07-14-2018, 03:54 PM
China couldn't be sure how long it took him to eat the big blob. Mostly because he had never learned how to tell time. Or even to count.
What he did know, though, was that despite its large size and threatening appearance, it hadn't actually taken all that long for it to stop moving after he’d burrowed his way into its head through that cyclopean eyeball and begun chowing down on soft, succulent grey matter.
And now, some-number-beyond-two sleeps later, he was finally finished scraping away as much flesh as he could from the insides of the food’s thick exoskeleton, and rested up enough to continue onwards with this aimless journey. On all six limbs, he stalked out of the thing’s gaping eye socket. He peered around.
Odd.
The forest floor was bare now, as far as he could tell given the ever-present mists, at least. The giant monsters had vanished without a trace. Or almost without a trace, in any case. The ground was still slicked with their slime, and squelched slightly as China trod through it. The stuff stunk, and tasted vile… but after spending as long as he had inside the guts of one of these bloated behemoths, the Ceramic Beast had ceased to notice the smell, and with no sense of touch, he didn’t have to deal with the horrible feeling of the cold, sticky ooze clinging to his body, which likely would have repulsed a more usual living thing.
He set off, not bothering to climb back into the trees, just crawling around on the ground. The place was utterly lifeless, as if the maggot-y things had eaten everything on their way out. He walked for so long that he began to feel hungry again.
Eventually, the slime underfoot vanished, and not long thereafter, he started finding signs of wildlife. The trees changed as well—not all of them in this area were laden with needles; some had actual leaves—and in places there were bushes and grasses growing. At last, he came upon something worth hunting.
A huge, heavily muscled warthog—almost four times the size of the largest of its kind he had seen in his own world—which bellowed and charged out of a thick wall of fog at him, its tiny, porcine eyes glinting evilly.
Spinning acrobatically to one side, the porcelain golem carved open its flank with five razor-edged talons, then cackled softly, rising to stand on two legs as it was once more swallowed by the mists. He could still hear it, though, shuffling though detritus and dirt as it awkwardly turned to charge again. Stuffing the bloodied digits into his grinning maw, China sucked off the delectable red stuff. Then grimaced. The taste was ruined by the vile ichor which still coated his form. He really needed to get that stuff off, somehow. And as soon as possible, preferably.
There was no time for further idle thoughts then, for the yum-yum tried once more to tackle him, roaring its rage at his audacity. A thrill of terror rushed through him, but he would not let it control him. Instead, the fragile golem dived forwards, spinning in mid-air to land on his back and skid a little way across the soft, loamy earth. Passing right under the raging beast bearing down upon him.
There was a crashing noise, as some part of him was trodden underfoot—this manoeuvre was hardly a cautious one, so it didn’t exactly come as a shock—but he paid it no heed, reaching up with all four hands to tear long furrows in the food’s flesh as its bulk passed by overhead. A cascade of droplets of blood sprayed down from its guts, splattering upon the ground and upon the already slime-slicked surface of China’s body.
It bellowed again, so loud that the Ceramic Beast feared his ears might break… if such a thing was even possible. It was a sound of bestial wrath and agony made manifest.
And then it was past him.
For just an instant, he was staring up at the thick mist hovering above, and then he sprung back to his feet.
Correction; foot.
Halfway down his right shin, his leg ended in a jagged mess of shards, the rest having been shattered into tiny pieces by one mighty hoof. He stumbled, flailed, and then his shattered shin hit the ground with a crunch, more little slivers of pottery breaking off as the cracks spread. Hissing, his wide mouth now set in a scowl, he lowered his body, leaning forwards, arms outstretched to the side, tails back to act as counterweights, helping keep his balance.
The giant warthog turned once again, ragged breathing easily audible, though he had lost sight of it in the fog. This time, the golem would have a harder time of it, should he try evading. Having lost a foot would cost him. So instead, he readied himself to pounce.
He hesitated a moment after it’s ground-shaking charge began, and then he leaped.
They collided with a loud crash, his chest striking its head and caving in, as the cracks surrounding his ‘heart’ spread like bolts of lightning down his torso, shattering its front section. Had he a pulse, it would have been racing. The food roared some more, shaking its head wildly from side-to-side and continuing to run. It may even have been accelerating.
Rearing back, the golem grabbed onto its curled tusks with his lower set of hands, then began swiping at its face and eyes with his upper pair, quickly blinding the maddened creature. Its cries took on a new pitch as it ran—now with no way of knowing where it was even headed—both its own body and the much frailer China’s smashing through any low-hanging branches that got in their way. Though he couldn’t feel the hits he was taking, the Ceramic Beast knew that he needed to end this quickly, for the cracks would be spreading across his body, and he’d be dashed to pieces before too long if they carried on like this. Or, worse yet, the dumb animal might just charge straight into the trunk of a tree and obliterate him instantly.
