Chapter 6: Chapter 3

Stones. Stones come in a variety of forms. Some are round, some are sharp, some are pretty dull while some may even shine under the sun. Stones also have quite interesting properties. For once, you can stack them or you can even use them to hit other stones. And while stones are usually great, they stop being great when you wake up on top of a few stones whose sole reason for existence was to hurt you like the one who pushed into my shoulder.

I didn’t even open my eyes, fearing that I would see nothing again as my hands touched the cold stone beneath me. At least it wasn’t like the barren landscape of purgatory as those two differentiated in one crucial regard. This place was all in all pretty smooth, completely unlike the gravel that was the ground of purgatory. At least managed to get away from the god.

“So stressful … what is wrong with me in the first place? Becoming the daughter of an evil god, am I actually dumb? And now this … why does it always have to be stone?” I was too scared to open my eyes, fearing what I may find. Would it be another hell like area or did I just lay on stone, surrounded by beautiful flowers and trees? Well, the air certainly smelled like moss if I remembered the smell correctly. It has been pretty long since I was inside a forest, but I imagined that this would smell like one.

I had two obvious choices, stand up and do something about the stone that bore into my shoulder or continue to lay down and ignore the pain. I decided to go with neither of them, rolled over to my side, still closing my eyes. There was just something great about this moment which only included me and my worries.

It was so peaceful as I imagined a new life where I would find a normal job, travel around the world, eat the best food and maybe even go swimming on a beach. I knew that it was probably a pipe dream, but what is a human without dreams? The dreams of my predecessors created an interstellar federation, technologies that may seem like pure magic and even artificial solar systems. Dreams were always my motivation to carry on and currently, I just wished for a quiet life.

Slowly, I opened my eyes, knowing that only dreaming wouldn’t get me far. A beautiful view greeted me. Glowing stalactites made out of crystals illuminated the surroundings in a gentle blue light. I was immediately mesmerized by the sight and stared into one of these, seeing the reflections of other stalactites which made the sight even more breathtaking. Never in my short life on earth did I see anything similar and not even the binary stars of Planet New New New  New New York were comparable. It was such a simple sight, yet unbelievably stunning for me, a girl that lived more than ten years in a tin can.

Realization struck me. This beautiful planet was my, no, our destination. Our journey finished, we have arrived at the place that was intended for us, a breathable atmosphere, life and … these beautiful crystals. I cried tears of happiness, ignoring anything else for the moment. I kept smiling even when I remembered that I wouldn’t see my friends for a while and I was dancing in the palm of an evil god. Still, something like that wouldn’t be able to destroy my happiness that easy. I didn’t know what to expect, but I never looked down to see my body, or even sideways to look at the ground. Too high were my expectations now and so would be my disappointment if I looked away.

Still, several minutes later I found the motivation to turn over to my side and look to the left. A tunnel, wide enough for several humans to go through side by side, stretched as far as I could see. The same crystals were everywhere on the ceiling, but the walls and ground were remarkably … plain. Sure, the walls and ground weren’t exactly smooth and you could try to hide here and there, but it was surprisingly normal stone. My hopes weren’t exactly crushed but this stone didn’t quite live up to my expectations.

“So few rocks I could use for building another castle. What a bummer…” I grabbed behind me, feeling for the stone that I laid down just a few seconds prior but couldn’t find anything except a suspiciously smooth surface. I turned around quickly and indeed found the spot a few centimetres away completely vacant. As surprised as I was, I could still make out the cause for the missing stone.

It was running. The stone was scooting away from me with six legs that rattled against the floor and a shell that indeed had a way too high similarity to a stone. I stared at the thing, mouth agape and wondered what in the world this was. It soon left my view as it turned around a corner, leaving me behind dumbfounded.

