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Luck probably wasn’t the right word.
After all she’d been sucked through a portal into an alien Hell.
Taunted by a burnt thing pretending to be her dead mother.
Grown up in the slums of Dreg City.
Abandoned again and again and again and again to infinity.
Yet in this specific case, she was lucky.
Had been lucky.
There was no sharp branch impaling her, no jagged rock with her brains splattered all over its surface. Nope, nothing perilous at all.
She sat up, taking in the new surroundings that were only half forest – the half behind her, up the surprise slope that had sent her downwards - with the rest of the scenery presenting itself as a large, open clearing.
Well, open in the sense that there was more space than on the forest path, but also not open at all as there stood a very unnatural cliff face at the far end. Fifty, sixty feet high, if she had to guess. Which she did as there was no measuring tape nearby.
There were also a lot of rocks. Rocks of all types and sizes. Some evidently arranged in a pattern, others scattered about as leftovers.
Hmm, the rock sanctuary, thought Chio, spotting a particularly huge rock in the middle, surrounded by five ponds that…wait, were they connected? It looked like it.
She moved closer, confirming the thesis.
One pond then, with little panel slides acting as pseudo-dividers. And a large rock in the middle that appeared to do nothing. Maybe a shrine of some kind?
Checking the path behind to make sure it was still existent, and not rolling in any fresh predators to devour her, Chio rubbed the reddish dirt off her palms and moved over to the cliff face.
It was still fifty or sixty feet high, and, with her body in mind, unassailable.
Yeah, there were a few cracks and crevices here and there, but none large enough to fit her fingers in. And she was shit at climbing anyway. Why wouldn’t she be? No one in Dreg City had to scale anything, there were magnetic elevators everywhere. And beyond the city lines, outside the gravity net, you could pretty much jump up to anything, and then float back down like an anorexic feather.
So what’s the move, she asked a group of nearby rocks, one of the patterned formations [this one shaped like the W in the Munich Manual].
The rock art did not respond.
But something else did.
‘You are wasting time.’
Chio spun round, frantically scanning the forest clearing, the five ponds, even the top of the pointless large rock. Nothing there or anywhere.
‘Wrong dimension,’ the voice said, sounding like one of her old teachers at the RAK centre.
‘Wor…what?’ she stammered back.
‘I am the monad inside your head, dimwit.’
‘Monad?’
‘God, you’re slow. No, I am not actually inside your head. Please don’t waste even more time prodding your skull like a child.’
Chio’s hand stopped halfway up to her temple. ‘Who are you?’
‘Look down and marvel at my beauty.’
‘Sorry?’
‘The rock with the lilac underbelly next to your slipper. Look at it.’
‘I don’t-…’
‘Quickly, before the Krezzak wakes up.’
Something electric pulsed inside her head, sending her eyes down to the ground where there was indeed a hand-sized rock with a lilac underbelly. Was that really the thing communicating with her?
‘Pick me up. But don’t put me in your pocket. I hate that.’
Chio reached her right hand downwards and drew an invisible net around the outline of the rock. ‘Is this real?’ she asked, voice a lot firmer now.
‘Pick me up and you’ll know.’
‘I mean, are we really talking to each other? Am I-…’
‘This is not a hallucination. Or a trick. I am a very valuable assistant who has been stuck in this pointless little death circle for almost two years. If I were humanoid, I would’ve died of starvation. Luckily, I am a rock, so I can only die of boredom. Which is very close to happening now…if you don’t pick me up and get us out of here.’
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Chio nodded at the rock, then stopped when she realised she was nodding AT A ROCK. Then resumed nodding when she remembered that she was on an alien planet called Gaarrr, where something crisp and telepathic had tried to devour her on the forest path about half an hour earlier.
‘Okay, I’ll pick you up,’ she said, flicking some more red dust off the top of her shoe, ‘but I have no idea how to get out of here.’
‘Really?’
‘I swear, I only got here five minutes ago. And I don’t even know how that happened, to be honest.’
‘Hmm, based on your general gormlessness, I believe you. Doesn’t matter. You can figure out how to exit by using your brain. And if that’s beyond you, then we just wait for the next player to turn up.’
‘Someone else is coming?’
‘You still haven’t picked me up, by the way. Did you notice that?’
Chio slit the throat of the laugh that was about to sneak out and picked up the rock. It didn’t feel particularly heavy or sentient. But then why should it? It was a telepathic rock, not a human. Or a humanoid. Its biology must be completely oppositional to her own. Oppositional? Probably not the right word, but who cares? She had a potential ally now, another soul, which meant, at the very least, she wouldn’t go mad from extreme loneliness.
‘I’d be more worried about the Krezzak than insanity, if I were you,’ said the rock, somehow reading her thoughts.
‘Krezzak…I’ve heard that name.’
‘Yes, I have no doubt. This is its home, and you are trespassing. Me too, to be fair, but I’m a rock and can blend in with the environment. You, on the other hand…
The rock may have been intending to finish its sentence, or it may have sensed what was about to happen and decided to silence itself for heightened dramatic effect…either way, it didn’t matter one bit as the ground shook throughout the clearing and the water on the surface of the five ponds trembled little wispy rings. Before Chio could mutter ‘earthquake,’ a large tree near the forest slope had pulled free of its roots and was now in the process of splitting itself in half to reveal…a thing…that looked like a nightmare she’d once had.
