Chapter 23: 23. It’s Not That Easy

You attempt to put the disturbing sights from your mind as you glide away, leaving the corrupted forest behind you.

Or so you'd like to believe.

Although the worst does seem to be concentrated around the weeping tree you saw and the stench does not return, it is difficult to forget what you saw when, now you know what to look for, you can see signs of a sickness throughout the forest. Even when you refuse to turn your head and look, your peripheral vision and high vantage point is enough to identify the spreading waves emanating from a swamp you had never bothered to visit.

You shiver. Whatever this was, it was nothing you wanted a part of. The very air seemed to hum with anger.

You realise too late that the humming buzz is getting louder.

You register the message

Crippling Damage to Left Winglet

Sickened condition resisted

before you notice the pain – a violent tearing sensation that sends you into freefall as you lose control of your glide. Turning in panic to try and find your attacker, you see that your winglet has been punctured, a neat hole the size of a fist drilled through your flight membrane, with one long ragged edge leading it a teardrop shape where whatever weapon had caused the initial damage had been torn free.

Luckily, with how you'd already doubled back once and lost altitude from the stench, you were only around twenty feet from the treetops when your glide becomes a plummet.

Unluckily, you had also been travelling forwards at a not inconsiderable velocity.

Thud

Crippling Damage to Right Forelimb, Disarmed

Crack

Crippling Damage to Jaw, Disarmed

Dazed Condition applied

Crunch

Crippling Damage to Tail

Thump

Your first coherent thought once you are capable of making them again is

Oh good. I landed in a crater. How considerate of me

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You shake your head, trying to dislodge the annoying buzzing noise. Then you stop, because the swaying the world starts doing all of a sudden makes you feel violently ill.

You try and make the two distinct worlds you can see overlap enough to make sense. Two big and blurry somethings are making an awful droning, buzzing noise. You want to tell it to stop, but you're having difficulty making words. Luckily, they drop to the grounds and their drone ends. They might be moving closer, but you're not sure. It's hard to keep your eyes on both of them at once.

In fact, the only things you can see clearly are a few words floating in your vision. Most of them are just talking about how crippled you are, but that's not right. You're fine. The other just says

Dazed: 7 seconds

You watch the number drop, slowly, as the big things slowly move closer to your recumbent body.

You wonder what will happen when the numbers run out.

3

2

1

OH FUCKING SHIT OH FUCK

The world snap back together. Pain surges through your body from multiple sources, but all of that just focuses your attention with crystal clarity on the chitinous creature in front of you.

Its body is held low to the ground, with a long abdomen half curled, with thick looking armour plates layered over an empty, sagging stomach. You can see organs twitch through the murky belly sacs. The thorax sits so high that it seems to almost rest on top of the stomach, a tight orb of armour from which four long wings jut out of infected looking sores, six legs that look too spindly to support the creature's weight leaking foul puss from every diseased joint.

Somehow, all this pales in comparison to the horror of the creature's head. Small, in comparison to the rest of the insectile body, it seems to be made up mostly of three parts – two of which are its eyes, multifaceted and huge. They're a milky off white, with a film of oil producing coruscating shades on the surface. The final, and perhaps most important part of the creature was its mouth. Under the eyes was perched a mouth most similar to a humans. A lower jaw, toothless and wet, made constant chewing motions as, where you would maybe be forgiven for expecting a tongue, emerged a jagged blade of chitin, unfolding from within like some mad dwarven contraption.

Level 7 Tranquil Mosquito

Animal, Mosquito, Sick

Sick? Sickened is a condition, not a type. What the fuck is happening?

You watch in morbid fascination at the jagged tongue of the apparent mosquito swells to full mast before you remember the hole torn in your wing. It moves with skittering deliberateness, steadily approaching as you struggle to find a part of your body that is willing to listen to you.

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