“Alrighty … focus on the obvious task first and ignore the crab. Is it a crab though?” I pinched my cheeks, realizing that I nearly got off track again. Before I could do anything else, I just needed to know what I was reincarnated as. I was pretty sure that the god didn’t change anything with my general body structure, but I still breathed out as I looked downwards. A dress made out of mostly black and a bit of red greeted me, but that wasn’t even the most important part. I had two feet, with absolutely no fish skin in between the toes! Happily, I stood up and inspected my feet a bit closer.

“Perfectly human! They could do with a bit of sunlight but it´s not like I don’t know how it is to live without the sun. They are a bit small though.” I was always a bit short for my age, but I had larger feet when I died. Concerned, I looked at my hands and immediately noticed the parallels to my feet. It wasn’t all bad though. My skin seemed nearly perfect if one ignored the deathly pale skin tone.

It seemed like I was reincarnated as a younger version of myself with barely any differences. My hair was still blonde, although a bit longer than I usually wore it, my nearly non-existent muscles had vanished completely and I was honestly a bit surprised. Positively, although …

“God of light, please punish him for his weird tastes. Reincarnating me as a defenceless child without any way to protect me. How rude … thanks for the dress though.” I couldn’t imagine how embarrassing it would be to run around naked and thankfully I didn’t have to do that. “Still, how am I supposed to save you like this? Well, it´s not like I am complaining, so lets better stay weak forever!” I stretched and tried to use the crystals as a mirror but failed miserably. The ceiling was too far away and there wasn’t a flat surface in the first place. Dispirited, I used my hands to feel my face, but there was nothing out of the ordinary too.

“Hooray for being a child again! I just hope that child labour isn´t a thing here. But what am I going to eat then?” Wondering about the social security net of this place, I started walking after the crab. The other direction seemed to be quite uninteresting, so it was obvious where I would go.

“I wonder if they have universal basic income here … probably not, but some level of security would be nice. I cannot do anything with how small I am, so how am I going to feed myself? Hmm, I could try sewing, but I was always pretty bad at it …” Finally, I reached the corner and got as close to the wall as possible. Slowly but surely, I leaned over and looked around the corner while holding my breath. There was just something about this corner that made me fear it. It wasn’t exactly the corner that sends shivers down my spine, but what I saw in the tunnel.

Firstly, the ambience didn’t really change as the blue crystals still illuminated the area. The ground and the walls were solid so there was nothing out of the ordinary here, except maybe a few rocks that littered the ground. The stone I was laying on earlier wasn’t alone though as there were now thirteen of these things in the tunnel, all having their back turned towards me. They weren’t trying to hide their presence at all, otherwise, I probably wouldn’t be able to make them out this easily. Instead they were all chirping like birds.

There are probably two occasions in which these crabs would chirp, one was to mate and one was a cry for help. As I looked at the other creature that stood in the tunnel, I was quite sure that they weren’t trying to find a partner for life.

That thing that just so happened to stare back at me looked completely unlike its children. While the small crabs barely reached my ankles, the mother or father reached up to my knees with two large pincers as hands. Its shell was completely stone-like and the rest just looked like a normal, although huge crab.

I directly knew what he was going for as it stepped on a smaller crab and began to move towards me. I just knew as I looked into these green eyes that it was out for my life, something I wished to have known before I peeked around the corner. And thus, I disregarded my pity for the small one that was crushed by its parent as he was stepped upon and turned around, running for the hopefully more boring direction, the rattling of legs closely behind me. I looked over my shoulder and saw this thing closely behind me, opening and closing its pincers while strangely walking forwards, completely unlike a crab should behave.

I looked forward once again, trying to find anything that I could use to my advantage. Sadly enough, I found nothing at all. The crystals on the ceiling were too high for me, the walls weren’t exactly helpful either and the occasional stone that laid around here could certainly turn to be one of these crabs. And so I ran at top speed through this boring tunnel, hoping for a change of scenery that would benefit me, while casually ignoring the fact that I certainly wasn’t this fit before.

Luckily, it merely took a few minutes for me to spot something in the distance. The tunnel branched off in two allowing me to change … nothing about my predicament. The crab would still follow me, no matter where I turned. Just as I was about to take the left tunnel, a loud inhumane scream reached me from the right, incentivising me further to ignore the right path.

