Kad moved through the higher reaches of the Reef faster than he’d ever gone before. He ducked and weaved through the trees, trying desperately to lose the lunatic freak chasing him. Every time he turned a corner, a chunk of wood the size of his head would slam into something inches from him. Every shower of wooden splinters was accompanied by the drowning, gurgling laughter of the Stranger.
Their voice sounded manic, they were talking too fast. “You run so fast for a fledgling” they crooned from so close behind him that Kad arched his back and moved faster. “Rabbit? Perhaps a leopard?” The muscle in his legs was burning, it felt like it would tear before he managed to evade this monster.
Kad reached down to the relay box on his waist, trying to push the button three times to signal and S.O.S. He had only clicked the button once before a pebble no bigger than the end of his thumb slammed into the device. Kad yelped and jerked his hand away.
“No, no, no, that’s cheating” the stranger gurgled out in a mocking tone.
He couldn’t get back to town, it was a two hour run in a straight line, and he knew if he attempted the journey he’d catch a rock or a snapped off branch to the back for his trouble. The only saving grace was the insanity that very clearly dominated the person following him.
“You’re running away from home little one” he heard behind him, still too close. He had to do something. He heard a whistle in the air and ducked. A stone slammed into the trunk above him, raining shattered bark and stone dust as he dove. He grabbed a branch and swung, using it to pivot him sideways.
“Perhaps you’re just a loyal little pup, defending his family, how utterly boring” there was contempt in their voice. Kad knew his time was running out to do something. He only had one idea to get away. He needed to die.
Kad pushed himself forward with renewed vigor. He flinched at another couple of things that had been thrown at him before he realized something. This absolute monstrosity of a person was easily maintaining pace with him, throwing chunks of healthy wood hard enough to explode, and managing to talk to himself the entire time. There was no way he should be missing the throws he was taking.
Kad felt ice run in his veins. He was missing him on purpose, but why? What purpose did this serve?
There, out of the corner of his eye he saw an arrow carved into a stalk. Perfect, he knew he was on the right track. He drove himself deeper and deeper into the Reef.
“I am Calam, the Pilgrim to carry your newborn King! He will simply be famished when he rises” The stranger said. It sounded like they were talking through the viscous liquid of the pond, the words burbling to the surface with sickly popping sounds punctuating every breath. Kad rolled his eyes. Of course, he would get a bad guy who not only liked to monologue, but sounded like he’d been breathing soup for a decade.
Kad spared a look back, seeing the devastation this ‘Calam’ caused in their pursuit. As they ran, they launched quick punches, snapping the stalks in their way with brutal efficiency. Two foot thick tree trunks were kicked with enough force to make the roots and brambles holding them groan in protest.
Kad felt a whimper escape his throat. How was he supposed to get away from this monster? They were keeping pace with him with enough ease to still try and torture him with their life story.
Something looked wrong about Calam as Kad looked back. The bulging veins that were writing under their skin had moved, wrapping like swollen balloons around their joints. The next punch shot out and Kad saw their limbs extend, the bulging veins connecting the two pieces of the arm as it stretched, until Kad saw the skin strain and begin to tear. As it snapped back it wobbled for a second before popping back into place.
They looked taller, like their body was stretching out to accommodate the wriggling mass of veins under the skin. Their skin had become a pale sickly green, thin spots of blood appearing on their shirt where the skin was beginning to rip.
Kad felt sick looking at them. This wasn’t what the Expedition Force members were supposed to look like. They were all muscular and beautiful, shining paragons of humanity. They were capable of superhuman feats but Kad had seen nothing on this level before.
He looked around for signs that he was close to the spot he wanted before spotting it. Stars carved into the trees and stalks in a wide area. Kad said a silent prayer as he moved, feeling the branches start to creak more as he moved. This was the dangerous part.
Every groaning step was a nightmare. The branches around here were weaker and one break meant the game was over. Calam stood on a high branch, their too long body swaying in the wind. They put a hand on their hip as they watched him move around the trees.
