22. Vesper
VESPER
The sound of shuffling leaves penetrates my dreams of Dox and life back in Dross.
It’s subtle at first, like the gentlest of wind trailing through the trees.
It’s easy to ignore. Within a few minutes, the crunching of leaves grows louder, until I’m scrunching up my face with my eyes still closed and groaning.
“What the fuck are you doing, Locke?” I groan.
He doesn’t answer and I frown before trying to blink open my eyes despite my sleepiness. I hadn’t slept well on the ground. Those nights spent sleeping at the AppleFrog’s in a plush bed really spoiled me. I’ve slept like shit anywhere else so far.
At first, when I open my eyes to the sunlight streaming through the trees, I don’t see anything at all. The canopies still diffuse the light, alternating between bright spots of sunlight and dark shadows. The fire is dead, and clearly, it has been for a while because it isn’t even smoldering.
“Locke?” I call, looking around for him.
For the briefest of moments, I worry that this is it.
He’s finally left me, but my senses kick in and I realize that would be foolish.
We’ve made it this far. Even if I’d admitted I thought about leaving him, I hadn’t.
I’d just told the truth, and he’s likely thought about it a million times as well.
I stand and stretch, my frown deepening when the sound of crunching leaves sounds again. My head jerks in that direction but I don’t see anything.
“Locke?” I try again, my voice more hesitant now. We’ve come across some insane shit here. What if it’s the howler monkeys? “Cipher?”
“Yes?” he answers immediately.
“Any idea where Locke—ah!”
Locke comes stumbling out of the trees on my right and I nearly leap out of my skin. I stumble backwards and nearly trip over the dead fire before I catch myself.
“What the fuck?” I hiss, pressing my hand against my chest to calm my racing heart.
Locke snorts. “What’s the matter with you?”
I smack his arm. “I thought the howler monkeys were back.”
His brows shoot up. “We haven’t seen any howler monkeys outside of the Whispering Canopies.”
“Yeah, well, some of us live in fear of those bastards,” I grumble, shaking off the last vestiges of my fear. “What were you doing?”
He shrugs. “Trying to find something to eat. I didn’t find anything before you ask.”
My stomach grumbles in protest and I sigh.
“We just need to find the safehouse in this section. We should do that before we fight the Minor Boss and we keep away from the Whispering Canopies where the Major Boss and the howler monkeys are.” I pat my stomach.
“I can’t fight anything on an empty stomach.
The fish wasn’t enough. We go much longer and we won’t have the energy to fight. ”
In Dross, it wasn’t uncommon to go without food for days at a time.
We’re forced to test our limits, and sometimes, those limits become hard lines.
I know my hard line is a week if I have access to water before I become so weak, I can’t even force myself to wake up.
I know my limit is three days before I start to get unstable in general.
We’re on day four of mostly no food. While I’d eaten the fish, it wasn’t much, and my stomach still demands more sustenance. It appears my limits and boundaries are changing.
“I agree,” Locke says. “I’m not going to be any good in a fight soon.” He looks off into the distance. “I thought when we came through the gate, I wouldn’t ever have to be hungry again.”
“We’ll find something,” I reassure him. “All these trees, there’s gotta be some sort of fruit hanging in some of them. And if there isn’t, we’re heading for the safehouse anyway.”
He nods. “You’re right. We should—”
The leaves crunch again and both of us whip toward the sound. It’s dark in that direction, the canopies giving so much shade, I can’t pick out anything at all. Not until the forest floor seems to move in the shadows.
I squint my eyes. “What is that?”
Locke pops his hammer from his inventory and I follow suit, grabbing my Bloodsense Fang and letting the weight settle in my hand. The handle forms to my hand immediately, settling into a more comfortable shape. It’s probably nothing but . . .
More crunching splinters the silence, and then the sound of a lot of little crunches follows. My eyes slowly adjust to the darkness where I can see the leaves shifting. They undulate and crunch, swinging back and forth as if the wind is whipping them around.
I raise my Fang higher. “You seein’ this?”
“I see it,” Locke answers, holding his hammer with white knuckles. “I can’t tell what it is.”
“The Leaf Cutter Empire is characterized by one thing above all others,” Cipher interjects.
“And what is that one thing?” I ask, holding my breath as whatever it is moves closer and closer. “What are we about to face?”