Oh.
Actually... that gave him an idea, “Aha, me-me such genius-smarty, yes, need-must just jump off-off when yum-yum get near-close to hit tree-thing, then it bash head on wood-trunk and stop move. Then be easy-easy prey-food for eating, yes-yes.”
His words were snatched away by the wind as he uttered them, not that the golem noticed. He hadn’t even realised he had spoken out loud at all. Turning to look behind him—in the direction the boar was taking them, he held one upper-arm over his face and squinted, trying to keep the branches that pelted him from breaking his eyes.
He tugged on the food’s tusks, trying vainly to angle it towards a tree, even as it did its best to shake him off. Soon enough—possibly as a result of the golem’s actions, but just as likely due to pure coincidence—they were headed directly for a thick, sturdy-looking trunk. China waited until almost the last moment before slackening his grip and allowing himself to be tossed away.
The world became a green and brown blur as he spun through branches and foliage, and then terminated with an awful crash as he struck a tree trunk himself.
Oddly, he could still see.
Dirt.
He could see dirt. He turned his head. Well, his eye.
The Central Eye seemed undamaged, despite the collision. From it, China could see much of the rest of his body scattered around him. He called to it, and it answered. The shards of his being did not join back together and merge into one again, but they did group up around him in a swarm of of sharpened pieces.
The eye rose, and China drifted forwards.
The mist peeled away before him, revealing the stunned beast stumbling dizzily away from the tree it had struck. China’s eye and the cloud of razor-edged slivers that wreathed it swung around to hover overhead, and then the porcelain rained down, cutting and slashing brutally into its hide. The beast did its best to rear and thrash and roll around to crush the shards to powder, but to no avail.
The little pieces of golem darted away like shoals of fish, faster than it could keep up, before circling back to slice at it some more. Soon the enormous creature resembled nothing so much as a huge chunk of bloodied meat. It slumped, unable to keep fighting back, breathing raggedly, and slowly died, its organs shutting down as blood fled its body.
China fitted his pieces back together as best he could, until he had managed to roughly reassemble himself into something that looked quite close to his original form. It didn’t move right, though. He couldn’t get them to join back up, and as they were now, his various pieces would not bend, they were just static slivers of ceramic. Furthermore, the black void that had been his insides was gone entirely, so no matter how much he chewed at his prey’s flesh with his teeth, anything he swallowed simply dropped down through his body until it reached his feet.
For some time, he continued trying to eat, allowing himself consumed by panic rather than stopping to think things through. Eventually, he gave up and wallowed in misery for a while, certain that he was going to die a long, slow death by starvation.
And then he remembered that he could heal even the most grievous of injuries just by resting for a while. And so, he released the various parts of himself from his control, allowing his form to collapse into a small pile of bits and pieces beside his catch.
As he lay there and focused on restoring himself, a bubble of rainbow light grew from nowhere to envelop him in its comforting radiance. And then, all he had to do was wait…
***
He was whole.
He was also full… or, at least, content; no longer starving. The warthog meat was delectable, especially compared to the filth of those maggot-things.
He continued his aimless trek through the mist-shrouded forest, and eventually found a rushing stream in which he was able to bathe, to cleanse himself of the ichor of that bug. He even managed to snag himself a few fish… though their scales were a pale, dull green shade, and in place of mouths, numerous tendrils dangled from the lower halves of their heads. They tasted of rot.
Like so much else in this place, there was something wrong with them. He wasn’t overly concerned about the potential for detrimental effects to his health… mostly because he wasn’t really intelligent enough to consider the possibility. Poisonings and illnesses had always been things that happened to other people, back in his own world, and he had yet to accept that such things could do him any real harm in this new reality.
As far as China was concerned, the worst thing that could ever be done to food was to make it taste nasty.
And taste nasty, those fish most certainly did. So hesoon left the stream and ventured onwards…
***
He walked, he hunted, he ate.
Most foods here were foul, but there were a few—such as the giant warthog from before—which were much nicer. His favourite, he discovered, were a breed of three-eyed bats with glowing, lilac irises, which haunted the higher boughs of the trees. He could have sworn that at one point the fog hadn’t reached all the way to the treetops… but it sure did now.
No matter how high up he got, there was always more mist. It wasn’t a problem, though. The bats’ eyes were so bright that he could see them in his mind even when his eyes were blinded, and though they made no noise that his ears could detect, their screeches and shrieks were loud enough that he felt sure they would break his head wide open.