“What’s so special about this spot? Is this your ‘final stand’?” they said it mockingly, letting out a wet gurgle as they laughed. “Ooh, you marked the trees here!” Calam ran a finger over the star shaped carving in the trunk of a tree. Their eyes twinkled and they looked down at Kad. “You have a plan, don’t you?” They clapped like he was a child taking his first steps. “That’s fun, let’s try it out” Calam blurred as he moved, throwing a kick that shattered two stalks to Kad’s left.
Kad kept moving, ignoring the burning in his legs and feet as he darted around the trees. Vines twisted and snapped, yanking down chunks of the canopy above. The mid afternoon sun started to filter through the holes. Jagged spears of light began to crisscross the area as Kad moved, desperately trying to keep ahead of Calam.
Calam was a whirlwind of kicks and strikes, the sheer force of his blows unfathomable. Kad watched as Calam sent a wild jab out at the trunk of a tree, a thunderous crack was accompanied by a shower of dry bark. The tree half exploded as it fell, yanking a massive hole in the coverage above.
As the trunk of the tree split open, a vein of rotten wood was exposed. The trees around the area were dying, tendrils of rot and fungal spores had infested the entire area. The tree crumbled onto the top of the stalks Calam had felled. Clouds of spores and sawdust swam in the pillars of light.
Kad watched as Calam seemed to dance across the branches. When they were moving before, the strikes had seemed random, chaotic in nature. But now he could see the truth, and it made his stomach drop.
Calam spun across the branches, their eyes closed as they moved. The overextended limbs moved with sickening fluidity, even grace. The too-long arms worked like whips, lashing out and cracking heavily at the last possible moment. Every sweeping strike was precise, a punch would crack out against a trunk, digging into it at a downward angle so it would fall the way that Calam wanted it to. This wasn’t some unhinged savage who lived out here for fun, this was a trained fighter who was incredibly capable. Kad had to do something before Calam got bored with him. He moved with heavier steps on the branches, stomping on the branches as he passed.
Calam sped up, weaving a tapestry of destruction around them. They didn’t seem to be truly pursuing Kad, more just doing exactly what they thought Kad wanted. Which frustrated him, because they were mostly right. The dance continued, rhythmic stomps and heavy leaps attempting to contend with fluid steps and rapid snapping hits to the surroundings.
It took almost two full rotations for it to work.
Calam stepped onto a branch, a well-placed step close to the trunk, their wide feet sideways to give them as much surface area to walk on as possible. A practiced maneuver that would have gone perfectly well if Kad hadn’t been running around, stomping hard enough to weaken their integrity.
The branch snapped, and two things happened simultaneously.
The first was Calam falling, a short gurgling laugh escaping their throat as the whirlwind of movements became a tangle of flailing limbs. If Kad could have seen their face through the brambles as they fell, he would have seen a look of amused respect. Calam hit the brambles still laughing, laying there with the thorny tangles trying desperately to grab and dig and claw into their skin.
The second was Kad launching himself directly at the biggest pile of felled trees and stalks, making sure to take a deep breath before going in so he didn’t choke on the visible dust cloud that still hung in the air. As he fell he looked up, giving a silent cheer as he saw the cloud of spores and dust billow above the canopy. Hopefully someone would see it from the crawler frames and send for rescue.
There’s some kind of joke there about mushroom clouds, I’m almost positive. Kad thought, his overworked body starting to feel oddly heavy as he fell. He hit the pile of trees that was nested on a few feet of brambles, and climbed down into the pile. He knew he was near the right spot, but anything could have happened. His silent prayers were answered when he slid around a pile of felled stalks at the bottom and saw the hollowed out log that had been full of starpods earlier.
He crawled inside, pulling his sweat soaked shirt up over his nose, trying to not breathe in spores. Kad reached again for the relay box, hoping by some miracle it still worked. His heart sank as he looked at it. The pebble had punched a hole clean through the black metal box on one side, the other side of it was ripped open, broken wires and pieces on the inside sliding around freely inside. That freak had pulverized his only method of calling for help. He just hoped the rising cloud of dust above the canopy would be visible from the Shoreline. Maybe someone would see it and send someone for search and rescue.