“The Leaf Cutter Empire is based upon the rainforest like the rest of the Verdant Nexus, but I have taken some liberties with some of the most misunderstood creatures. They cannot be ignored here like they can be in other parts of the Verdant Nexus. Primarily, The Leaf Cutter Empire hosts a variety of—”
A large creature bursts out of the leaves in front of us.
Both Locke and I stumble back in surprise and horror.
It’s the same color and texture as the leaves, which explains why we couldn’t see it.
It’s long, probably at least three meters.
On its face, two pinchers snap at us as it chitters, its antennae twitching like it’s trying to smell us.
And the legs! There are what look like thousands of legs down its long body, all moving independently, all skittering toward us.
“—giant insects,” Cipher finishes. “The one in front of you is a Scolopendra Gigantea, or the Amazonian Giant Centipede. Of course, they were once only around thirty centimeters long. As you can see, this one is more like three meters, almost nine hundred percent larger if—”
“Shut up, Cipher!” I snarl. “Now isn’t the time!”
The creature’s antennae dance between the two of us standing there, staring at it. It looks like it has armor plates along its back, the reddish-brown color catching in the light and making it look almost like it’s glowing with fire. It starts to make a sound at us, chittering more aggressively.
Locke roars at it and swings the hammer threateningly, trying to scare it away. “Go away, bug!” he says, his voice a little desperate. “Shoo, bug!”
The giant centipede focuses on Locke as he swings the hammer and shouts at it. The chitters stop, almost like its thinking and studying him.
“Ah!” Locke screams at it, still trying to scare it away. “Shoo, bug! Shoo!”
“Locke,” I growl. “I don’t think that’s—”
The bug rears up, it’s legs in the air moving and undulating in a way that makes my skin crawl. I watch, horrified, as it sucks in a large breathe, and then lets out a horrible, shrill scream.
Locke stumbles back, his eyes wide with terror. He hates bugs, and this one is massive. “Nope! I’m out!” he says, before turning and starting to run.
“What?” I screech. “Don’t leave me here with this thing!”
“Then fucking run!” he shouts back at me, already putting huge distance between us.
I look at the centipede. It looks back at me now that Locke is gone. I grimace. “No offense,” I tell it, “but you’re fucking terrifying.”
I spin on my heel without waiting for a reply and start to sprint after Locke. The problem with sprinting is it requires energy, and energy requires food. So, I immediately know I’m in trouble when my muscles start to scream and I get winded far faster than usual.
The centipede makes that horrible sound again from behind me and I risk a glance over my shoulder. It’s right behind me, trailing along, and it doesn’t look like it’s moving at its full speed.
“It’s playing with us,” I pant.
“Scolopendra Gigantea are known for their penchant for feeding on any other animal it can overpower and kill,” Cipher adds helpfully. “The normal ones were capable of killing everything from tarantulas to small birds and mice. They have incredible muscular strength—”
“Is there anything you can tell me that’s helpful?” I hiss through my teeth as I run. I’m getting slower. I can feel it. The centipede is just playing with its food at this point and we’re going to be served if we don’t get away from the thing.
“Scolopendra Gigantea is also venomous,” Cipher answers. “I would suggest you escape it quickly.”
My heart threatens to rip from my chest, it beats so hard.
My breath saws in and out of my lungs, making them burn with the overexertion.
Locke is ahead of me, screaming about how much he hates bugs.
I watch him as he scrambles over a fallen tree and falls on the other side, clearly as weak as I am.
He gets up and tries to run again, but stops.
I slam into his back, expecting him to have moved already, and we both go tumbling down in a ball of limbs.
“What are you doing?” I cry, “Go!”
Locke is staring with wide eyes in front of him. As I look at him in agitation, he slowly lifts his arm and points.
I’m not looking in that direction at first. Part of me doesn’t want to turn.
I know that when I do, I might see something more terrifying than the bug chasing after us.
Still, I’d rather see it and knows it’s coming.
Slowly, I turn, following the direction he points, before I see what it is that has him so spooked.
“Ah, yes,” Cipher purrs. “Dynastes Hercules. Better known as the Hercules Beetle. This one is a male, characterized by the long, cephalic horn and thoracic horn on his head that they use for fighting.”
“Is it a meat eater?” I pant, trying to untangle my limbs from Locke’s.
“Adult Hercules beetles are herbivores, mostly feeding on rotting fruit and tree sap. This one is about a thousand percent larger than its ancestor. Avoid the horn as Hercules beetles can lift up to eight hundred times its weight.”