Now she was fighting for her life.
It was supposed to be easy. That’s what the others had said. They had promised her that she would be okay. They had handed her meal tokens and taught her how to cultivate and how to fight. They had given her a group and acted like everything was going to be alright.
But it wasn’t. She had teleported – teleported – into dense jungle with four others. Without any direction, without any landmarks. The only thing they had to go off of was a quest, and the only thing it said was Survive (Normal). As if she wasn’t going to try to survive!
At first, she was scared. Her team tried to comfort her. But she remembered what had happened to that boy who had been taken by the redburr crabs. No one else seemed to care, but she wouldn’t forget. They wandered the landscape aimlessly and alert. Then the first swarming bugs had come, and fear had given way to annoyance. The little insects were insufferable, flying gnat-like things. She swatted them in droves as if they had no experience with humans, but they kept coming.
Her group agreed to search for water. Maybe for a place to start a fire. Nathaniel knew how to do that. He said it would help keep the bugs at bay.
It all started going wrong as soon as they stumbled on their first monster. It was large and lumpy, with two legs. It was like a kiwi, except with dog’s teeth. She’d loved kiwis. She hated that thing. It had run screaming at them through the underbrush, and before anyone had reacted, it had bitten Yvonne in the knee. They panicked. They tried pulling the monster off her, but that just made the bite worse, and its kicking legs scratched them up something awful. Finally Kevin had freaked out, swung his [mercury rod] and clubbed it to death. Shaken, they used two healing pills to get Yvonne walking again. An hour later, they met another dog-toothed kiwi and it bit Nathaniel in the hand before he put it down. He lost a finger before he got his hand free. He’d tried to stick it back on as he took his healing pill, but the wound sealed shut at the knuckle.
They counted their healing pills with growing dread. It wasn’t like it was hard to kill these things, Valerie knew that. But every instinct in her revolted against the idea of violence. It was so unnatural to her, to all of them. They weren’t prepared to do what was necessary to defend themselves.
Another hour passed and someone suggested splitting up to search. What a stupid idea! Valerie wanted to say so, but her voice caught in her throat. Luckily Yvonne shot the idea down. Kevin morphed their weapons into little machetes for them and they traveled in a tight cluster. They followed the grade of the ground, ever descending.
Yvonne was falling behind. Her leg was still bothering her. That was probably why the snake targeted her. One moment she was following at the back, the next she was looped around the waist, all the air squeezed out of her. The beast had camouflaged itself as a vine, with bark-like skin and small protrusions that looked like leaves. It lifted with immense strength.
Yvonne’s scream was cut short. The group ran back to help her. She was too high up. They grabbed her feet and tried to drag her back down. All four of them applied their weight, and the creature finally lost its grip on the trees. It fell and Kevin stamped on its head until its coils released.
They were shaken.
In time, they made it to the river. The banks were steep and covered with encroaching foliage. Scarlet fish leapt out from the deep middle section, headed upstream. Valerie drank deep from cupped hands until Nathaniel warned her about clean drinking water. Too late. Besides, they didn’t have anything to boil water in anyways.
Night began to fall. The jungle was loud with the cries of nocturnal animals. The group huddled together on the forest floor for warmth and for comfort. None of them were tired yet. They laid their [greed satchels] on the ground. Nathaniel cradled his severed finger and cried.
That’s how the giant assassin beetles had found them. Trundling with their thick shells and their long, stabbing proboscises, their approach had been hidden by the sound of the flowing river.
Kevin lies on his side, picking at the ration loaf they were all sharing. He has taken his chestplate off and scratches at his belly. His back is to the forest. At the last moment, he hears a noise and rolls to a seated position.
“Huh?”
The assassin beetle jabs him right in the chest with its needle mouthpart. He gurgles.
Valerie leaps to her feet and then falls over. She fumbles for her [mercury rod] and stands up again. The beetle shudders with glee as it suckles on Kevin’s fluids. He grabs the beetle’s extension and rips it out of his torso. Blood pours out of the hole.
Two more beetles emerge from the woods around it and their mouthparts stretch out threateningly. Valerie screams. She can’t help it. The others are on their feet already. They swing their weapons in the air, trying to fend off their attackers. But the beetles have no fear. They simply advance. One of them reaches for her leg, it’s rostrum outstretched.
Valerie does the only thing that makes sense. She flees. The others shout after her, call for her to come back. She ignores them. Her heart hammers in her chest. The jungle echoes with distant hoots and caws, a surrounding cacophony.
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The inevitable happens: she gets lost.
Calming down, she realizes the mess she is in. She listens to the darkness, trying to hear the sound of voices. Trepidatious, she retraces her steps. She debates calling out to her group, but fears the risk of making noise. Every errant sound sends her into paroxysms. She finds herself drifting towards the river’s edge as she goes.
