Nekroz

The lord has and never will forsake me! Nor will he forsake those who put their trust into him fully!

Celia, despite every warning her father had ever issued, was a stranger to disaster. No longer complete, but still far from familiar. So when the cave system began to shake, seemingly from the approach of some gargantuan creature, she froze. Mind caught between minor disbelief and the paralyzing effect of fear. Both working in tandem to root her in place. Eyes going wide as she realized that, no, she wasn’t just imagining what she felt. And that there really was a - and she almost didn’t believe it still - mountain sized life form of some sort coming this way. Each of its earth shaking steps causing the cave to rumble and be set aquiver. 

And eventually, that got to her. Woke up that part of her brain that screamed Survive. Urging her to get moving, to find someplace safe. Safer than here at least. So, for what felt like the first time all over again, Celia got moving. 

She felt the tremor move through her legs twice. The first time through her more traditional senses, and then a second through her newly gained tremor sense. And the end result was a painful awareness of exactly how wide she was now. Which was exactly wide enough that more than a few people back home might stare. She could already imagine the cat calls. 

A blush coming to her cheeks as she did so, unsure if she liked the thought or not. Only for it to be immediately drowned out by returning terror, when the tremor in the distance grew all the stronger. The quake becoming a wave that she swore she could feel ripple through the world, through the caves and beyond. Like some sort of leviathan stepping into the water. Which was utterly horrifying that anything could get that big, and doubly reassuring that she needed to get away from it. Whatever it was. 

A ship that sailed all too quickly when she had the sudden epiphany that there was virtually nowhere to go. Yeah, she could run out towards the other tunnels, the ones she hadn’t explored. But that invited an amount of risk she wasn’t really comfortable with, like at all. There were too many unknown dangers that way. Not to mention she kinda liked her little cave and it’s magic fire rocks. 

And maybe, just maybe, she was being a little panicky? 

The instincts telling her to run were strong, deeply rooted somewhere in her psyche, and also animalistic. Like how a bird might try and flee something it didn’t understand or recognize. 

There was just a lack of logic to it. After all, whatever that "thing" was there was very little odds it was here for her. Or even know that she existed in the first place. If anything, it might, maybe, potentially be in her interest to go and sneak a peak at it. After she built up the courage to commit to such an act, of course.

Which took her an embarrassingly long ten minutes. After that it was just a manner of navigating her way over to where she felt the giant settle down. A trip that took her through tunnels both known and unknown. Passing by, under, and around creatures her mind struggled to reconcile as real. 

like head sized bugs with bird feet. More bugs with tentacles, and a few that seemed to have… lava inside of their bodies.

Celia ignored those ones. 

Both because getting near anything that seemingly had lava inside of it seemed like a bad idea, and because they didn’t smell all too good either. As for the other ones? Well, she was more than a bit ashamed to admit that she had given them a taste. And by a taste, she meant gobbled them up while they were busy trying to investigate her hair flowers and the fresh corpse smell they had going on. In fact it wasn’t long at all till Celia had managed to eat enough of them to add a bit more roundness back to her tum. 

Which, maybe like a day or two ago, would’ve shocked her enough to stop. Not just that, but she probably would’ve stopped eating for the rest of the day out of sheer embarrassment. 

Now that her stomach was practically a spoiled brat, it barely stopped her for five minutes. After that it was back to stuffing herself with every "little" insect she could get her hands on. The eventual consequences a problem for future her to deal with. 

As current her already had enough on her plate. In her stomach too - which sadly still wasn’t enough to get her to stop eating. No, that came later when she finally managed to find her way to the disturbance. Tunnel ending in a massive crater. A bowl shaped indent of destruction with the open sky hanging above it all, and down below she spotted the source of the tremors.

A dragon. 

Or, at least a creature that was very generally dragon shaped. Triangle shaped head, long reptilian body, a whole host of scales - that she totally wasn’t oddly envious of - covering it from head to tail, and a pair of enormous wings. But that was where the normal ended and the weird began. 

It’s wings, a pair of great white crescents, were speared through with tentacles and alien like growths. Their shape distorted into a pair of deathly curtains. Along its back ran a series of wiggling spines, leading back down to its skull.

