While exploring the city, they found a factory where their favorite chocolate milk was once made. The insectoid bodies, now composed of many more species, sneaked into the factory to find some remnants of the drink. Compared to the blissful taste before, it felt terrible and has led to the death of some of their bodies. Later, they found a toy store and broke inside, eager to find some plushes to cuddle with before going to sleep. Only all the toys had long since burned. Fortune smiled on the tortured soul, and on their quest to bury the deceased, they found several terminals and spent hours reading books. The battery died, leaving them cut off from everything once more.
Is this it, then? Are we to wander this place until we go mad, or die of hunger when everything finally rots away? They pondered this thought, struggling to contain dread. Suddenly, a sound came, caught by one of their bodies. Human voices!
The bodies turned into a whirlwind of flying, running creatures, rushing towards the sound like a living river. Two groups of humans. An armed group of adults demanding all the food from the unarmed group of humans hiding children behind them. A person from the unarmed group lay motionless on the ground, a pool of blood spreading from beneath his body, soaking the dirty rags he used for clothing. As the argument heated, a person raised her gun.
They were on the baddie in a moment. They did not kill her, of course, just wrested the gun from her hand and tried to scare off the rest of the baddies. Bullets tore through their bodies, exploding some, but as a whole, they were unharmed. When the bullies saw the creature transform into a human form and a giant worm burst through the ground, they lost their nerve and ran.
The unarmed group watched in horror. When they began to speak and tried to explain the situation, the unarmed group picked up their children and ran away, leaving them screaming and begging. In their flight, the civilians left behind their belongings, and the New World human had to exercise all of their willpower to refuse taking any of them, especially several bars of chocolate. They wanted it. The sweet taste of a pleasant milky chocolate, to feel it melting on the tongue or to swallow the whole thing… Only their tongues no longer worked that way, and the item belonged to the others. The person guarded the supplies for some time until a member of the frightened group came to retrieve them.
Over the next few days, they found several more humans. All refused to even speak to them; some even attacked them; others simply ran away in horror. Soon they found people trapped under the rubble and used the worm’s body to clear a path to safety. But as time passed, they found fewer and fewer people in the city. Most of the people were leaving this place.
“Why are we always alone?!” they shrieked upon stumbling into a camp and facing the familiar scene again. The shriek continued, leaving a crack in a broken window nearby. “We mean you no harm! We swear! Please talk to us!”
No response. The bodies confirmed other humans had just run away as far as they could.
“I hate being alone!” They kicked the ground in frustration and began rifling through the camp’s belongings. As always, medicine and supplies were off-limits; people usually came back for them, and it was a desperate time. Sometimes, they even secretly brought canned food to the hungriest or unluckiest groups of people. Even to the bullies. Papa and Mama always taught them...
Her
… that it was good to help others in need. But they found messages. A country was supposedly intact. Messages came from the people in that distant land. This group was headed for this mythical country. The Iternian Kingdom was the name of the place. Among the supplies was a badly damaged old book; some pages were torn out, and the thing itself was soaked. They memorized the general directions on the map and left the map in the camp, taking the book with them. In its place appeared fourteen cans of meat, taken from one of the underground stores found during the exploration. At night, the people sneaked back to their camp and left the city in a hurry; the insects protecting them from the predatory fiends that stalked the ruins. One such creature, a hideous cross between a dog and a crab, had tried to snatch a child from the group. The ground opened beneath it, and a tornado of black bodies enveloped the creatures, leaving behind only bones and carapace. Needless to say, this frightened the humans even more.
Monsters stalked the ruins—not two of them alike. They saw a pool of living flesh dragging itself across the road with spiky appendages. It ignored all attempts at communication and tried to devour a group of survivors, so they eliminated the threat at the cost of half their hive. But that was all right; more and more insects crawled out of the ground and became part of them overnight. They found a huge tentacle belonging to some kind of underground monster. The thing was dead, and the worm has feasted on it ever since. Screams filled the night, and they tried their best to keep the humans from killing themselves and to destroy the monsters. It was impossible to get everywhere in time, and they came upon a wounded man who screamed in terror, ignoring all their attempts to reason with him and calm him. Finally, he collapsed, bleeding from the wound in his side.
This couldn’t stand, and the insects spread out, herding a group of refugees into the area by force. None were hurt, but they wouldn’t let them go, bringing medical supplies from underground until the humans got the message and treated the wounded. It was an act of evil. You don’t force people to do your bidding; only bullies do that. So when a punishment came, they weren’t surprised. One of the group members threw a strange grenade that burned a hole in his body, and everyone fled, carrying the wounded with them. They couldn’t find a similar grenade anywhere and delivered a rifle to the group instead. A good deed for a good deed, like Mama told them…
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
Her.
