Chapter 85: Mission for Ascendance: The Shri'kilian (2)
After walking for just a few more minutes, he finally saw it, the Shri'kilian tree.
The tree stood solitary, like a looming giant, each of its branches big enough to house whole cars. It was like standing in a cemetery, and though there were no graves in site the smell of death filled the air.
The skeletal remains of a large creature, seemingly fused into the tree marked its entrance. Which was a gaping black abyss that seemed to stare at him, daring him to enter.
Lucius carefully walked in, and just like Asclepius had described, the path descended into the darkness. A pitch ball hole large enough to swallow large construction vehicles.
Lucius used his knives to anchor himself onto the walls and slowly made his way down. After going down for about 30 minutes, he finally reached the bottom, the start of the maze that Asclepius had described
~The dimensions here don't make any sense. Just how deep do these roots go? And why does it seem like the tree has more area beneath the ground than on top of it?~ he thought to himself. Wondering if perhaps the place had something to do with magic.
It was pitch black, unnaturally so, and Lucius couldn't see a thing. He quickly called out his crux, accepting the risk of being discovered, over going in blind. And though the crux offered little ambient light, it allowed him to see at least 2 meters ahead.
As Lucius walked deeper in, the hollow root walls around him began expanding, eventually becoming tunnel-like the deeper he went. After a few minutes of walking silently, he came to a crossroads. This one tunnel, branched off into several different paths, each identical in size and shape to the other.
"Roots parting," Lucius whispered to himself, before randomly choosing one of the paths.
As he continued walking, the hollow walls began to cause an echoing effect, and he could hear the murmurs and movements of creatures deeper in the roots.
He tugged on the ropes that connected to his blades and slowed down his pace to reduce his noise.
~One's close by,~ he thought to himself unsure of how exactly he knew. It wasn't as if he could see it, and the echoes were like an incoherent amalgamation of different creatures, each at different locations, so it wasn't as if he could hear it either.
No, it was something like a feeling that he got from the ground. The pulling 'feeling' felt a little off, it was hard to describe but he sensed something was walking ahead of him.
He walked silently, recalling his crux. And after walking for not more than 10 meters, he heard something dragging itself across the ground. Though he couldn't make out its body, he could hear its breathing over the echoes, a ragged type of breathing, like it was extremely exhausted or had been injured.
Lucius threw one of his daggers toward the source of the sound. The blade seemed to have wrapped itself around something instead of impaling into it, but Lucius didn't panic.
He quickly pulled out the needle spear from his back, pointing it straight out as he tugged on the rope with all his strength. The unknown creature squealed as it rushed towards its demise, before being silenced by a loud thud.
Feeling that the spear hadn't driven into the creature completely, Lucius struck the blunt end of the needle with all his strength, completely driving it into the creature.
Once it stopped moving, he called his crux to take a look at what he had caught.
"An arachnid. A large one at that," he whispered, removing his weapons from the creature. "Too bad I can't take it along,. Hopefully, it's still around when I come back," he said, before continuing on his journey.
The place was more like a labyrinth than a maze, if that made any sense. Often times there were weird openings that looked like they had been made by other creatures, and other times the walls suddenly became fleshy in appearance.
Lucius avoided those paths, as they gave off an unnatural warmth like they were some kind of living creature.
Sometimes he would come across crossroads that had markings on every path, at times like these he would backtrack and try to choose a different path at the prior crossroads.
The marks were obviously made by intelligent creatures as they seemed to be some sort of alien language, he assumed that these were the dens of the so-called 'furry-folk.'
The deeper he went, the more creatures he encountered. He took a very stealthy approach at fighting them. He would throw his blade towards the source of the sound, and if it impaled into something he would tug at it to see how heavy the creature was.
There were a few times when he threw his blade and fund that the creature on the other end was so heavy he couldn't pull them. At times like these he ran like the wind, not caring to look back as the creature roared in pain and tried to chase after him.
By the time he had reached a crossroads that had a red trail glittering across one of them, it had been several hours, or so he thought.
"Finally, a path that has a fruit," Lucius sighed to himself. Though he probably wasn't the only one that had arrived here. Moving slower than he ever had, he walked into the pathway, following the glowing red trail.
The trail glowed with such intensity that it illuminated the entire area in a red ominous light. Lucius tightened the mask on his face, fearing that the hallways might be filled with toxic gas.
~Something's here,~ he thought to himself, sensing something close by with his weird earth sense. For some reason, it felt stronger, like it was telling him to run, to turn back.
Once the fruit was in view, he realized why his senses had told him to run. In front of the glowing red fruit was a massive centipede, the size of a small boar, with a body that extended at least 6 meters.