Chapter 8: I Am So Done
Day 2: Noon
The pond was exactly as I had remembered it, a glassy, round pool of sky blue water that was just a little too still to be natural. In fact, it was among the first things I noticed immediately upon arriving at this world due to how picturesque it was. In my country, most ponds looked like a brownish smudge on the ground that you couldn’t help but wonder if the nearby drains had “contributed” some of their fill during the flash floods. This one though, wow. From close-up, it looked like a giant mirror that had captured a corner of the sky. I could almost believe it was the actual sky, and that stepping on it would cause me to fall into the air. It was wide enough to fit about a dozen cloud golems—aw, why do I gotta to deflate my own mood like that?—and the perfect size for a swimming pool, though of course I wasn’t crazy enough to take a dip. Even if the cloud golems weren’t right around the corner, it would’ve been a shame to mar such beauty, for a little while anyway. I hadn’t forgotten why I came all the way out here in the first place, and a source of water was one of the reasons.
One odd thing I noticed was that there was no wind in the area, not even a little. Today was pretty windy too, in fact I was counting on it to make the foggy air less uncomfortable. But here, the air was still instead of moving, clean instead of foggy, warm instead of cold, and refreshing instead of stale even though to my understanding still air was often stale especially in confined spaces like mines. While this place was in the open, all the oddities made it almost seemed like a separate dimension; a tiny corner of paradise that was somehow untainted of the fog. Maybe it was. It could explain why the pond was permanently still, why the cloud golems stopped chasing us all of a sudden, and why the giant murder cloud couldn’t destroy it.
There were a couple of questions though. Why could we enter this dimension, for starters? Was it because Miss Plant did her magic? Was it because the dimension only allows living beings to enter or something? Or was it something else entirely?
After Miss Plant had deemed it safe enough to put me back on the ground, I started toward the pond, paused, put down my bag and took out my diary (speaking of which, I’m just going to call it a diary now to avoid confusion). Then, I walked around a bit in search for the perfect angle, found it, and stared at the scenery until the image was imprinted in my memory. There was no need to hold the image for long. The memory didn’t even need to be precise, in fact trying to do so only screws up the memory. All I needed to do was to focus on the whole picture for an instant, and the diary would take over from there. I would admit that the technique sounded a tad abstract, but when I was recuperating from my eye surgery the doctor had taught me how to relax my eyes by practicing the 20-20-20 rule properly. He had told me to imagine an invisible boundary—something like a circle works best—before staring at it without blinking for at least twenty seconds. The exercise should then be repeated until at least two minutes had passed. It didn’t always work because the eyes tended to stray, and if something in the area of focus so much as twitched you had to start all over again. But thanks to this little exercise, I had no problems exercising the diary’s ability.
Once it was done, I looked down at my handiwork and smiled. Where there was an empty page before, a “photo” of the glassy pond now occupied the space. It was a bit disappointing that the backdrop was all fog—made me miss the blue sky and gorgeous horizon all over again—but then again I was hardly going to look a gift horse in the mouth. Excluding the first image I had made as an experiment, this was my first real visual record of my journey in another world. I planned to treasure it even if this journey had mostly been me running or hiding from one impossibility after another so far.
Suddenly, I noticed Miss Plant staring curiously in my direction. She was also swaying back and forth a little like she was… I don’t know, relaxing? I know I was after that harrowing encounter. Anyway, I chose to interpret it as an expression of good mood and went over to her with the diary. I then showed her the picture with a bright smile on my face,
“Look at this! This is pretty cool, isn’t it?”
For the first time, I caught a glimpse of actual interest in Miss Plant. She looked back and forth between the lake and the diary for a bit before finally focusing all of her attention on the book. She extended a tentative tendril beneath the book as if asking me for permission to hold it, and seeing no problem with this I placed it right on top of her tendril and—
Crackle!
“What the fuck!?”
Where the tendril and the diary touched, a massive ball of fire appeared out of nowhere like magic. Scratch that, it could only be magic. Both Miss Plant and I flinched as I dropped the diary to the ground and got ready to stomp out the flames. Thankfully, the flames disappeared as soon as the contact was broken, so I halted my foot just inches away from the leather cover. I took a few steps away from the diary and circled around it for a bit, examining for damage. The good news was that I didn’t find any, so I decided to leave it on the ground for the time being and check on Miss Plant first. I walked up to her and asked her concernedly, “Hey, are you okay? I’m so sorry, I didn’t know that would happen at all!”