Kad waited as still as possible, listening to the creak of the stalks and trees that remained in the area. His body was worn, everything was hurting. Kad took deep calming breaths to slow his heart down. He needed to conserve every ounce of energy. Just underneath the sound of the settling forest was the awful gasping laugh of Calam laying in the brambles.
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“That was clever, well done.” Kad heard a grunt and the rustling of leaves. Then a thud as Calam landed on top of the pile of downed logs. “You had a plan and executed, even went with the flow when new factors arrived” the trunks shifted, dirt and spores raining down through the cracks as Calam paced on top of them. “Perhaps you’re even an Owl. That would be a nice tribute to the King” Calam moved again, and took a deep, wheezing breath. It sounded like a dying gasp.
Calam crouched on the logs, knocking on them and leaning close. “I’m sorry to tell you that I saw you jump, I know you didn’t run.” The words sent new spikes of fear through Kad’s heart. “Now, let me demonstrate why of my humble little family, I was the one chosen to be a Pilgrim of the Vine. For my king, I come undone”
The words came out with such a force of will that Kad shivered. He’d felt the declaration in his bones, rattling them until they itched. “How many times is this psycho gonna do something that doesn’t make any sense” Kad thought, desperate for this cat and mouse game to end.
Kad felt the earth beneath him vibrate. He looked out of a crack in the hollowed out log into the dense brambles of the forest floor, unable to comprehend what was happening. They were wilting before his eyes. The heavy vines shriveled and turned brown, cracking as they became brittle. As they shrank, Kad saw the scene laid out before him.
Calam stood there before him, arms held out at their sides. The veins under their skin were undulating, writhing beneath the skin. They grew and grew until their skin seemed ready to burst. More veins slid out, like their entire circulatory system was beyond capacity.
Skin split, muscle shredded as Calam became something…more, something other to what he was. Kad had the distinct impression that if he were to live, the sight he was witnessing would haunt his nightmares forever.
Calam’s skin had split, and where the veins had wrapped across their body were now slick green vines. They had a thin sheen of blood coating the surface, and they still moved, growing and wrapping, creating a second set of muscle over Calam’s entire body.
Their entire body shook and convulsed involuntarily, Kad heard groans escaping their throat as the transformation occurred. Calam grew even taller, crossing first seven, then eight feet in height. The skin on their stomach ripped, and Kad saw it. An opalescent shelled seed like the one he’d seen them place down at the pond. It sat embedded into the muscle above Calam’s navel.
Vines poured out of it, forcing the seed to open further. When it finished, it was hidden under a thick layer of vines that extended and wrapped around Calam. Leaves began to sprout all over their body, wide flat ones that would unfurl only to press themselves tight against the vines. They aged and changed colors.
Kad watched as the leaves warped and overlapped until Calam had a layer of ‘skin’ over their entire body. They had nearly imperceptible lines at the edge of each leaf giving the illusion of scaled skin, mostly human in color but tinged a light green. Vines grew from their head, wrapping and coiling on themselves in thin tendrils, darkening until it looked like their original hair.
Kad looked at the being before him that seemed so close to Calam but so far away. They stood over eight and a half feet tall and radiated a domineering presence. When they opened their eyes they had none of the mania or insanity that had been there before, now there was only clear eyes and confidence.
Kad knew in that moment that Calam the human being was gone, replaced with the ‘Pilgrim’ that stood before him, a force of nature on a scale Kad’s brain struggled to understand.
They moved their arm lazily, and the leaves on their arm parted to allow dozens of vines to shoot out. They made a sound so close to the dull roar of the wind sweeping through the shoreline that it sent chills down Kad’s spine. The vines wrapped themselves gingerly around each of the felled trees and stalks in the area, lifting the shattered trunks and tossing them like they were twigs.
