions. However, its tail is still stuck to the capsule, and the warrior simply adjusts where the torch is, burning the creature until it falls into the muck.

The stench of something along the lines of burning flesh, but worse, makes the nauseating air of their current environment even more sickening. Lykha doubles over, retching briefly.

She watches weakly as her bile drips down the warrior’s leg while he surveys the area. She wants to apologize, but can’t even look up yet.

Satisfied that they’re safe for the moment, the warrior climbs down the corpse he took a brief tactical advantage on and continues on his way.

When she can finally sit up and lean against her capsule, Lykha murmurs apologetically, “I’m sorry I threw up on you…”

The warrior scoffs, replying plainly, “Doesn’t matter.”

“What… were those things?”

“Parasites. They actually feed on the gryduke, but when they ambush prey, they tend to protect the gryduke from its meals wandering.”

“Wouldn’t that make them antibodies?”

“No. Antibodies are much worse.”

The warrior climbs out of the stomach at what seems like the entrance to the intestines, given its position and the long narrow tunnel in relation to the huge cavern they were just in.

Lykha looks over her shoulder, which is effectively leaning against where his is compared to her capsule. She asks the warrior, “So… you’ve done this before?”

“Yep.”

“Are you… some kind of colossus… slayer?”

“Some kind.”

Lykha sits quietly for a moment as the warrior walks. Once more, his calmness, his simple answers, and the fact that she’s not dead yet have put her at ease.

“So… Do you intend to kill this gryduke?”

The warrior stops, looking over his shoulder to try to look at her. He replies, “Of course.”

He slashes open a membrane in the intestine wall, and a thick grey liquid rushes past.

Lykha grimaces at the fluid, but manages to ask, “And… how do you intend to do that?”

The warrior shows her his compass, which looks to be a regular compass. He replies calmly, “With this.”

********************************************

Hours have passed. Hours of brutal body horror wandering, passing through organs that can only be guessed at and trekking what feels like half a country’s distance.

Lykha and the warrior have come to rest in a gusty cavity that she dares not even speculate on. The warrior is navigating the monster using his compass, but has gone in every possible direction during his trek, with Lykha the fairy stuck along for the ride.

She, of course, is not ungrateful about that last fact. Her options were to be stuck with this warrior, or be stuck in a pool of acid or the middle of a desert slowly dying. At least now, she has someone to talk to.

Of course, he’s not very easy to talk to. His answers are typically brief, he doesn’t seem keen on explaining everything to her, and every time he seems like he might, more of the gryduke’s internal biome attacks them.

So far, it’s only been a couple of other types of parasites, according to the warrior. He has won with skillful use of his weapon, as the parasites are extremely predictable pounce predators.

On the bright side, though, he has provided Lykha water and food through the air holes in her capsule, so he’s not all bad. She feels so thankful just to have a full belly again, though she dreads emptying it all onto the warrior should they face another fight.

And still, she has no idea what’s so significant about the compass.

“Um, warrior? I am EXTREMELY thankful to you for… well, at least STARTING to rescue me. Obviously, we’re not out, yet, but… I can’t help but keep wondering; what is your compass leading us to?”

The warrior replies as he snacks on jerky he brought through the underside of his homemade helmet, “Grydukes ingest a lot of iron, making their blood rich in it. Pass an electrical current through and around iron, and you get a magnet.”

“An electrical current? What, grydukes are battery-powered now?”

“No. But the impulses cycling its heart, like the heart itself, are thousands of times stronger than ours.”

Trying not to be a complete dummy, Lykha quickly picks it up, “OH! Okay, I got it! It’s heart is magnetizing the iron as it passes through. Magnetic field, compass…” She snaps her fingers confidently, pointing at him with both index fingers and a grin, “Gotcha.”

The warrior nods, continuing his snack.

Still curious, and finally getting him to really talk, Lykha asks, “So, why inside it, then? Couldn’t you… I dunno… try to hit it from the outside? Why would you get yourself eaten to kill it?”

The warrior wraps his meal up and then uses grime from the “floor” to draw on his thigh. He draws a quick and rough sketch of the gryduke, with its massive head and body, and tiny little legs underneath. He points to a spot near what would be its belly, saying, “A gryduke’s heart is near its lowest point, extremely far back. Even when one is ambushing prey, it’s still almost always submerged at least this much in sand.”

He draws a line that puts a lot of the gryduke above the line, but not its heart.

He continues, “And, if you have a gryduke dragged far enough out of the sand to engage its belly, it will be at its most desperately ferocious trying to dig back into the sand. But, grydukes are still animals. They can’t process that their prey might reach their most vital organ after they’ve already been swallowed.”

The warrior wipes his thigh off and sits back, taking a drink next.

Lykha ponders what he just explained. He really does have the whole thing planned out. Even after he first admitted this isn’t his first time inside a monster like this, she was skeptical that such a plan was actually feasible. But, he delivers it with such confidence, and he’s certainly not wrong about the grydukes when they’re being attacked from outside. If it feels threatened, it will do anything to sink as deep into the sand as it can and actually dig away from the threat.