They were aggressive, but he was fast and large, and they were soft and small and tasty.
He got so used to the eerie silence of the forest—broken only by the noise of his own movement as he scrabbled across and leapt between trees—that when he came upon the voices, they caught his attention immediately, even though they must still have been quite some distance away.
Of course, that may have been largely thanks to the excellent acoustics in this forest. He homed in on them quickly, leaping from branch to branch with the natural grace and agility of a born predator. The golem soon found himself close enough to make out individual words.
There were light thumping noises, as some of the speakers fell over, but the fog seemed to be thickening, and a strange sensation sped throughout his body. He slumped over, against the trunk of the tree he was perched upon, and which he couldn’t even see, though it was but a scant few inches from his eyes.
Now that the feminine voice mentioned it, the Ceramic Beast could hear something… or not. Hear was the wrong word, perhaps. It was more like the bats, he though. The vague, unintelligible words seemed to show up in his head without passing through his ears. They got louder, and he hissed softly in pain, curling up against the tree trunk, talons digging into the bark.
He still couldn’t make out what the speaker was trying to say, but he quickly ceased to care, as all the strength rapidly drained from his body. He just felt so, so weary. China closed his eyes and let unconsciousness take him, bringing with it a welcome relief from the unabating screams of the voice in his head.
***
When he awoke, he almost toppled from his perch immediately. After shrieking and flailing for a moment, he managed to sink his claws into wood, and hold on.
There was something wrong, though.
His body was… different.
Odd.
He looked down at himself, and his eyes bulged with shock. So small, so skinny! Whilst he slept, some horrendous change had warped his form, making him tiny and weak.
…
Eh. Could be worse.
Shrugging his two sets of arms, China began crawling down from the tree. The mist had thinned dramatically in the area in front of him, leaving a wide space almost entirely devoid of fog.
And in this wide space, there were corpses. Being little was unfortunate. It would make hunting harder… but with this much meat to feed on, he wouldn’t have to hunt for a while. Also, being small might mean that he would be able to state his hunger more easily as well, in which case this great bounty might last him even longer than it would have ordinarily.
All in all, he was feeling pretty optimistic, despite the curse he had found himself under.
That ended when he reached the first body and discovered that it was just a fake. It had no scent, but he bit it anyway, just to check and make sure.
He spat out a mouthful of sand, and glowered around at the scenery. He couldn’t smell a drop of blood, no matter how hard he sniffed. Every one of them was fake.
It did occur to him that it might be the setup for an ambush, as surely a huge collection of meat like this would prove an irresistible temptation to any hungry person who laid eyes on it, but, “No problem if trick-trap, come-come attack-fight, give-give chance to eat-kill food faker, get-get much-many revenge.”
Continuing to mutter vague yet heated threats under his breath, the porcelain golem stalked around the fog free area for a while longer, hoping that someone would leap out and give him an opportunity to take out his frustration on them.
Eventually, though, he grew bored and lost his patience. No one was here. No one was coming.
He turned to go, to head back into the deeper fog, when something nearby caught his intention. He sniffed.
He was almost positive that he had actually picked up the scent of blood this time.
He glanced around. It took him a little while, but between his sight and smell, he tracked down the source, and slunk over to a nearby bush. A few of its wicked-looking thorns glistened with fresh blood, as if some unwary passer-by had stumbled and cut themselves. A few torn threads had been caught and left behind on the plant.
He had been right. There had been real two-legs here, not just these false ones. The golem’s face—previously having reverted to its blank, mouthless, ‘default’ appearance—now split in a cheshire grin.
Passing the bush, he sauntered after his prey, on the lookout for any more telltale signs to follow.
***
It was hard to really get any idea of how large the village actually was. It stretched on as far as he could see before him… but when ‘as far as he could see’ was only a few dozen metres, that wasn’t saying a whole lot.
There was more fog here than in the corpse-clearing, though still not nearly as much as in the forest proper. China was crouched on one of the lower branches of a tree, looking out over the little huts built from rocks, bricks of dried earth, and sticks. They were primitive compared to other humans; even a being such as the Ceramic Beast could see that.
Not all of their houses were on the ground, though; many nestled in the lower boughs of the trees scattered throughout their village. Much like the place with the false dead, this area held fewer trees than the surrounding woods, though they hadn’t been cleared away completely.
All in all, it would be a hard place to sneak into; enough trees to provide the denizens with plenty of places to watch for invaders, but not so many that an intrepid golem could use them as cover.