‘What the-…’
‘Krezzak,’ finished the rock, adding a snigger that was a little bit childish.
Chio stood gargoyle still, the rock somehow staying glued to her palm, and stared at the self-reconstructing creature across the clearing apparently called Krezzak; an abomination-monad of branches and viscera, faceless, eyeless, sarcasm-less, which refused to stand up to full height and terrify on a cosmic scale cos it was too busy slithering around the five ponds to get to her position and…probably not hug her...or shake her hand.
‘I suggest movement,’ said the rock, vibrating in her grip, flashing an all-over purplish glow.
‘It’s…huge.’
‘And wants to eat you, so…your feet, use them.’
Chio shuddered at the word EAT but, for some reason, her legs didn’t budge. Maybe it was pure terror inducing a type of paralysis, or it could be the fact that the Krezzak beast was moving at the speed of an arthritic hospice patient around the first pond and there was no immediate danger.
‘Don’t get cocky, the Krezzak has a pretty impressive branch-tickling range.’
‘Tickling?’
‘One touch of that and you really will be dead in the water.’
‘You mean…’
‘…it will paralyse you, yes. Then slither over and scoop up your head. Not a good thing, right? Hence my previous I suggest movement line.’
Chio looked down at the rock, still glowing faint purple, and then back at the Krezzak, which had just managed to make it past the middle of the first pond.
‘Okay, there’s clearly some brain lag here. All you need to do is keep circling the ponds while you figure out the exit route. And don’t ask me if I know where it is cos I don’t.’
‘You’ve never left here?’
‘Left? I had never even arrived until that sneaky little-…that disaster two years ago. Being forced here against my will. Argh, it’s a boring story. Let’s just focus on getting out of this rockery, okay?’
Chio heard a cracking sound nearby and looked across the clearing. The Krezzak had reached the second pond, a little bit close for comfort, so she took a few steps to the right, making sure she didn’t go too close to the pond edge as the ground looked moist and slippery.
‘Ah, wait a second…what do we have here? If my senses aren’t malfunctioning, it’s a new player tumbling down the slope. Perfect. Hopefully they’re a puzzle enthusiast and can help us out of this mess.’
The words took a second to catch up to her brain, and when they did, the first thing that she gave out was a warning: don’t roll too close to the-
It was too late.
The new player, a humanoid of some sort - too green-skinned to be human - tumbled like a complete amateur down the slope that Chio had rolled down a few minutes earlier, declining to either stop or tumble away from the tree-like creature blocking the path ahead.
‘You cannot be that fucking…’ said the rock, adding an untranslatable word at the end.
‘He’s not gonna stop.’
‘Nope.’
‘The Krezzak…’
‘This is not gonna be pretty.’
‘Should I go and…’ Chio started to say, but then she heard a hissing noise and looked back over at the beginnings swipes of a Goya painting. Jun, jun, jun and jun. It was horrible to watch yet she could not pull her eyes away. The tree beast must’ve already paralysed the green guy as he was standing there frozen with his left arm hanging on by a single vein…and that was just the appetizer. Now, the branches were wrapping around the poor guy’s body and pulling him into a death embrace…only he wasn’t going there fully-skinned, he was…it looked like…being melted by the viscera leaking off the Krezzak’s limbs.
All in all, it took about one and half minutes for the entire body to be consumed, and when it was done, the creature didn’t retire to a nearby rock and take a nap like most Earth predators, it cracked its branches and continued slithering, slowly, inexorably towards its next meal.
Her. Chio.
Unless another player rolled in.
Which seemed very unlikely.
Jun.
‘As you can see, it’s healthy to keep moving,’ said the rock.
‘For how long?’
‘Until we find the exit route.’
Another piercing crack from the Krezzak forced Chio to take three quick steps to the right, almost tripping over a random ground obstacle yet again.
‘Won’t it get tired?’ she asked, checking back on the tree predator.
‘Krezzak don’t sleep. Or get tired.’
‘What?’
‘But they do move slowly. Which is a small mercy in our current predicament. Correction: your predicament. I’ll be fine…if a little lonely.’
‘I feel sick.’
‘Ah, delayed reaction from our green friend’s consumption?’
Chio jabbed her temple, took a few more steps around the pond. ‘No, not that.’
‘Hunger?’
‘It’s my head…feels weird. Sluggish somehow.’
‘Hmm. Probably residue from the translator insert. Hopefully not enough to debilitate you.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I’m sure that won’t happen though. You’re a strong humanoid, correct? Yes, quite strong, I can tell from your hand grip. Now, this exit. Where could it be? Any fresh ideas?’
Chio opened her mouth to say, ‘you tell me, you’re the one who’s been living here the last two years,’ but the words wouldn’t form, and, no matter how hard she punched the side of her head, the sudden fogginess that was enveloping her peripheral vision didn’t dissipate and
now everything was turning sideways
becoming weightless
as dark as a-
The last sound she caught before the lights went off was the cracking of an alien branch, the Krezzak creeping slowly, methodically towards her.
And then nothing.