Miss Plant didn’t seem bothered, though she was examining her tendril curiously. A small scorch mark had appeared on the affected tendril, which was something I wasn’t expecting at all. Plants did not burn easily unless they were dry and wilted, and Miss Plant, despite my nickname for her, was no ordinary plant. Just how hot were the flames to burn a being like her, and how did the heat transfer to her tendril so quickly anyway? I remembered watching a Youtube video where a man was able to slap molten metal with his bare hands repeatedly without getting burned. It was because of the Leidenfrost effect; the layer of moisture on his hand protecting him from the heat of the metal. While I had no clue if the Leidenfrost effect applied to plant and/or eldritch life as well, a single instant of contact still shouldn’t be enough to burn her, which almost certainly proved that the flames were indeed of magical nature. Why did it happen in the first place though? Was it some sort of security system? Does that mean that anyone who makes physical contact with the book who isn’t me would get a fireball to the face? Not that I have too much of a problem with it, but if that was true, then it was super violent, super over the top, and sadly, totally in line with everything I had experienced in this world until now.
“It looks pretty minor, but you should probably get some water on it,” I said with a small grimace. “Lucky for us, there’s a pond right here. Come on.”
I tugged at one of her vines and led her to the pond. After mouthing a silent apology—I was about to make the pond that never ripples ripple for the first time after all—I submerged my own hands into the cool water and gestured for Miss Plant to do the same. It took a couple of attempts, but she eventually she tilted her head and dipped not just the injured tendril, but some roots into the water as well. Looks like water was a necessary component of life even for eldritch horrors. Good to know. ith that done, I scooped up the translucent water and was was about to drink it when I noticed that my hands were dirty. I washed them clean before finally taking a small sip from the pond. It tasted great. I started drinking faster.
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Now, I was aware that drinking from still water wasn’t safe, but physics clearly operated on a different level in this world, not to mention I had walked for hours in dirty fog before being chased by murderous cloud golems. If the pond wasn’t so picturesque and my only source of water right now, I would have dove in and scrubbed every inch of my body already. This? This was me showing restraint.
A certain theory was also beginning to sprout in my head, but I hesitated to jump to conclusions. I would come back to this at a later date.
After drinking until my belly felt full, I let out a sigh of satisfaction before sitting crosslegged at the pond’s edge for a bit—I didn’t want to dip my legs into the pond and dirty the water. A moment of relaxation later, I suddenly decided I wanted to look inside the water for a bit. No, there was no particular reason behind the decision, I just thought it could be fun. I hadn’t done something like this since I was a child, and right now I felt like indulging in a bit childishness. Once my mind was made up, I sucked in a small breath and slowly lowered my neck. The cool sensation of liquid touching flesh spread from the tip of my nose all the way until my hairline. I looked around. The water was crystal clear. I looked to the side, and I immediately noticed Miss Plant’s tendrils and roots were pressed up against the sides of the pond and stretching all the way toward the bottom. I could also see her roots pumping small pockets of water up to her body like they were cartoon hoses, which was both an unexpected and amusing sight. She continues to surprise me every day.
Unfortunately, the moment of amusement passed all too quickly. The second thing I noticed was that the pond had no bottom. Like literally, none. Just a straight pit leading toward an endless black hole. As it turned out, the pond wasn’t a pond after all. It was yet a another sinkhole, though unlike the one near the cottage this one was filled to the brim with water. I instinctively pulled my head out of the water when I realized this. I knew it wasn’t dangerous, but something about being near a hole of immeasurable depth just disturbs me greatly. Maybe it was because I had a slight fear of heights, or maybe it was something else. It was a useful discovery though. This was the second sinkhole I had found in two days, and they were, geographically speaking, right next to each other. What did this mean? Did the ground here had the tendency of crumbling away into bottomless pits without warning? Not the most far-fetched theory I had hypothesized considering that this world had giant murder cloud that wipes out almost everything on the surface, but… somehow I had the feeling that I shouldn’t dismiss this as just another otherworld fuckery.
“I should take another look. There could be some clues I missed the first time,” I muttered to myself.
