Gordian Slash
2009-03-02 08:20:36 UTC
A lot now depended on unknown variables. Was the starving nanotyranus
still strong enough to get with the plan? Was it hungry enough? Could it
still negotiate the tunnels without getting stuck, or had it grown too
large while trapped in this damp hole? The raspy scrape of claws on
stone, coupled with a heavy stentorian panting - becoming louder by the
second - told me that I would soon have my answers. The half-grown
therapod emerged from the river mists swirling below my vantage, its
long wide-jawed head swinging blindly from side to side. Sightless eyes
unblinking. Nostrils flaring wide. The things head reached to within a
few yards of the ledge at my feet.
It caught the scent of the spilled blood and let out a roar rife with
need and rage.
Ah hah! I turned and ran.
I could hear the nanotyranus scrabbling up the ledges behind me as I
attained the tunnel. In its blindness it smashed into the edge of the
opening to the passage, but rapidly shook off the impact and reacquired
the scent trail. It caromed from side to side as it tracked me, tearing
strips of hide free and sending sprays of shattered rock shards flying
as it impacted the walls. Still, at no point did it become stuck...its
velocity and mass sufficient to force it through any narrows. I had
underestimated the power of the spur put to the beast by its
hunger...and it was gaining on me.
When I reached the axial chamber I was faced with a crisis. The
carnosaur was right on my heels, just behind me in the darkness. My
original plan had been, with a sufficient lead on the animal, to veer
off into the unbloodied tunnel and use its length ( or perhaps even the
door at its far end ) to hide myself while the nanotyranus passed -
still following the blood spoor on the rocks. However, it was proving to
be faster and stronger than I thought would be the case, and now I knew
I would get no further than a few feet down that potential refuge before
the creature lunged forth into the radial cave. True, it was blind...but
my arm was wrapped in a blood soaked cloth, the wound itself still
oozing, and I now realized that there was no way I could get far enough
away that my own scent would not be stronger than that of the rapidly
drying blood trail.
After a moment of desperate indecision, I plunged into the pool in the
center of the cave.
The water was barely deep enough to cover me, and ice cold. I did my
very best to flatten myself to the rough bottom of the shallow water
filled declivity. The therapod tore through the chamber, one huge clawed
foot slamming down into the pool within inches of my head and neck, then
it was gone...still following the crimson markers I had set for it. I
surged to the surface spitting water, and dragged myself from the pool.
Now I was the pursuer.
I could not see the green glow ahead until I was almost upon the room
wherein the amorphs laired, as the body of the fleeing nanotyranus
blocked my line of sight into that chamber of horrors. So much so that
when I reached the end of the tunnel I almost ran right into the back of
the dinosaur. Instead of charging directly off the gallery as I had
hoped, the nanotyranus had somehow arrested its forward movement and was
now perched at the very lip of the stone ledge. The creature was swaying
back and forth, its tail a counterbalancing rod held out rigidly behind
its body, its claws literally dug into the rock of the edge of the
precipice. It left one with the impression of a gigantic green canary
swaying precariously on its perch. With a weird whining growl deep in
its throat the prehistoric predator sniffed heavily at the air...it was
clearly disturbed or confused, perhaps even frightened, by something.
It could smell the amorphs. The creature dipped its head as if to bring
its nostrils closer to the faint miasma that worried it, shifting its
balance forward slightly. Primitive reptilian memory was extremely
transient in nature, and the dinosaur was clearly having difficulty
understanding why the new odor should cause it to experience such
instinctive alarm. Its head suddenly came up with a terrified croaking
growl and it raised one leg as if to step back from the brink of the
gallery in growing panic. It had remembered what had driven it down into
these passageways in the first place, and fright had now replaced its
gnawing hunger.
With a running leap I slammed my body weight into the nanotyranus upper
back, just between its shoulder blades...
...over the edge we toppled.
I rode the hapless creature to the floor, where it smashed with
considerable force into the resilient black mass waiting below. Using
the burst of forward velocity thus gained I launched myself as high and
as far out into the chamber as possible. Arching out and away from the
doomed animal, I rather painfully hit the nearest edge of the platform
in the center of the room, and turned my momentum into a braking forward
roll. I managed to stay on the platform with the greenly glowing crystal
lever, dragging to a halt just before taking a tumble over the far edge.
A hideous scream rent the air of the chamber as the living floor surged
up to envelope the thrashing dinosaur. Night-black pseudopods of alien
flesh whipped and smashed at the violently struggling beast. Tatters of
animate darkness were sheared free by the nanotyranus claws and
teeth...to no avail. The enveloping amebic mass rapidly rose to cover
the therapods form, dragging it down beneath a monstrous devouring
hillock of heaving blackness. Silencing its terrified cries.