He had decided, therefore, to wait until he spotted a group of them headed away from the camp to go hunt or forage for food before following them and attacking when they least expected it.
He never got the chance.
He'd been sitting there, in his tree on the edge of their settlement, concealed by the leafy branches, for only a few hours when a small band approached. At their head was a boy in worn and poorly repaired leather armour, who wore a scowl on his face and whose lip was split by a ragged scar. He might have been quite intimidating, were he a few decades older.
Behind him were five others dressed in brown cloth and leather, as well as a blonde girl with pointed ears, right in the middle of the group, who was clad in robes which appeared to consist entirely of leaves and grasses.
At first, the golem was sure that these seven were the prey he had been waiting for, and he grinned savagely, his mind swirling with thoughts of brutal violence, murder and feasting. If his body had been capable of salivating, he was sure he’d have drooled.
But they stopped. Right by the foot of his tree.
That was when he started to get a little nervous. The girl in green looked up and began chanting something. Her eyes shone with emerald light. He was strongly tempted to either flee, or leap at them and attack.
They were far, far too close to the rest of the children, though. Should they all discover his presence, there was no doubt that they’d do everything they possibly could to kill him… which… wouldn’t be the end of the world, he supposed. Still, he’d rather not fight a whole horde at once, if he had any say in the matter; he liked his fights to include the possibility of victory, after all.
And running was definitely out of the question. No matter how dire his circumstances, he couldn’t do anything that would jeopardise his chances of being reborn. If he started fleeing from danger, Omni may well get bored of him and consign him to never return after dying.
So he sat and waited, hoping that they would finish what they were doing and pass him by.
Instead, the glowy-eye food pointed directly at him, and scores of creepers and vines broke away from the tree he was in, and some others nearby, to dart his way and wrap tightly around him before he could do more than twitch in alarm.
He was tugged down from the trees, and the little foods picked him up, whilst he struggled in vain against his bonds. The one dressed in foliage smiled and patted his head, as if he were some sort of cuddly little kitten. He hissed at her.
“The One sees everything in its forest,” she announced uninvited, “you could never have taken us by surprise… but once you too have learned to accept its wisdom, you will find life here far preferable to existence on the outside. Now, come along and let’s introduce you to your fellow recruits.”
When China gave no response other than a snarl, she patted his head again, then nodded to the leader of the little band. The boy gave the order, and the little band of children hauled away the trussed-up Beast.
They carried him through their village—which turned out to be quite expansive, if not exactly advanced—until they reached the entrance to a cave in the side of a cliff face. The scarred food was given a burning torch by a girl standing guard outside. China was then brought within, and down a series of winding, labyrinthine tunnels, which he was sure must have led deep underground, until they reached a small cavern.
Like all of the tunnels so far, this wider area was damp, and moss grew here and there. There were even a few mushrooms. A crude gate of branches and twine blocked the entrance, and was guarded by a couple more children. In a sconce on the tunnel wall another torch burned, though its light didn’t reach far into the cell itself.
“Another one?” one of the guard-kids asked, as her partner worked on opening up the gate. The pointy-ear food simply nodded, saying nothing. When the portal had swung wide, the golem was placed back on his feet and at the wave of a hand from the girl in green, his bonds fell away.
Before he could react at all, a couple of his captors shoved him hard from behind. He stumbled forwards and fell—hands and knees clacking as they struck the stone floor—and the gate was slammed shut behind him, then the rope that they used to hold it closed was hurriedly tied tightly once more.
The prison was illuminated somewhat as the leader of the band that had brought China here stepped up to the entrance, and the light of his torch revealed to to the golem his fellow inmates. Three seemed to be more-or-less regular human children, but one of the others had a grey complexion and a pair of horns, while the final child was purple, with pointed ears.
“This room may not be very nice, but as far down as it is, you’ll be able to hear the One much more clearly… listen, and accept what you hear. Once we know that you’ve done so, you'll be free to return to the surface, and live among us.”
The Ceramic Beast barely listened; he was much more focused on observing the small group he’d just been penned in with. Killing children had never been difficult for him before, but now that he was just as small and weak as they were, he got the distinct impression that he might find them a lot more troublesome.
“Just make sure to decide quickly. We wouldn’t want any of you to starve to death.” with those parting words, the scar-faced youth turned and strode off, taking the light with him. Judging by the sound of receding footfalls, the rest of his band had followed him, leaving behind only the pair guarding the exit.
What he did know, though, was that despite its large size and threatening appearance, it hadn't actually taken all that long for it to stop moving after he’d burrowed his way into its head through that cyclopean eyeball and begun chowing down on soft, succulent grey matter.