It was probably the right decision as I found a little crack in the wall, just enough for me to fit trough after another minute. With nearly perfect timing, I slipped into it but sadly left an opportunity for the crab to close its pincers around a bit of my leg. The wound wasn’t that deep at all, just a few centimetres or so, but the attack could be called successful as it certainly incapacitated me from running further. I fell down quite fast as strength left my leg.

Luckily, I was out of reach for the crab now as it was too wide to fit in here, but unluckily, it had already won. I screamed as I held my leg and looked at the wound. It started to turn yellow eerily fast with barely any blood dropping out of it. I didn’t know what happened, but this wound was certainly not a normal one.

I let go of my leg and dragged myself further away from the crab that still tried to reach me. Small bats flew over me as I groaned in pain, scaring me completely. The small rocks were honestly kind of interesting, but once they turned older, they were quite terrifying. So, what would bats turn into? A human-sized version maybe?

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I was fortunate that I didn’t have to find out that day. The crack in the wall lead to a small cave where just small bats hang on the ceiling, looking at me with red eyes, but strangely not attacking me at all. I was glad that they turned out to be harmless and leaned against a wall, realizing that I was probably poisoned. My vision started to turn hazy and I couldn’t really move my hurting leg anymore.

I began to drift in and out of consciousness and shook my head each time I woke up again. I wanted to stay awake, knowing that the next time I drifted into sleep could be my last time. Luckily, I woke up each time but couldn’t quite shake the feeling of drowsiness. But I did have a little helper that certainly saved me that day, even when it was unintentional. Just short of napping again, a bat landed on my face and bit me in the nose lightly. It immediately let go as I shook my head and got rid off every bit of tiredness.

“Alright, how am I going to escape?” Although awake now, I felt incredibly weak and so hungry that I could eat a boar. The bats wouldn’t even be able to sate my hunger, at least that’s what I felt like. Not that I didn’t try to catch some of them though, but they were a bit too nimble for me. The bat that bit me and was now resting in my hair was certainly another food option, but couldn’t bring myself to hurt this little guy. So all that was left was to go out and find something else to eat, preferably something that didn’t defend itself.

And that was my main problem. The crab still was in front of the cave after all this time, making sure that my escape wouldn’t be that easy. I knew that I didn’t have that much time left to escape this place as my strength would deteriorate even further if I would wait too long.

“Mr or Mrs Crabby, I am sorry to say that today is the day you and I need to part. You have my pity. And now … GO!” I shouted into the small cave waking every bat up. Startled by the sudden noise, they started to fly, directly towards the exit where I was heading as well. I was so much slower than previously, but still fast enough so that I could witness what these bats were capable of.

Which was not much, in all honestly. I didn’t know what I expected, but they were certainly not the best fighters to ever exist. Indeed, they flew around the crab and attacked it with their small teeth, but they didn’t even leave a scratch on its shell. Well, at least they were small and nimble enough to evade its pincers, so no bat was hurt at all. Still, after some time they retreated back towards their cave as they realized that there was no need to panic like this. The crab on the other hand was quite agitated now and saw me as I stumbled away from it some hundred metres away. Naturally, I haven’t wasted the time the bats gave me.

It immediately started walking towards me, but this time way more slowly. Maybe it was because it realized that I was weakened, or maybe it was weaker itself because of the time spent in front of the cave. But it was still faster than me, so it would certainly catch up to quickly.

The first hope I had was another junction, but I discarded it immediately as I saw a large spider web covering the whole tunnel. There wasn’t a single chance that I would be able to escape through that. So, I gave my best to run forwards as my stomach rumbled loudly.

“Ahh, what would I give for food. Even seafood would be alright right now…” I looked behind me towards the crab that was slowly but surely moving forward with one single bat following slowly behind. It didn’t even attack the crab or anything, it just watched it from a few metres away. The crab on the other hand wasn’t fazed by this in the slightest and continued to chase me.

