When the children finished filling the basket Lutza carried on her back with pieces of crystal, they realized that they were deep inside a huge cavern. They had already covered a large part of this without any complications. What the little ones did not know was that in the center of this great cavern was the corpse of a powerful creature. Frigglene would have recognized it had she been present. It was the same monster that she was surrounding with Darthañan.
Caveking is the name by which the natives know it. It is a parasitic mold that formed a kind of golem by assimilating corpses. It does not represent a major threat in its infancy and maturation stages. The problem comes when this mold manages to form a golem as an adult. Its ability to use hallucinogenic spores that no one below the third magnitude can resist makes it a fearsome enemy.
The golem's body in the cavern, where the little ones were, was impaled by more than a dozen crystals. If any of the children had approached, they would have been able to see the fluids, which the mold had generated inside the golem when it controlled it, emerging from the wounds caused by the crystals.
The creature had died a few days ago and not by natural means.
“Look!” Shimu shouted when he saw a sword-shaped crystal at the entrance of a tunnel through which they had not entered.
“Wow!” The children came closer and began to admire the crystal sword.
“Lutza, can you take it?” Shimu asked excitedly. His eyes seemed to shine as he saw the weapon. Although the sword came out of the rock from a very high part of it, Lutza could reach it.
Lutza reached out and grabbing the sword that came out of the wall by what would be the edge of a real weapon and began to pull it with all her strength to see if she could get it out of the wall. She used so much force that she lost her balance and slipped, which make her fall back.
The crystal was not sharp but the friction between Lutza's hands and the crystal made by the weight of the large pikmi caused her palms to be cut.
“Blood!” Mushi shouted with wide eyes.
As soon as she heard Mushi, Lutza looked down at her hands. It had not hurt much because her body was very resistant, but the panic, seeing the fuss that her friends were beginning to form, made her burst into tears.
“Guuwaaaa!” Lutza started crying raising her arms.
The other little ones, except for Mushi who was stunned, began to comfort her in the best way they could.
“Do not worry, your parents are doctors, they will cure you,” said Elizabeth a little panicked because she considered this her fault for having brought others to this adventure.
Lutza seemed to calm down for a moment; but remembering that they had run away from home and that their parents were not nearby, she cried again.
“Guuwaaaa!”
“Guuwaaaa!”
“Silence Lutza!” Shouted Shimu.
“Slurp!” The gorilla sipped her snot.
“I have an ancient solution that my sister taught me when I scraped my knee,” proclaimed Shimu eloquently moving his index finger in circles.
“Snif! Snif! ¿What it is?” asked Lutza trying to calm her tears.
“Show me your hands.”
“But it hurts.”
“Trust me. when have I been wrong?”
Lutza lowered her hands slowly still doubting Shimu's words. Shimu looked at her hands and seeing that her hands were still too tall for him to see, he frowned.
“I need to see the wound for it to work” indicated the little lepiota.
Lutza lowered her hands until they were in front of Shimu.
" Exactly as I thought, " Shimu muttered loudly for all to hear.
“Smooch!”
“Smooch!”
Shimu kissed both of Lutza's wounds.
“Done! Now everything will be fine” Shimu confirmed before the incredulous glances of his friends.
In those moments Mushi, the only one of the 5 who was not focused on what his brother was doing noticed something strange with Destroyer.
" Hey, " he said shyly.
But since nobody heard him, he had to raise his voice.
"Hey, guys!”
Immediately everyone turned to see him.
“Look at Destroyer," he said pointing to the red panda.
Destroyer stood with his hair standing, staring into the tunnel that turned dark as it descended, growling and showing his teeth.
“Grrrr!”
“Grrrr!”
“Pufff!” Suddenly his body caught fire and his eyes turned red.
From the darkness of the tunnel a terrifying insect leaped. It looked like a combination of centipedes and a fly. With a body thirty centimeters high and one-meter long. The Hazasayi, as it was known, had been attracted by the smell of blood.
Screams and cries of surprise and fear were heard in the cavern. Mushi and Elisabeth pissed themselves in fear. Shimu, Theodor, and Lutza were paralyzed from the terror they felt. The insect's appearance was disgusting, nothing like the adorable animals they were used to see in the castle.
Destroyer lunged at the hazasayi to bite it. The insect counter it by coiling around the red panda to strangle him. The move was costly because Destroyer was engulfed in flames. The two animals began to bite and scratch each other as best as they could while moving around the children. The hazasayi tried to get closer to the little ones, but every time Destroyer prevented it.
After several seconds of fighting, when the hazasayi received too many injuries, the two animals separated, making threatening sounds at each other. The insect then turned around and escaped into the tunnel through which the children had arrived.
When the hazasayi disappeared from everyone's sight, the fire around Destroyer disappeared and his eyes returned to normal. Then, due to the injuries he had received, he collapsed on the ground.
“Destroyer!” shouted Theodor being the first to react to what had happened.
The little half human half vampire ran up to his pet and hugged it carefully. Tears began to fill his face as he understood the state Destroyer was in by some kind of bond between them.
After him: Shimu, Lutza, and Mushi reacted and reached out to hug and thank Destroyer as they cried. Elizabeth was the only one who did not come near, she was aware that she had urinated and was very ashamed, she didn’t want her friend to notice.
Seeing that the place from where they had come from was where the terrifying insect had fled to, she turned her gaze to the tunnel that was in front of them. The darkness within it seemed to move, seemed alive, seemed filled with more insects.
Elizabeth felt a chill go through her body when she understood for the first time that the place where they were, was not safe.
Mr. Crispa's stories were not true. In real adventures, there were: blood, pain, fear, scary monsters, ugly smells, uncomfortable moments and cries, many cries.
Little Elizabeth's conscience weighed her down as she was the one that brought her friends to this dangerous place.
She had to think about how she was going to get them out of this dangerous situation. She had to make sure nothing bad happened to Theodor. She had to save Lutza and the Destroyer. She had to do many things. She had…
She was trying so hard that it strained her three-year-old body. Her brain began to require energy to optimize its processing. Unfortunately, the seal placed on her by her parents was activated, cutting off the power supply. The seal was designed so that the twins could only get a little more energy than the average for kids their age. And in this case, three years was a time a human nor a vampire had great internal energy.
The sudden stress to which Elizabeth's brain was subjected ended up causing the girl to lose consciousness as a measure of self-preservation.
“Plop!” Elizabeth's body collapsed.
“Eli!” Theodor shouted feeling somehow that his sister had passed out.
“Eli!”
“Eli!”
“Eli!”
Theodor screamed with all his might, he even got up carrying Destroyer and approached his sister's body.
“Eli!”
“Eli!”
He moved her desperately. But his sister did not respond.
“Eli, don't die please” Theodor implored while crying without being able to distinguish between fainting and death.