And now, some-number-beyond-two sleeps later, he was finally finished scraping away as much flesh as he could from the insides of the food’s thick exoskeleton, and rested up enough to continue onwards with this aimless journey. On all six limbs, he stalked out of the thing’s gaping eye socket. He peered around.
Odd.
The forest floor was bare now, as far as he could tell given the ever-present mists, at least. The giant monsters had vanished without a trace. Or almost without a trace, in any case. The ground was still slicked with their slime, and squelched slightly as China trod through it. The stuff stunk, and tasted vile… but after spending as long as he had inside the guts of one of these bloated behemoths, the Ceramic Beast had ceased to notice the smell, and with no sense of touch, he didn’t have to deal with the horrible feeling of the cold, sticky ooze clinging to his body, which likely would have repulsed a more usual living thing.
He set off, not bothering to climb back into the trees, just crawling around on the ground. The place was utterly lifeless, as if the maggot-y things had eaten everything on their way out. He walked for so long that he began to feel hungry again.
Eventually, the slime underfoot vanished, and not long thereafter, he started finding signs of wildlife. The trees changed as well—not all of them in this area were laden with needles; some had actual leaves—and in places there were bushes and grasses growing. At last, he came upon something worth hunting.
A huge, heavily muscled warthog—almost four times the size of the largest of its kind he had seen in his own world—which bellowed and charged out of a thick wall of fog at him, its tiny, porcine eyes glinting evilly.
Spinning acrobatically to one side, the porcelain golem carved open its flank with five razor-edged talons, then cackled softly, rising to stand on two legs as it was once more swallowed by the mists. He could still hear it, though, shuffling though detritus and dirt as it awkwardly turned to charge again. Stuffing the bloodied digits into his grinning maw, China sucked off the delectable red stuff. Then grimaced. The taste was ruined by the vile ichor which still coated his form. He really needed to get that stuff off, somehow. And as soon as possible, preferably.
There was no time for further idle thoughts then, for the yum-yum tried once more to tackle him, roaring its rage at his audacity. A thrill of terror rushed through him, but he would not let it control him. Instead, the fragile golem dived forwards, spinning in mid-air to land on his back and skid a little way across the soft, loamy earth. Passing right under the raging beast bearing down upon him.
There was a crashing noise, as some part of him was trodden underfoot—this manoeuvre was hardly a cautious one, so it didn’t exactly come as a shock—but he paid it no heed, reaching up with all four hands to tear long furrows in the food’s flesh as its bulk passed by overhead. A cascade of droplets of blood sprayed down from its guts, splattering upon the ground and upon the already slime-slicked surface of China’s body.
It bellowed again, so loud that the Ceramic Beast feared his ears might break… if such a thing was even possible. It was a sound of bestial wrath and agony made manifest.
And then it was past him.
For just an instant, he was staring up at the thick mist hovering above, and then he sprung back to his feet.
Correction; foot.
Halfway down his right shin, his leg ended in a jagged mess of shards, the rest having been shattered into tiny pieces by one mighty hoof. He stumbled, flailed, and then his shattered shin hit the ground with a crunch, more little slivers of pottery breaking off as the cracks spread. Hissing, his wide mouth now set in a scowl, he lowered his body, leaning forwards, arms outstretched to the side, tails back to act as counterweights, helping keep his balance.
The giant warthog turned once again, ragged breathing easily audible, though he had lost sight of it in the fog. This time, the golem would have a harder time of it, should he try evading. Having lost a foot would cost him. So instead, he readied himself to pounce.
He hesitated a moment after it’s ground-shaking charge began, and then he leaped.
They collided with a loud crash, his chest striking its head and caving in, as the cracks surrounding his ‘heart’ spread like bolts of lightning down his torso, shattering its front section. Had he a pulse, it would have been racing. The food roared some more, shaking its head wildly from side-to-side and continuing to run. It may even have been accelerating.
Rearing back, the golem grabbed onto its curled tusks with his lower set of hands, then began swiping at its face and eyes with his upper pair, quickly blinding the maddened creature. Its cries took on a new pitch as it ran—now with no way of knowing where it was even headed—both its own body and the much frailer China’s smashing through any low-hanging branches that got in their way. Though he couldn’t feel the hits he was taking, the Ceramic Beast knew that he needed to end this quickly, for the cracks would be spreading across his body, and he’d be dashed to pieces before too long if they carried on like this. Or, worse yet, the dumb animal might just charge straight into the trunk of a tree and obliterate him instantly.
Oh.