I had little time to observe this however, even had I wished to do so.
Remembering that I must not touch the lever myself, I unslung my
pack-bag and quickly released one end of one of the longest straps.
Whipping this strap around the lever, the buckle-clip acting as a weight
at its loose end, I grabbed the flying strap and threw my weight away
from the lever. It did not budge in the slightest. I dug in my booted
feet and tried again, straining until I thought I would tear ligaments
in my arms and my back would break. Still, the lever would not move.
Throwing my weight in the opposite direction had no greater effect on
the lever, nor did violently jerking the strap from side to side while
continuing to pull with all my strength. The lever was well and truly
jammed into place with the passage of the years. A possibility the
gestalt mind did not seemed to have anticipated.
I risked being trapped out there on that low platform, surrounded by a
carnivorous alien entity - one that had already proved itself beyond my
ability to damage, even in a much smaller variety than that before me
now - of terrifying proportions, and I could not even budge the bloody
switch. As I quickly returned my pack-bag to its traditional
configuration, I saw that the black bulge beneath which the nanotyranus
had vanished was rapidly growing smaller as powerful molecular proteins
within the gigantic amorph liquefied and absorbed everything softer than
bone in the remains of the poor animal. Of more immediate importance -
to me at least - was the fact that as the bulge covering the dinosaurs
carcass grew smaller the edges of the evil black mass were rapidly
flattening back into its original floor spanning shape. When it had
flowed up over the therapod it had pulled in its edges ( it only had so
much physical mass after all ) revealing wide sections of the native
flooring previously hidden beneath its gelid body. These patches of bare
rock were now rapidly vanishing.
My escape plan was evaporating before my eyes.
Worse...the thing seemed aware of me now! I watched in fey horror as
small black tendrils, almost like flagella around the edges of an
improbably vast paramecium, emerged from the main mass and probed at the
edges of my platform. Rising up over the edge they wriggled forth across
the flat stone of the raised flooring, probing in my direction. Behind
these tendrils large fleshy pseudopods were emerging. Bodily humps rising.
---
ENDS PART TWENTY SIX ( LC 6.2.26 )
still strong enough to get with the plan? Was it hungry enough? Could it
still negotiate the tunnels without getting stuck, or had it grown too
large while trapped in this damp hole? The raspy scrape of claws on
stone, coupled with a heavy stentorian panting - becoming louder by the
second - told me that I would soon have my answers. The half-grown
therapod emerged from the river mists swirling below my vantage, its
long wide-jawed head swinging blindly from side to side. Sightless eyes
unblinking. Nostrils flaring wide. The things head reached to within a
few yards of the ledge at my feet.
It caught the scent of the spilled blood and let out a roar rife with
need and rage.
Ah hah! I turned and ran.
I could hear the nanotyranus scrabbling up the ledges behind me as I
attained the tunnel. In its blindness it smashed into the edge of the
opening to the passage, but rapidly shook off the impact and reacquired
the scent trail. It caromed from side to side as it tracked me, tearing
strips of hide free and sending sprays of shattered rock shards flying
as it impacted the walls. Still, at no point did it become stuck...its
velocity and mass sufficient to force it through any narrows. I had
underestimated the power of the spur put to the beast by its
hunger...and it was gaining on me.
When I reached the axial chamber I was faced with a crisis. The
carnosaur was right on my heels, just behind me in the darkness. My
original plan had been, with a sufficient lead on the animal, to veer
off into the unbloodied tunnel and use its length ( or perhaps even the
door at its far end ) to hide myself while the nanotyranus passed -
still following the blood spoor on the rocks. However, it was proving to
be faster and stronger than I thought would be the case, and now I knew
I would get no further than a few feet down that potential refuge before
the creature lunged forth into the radial cave. True, it was blind...but
my arm was wrapped in a blood soaked cloth, the wound itself still
oozing, and I now realized that there was no way I could get far enough
away that my own scent would not be stronger than that of the rapidly
drying blood trail.
After a moment of desperate indecision, I plunged into the pool in the
center of the cave.
The water was barely deep enough to cover me, and ice cold. I did my
very best to flatten myself to the rough bottom of the shallow water
filled declivity. The therapod tore through the chamber, one huge clawed
foot slamming down into the pool within inches of my head and neck, then
it was gone...still following the crimson markers I had set for it. I
surged to the surface spitting water, and dragged myself from the pool.