Which was hollowed out. Hosting instead of a skull or even a brain, a small group of, very, vaguely shaped humanoids. Or maybe it was more accurate to say they were bipedal. As the only human thing about them was the fact that they had two legs, two arms, and a torso. And one of them didn’t even meet all of those conditions. 

Physical forms aside, the group of not-monsters were each separating off into a tunnel of their choosing. The number of them present in the giant, seemingly, dragon made crater shrinking down to only two after a minute or so. And one of those two was unfortunately enough heading her way. To make matters even worse, it was both the biggest and the least human shaped member of the group. His body arranged more like that of a scorpions only in reverse. Where his bulkier front was the upper half, and his far skinnier tail split off into a number of stalks that held him upward.

Stalks that were rapidly bringing him to her side of the crater. Naturally, Celia did the smart thing and retreated. No point in risking an altercation that could be easily avoided after all. 

But the moment she took a step in the opposite direction, she felt, via tremor sense, the gargantuan scorpion like monster stiffen. His entire body going unnaturally still, almost like he just didn’t exist to her newfound sixth sense. And so she did the same. Stilling as much as she could in the vain hope that the scorpion would just forget about ever even hearing her.

Which was when her body decided now was the best time to release all the air she’d accidentally packed into her gut, with an offensively unladylike belch. 

Celia didn’t even get the chance to cover her mouth. The scorpion was that fast. In the blink of an eye, he had covered half the distance between her and the tunnel. Legs no longer carrying him like before, but practically granting him the ability to fly. And fly he did, throwing himself a dozen feet at a time, the distance between them shrinking rapidly. 

Celia started running. Going back the way she came as fast as she could. Which was a great deal faster than she was used to moving. As if she was in peak physical form in spite of her, erm, wider appearance. Compared to the scorpion though, she may as well have been a snail. A smart snail that threw herself down a smaller tunnel in the hopes of losing him. Which didn’t work. His massive physical form appearing behind her only a second later. Large, red, and alien face staring at her with a smile that reminded her of every serial killer she’d ever heard of all at once. 

And then he started digging. Claw like hands cutting through rock and dirt like it wasn’t even there. Widening the tunnel enough so that he could not-so-slowly advance towards her. 

Even with that impediment however, he was still faster than her. Still gaining on her. Still smiling. 

A smile that only grew wider when Celia started throwing insects at him in a desperate attempt to do something. But he wasn’t even fazed, and ignored the insects like a masochist might ignore the rain. Utterly unperturbed and unmoved. If anything, it looked like his smile had grown bigger.

Up until she grabbed one of the lava insects and chucked at him. And this time when it hit him, it’s armored shell bursted apart on impact. The blazing contents within its body splattering all over her pursuer. Covering his face, hands and chest, as he stopped in an attempt to wipe it off. 

Celia took that as her chance, to bolt into even narrower territory. Slamming herself down a tunnel that seemed outright claustrophobic. And she kept going, didn’t stop when she heard him catch up, and kept going after that. All the way till she reached an even deeper section of the tunnel that was finally narrow enough that even she was having trouble continuing. Hips catching on every bit of the wall that stuck out, slowly her pace by a worrying amount.

But it slowed the scorpion down even more. 

The walls here were made out of sterner stuff. Taking him a couple of seconds to gain any ground whatsoever. A length of time that only got longer the less spacious the tunnel became. 

Up until he gave up. Offering her a single bloodthirsty glance before he retreated out of sight.

Celia waited till she couldn’t even feel him via tremor sense before she moved on and began navigating her way back to her cave.

Which she did so in silence. Mentally berating herself for doing something so stupid, and her stomach for betraying her like that. Which did nothing to curb her steadily rising appetite. If anything it did the opposite, as Celia was rapidly discovering she, like her dad, was a bit of stress eater. With more than a few bugs finding their way down her maw before she made it back home. 

Where she sat down against the wall and realized she would need to update her plans once again.

Nekroz

Hi Nekroz here! Just wanted to say hi. Hi!

Patreon