Actually... that gave him an idea, “Aha, me-me such genius-smarty, yes, need-must just jump off-off when yum-yum get near-close to hit tree-thing, then it bash head on wood-trunk and stop move. Then be easy-easy prey-food for eating, yes-yes.”
His words were snatched away by the wind as he uttered them, not that the golem noticed. He hadn’t even realised he had spoken out loud at all. Turning to look behind him—in the direction the boar was taking them, he held one upper-arm over his face and squinted, trying to keep the branches that pelted him from breaking his eyes.
He tugged on the food’s tusks, trying vainly to angle it towards a tree, even as it did its best to shake him off. Soon enough—possibly as a result of the golem’s actions, but just as likely due to pure coincidence—they were headed directly for a thick, sturdy-looking trunk. China waited until almost the last moment before slackening his grip and allowing himself to be tossed away.
The world became a green and brown blur as he spun through branches and foliage, and then terminated with an awful crash as he struck a tree trunk himself.
Oddly, he could still see.
Dirt.
He could see dirt. He turned his head. Well, his eye.
The Central Eye seemed undamaged, despite the collision. From it, China could see much of the rest of his body scattered around him. He called to it, and it answered. The shards of his being did not join back together and merge into one again, but they did group up around him in a swarm of of sharpened pieces.
The eye rose, and China drifted forwards.
The mist peeled away before him, revealing the stunned beast stumbling dizzily away from the tree it had struck. China’s eye and the cloud of razor-edged slivers that wreathed it swung around to hover overhead, and then the porcelain rained down, cutting and slashing brutally into its hide. The beast did its best to rear and thrash and roll around to crush the shards to powder, but to no avail.
The little pieces of golem darted away like shoals of fish, faster than it could keep up, before circling back to slice at it some more. Soon the enormous creature resembled nothing so much as a huge chunk of bloodied meat. It slumped, unable to keep fighting back, breathing raggedly, and slowly died, its organs shutting down as blood fled its body.
China fitted his pieces back together as best he could, until he had managed to roughly reassemble himself into something that looked quite close to his original form. It didn’t move right, though. He couldn’t get them to join back up, and as they were now, his various pieces would not bend, they were just static slivers of ceramic. Furthermore, the black void that had been his insides was gone entirely, so no matter how much he chewed at his prey’s flesh with his teeth, anything he swallowed simply dropped down through his body until it reached his feet.
For some time, he continued trying to eat, allowing himself consumed by panic rather than stopping to think things through. Eventually, he gave up and wallowed in misery for a while, certain that he was going to die a long, slow death by starvation.
And then he remembered that he could heal even the most grievous of injuries just by resting for a while. And so, he released the various parts of himself from his control, allowing his form to collapse into a small pile of bits and pieces beside his catch.
As he lay there and focused on restoring himself, a bubble of rainbow light grew from nowhere to envelop him in its comforting radiance. And then, all he had to do was wait…
***
He was whole.
He was also full… or, at least, content; no longer starving. The warthog meat was delectable, especially compared to the filth of those maggot-things.
He continued his aimless trek through the mist-shrouded forest, and eventually found a rushing stream in which he was able to bathe, to cleanse himself of the ichor of that bug. He even managed to snag himself a few fish… though their scales were a pale, dull green shade, and in place of mouths, numerous tendrils dangled from the lower halves of their heads. They tasted of rot.
Like so much else in this place, there was something wrong with them. He wasn’t overly concerned about the potential for detrimental effects to his health… mostly because he wasn’t really intelligent enough to consider the possibility. Poisonings and illnesses had always been things that happened to other people, back in his own world, and he had yet to accept that such things could do him any real harm in this new reality.
As far as China was concerned, the worst thing that could ever be done to food was to make it taste nasty.
And taste nasty, those fish most certainly did. So hesoon left the stream and ventured onwards…
***
He walked, he hunted, he ate.
Most foods here were foul, but there were a few—such as the giant warthog from before—which were much nicer. His favourite, he discovered, were a breed of three-eyed bats with glowing, lilac irises, which haunted the higher boughs of the trees. He could have sworn that at one point the fog hadn’t reached all the way to the treetops… but it sure did now.
No matter how high up he got, there was always more mist. It wasn’t a problem, though. The bats’ eyes were so bright that he could see them in his mind even when his eyes were blinded, and though they made no noise that his ears could detect, their screeches and shrieks were loud enough that he felt sure they would break his head wide open.
They were aggressive, but he was fast and large, and they were soft and small and tasty.
He got so used to the eerie silence of the forest—broken only by the noise of his own movement as he scrabbled across and leapt between trees—that when he came upon the voices, they caught his attention immediately, even though they must still have been quite some distance away.
