Chapter 3: Everyone Can Smell It, But Only You Can Feel It
I had never been physically attacked in my life. More accurately, I had attempted to initiate a fight a couple of times, but they never turned into one either because the other party was either too cowardly, or because they didn’t think it was worth wasting their time and energy on me. Most likely the latter, since I was a scrawny little shit with a screw or two loose in the head at the time. Anyway, my point was that I had less combat experience than even a farm chicken, so by the time I realized what was happening I was already hanging in the air and completely immobilized. I’m not even exaggerating. There were hairy tendrils strangling nearly every part of my body, and thick branches forcefully stretching my limbs until they were straight. I couldn’t even move my toes or fingers proper even though the vegetation had, for whatever reason, left my head and neck untouched. It was easily the most vulnerable I had ever felt my whole life.
They came in smelling like bark and freshly cut grass and other things I couldn’t identify. Standing at an unbelievable height of four meters, they easily reached up to my waist even though I was suspended at least three meters above the ground. Their form was surprisingly feminine, though it would take exceptionally thick rose-tinted lens to view them as anything but alien, especially considering the castleton green tendrils draping across their center of mass and waist like spider webs. In contrast, their arms were so thin they almost looked malnourished, and instead of hands they had swaying brown tendrils that seemed to blend in seamlessly with the background. The upper half of their legs were green vines and brown roots, but the lower half were stiff, hard, blackened trunks that narrowed down into pointed ends. It did not seem like the most comfortable method of foot traveling—like walking on sticks—but then again, they didn’t walk. They had glided into the room like an ice skater or a robot with fictional anti-gravitational pads installed to their feet. In any case, I was pretty sure they were infinitely more mobile than I was.
Last but not least, the face, or rather lack thereof. It was a hole. Even though it was daytime, and nearly every inch of their body was illuminated by the sunlight shining through the gaps of the roof, their face remained entirely black, hollow, and impenetrable. It reminded of the darkest black, a kind of color that absorbed 99.99% of visible light. I had a feeling that this entity’s black was even darker than that though. It was easily the most intimidating part of them.
The eldritch horror came to a stop about one meter away from me. I thought I was dead, that they were about to reenact a scene straight out of a gore movie before eating me. I was wrong though. First, they stared—or at least I think they did, I couldn’t really tell because, you know, they had no face—at me for a good few seconds. Then, they turned to look at something behind me. Finally, they affixed their gaze on me once more, and despite not being in the calmest state of mind in that moment I somehow figured that they were judging me for the broken jar and the crushed cockroaches near the walls. I immediately blurted out without thinking,
“I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to break your things! I was just so hungry that I couldn’t help but look around a little! I had no idea you keep cockroaches in your jar and I hate cockroaches, so I just…”
They didn’t respond. Another few seconds of awkward silence later, I tried again, “Can you… put me down? Please? I promise I won’t run away, it’s not like I can go anywhere in my state…”
Still nothing. I was starting to suspect they couldn’t understand me, which made perfect sense as a matter of course. Why would an eldritch horror from another world be able to understand English? Just because they had been acting surprisingly human thus far didn’t mean they understood human, especially one from a completely different world. Still, I needed to get through to them somehow. I did not want to be suspended in the air indefinitely just because I couldn’t overcome a language barrier. Okay, if they couldn’t understand verbal language, then what about body language? Surely there is only be one way to interpret struggling, right? So, I strained against my bindings and—
“▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇!”
Death. Pain. Torture. Shock. Fury. Grief. Death. Horror. Insanity. Malice. Fear. Revulsion. Emptiness. Death. Death. More death. It was like being hit by the foulest sea of shit in all of existence, the vilest horrors that you never knew existed until it was already spreading through your veins and taking root inside your body, the worst emotions humanity could conjure in their endlessly horrifying minds, and more. Somehow I had the presence of mind to note that this was exactly what had knocked me out last night, but the thought was quickly drowned out by pure, unadulterated terror. By the time I regained my senses, I realized I was screaming and thrashing hard enough to bloody quite a few parts of my body. My pants were also wet and heavy, though I couldn’t care less about that right now. Whatever possessed me to think that it was possible for me and this monster to reach some sort of mutual understanding? Even if there was, it could only be that of a predator and a prey. I was certain I was going to pay for my foolishness with death.
“▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇!”