Rustle, rustle go the leaves. She freezes. They part, and an assassin beetle emerges. It’s followed her, and its legs go click, click, clack.
Valerie turns to run again, and this time she doesn’t stop. She trips on vines. She stumbles on roots. She drops her [mercury rod] and has to find it again. But she outpaces the giant insect. In fact, she outruns it so badly, she starts to wonder what it is she had been afraid of in the first place. Couldn’t she loop around and find the others? Where was the river? All she needed was one point of reference. She peers around in the dark. All she had to do was turn around and head left, and then follow the waterway back. That’s right. That’s a good idea.
Rustle, rustle go the fronds. Valerie spins towards the sound. The greenery parts and a pair of dog-toothed kiwis waddle out. Valerie freezes. Her brain grinds to a halt. The bird-mammals bark as they spread out. They try to hem her in. Her senses come back to her.
What can she do? She kicks one, but she doesn’t put her full strength into it. The other beast rushes her and chomps on her shin.
She screams, this time at the top of her lungs. Valerie flails. She holds her machete crooked as she bends over and bashes the animal with the flat edge.
“Get off! Get off!” she cries.
The other dog-toothed kiwi approaches slowly. Its ribs are cracked from the kick. Valerie yelps as it tries to bite her. She steps away on her hurt leg, and trips on the beast biting her. Her unnatural dexterity acts to keep herself on her feet, but the pain blinds her. She falls.
The second kiwi bites her right arm. It grips on tight and tears flesh.
She howls. Adrenaline flushes through her system. She stops holding back. She punches the kiwi on her arm until it whimpers and lets go. She grabs her [mercury rod] and uses the blunt edge to shatter the neck of the one gnawing on her leg. She drags herself to her knees and pummels the surviving beast until it stops moving.
Valerie Plummer weeps. Partly in relief, and partly in despair. Blood seeps from her open wounds. She shivers. She holds herself and begs for someone to come save her.
She could get up. She could move. All it would take is willpower. All it would take is drive.
Valerie Plummer has none of those things. She’s just a normal girl, who’s lived a normal life. There are police officers and firemen and EMTs in her world. There are administrators and adults. You’re never far from help.
So she stays put. She doesn’t bind her injuries. She gets woozy from blood loss.
When the assassin beetle finally finds her, she tries to put up a fight. She does. She cracks its shell with her weapon and it oozes hemolymph. She kicks it and exoskeleton crunches.
But.
Its robotic instincts direct it. Its survival mechanisms are twisted, focused on aggression. Valerie whimpers in agony as the creature stabs her in the leg. Muscle splits. Caustic spittle enters her bloodstream. She lashes out and snaps the mouthpart in two. Undeterred, the beetle tries ineffectually to crawl her to death. For a moment, she wrestles with it, ripping out a leg. The ease at which she removes the limb surprises her. She starts swinging her fist. Chitin splits and splinters. The insect twitches and dies.
The spear-like appendage is still in her leg. Valerie tugs on it, but the pain stays her hand. She tears at her hair.
When she tries to get back on her feet, she limps barely a dozen yards before giving up. She screams into the night, the names of her team, and for help in general. Her voice grows hoarse.
She cries in relief as Nathaniel finds her. He speaks to her softly, then picks her up gently and carries her like she weighs nothing.
But things in the dark have heard her too. Beasts have come running, eager for weak prey. Fat bellied toads with sharp beaks, four legged lamprey-lizards, giant crickets with toothed knees, they boil out of the jungle and attack.
Nathaniel drops her unceremoniously as he defends himself from a prehensile tongue. With its sticky tip, the toad suctions onto his shoulder and pulls itself towards him. He clubs at the amphibian ineptly. It latches onto his body and bites down.
By the time he kills it, there’s already another creature wriggling out of the woods. By the time he kills that one, there are three more. Nathaniel starts to freak out. A cricket flies into his face and its thorned legs cut up his chin. A lamprey-lizard crawls on his pant leg and gloms its hideous sucker onto his calf.
He hurls the beasts off himself, bleeding as he does so. Valerie exchanges one final glance with him. Her eyes beg him to stay, to fight for her. Nathaniel spits one last curse. He dodges another tongue, kicks a creature out of his way, and then he runs.
May God damn him, he runs.
Valerie watches in shock as Nathaniel’s back disappears behind a trunk. She wails as a cricket the size of a loaf of bread leaps onto her chest. She shrieks as a lamprey beast bites through her shoe. She rolls over, kicks, and rises to her feet. She staggers a step forward. Another beast latches onto her leg. She collapses. Surrounded on all sides, she shouts for someone to come save her, anyone at all.
No one does. There is only sharp teeth, the swarm, and a bitter end.