Books were good; they helped them keep their sanity. A precious few remained, and they carried them all with them. According to the map, the journey ahead would be difficult. They would have to cross the entire continent and even the ocean somehow. Training was needed. Bodies were needed. Not knowing what to expect outside the ruined city, they spent two full months getting used to their new bodies, multiplying and testing how far they could stretch the insects before the pain would hit.
Humans seemed to have started leaving the city, almost as if they were afraid of them. This was sad, so they began training to mimic human speech perfectly. They learned that if they hid themselves, they could start a brief conversation. But when they revealed themselves, everyone ran away. So, when they were not busy training or hunting rodents to eat, they spent their time reading the few books they could find, learning about medicine, food, songs, and the world at large. It was such a magnificent thing to learn. To be able to remember and understand the meaning of the world… What was denied to them before has come easy now.
Finally, they decided it was time to leave the city. Thus, after spending time in the ruined city, they marched north. Their journey was almost cut short when colossal beasts swarmed them, tearing smaller bodies apart. But they survived in the worm’s body and spent time restoring themselves, searching for the smaller insects and introducing them into the multitude. As they traveled further, they found a human settlement. Actual humans living in this wasteland! Happiness soon ended as a human shot a ball of fire at them and they had to flee. It seems that they were not the only ones to change in this new world.
It was a silly thing, but they had spent an entire week around this settlement, learning all they could. The people inside had dug a ditch several meters deep and wide around their home, leaving a single strip of land leading to the gates. Only it was a trick. They had seen a six-headed mutant charge across the overheated stones and explode on a mine when it stepped on the paved bridge. In fact, they learned, the gates themselves were a dud. It was part of the wall, not meant to be opened. The actual entrance was a small archway on the side of a makeshift barricade that served as a wall. Every morning, people would leave the settlement and bring back the wreckage of their cars, and one person with fire would melt them into the walls. Another person could make the ground rise and fall, and she used it to help expand the settlement by moving the moat.
Inside stood huts made of the remnants of cars. A single workshop was set apart from the huts, and smoke always wafted through its barred roof. There was no rain in the New World, but they became curious as they watched the people set up mechanical devices to collect moisture during the night and produce water in the morning. A simple nursery and kindergarten was set up in the middle of the settlement, next to the voters’ house. People armed with rifles watched hawkishly on the walls, and every day a group of miners would set out to work on one of the fallen skyscrapers nearby, dismantling the thing and bringing back metals and tools found inside. The group brought back any animals they could find, creating a series of small farms where they raised chickens and cats to slaughter and eat on special occasions. But most of the time, they lived on a simple diet of canned food.
It didn’t last long. The same monsters that had attacked them before came for the settlements, charging across the plains leading to a hill where the settlement was located. Bullets ricocheted off their bone plates, and the monsters responded by firing back bone spears, tearing chunks of the settlement along with the defenders. The minefield did little to deter them; only one in six of the monsters went limp, and that was when they acted.
Save humans. That’s what a hero would do. With the worm leading the way, their larger bodies emerged from underground. The world changed, and so did its insects. The ones who skittered toward the monsters stood roughly the size of half a human body and wielded two sharp blades, serving as two of their eight limbs. Where bullets bounced off the bone plates, the chitin blades cracked the monsters’ plates, and the worm crashed into the largest of them as they gathered smaller bodies into a humanoid form. It was a vicious fight; the humans saw their help as little more than an attack by another predator, and bullets killed those of their insects that nimbly danced around the massive fists and bone blades.
The worm bit off the monster’s head and disappeared underground because of a punctured hole in its body made by the flame user. Two of their bodies appeared at another monster’s shoulders and buried the blades into the thick neck, sliding the points of their blades between armor. A raised stone wall crushed them, and the monster took several steps, shattering the false gates and killing five humans in a single blow. Only by wasting almost all of their precious, newly captured bodies did they keep the creatures from entering the settlement. Fire, curses, grenades, and moving earth were their rewards. The weeping people listened to not a single word, and they left. Some hero they are, can’t even communicate with the people.
You are my hero.
Thanks, our inner voice.
As they traveled north, they continued to read books. One was filled with religious stories. Most of them made no sense to them, but something caught their eye. Hell. It was written that those who acted badly, who sinned and abused others—all these people ended up in hell and suffered forever.
Could it mean that we are in hell? They wondered. They tried to contact other people, but people refused to accept them. The world is no longer the same, and the landscape sure resembles hell.
It doesn’t make any sense. We are not bad. Also, we are alive. They tried to calm themselves as their giant worm body finally gave out and died from its wounds. Smaller bodies ventured north. Toward the ocean. If only they could cross the ocean...