Of course, that may have been largely thanks to the excellent acoustics in this forest. He homed in on them quickly, leaping from branch to branch with the natural grace and agility of a born predator. The golem soon found himself close enough to make out individual words.
Quote:“The One brings us all back to being children and looks after us. And it will do it for you as well.”
“It will do no such thing.”
“You’re already in its forest. You have no choice.”
There were light thumping noises, as some of the speakers fell over, but the fog seemed to be thickening, and a strange sensation sped throughout his body. He slumped over, against the trunk of the tree he was perched upon, and which he couldn’t even see, though it was but a scant few inches from his eyes.
Quote:“You... you won’t take me... I... am the great... Illidan...”
“Yes, the great Illidan Stormrage. Now go to sleep. Everything will be all right when you wake up. It promises. Can’t you hear it?”
Now that the feminine voice mentioned it, the Ceramic Beast could hear something… or not. Hear was the wrong word, perhaps. It was more like the bats, he though. The vague, unintelligible words seemed to show up in his head without passing through his ears. They got louder, and he hissed softly in pain, curling up against the tree trunk, talons digging into the bark.
He still couldn’t make out what the speaker was trying to say, but he quickly ceased to care, as all the strength rapidly drained from his body. He just felt so, so weary. China closed his eyes and let unconsciousness take him, bringing with it a welcome relief from the unabating screams of the voice in his head.
***
When he awoke, he almost toppled from his perch immediately. After shrieking and flailing for a moment, he managed to sink his claws into wood, and hold on.
There was something wrong, though.
His body was… different.
Odd.
He looked down at himself, and his eyes bulged with shock. So small, so skinny! Whilst he slept, some horrendous change had warped his form, making him tiny and weak.
…
Eh. Could be worse.
Shrugging his two sets of arms, China began crawling down from the tree. The mist had thinned dramatically in the area in front of him, leaving a wide space almost entirely devoid of fog.
And in this wide space, there were corpses. Being little was unfortunate. It would make hunting harder… but with this much meat to feed on, he wouldn’t have to hunt for a while. Also, being small might mean that he would be able to state his hunger more easily as well, in which case this great bounty might last him even longer than it would have ordinarily.
All in all, he was feeling pretty optimistic, despite the curse he had found himself under.
That ended when he reached the first body and discovered that it was just a fake. It had no scent, but he bit it anyway, just to check and make sure.
He spat out a mouthful of sand, and glowered around at the scenery. He couldn’t smell a drop of blood, no matter how hard he sniffed. Every one of them was fake.
It did occur to him that it might be the setup for an ambush, as surely a huge collection of meat like this would prove an irresistible temptation to any hungry person who laid eyes on it, but, “No problem if trick-trap, come-come attack-fight, give-give chance to eat-kill food faker, get-get much-many revenge.”
Continuing to mutter vague yet heated threats under his breath, the porcelain golem stalked around the fog free area for a while longer, hoping that someone would leap out and give him an opportunity to take out his frustration on them.
Eventually, though, he grew bored and lost his patience. No one was here. No one was coming.
He turned to go, to head back into the deeper fog, when something nearby caught his intention. He sniffed.
He was almost positive that he had actually picked up the scent of blood this time.
He glanced around. It took him a little while, but between his sight and smell, he tracked down the source, and slunk over to a nearby bush. A few of its wicked-looking thorns glistened with fresh blood, as if some unwary passer-by had stumbled and cut themselves. A few torn threads had been caught and left behind on the plant.
He had been right. There had been real two-legs here, not just these false ones. The golem’s face—previously having reverted to its blank, mouthless, ‘default’ appearance—now split in a cheshire grin.
Passing the bush, he sauntered after his prey, on the lookout for any more telltale signs to follow.
***
It was hard to really get any idea of how large the village actually was. It stretched on as far as he could see before him… but when ‘as far as he could see’ was only a few dozen metres, that wasn’t saying a whole lot.
There was more fog here than in the corpse-clearing, though still not nearly as much as in the forest proper. China was crouched on one of the lower branches of a tree, looking out over the little huts built from rocks, bricks of dried earth, and sticks. They were primitive compared to other humans; even a being such as the Ceramic Beast could see that.
Not all of their houses were on the ground, though; many nestled in the lower boughs of the trees scattered throughout their village. Much like the place with the false dead, this area held fewer trees than the surrounding woods, though they hadn’t been cleared away completely.
All in all, it would be a hard place to sneak into; enough trees to provide the denizens with plenty of places to watch for invaders, but not so many that an intrepid golem could use them as cover.