“Crappy crab, let me tell you this, from one idiot to the other: It´s not worth it. There is barely any meat on my bones anyway.” The crab seemed to be pretty unfazed, but that was to be expected. After my persuasion didn’t work, we stumbled through the tunnel that ended after another hundred metres or so. The crab naturally didn’t give up on its meal but seemed to be a lot weaker now with two legs even completely motionless.

I chose to ignore it for the time being and looked downwards. The tunnel lead to an underground ravine, deeper than I could see, stuffed with countless openings like this one, some even spewing water out of them. I shortly considered climbing towards one of the dry ones, but I immediately discarded that as I was too weak to even walk properly. The only other choice I had was to jump so … I turned around and looked at the crab a few metres away. There was no way that I was going to jump.

“Hey, crab. I have seen a boxer before. Not really and on a screen, but that’s basically the same these days. So if you come any closer, I´m going to punch the crab out of you.” I smiled because of my pun but still inched closer to the end of the tunnel, but only slightly.

Three of its six legs were already completely limp and it dragged its body over the stone, making loud noises. Three metres away, another leg gave up and a pincer stopped closing and opening. Still, it didn’t seem like it was going to give up on the last few metres, so I had to do something.

“Didn’t the god of reincarnation say something about magic?” I pondered about my possibilities and recalled everything I knew about magic. Just as the crab was one metre away, I finally found the answer.

“Isn´t magic this illusion stuff? In that case … magical punch!” I focused my chi, I funnelled my mana, chanted abracadabra and used the whole momentum I could muster to kick it. It died.

In fact, it went limb even before I kicked it, but I couldn’t stop anymore. Barefoot, hit the hard shell and I winced as I held my ankle. I still held my breath, doing my best to not scream and alert every monster in the other tunnels of my presence.

After giving everything for quite some time, the pain slowly got better and I could focus on the more important stuff. Food. It was just there before me, but I couldn’t find any way to pry open the hard shell. I really tried my best, but after ten minutes of hard labour, I just gave up and pitifully crouched against the wall, completely devoid of any energy. My stomach was rumbling non-stop because the food was right in front of me, yet so far away at the same time.

“Wait … this thing … died of poison … there has to be a weak point.” Well, it was certainly not too late for me to try tearing off the legs or so, but a whole army of bats ruined my plan. I spotted them as I robbed over to the crab and tried to ignore them at first, but as soon as they swirled around me and the crab it became impossible to do so. I was right with assuming that they wouldn’t hurt me directly, but I was crushed as I saw them flying away again. The crab? Gone, carried away by a swarm of surprisingly strong bats.

“You rowdies! That’s mine!” They did leave behind something else though. A dagger, reflecting the blue light of the crystals was laying exactly where the crab once was. “I´m not taking this!” My voice was beginning to sound pretty hoarse, but I wasn’t done yet. “Okay, I am taking this, but I will get my food back!”

After standing up and stumbling forward, I inspected the dagger closer. Runes were inscribed in the handle, but all in all, it just looked like a normal dagger, although the edge was pretty badly done but that came from a girl who knew about cutting edge technology. Sadly, I couldn’t use the blade like a mirror, but the dagger would certainly come in handy another time.

And so, I stumbled back to the bat hideout, completely alone this time as my trusted companion left together with his friends to enjoy the meal. Shortly afterwards, I walked past the spider’s nest while lamenting the fact that my food was stolen from me loudly. I stopped right in front of it, thinking that I heard something. Just as I stepped forward again, shaking my head in disappointment, I heard it again.

“Hilfe …” I heard an unknown language, completely strange to me from this tunnel. It sounded like a weakened, desperate human made these sounds, although I could be mistaken. “Bitte …”

“Yeah, I´m not going to fall for that trap. Stones are monsters, spiders can speak and I am quite hungry and frustrated that I can probably never build a castle again. So bye, have a great time.”

I could nearly see the crab in front of me, steaming deliciously as I made a step forward once again.

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