The unholy screech struck me again, but for some reason it was shorter and softer than before. The lizard part of my brain screamed to struggle harder, but somehow I found it within me to wrestle down my basic impulses and think. It was… a warning. Stop struggling or die. Maybe stop struggling and die, but the situation literally couldn’t get any worse than it was, so I mustered myself and ceased moving altogether. I would say it took effort, but I had forgotten exactly how hungry and hurt I was. It was about time my earlier adrenaline ran out too. As soon as I stopped struggling, I felt as if someone had turned off all the switches in my body. My jaw slackened, my vision swam, my thoughts suddenly flowed much slower than they normally did, and my limbs would’ve fallen limp if they hadn’t been kept straight by the vegetations. My systems were shutting down, I realized. At this rate, I was going to die even if the eldritch horror decided to change mind.
What happened next would go down as one of the strangest moments of my life. As if noticing my growing weakness, the monster cocked their head to one side—once again, I was struck by how human-like the gesture was—and grew a yellow flower on their shoulder. No, I’m not kidding, it was like watching a time-lapse video of the life cycle of a flower, except this was happening right before my eyes. The flower reached full bloom in just a few seconds before its petals started wilting. At the same time, its center grew bigger and bigger until it transformed into a red fruit that looked like a mix between an apple and an orange. The entire process could not have taken more than twenty seconds; a feat that was absolutely impossible to achieve with currently known scientific methods and should exist only in the realm of imagination.
My eyes widened, but not because I was fascinated by the miraculous feat. It was because I was hungry. My entire body went into overdrive, my stomach clenched hard enough to cramp a muscle, and my mouth salivated even though I had barely drunk any water in the past twenty-four hours. Am I dreaming, is that really what I think it is? I got my answer just a few seconds later. A tendril carried the mystery fruit up to my face, and I bit down with a snarl as soon as it was within range.
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Heaven. My soul was in heaven. The flesh was the best I had ever tasted in my life, like sweet butter slowly melting against my tongue and spreading across my oral cavity. I liked that it didn’t have a core, though I would have swallowed it anyway in my current condition. It was also surprisingly rich in water, a more-than-welcomed feature since my throat was beyond parched. Some people would not like its thin, slightly sour skin, but for me it only enriched the flavor and made me wish I had a second mouth. By the time I had finished devouring the fruit—which didn’t take long at all despite my bound state—I was moaning like I was having an orgasm. In that moment, I would have happily asked for seconds, thirds or tens even if it was revealed later that the fruit was really chock-full of poison. And I did. After swallowing the last droplet of heaven and spitting out the stem, I showered the mons—nay, the sweet goddess with the absolute best puppy dog eyes I could muster. I prayed to any god that may exist in this world that they might understand my unsaid request. This can’t be the end of it. I need more!
And they did understand. They started growing two or three fruits at a time—the first was probably a test run, now that I think about it—and fed them to me one by one. It was unquestionably the best time I had had since arriving at this world. At first, I devoured the mystery fruits as quickly as they came, but after a while I started taking my time to savor the flavor. They didn’t seem to mind. By the time I was full and burping in satisfaction, at least twenty fruits must have vanished down my throat. When the entity held the next fruit in front of me again, I pointedly pulled away from it and slowly shook my head. They seemed to understand my meaning and lowered the tendril. I smiled. I wasn’t entirely relaxed yet because I was still hanging in the air like Jesus on a cross, but both my mood and my energy levels were a million times better than what they were a moment ago.
“First things first,” I said out loud, “Thank you for the meal. I know you don’t understand me, but I still have to say it. Also buys me a little time to figure out how to convey ‘please let me go’ without triggering you again. I don’t want to puke all over you and cause you to decapitate my ass.
“So, what should I do? struggling against my binds is a no-go, but what if I wriggle my fingers and toes?”
I did just that, and they actually responded by cocking their head again! Unfortunately, that was all they did. It seemed they understood that I wanted something, but couldn’t figure out what. I supposed that the action was a little too vague. This time, I pointed looked at the ground beneath me, said, “Please let me down,” and wriggled my fingers and toes again. They stared at me for a while as I repeated the gestures every so often, and finally—
“Woah!”
I let out a cry of surprise as vertigo seized me, but my feet touched the wooden floor, and all the vines and branches that were withdrawn back into the entity’s body. I let out a long sigh of relief. It should not need to be said, but being bound from shoulder to toe was quite the stifling experience even though she had left everything above the neck untouched.