He had decided, therefore, to wait until he spotted a group of them headed away from the camp to go hunt or forage for food before following them and attacking when they least expected it.
He never got the chance.
He'd been sitting there, in his tree on the edge of their settlement, concealed by the leafy branches, for only a few hours when a small band approached. At their head was a boy in worn and poorly repaired leather armour, who wore a scowl on his face and whose lip was split by a ragged scar. He might have been quite intimidating, were he a few decades older.
Behind him were five others dressed in brown cloth and leather, as well as a blonde girl with pointed ears, right in the middle of the group, who was clad in robes which appeared to consist entirely of leaves and grasses.
At first, the golem was sure that these seven were the prey he had been waiting for, and he grinned savagely, his mind swirling with thoughts of brutal violence, murder and feasting. If his body had been capable of salivating, he was sure he’d have drooled.
But they stopped. Right by the foot of his tree.
That was when he started to get a little nervous. The girl in green looked up and began chanting something. Her eyes shone with emerald light. He was strongly tempted to either flee, or leap at them and attack.
They were far, far too close to the rest of the children, though. Should they all discover his presence, there was no doubt that they’d do everything they possibly could to kill him… which… wouldn’t be the end of the world, he supposed. Still, he’d rather not fight a whole horde at once, if he had any say in the matter; he liked his fights to include the possibility of victory, after all.
And running was definitely out of the question. No matter how dire his circumstances, he couldn’t do anything that would jeopardise his chances of being reborn. If he started fleeing from danger, Omni may well get bored of him and consign him to never return after dying.
So he sat and waited, hoping that they would finish what they were doing and pass him by.
Instead, the glowy-eye food pointed directly at him, and scores of creepers and vines broke away from the tree he was in, and some others nearby, to dart his way and wrap tightly around him before he could do more than twitch in alarm.
He was tugged down from the trees, and the little foods picked him up, whilst he struggled in vain against his bonds. The one dressed in foliage smiled and patted his head, as if he were some sort of cuddly little kitten. He hissed at her.
“The One sees everything in its forest,” she announced uninvited, “you could never have taken us by surprise… but once you too have learned to accept its wisdom, you will find life here far preferable to existence on the outside. Now, come along and let’s introduce you to your fellow recruits.”
When China gave no response other than a snarl, she patted his head again, then nodded to the leader of the little band. The boy gave the order, and the little band of children hauled away the trussed-up Beast.
They carried him through their village—which turned out to be quite expansive, if not exactly advanced—until they reached the entrance to a cave in the side of a cliff face. The scarred food was given a burning torch by a girl standing guard outside. China was then brought within, and down a series of winding, labyrinthine tunnels, which he was sure must have led deep underground, until they reached a small cavern.
Like all of the tunnels so far, this wider area was damp, and moss grew here and there. There were even a few mushrooms. A crude gate of branches and twine blocked the entrance, and was guarded by a couple more children. In a sconce on the tunnel wall another torch burned, though its light didn’t reach far into the cell itself.
“Another one?” one of the guard-kids asked, as her partner worked on opening up the gate. The pointy-ear food simply nodded, saying nothing. When the portal had swung wide, the golem was placed back on his feet and at the wave of a hand from the girl in green, his bonds fell away.
Before he could react at all, a couple of his captors shoved him hard from behind. He stumbled forwards and fell—hands and knees clacking as they struck the stone floor—and the gate was slammed shut behind him, then the rope that they used to hold it closed was hurriedly tied tightly once more.
The prison was illuminated somewhat as the leader of the band that had brought China here stepped up to the entrance, and the light of his torch revealed to to the golem his fellow inmates. Three seemed to be more-or-less regular human children, but one of the others had a grey complexion and a pair of horns, while the final child was purple, with pointed ears.
“This room may not be very nice, but as far down as it is, you’ll be able to hear the One much more clearly… listen, and accept what you hear. Once we know that you’ve done so, you'll be free to return to the surface, and live among us.”
The Ceramic Beast barely listened; he was much more focused on observing the small group he’d just been penned in with. Killing children had never been difficult for him before, but now that he was just as small and weak as they were, he got the distinct impression that he might find them a lot more troublesome.
“Just make sure to decide quickly. We wouldn’t want any of you to starve to death.” with those parting words, the scar-faced youth turned and strode off, taking the light with him. Judging by the sound of receding footfalls, the rest of his band had followed him, leaving behind only the pair guarding the exit.
![[Image: chinasig3.png]](https://image.ibb.co/gG00sd/chinasig3.png)