But, assuming he can keep them alive, Lykha and the warrior are at their leisure as far as engaging the gryduke itself and killing it. It’s just a matter of finding the heart.

That raises a new question, though.

“Wait; if the heart magnetizes the blood -okay, I’ll buy that-, but wouldn’t the compass spin crazy out of control? Its blood is all around us, isn’t it?”

“The magnetic field concentrates enough at the heart to be the strongest source.”

“And what if it has an aneurysm or something, o-or some disease that makes the iron build up somewhere else?”

“Why would it have those?”

“I don’t know! But what if?”

“Then I’d listen for it. And failing that, I’d find some other way to navigate.”

“But, what if it’s taking too long? How much food do you have?”

“That’s not a concern.”

“And why not? Never had your compass trick fail?”

“If it came to that… We’re sitting on food.”

Lykha looks around. All she sees is the flesh of the… She turns pale.

“I was once told by someone I trust, almost every creature is edible, if you know how to eat it.”

Lykha looks in horror at the warrior as he moves on to re-lacing his boots. His old laces break with ease, eaten away by the acids of the gryduke. Though, his boots themselves have fared the best, even as the armor on them corroded.

The fairy sighs, asking, “What about me? Am I edible?”

“No.”

“No? Not even in the worst of times?”

The warrior scoffs. “Not even then.”

Lykha relaxes a little. He’s a little blunt and grim for her tastes, but she’s in his world right now. She can accept that for the time being.

***********************************************

Bum… Bum… Bum…

A distant, slow drum-beat pounds through the meaty walls. To Lykha’s begrudging surprise, the warrior’s simplistic trick has led them closer and closer to what can only be the slow-beating heart of a titanic creature resting and lying in wait for an ambush.

The walls around them slowly expand closer. There’s still a lot of room in the cavity the warrior has worked his way to, but the breeze is a clear indication of where they are now. The walls expand away, and the breeze changes direction. The monster has long, slow breaths, undoubtedly to keep it hidden from both its prey and anything looking to attack it.

Even as “close” as they are, it’s a long walk. Grydukes, like all of the colossi of the world, are gigantic. If it coughed or sneezed right now, it would be like a full-blown hurricane for the two comparatively microscopic beings inside it.

Lykha wonders if the warrior’s cross-contamination of all of its insides would do the job, since he’s undoubtedly tracked intestinal bacteria into its lungs, now. But, that might actually be a much slower death, and he seems intent on seeing the gryduke slain much sooner than that.

The warrior draws closer to the heart, with Lykha in tow. She’d do more if she could, if only to escape sooner, but the capsule has her almost useless.

That is, almost.

She smells a smell that had finally faded some; the vile stench of the intestines, as well as the bile of the stomach. It’s stronger than the remnant on the warrior, which she’s relatively used to now.

This smell is new. It’s fresh, as if they’ve returned to the stomach itself. Lykha’s own stomach feels like it’s churning all over again, and she sinks to her knees. The warrior has been scanning carefully in every direction with his torch, so nothing is close yet.

But, something doesn’t feel right to her. She’s not just sick. Her instincts are screaming at her. Fear is pleading for her attention. In the noise of her suddenly chaotic mind, she’s almost lost to the turmoil, ready to shut out her brain if it’s just going to be useless.

Antibodies are worse.

A sobering realization washes over the inexperienced fairy. She knows fairies don’t have very good reads of their own instincts. In a normal fairy’s life, there is no danger. Their villages are almost completely inaccessible to the other races, and some are built literally on the shoulders of the largest colossi in the world. It’s part of what makes fairies so vulnerable outside of their villages; they have excellent instincts for danger, but no sense of what they mean.

This fairy only barely does. A drip hits her capsule from above, and Lykha screams, “ABOVE US!”

The warrior’s step hitches only for the briefest of moments, and he instantly dives forward into a roll, tumbling the fairy in her capsule. A thick, squelching slop on the tissue behind them reverberates in the lung cavity, and the breathing shifts forebodingly.

The thing that just landed where they were is much larger than any of the parasites the two have seen today.

It has a long, white, serpentine body with no eyes or scales or any seeming textures. It does have long, scythe-like arms, likely for grabbing targets and latching onto them, as well as four paddle-like feet/fins that it can stand on, but likely serve it for navigating the body’s fluid systems much faster. Its pointy, arrow-shaped head seems perfect for starting its journey through membranes so it can pass system to system with minimal damage to the gryduke, and the point is formed by vicious looking mandibles like a crab or spider.

Every creature in the world has mechanisms to fight off foreign invaders in the body. Generally, these foreign invaders are microscopic, and so, the defenses are microscopic. But for a creature the size of a large building or more, that’s not necessarily enough. Foreign invaders can be much larger, and just as, if not more so, deadly.

To fight off these larger foreign invaders, colossi have antibodies to match.

The warrior grips his polearm, while Lykha braces in her capsule.

Unlike the parasites, this monster radiates power.

It bellows a loud, wailing roar.

And several more roars call back in reply.

This fearsome serpentine antibody is not alone.

***