Fragment 012

A heavy weight bore down on my back. I couldn’t get up. I managed to move my arms, sharp rocks cutting into my skin as I forced them beneath my chest, trying to push myself off the ground.

As I strained, I heard a muffled voice calling my name.

“X!”

Obe. It had to be. But where was he? I couldn’t see a thing.

I pressed down harder against the ground and, to my relief, my body slowly began to rise. Large slabs of stone slid from my back while streams of sand poured off me. The weight was gone. I was free.

So why couldn’t I see?

My eyes stung as dust and sand swirled through the air around me. It was like standing inside a thick fog.

“X! Rocco? Where are you? Are you okay?” Obe called again.

“I’m here. I’m okay… I think,” I replied, trying to work out where his voice was coming from. “What happened?”

Though I still couldn’t see him, Obe’s voice sounded close by. “I think when Rocco tripped on those vines, it disturbed them. They spasmed, and that caused the ground to collapse.”

“So where are we now?” I reached my hands out into the darkness, blindly trying to feel my surroundings.

“My educated guess? Some kind of underground network. A cave system… or maybe a giant pocket beneath the surface.”

Suddenly, something grabbed my hand.

“There you are!”

Obe pulled me closer. “Any signs of Rocco?”

“I haven’t heard him,” I admitted. “And I still can’t see anything.”

A beam of light suddenly pierced through the dust cloud. Tiny particles danced through the glow as Obe pulled me closer, his face finally becoming visible through the haze. A small torch attached to the top of his weapon illuminated the chamber around us.

“I imagine the dust will settle soon,” he said, sweeping the light around carefully. “Then we should be able to see properly. Let’s stay here and listen for Rocco until then.”

So we waited, listening carefully for any sign of him, but heard nothing. Gradually, just as Obe predicted, the dust began settling. Visibility slowly returned, revealing more of the underground chamber surrounding us.

“Rocco?” Obe shouted, sweeping his torch across the cavern.

Still nothing. No sign of him anywhere. Only shattered debris and collapsed rock scattered across the ground.

“Hey, X… look over there.”

Obe directed the light upwards. The vines stretched through the ceiling above us, burrowing through layers of rock and earth. From below, we could now follow their full path as they converged deeper into the cavern.

Then the beam reached the centre.

“What the…”

Obe stopped mid-sentence.

In front of us, the vines merged together into a massive trunk-like structure rising from the ground and descending from above at the same time, as though countless roots had fused together to form some grotesque underground tree. The entire thing pulsed faintly, its surface shifting and writhing constantly, almost as though it were breathing.

Dangling from the thick central mass were large bulbous spheres that hung like fruit. Their surfaces were brown, wrinkled, and disturbingly organic, almost fleshy in appearance. The outer layers twitched and folded continuously, making the entire structure feel horribly alive.

“What is that?” I asked, already knowing Obe wouldn’t have an answer.

“This is fascinating…” he muttered instead, completely captivated.

He slowly swept the torchlight across the structure before stopping on one of the trembling spheres.

“Huh?”

Obe suddenly gasped.

At the centre of the sphere, a large eyeball slowly formed and blinked open.

My skin crawled instantly.

“That… is creepy.”

We cautiously backed away, unable to break eye contact with the massive staring eye.

“I think we need to find Rocco and get out of here,” Obe whispered. He quickly glanced around the cavern. “It’s a dead end. If Rocco isn’t here, then he must’ve fallen somewhere else.”

A heavy thud suddenly echoed through the chamber from near the vine trunk.

Obe immediately swung the torch back towards the eyeball sphere.

“It’s gone?”

He lowered the beam slightly. The sphere had fallen from the trunk like fruit dropping from a tree.

We stared at it cautiously. Its skin-like membrane pulsed and bubbled violently. One of the swollen bubbles rapidly expanded before suddenly bursting open.

Immediately, a tentacle erupted from the hole and shot towards us.

“Auugh!”

The strike hit me with incredible force, launching me backwards across the cavern floor.

Obe, too stunned by what had just happened, failed to notice two more tentacles rapidly emerging from the creature. One lashed towards him, barely grazing his body. He quickly swung the torch back onto the creature.

The reaction was immediate.

The thing recoiled and covered its giant eyeball using one of its tentacles, almost like it was shielding itself from the light.

Then another heavy thud echoed through the chamber.

And another.

More of the bulb-like creatures began dropping from the vine trunk above us. As they landed, giant eyes formed across their bodies while tentacles burst from their flesh. Some even sprouted smaller tendrils tipped with additional twitching eyeballs.

I watched from the ground, my body still aching from the impact. We didn’t know much about these creatures yet, but one thing was immediately clear.

They were dangerous.