Now I was the pursuer.
I could not see the green glow ahead until I was almost upon the room
wherein the amorphs laired, as the body of the fleeing nanotyranus
blocked my line of sight into that chamber of horrors. So much so that
when I reached the end of the tunnel I almost ran right into the back of
the dinosaur. Instead of charging directly off the gallery as I had
hoped, the nanotyranus had somehow arrested its forward movement and was
now perched at the very lip of the stone ledge. The creature was swaying
back and forth, its tail a counterbalancing rod held out rigidly behind
its body, its claws literally dug into the rock of the edge of the
precipice. It left one with the impression of a gigantic green canary
swaying precariously on its perch. With a weird whining growl deep in
its throat the prehistoric predator sniffed heavily at the air...it was
clearly disturbed or confused, perhaps even frightened, by something.
It could smell the amorphs. The creature dipped its head as if to bring
its nostrils closer to the faint miasma that worried it, shifting its
balance forward slightly. Primitive reptilian memory was extremely
transient in nature, and the dinosaur was clearly having difficulty
understanding why the new odor should cause it to experience such
instinctive alarm. Its head suddenly came up with a terrified croaking
growl and it raised one leg as if to step back from the brink of the
gallery in growing panic. It had remembered what had driven it down into
these passageways in the first place, and fright had now replaced its
gnawing hunger.
With a running leap I slammed my body weight into the nanotyranus upper
back, just between its shoulder blades...
...over the edge we toppled.
I rode the hapless creature to the floor, where it smashed with
considerable force into the resilient black mass waiting below. Using
the burst of forward velocity thus gained I launched myself as high and
as far out into the chamber as possible. Arching out and away from the
doomed animal, I rather painfully hit the nearest edge of the platform
in the center of the room, and turned my momentum into a braking forward
roll. I managed to stay on the platform with the greenly glowing crystal
lever, dragging to a halt just before taking a tumble over the far edge.
A hideous scream rent the air of the chamber as the living floor surged
up to envelope the thrashing dinosaur. Night-black pseudopods of alien
flesh whipped and smashed at the violently struggling beast. Tatters of
animate darkness were sheared free by the nanotyranus claws and
teeth...to no avail. The enveloping amebic mass rapidly rose to cover
the therapods form, dragging it down beneath a monstrous devouring
hillock of heaving blackness. Silencing its terrified cries.
I had little time to observe this however, even had I wished to do so.
Remembering that I must not touch the lever myself, I unslung my
pack-bag and quickly released one end of one of the longest straps.
Whipping this strap around the lever, the buckle-clip acting as a weight
at its loose end, I grabbed the flying strap and threw my weight away
from the lever. It did not budge in the slightest. I dug in my booted
feet and tried again, straining until I thought I would tear ligaments
in my arms and my back would break. Still, the lever would not move.
Throwing my weight in the opposite direction had no greater effect on
the lever, nor did violently jerking the strap from side to side while
continuing to pull with all my strength. The lever was well and truly
jammed into place with the passage of the years. A possibility the
gestalt mind did not seemed to have anticipated.
I risked being trapped out there on that low platform, surrounded by a
carnivorous alien entity - one that had already proved itself beyond my
ability to damage, even in a much smaller variety than that before me
now - of terrifying proportions, and I could not even budge the bloody
switch. As I quickly returned my pack-bag to its traditional
configuration, I saw that the black bulge beneath which the nanotyranus
had vanished was rapidly growing smaller as powerful molecular proteins
within the gigantic amorph liquefied and absorbed everything softer than
bone in the remains of the poor animal. Of more immediate importance -
to me at least - was the fact that as the bulge covering the dinosaurs
carcass grew smaller the edges of the evil black mass were rapidly
flattening back into its original floor spanning shape. When it had
flowed up over the therapod it had pulled in its edges ( it only had so
much physical mass after all ) revealing wide sections of the native
flooring previously hidden beneath its gelid body. These patches of bare
rock were now rapidly vanishing.
My escape plan was evaporating before my eyes.
Worse...the thing seemed aware of me now! I watched in fey horror as
small black tendrils, almost like flagella around the edges of an
improbably vast paramecium, emerged from the main mass and probed at the
edges of my platform. Rising up over the edge they wriggled forth across
the flat stone of the raised flooring, probing in my direction. Behind
these tendrils large fleshy pseudopods were emerging. Bodily humps rising.
---
ENDS PART TWENTY SIX ( LC 6.2.26 )