Before I dunked my head into the water once more, I shot Miss Plant a glance just in case she was planning to leave or something. It didn’t look like it. She was still standing there motionlessly and guzzling down that water until her vines looked twice as thick as before. Also, is it just my eyes playing tricks on me, or is she a bit taller than before? Man, I wish I could grow taller just by drinking some water. I was only 162 cm despite all the milk I drank and jumping exercises I did when I was younger, and it remained a sore point for me to this very day. Anyway, this was no time to be distracted by mild insecurities, so I closed my eyes, sucked in a much deeper breath and submerged my head into the water once more. Once the bubbles had faded away, I opened my eyes and—
Hmm? What’s that? There a grayish white dot at the center of the pitch black pit that I was sure wasn’t there before. At first, I thought I might have caught dirt in my eyes and tried blinking it away, but not only did the dot remained, it seemed to be growing bigger and bigger. It wasn’t until I felt a tendril wrapping around my waist before I finally processed what I was seeing, and I thought to myself, ah. Here we go again.
The roaring boom felt like someone had detonated a tonne of TNT in the water. The tidal wave hit me hard enough to rattle the bones in my body, and the water forced their way into my nasal cavity and activated every sensory receptor in the absolute worst way imaginable. I also couldn’t breathe for a terrifying few seconds that felt like minutes before the water finally subsided. It reminded me of the first time I went to a wave pool. Despite not having my goggles with me, I had fancied myself a pretty good swimmer and thought that I could handle a wave pool just fine. Instead, I almost drowned. Not only did I find myself tiring far quicker than normal, I realized I was basically blind because the waves kept splashing over my face over and over again. I couldn’t even swim back to the safe areas because I could not tell which direction I was going, and I was practically hyperventilating at that point. I had had to stand on my tiptoes, fight for every breath, and slowly inch my way back to what I hoped was shallower depths. If someone hadn’t noticed my predicament and saved me, that could have been it for me. This bloody wave was bringing back the worst moments of that memory.
“COUGH COUGH! COUGH! Hack—ptooey! Cough! For fuck’s sake, what now!?” I swore while coughing my lungs out. When the world eventually came back into focus, something white and gigantic immediately caught my attention. It was a whale—no, a leviathan that closely resembled a whale—that glowed under the sun like a massive, long, well-polished slab of white marble. It had a curved and oblong upper jaw that was not unlike the xenomorphs in the Alien series, but was a hundred times bigger than its counterpart. In contrast, its eye—the only one I could see from my position—was “just” the size of a soccer ball hidden behind a tiny slit. As it was located right next to the corner of its mouth, it was nigh invisible even though it was broad daylight. If I didn’t know a little about whale anatomy, I could have believed that the creature had no eyes at all.
Unlike a normal whale though, it did not possess any fins whatsoever. It might have something to do with the fact that it lived in subterranean waters and its tendency to burst out of random holes on the surface to, I don’t know, scare the living shit out of poor, unsuspecting souls, or I was totally wrong about it being whale-like, and it was really more like a worm with a whale’s upper body. I didn’t really have the energy to care at the moment. Speaking of which, the creature was still bursting out of the pond right now, its humongous size making it seem like it was traveling in slow motion even though it really wasn’t. Still, it was only a matter of seconds before it reached the end of its ascent and fell back into the pond, so I decided to spend that time checking if Miss Plant she was okay. What I saw was not what I expected to see. On one hand, she was exactly where I thought she would be. The massive tidal wave had failed to budge her from her spot even a little. One the other hand, the vegetation composing her body were moving about rapidly like a nest of restless, disturbed snakes. This was the first time I had ever seen her like this. What was she doing? Was she angry with the leviathan or something? Perhaps she lost some roots and tendrils in the water when the fucking thing had ambushed us. I know I would be doing some stabby stabby if I had her powers. It almost took my head off!
And then time was up. The leviathan’s upward momentum was spent, and it… did not fall back into the pond. I wasn’t expecting that at all. The creature must have entrenched itself in the pond, or maybe it had just gotten stuck because of its fat ass. I kinda wished it was the latter because it meant that it could not unleash its full power. And why would I worry about something like that? Well, as soon as the leviathan steadied itself, it immediately let loose a series of clicking sounds that sounded nothing like the challenge roars boss monsters usually made in video games, but I had the distinct feeling shared the same meaning anyway. There was also the fact that its upper body was starting to fall in our direction. Welp. As my body was violently tugged in another direction once more, I thought numbly to myself,
I am so done with this shit.