Rose Blumen ~ Exogignesthai

579. Exotic matter, 9

(Rose)Life comes in so many forms.

As we reached the inner sanctum of this place, we found a new one my daughter had not met before.

This partially collapsed building, or bloc even, has locked the inner park or garden from most outside influences.

Whether such isolation usually protects what’s inside from what’s outside or the opposite, the result remains similar.

Isolated places are a chance to find something drastically different from the usual.

Just as some mushrooms grow better inside caves.

But here and today, what this means is...

~

Some of the human remains are more obvious now inside this place. Above us, a sort of intricate and three dimensional web shelters this place from direct sunlight. It’s a big sculpture spanning the entire space of that greenhouse.

Nokarlık picks up some things she recognises on the ground.

Shoes. Clothes. Rags. A pair of glasses is intriguing.

I’m looking above and around warily whilst she rummages along the corners of the walls.

Something crawls along the webs spanning all over the visible sky here.

Shrouds react to our presence.

I grab my child and pull her back abruptly. It’s not a beast that comes, but a crawling colour, like a two dimensional being, only moving along the surfaces of objects.

It’s a colony of bacteria, I think.

Not something I could ask to wait. And it’s rushing at us.

I pull out with my child before it’s over us.

~

We go back faster through the dark corridors. I push Nok first through the tunnel we had to crawl through to get in.

Behind me, I see the stains running along the walls, floor and ceiling. Some elements, living or not, are disturbed by this tidal wave that goes over silently.

I dive into the hole and hurry.

As I reach out, I tell Nokaranlık to run further away.

I begin to stand up in a leap ahead, almost falling, and see with a sudden scare that the grey colour was able to leap as well.

A string is glued to my ankle, and it’s already eating through my sock.

My heart hurts. I run just a few steps, gritting my teeth in pain already as my foot bleeds.

The pain of being eaten through is a thing. The upcoming pain of cutting my own leg off is another...

As I lose my balance a few steps further, like Nok might have a short while ago, I crash against an old vehicle.

I yell at Nokarlık not to get closer as she was beginning to.

I check first that the pursuer hasn’t gone this far away from its nest first. If this thing is, I may have to use my light...

Thankfully the colour doesn’t spread out from the hole, but does linger around its mouth. Good enough.

The main colony is watching, boiling, to see if the child currently eating my foot will manage to grab all of me.

Fuck... I’ve raised my short sword above my head and am trembling.

There’s a sharp pain from my dissolving foot and ankle, but it’s oddly bearable, diminishing even. What I need to do...

There’s already too much blood around me for my own sake, pooling around.

I strike my leg below the knee, I yell and cry. I saw through the flesh below the knee and scratch it off and away. I rip my muscles off. I can’t find the strength and resolve however to attack the bone with that smooth blade. I can’t. My foot is already dislocated from the thing eating it. I can pull out my butchered leg away from the contaminated part.

I lose grip on my blade, but spark instead enough magic to burn my atrocious wound and what’s at the end of it.

I crawl back on my sitting position a little further away, breathing painfully.

The grey colour is busy eating the meat I’ve cut and drinking the juices I’ve left. It didn’t stick much to the bone itself.

I leave all the bones of my foot with my shoe as I resume crawling a little further away.

I spark another flame at the small stains still stuck at the end of my damaged leg. They escape on the ground and rush to the feast of my foot and scrapped meat.

I manage to take another breath.

I think I’m safe... But I’m about to pass out from shock.

I call Nokarlık for help. She can pull me out before the feast is over, so they return to their nest instead of daring for more.

I get no answer. I turn around, worried. I’m scared again, now in a different way.

~

Nokarlık is growing, fast.

On all four, I see her arms and shoulders now becoming as high as I’m tall standing. Her head turning enormous has her eyes locked on the colour at my foot.

She looks anxious and angry. I’m in stupor at how her body transforms. Why now?

Is it the first time there’s a threat to her existence? I begin to realise that when she would be facing demise, her creator mother might have chosen to insure she could always triumph in fight.

As I see her grow into a giant, with its weight, I become convinced of it.

Nightmare didn’t build much of a flee response in her... I think she chose to give her some odd powers to prevail instead.

Nokarlık’s mouth opens as she growls, with a voice that doesn’t sound anything like her anymore. She’s become massive. At least ten metres tall if she were to stand. I’m petrified.

All her body has grown proportionately, except for her pelt. It has perhaps grown somewhat bigger, but kept retracting as she grew, over her hair only. She has short hair in this gigantic form.

I’m so confused by how her body works again. Where does this mass and weight comes from?

Before I can do or say anything, she leaps. The movement of the air itself around makes me lose balance.

She lands across and above me, like a giant dog

Her hand and claws grab a handful of the ground with the feasting colour on it, and eats everything.

Now I’m suddenly very worried about what she just ate! Forget my flesh, I hope she can really digest this...

Actually, a few seconds later, she vomits it back in a waterfall of acids on the side. That’s awful.

I think her body said no. Which is probably good.

Between that smell and the sight of the half dissolved colours, I’m a little relieved. She’ll be alright I think...

I don’t care that much about what she looks like, and even less about my leg...

I only wish Blume had been there and awake to warn me about the colour earlier.

Nokarlık wants to jump at the end of the main colony, around the tunnel in the decrepit wall.

I yell to her as loud as I can not to.

She turns her head below her tummy to look at me. She then hisses loudly at the enemy.

The colour, because of the sound of it, or the loss of contact with its leg colony, recedes in the darkness.

I sigh my relief and pass out.

Nokarlık grabs me delicately.

~