Hmm? My thoughts became interrupted all of a sudden. I feel like I just recalled something important…
“Oh. Oh!” My eyes widened as I touched the belt around my neck. “I can’t believe I forgot all about it! The reason I came here in the first place is to get help! I need you to… huh?”
Something was wrong. Since yesterday, my self-inflicted, near fatal wound had been a constant pain in the neck both figuratively and literally. It had driven me to crawl across an entire meadow just for the flimsy chance that someone might be able to help me. It was also one of the main reasons I chose to keep pushing instead of giving up last night. Having been spoiled by a world where painkillers existed, having to deal with chronic pain without so much as a paracetamol to mute it was… let’s just say I did not care to relive the experience ever again.
But the pain wasn’t there anymore. Well, that wasn’t technically accurate, there was still a biting ache that was not too dissimilar to the other aches inflaming the rest of my body. That’s the thing though! It used to feel like someone was attempting to chisel and smash into my neck, but now it only felt like a crab was pinching my flesh with its pincers! Still not a level of pain I was comfortable with of course, but the difference might as well be night and day. Could it be…?
I pressed a finger to the area just below the wound and hesitated. It was common sense not to irritate a wound, much less a near fatal one. Last night’s fuck-up was also still fresh in my mind. However, I had to know if my theory was true, and—I shot the entity a glance—it wasn’t like I had no insurance. If they wanted me dead, I would be dead yada yada. So, I sucked in a deep breath, braced myself, and slipped a finger under the belt. I wanted for the blood to trickle down my skin like an open dam.
I felt nothing. The floodgates were open, but the “water” was nowhere to be found. My heart immediately leaped to my throat. I cautioned myself, don’t jump to conclusions just yet. It could just be a fluke. I should touch it to know for sure. Side note, but it was a stupid idea one should never attempt at home, the hospital, or even a team of the best medical professionals in the world. It’s the medical equivalent of invoking the dreaded, “What could possibly go wrong?”, and nothing good would come from it unless you were exceptionally lucky.
I happened to be exceptionally lucky today. The contact immediately elicited a stab of pain, but my mouth fell open in disbelief. The right side of my neck had been split open like a half-cut piñata, jostled for god knows how many hours when I crawled my way over, and finally slammed shut right right before I hit the ground and passed out. I should’ve been dead. Even if I was given immediate treatment and rushed to the hospital, the wound still would have taken weeks, if not months to heal properly. That wasn’t the case here. I discovered that the wound was completely sealed, and not just sealed as in “a proper bandage has been applied to the wound”, but “new flesh has grown over it” sealed. I know it because I immediately unclasped the belt and ran my fingers across the wound again, feeling very tender, very new flesh. It still might tear open if I was too rough with it, but I was, in every practical sense of the word, healed.
This was straight up impossible. Even if cutting edge medical technology had reached the point where a major laceration could be healed in just a matter of days, which it hadn’t, it still wouldn’t be enough to explain what had happened to me. It hadn’t even been thirty hours since I arrived at this world, and I certainly wasn’t lying in a hyperbaric chamber while the world’s best doctors were fussing over my neck wound.
I hate to say this, I’ve been avoiding the term ever since I arrived at this world, but could this be… magic? Am I actually in a magical fantasy world?
I looked at the only person in the room who could have done this. I tapped my neck twice before asking in an awed voice, “Did you do this? Did you save my life?”
They didn’t respond, but it could only have been them.
“Thank you. I don’t know what I can do to repay you, but I swear I’ll find a way,” I declared. “Now that both of my immediate crises are solved, what should I do? If I’m being completely honest, I would like to go back to my mattress and sleep like a log, but it’s not even noon yet. It would be a waste of time to sleep now.”
I squinted at the door behind the entity for a bit. “Alternatively, I could head out and explore the area a little, but that requires convincing you to let me out of the house. I doubt it’ll be easy since you locked up the front door and stopped me from going out earlier. What other choice do I have though? I can’t stay here forever.”
I waited for a couple of seconds to see if the entity would respond, but they did not. I sighed and went over to the nearest chair to take a seat. “Well, it doesn’t look like you’re going anywhere, so I may as well use this time to study you—”
Squelch.
I froze. For a second, I couldn’t comprehend what just happened. Then, the memory of my bowels unclenching when the entity screamed at me flashed through my mind.
“Ah crap.”