The rustling tendrils of vine reached inside the hollowed out log, not even bothering to pull him out. They simply pulled, ripping the wooden shell open and exposing Kad’s weary form to the being in front of him.
Something in the back of Kad’s mind screamed at him to move, and he scrambled to his feet. He tried to run, heading for the edge of the clearing that was now here. His foot crunched against the dried husk of vine before the worst pain he’d ever felt wracked his body.
The Pilgrim was in front of him, the same glassy look of confidence and lordship on their face. He’d been kicked. His body jackknifed into the air, his ribs cracked, his spine popped along the entirety of its length. Blood and bile shot from his mouth as he puked.
The Pilgrim grabbed him before he hit the ground, placing their enormous palm against his chest. More pressure, more ribs cracked. Kad’s vision darkened and when he opened his eyes he was against the trunk of a tree at the edge of the clearing. How was it moving this fast?
The Pilgrim turned to face him, and took a slow, gingerly step toward him. When it moved Kad saw the bottom of its foot, a knotted white root system that seemed to have to un-root itself as it stepped.
“Apologies, I only meant to incapacitate you. I have little practice in the embrace of my Lord, and do not know my own strength” The voice was like a whisper through trees, soft and rustling. Kad had trouble focusing on it. His vision swam and he didn’t know how he was even still conscious right now.
“I am truly sorry for doing this to you. You didn’t know the path you walked, the one I set you on” the Pilgrim said. “One of my sisters arranged to have a suitable martyr for the King. I am only a facilitator of my Lord’s will” The Pilgrim knelt down, looking at Kad.
Kad’s head swam, and the darkness closed in, until he was awoken by a jolt of pain. He was lifted into the air, vines wrapping themselves around him, occasionally pressing into him.
“You have to stay awake please. If you die the King won’t be able to take your instinct.”
Kad would have inquired about that if he weren’t so busy being in the worst pain of his life. Instead he trained his eyes on the darkness of the Reef, watching as he was being carried back the way they’d come. He said a prayer to any being he could think of. Matal the trickster, Selom the kind, Yulsha the demon. He rattled names and prayers as he was taken towards his death.
A vine wrapped in thorns laid itself along his stomach, pricking as it stuck into his skin. Cool relief flooded him as it did, and he looked up at Pilgrim in confusion.
“It’s a natural byproduct of some plants that grow in a canyon out in Deep Waters. You should not face your fate injured.” Pilgrim said, moving him in front of it so he could speak to it directly.
It smiled at him, and Kad’s eyes flickered to the path behind them. A long figure with bright green eyes was lumbering along the ground, its hind raised in the air as it stalked. The Matal from earlier was following.
Kad just laughed out loud in the Pilgrims face. It said nothing, only offering him a look of pity. He laughed even harder. Pilgrim thought he had lost it, or his mind was addled by the drug he’d been given. Kad felt the shape of the claw still in the pouch at his waist. He was dying, he knew it. With the relief that the drug gave him he had the faculties to assess himself. He could feel himself leaking inside. He felt bone floating and sticking places it shouldn’t. He was going to die out here. Maybe if he distracted the Pilgrim enough, the Matal would take him out. That sounded like a good enough ending to Kad. Given the circumstances, he guessed he couldn’t be picky.
So he laughed, laughed at fate, and death. He laughed at the memories he had, at the pain every wheezing breath brought. He’d die laughing in the face of his killer. He wondered if there was an afterlife, if he’d stick around and haunt Raya as she raised a toast in his name. He wondered if she’d do that at all.
He saw the Matal pounce, and time seemed to slow. He could see the ripples of muscle underneath its fur, saw the dinner knife sized claws extend out and the wrinkle of its nose as it pounced with bared teeth. It was a lesson in the perfection of an ambush predator. He slid his fingers into the pouch at his waist, and gripped the claw, feeling the skin on his fingers part under its razor edge. The Matal’s claws cut the air like a farmer’s sickle carving through wheat. It was less than a foot away when Pilgrim moved.
If the Matal was a lesson in perfection as an ambush predator, then Pilgrim was a lesson in experience, in efficiency of movement. He saw the vines contract like muscle, a raised arm throwing an elbow back with a gripped fist. There was no hesitation, no surprise present. It was momentum taken to its extreme, no wasted potential. Pilgrim’s elbow struck the Matal like a blacksmith striking steel.
Bone crunched and flesh and blood squelched as the elbow passed through its skull into something wet and soft. The momentum of the cat carried it into Pilgrims back, the razor claws slicing deep into their back. It hung there for a moment, claws latched into Pilgrim’s back, its skull smashed against their elbow. Pilgrim shrugged the beast off, never even breaking stride. Kad watched as the cut vines on Pilgrim’s shoulder shriveled brown and died, and more pushed out from the center of their stomach to recover what was lost.
A look of consternation crossed the previously placid face. “Fate seems to Coalesce around you, bizarre.” Pilgrim said, giving Kad an appraising look.
Kad still had the claw digging into his fingers, feeling it grind against the bones. His moment had passed before he had a chance to act. He wanted to laugh again at Pilgrims words. Fate had nothing to do with a psychopath killing him while he was out here. He gripped tighter on the claw. He’d thrash out with it, carve this son of a bitch up, force Pilgrim to kill him before he could get there. He’d cut this overgrown fern down and feed it to chickens, he’d-
Something disturbed the air so forcefully Kad felt his ears pop. He felt pressure behind his eyes so heavy that he almost lost consciousness again, but something deep and angry inside him yanked him back awake.
The trees and stalks bent under the pressure, branches snapped and dust kicked up. Pilgrim froze and looked back, for the first time something akin to fear in their eyes. Kad didn’t hesitate this time, he yanked the claw free and plunged it right into Pilgrims gut, aiming for the shell he’d seen the vines come out of earlier.
The vines shuddered and Pilgrim gasped in pain. The vines wrenched inward, ripping the claw from Kad’s hand. Pilgrim looked at him with burning fury in his eyes. Kad laughed at the look of pain and anger in his killer’s face, the last thing he remembered was being thrown into the brambles, and the sharp scraping of thorns against him as he faded into inky black unconsciousness.
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Calam ran as fast as they could back to the clearing, leaving the mangled form of that petulant young man in the brambles. The Pilgrim had actually been hurt by an unchanged little seedling out here. If it weren’t for the pulse he felt he might have laughed at the idea of it. Now Calam was out here without the ability to call upon the power of the Pilgrim again.
That pulse that had rocked out meant some very dangerous individuals from the Expedition Force were coming for the King. Calam reached down and felt at their Genesis Seed, feeling the long groove where it’d been stabbed by the claw of that damned Matal. The seed was damaged, that was bad news if the E.F. caught up.
Calam reached the clearing and went to the edge of the pond. Under a thick membrane sat his charge, coiled at the bottom. Calam sighed, slicing open the top of the pond, sticking an arm into it. The young King slithered up and onto the limb extended, probing around.
“Not yet my liege, but soon. We’ll find you something suitable farther in I’m sure” Calam said, already feeling the wet warble in their voice returning. Calam tugged on the connection to the vines that lived under the surface. The link was weak right now because of the damage, but they didn’t require much to do what was needed. The largest one they could muster tore a hole in Calam’s arm, eliciting a wince.
The smell of blood made the coiled form of the newborn King wriggle in excitement, and it slithered into the opening. Calam grunted and held still for a moment while the King burrowed in, getting close to the active seed at their core.
Calam picked up the inactive seed that was supposed to belong to the king once it had absorbed a host body, tucking it into the small box and looking back one last time, before heading deeper into the Reef, heading toward Open Waters. If they could make it that far, escape was possible.
A shudder crossed Calam as the King probed the seed, enjoying the energy it radiated. Calam could feel it happening.
The King was already growing.