Chapter 9: Chapter 9 - The Scorpion or the Grasshopper

Diary Entry – 12th of Julioaugust

Yesterday giant monsters came out of the woods…

They must be earth beasts, god beasts, like what the false God is often described as – I knew it wasn’t a true earth-beast. These ones must be the real deal, especially the serpent, I’m sure it’s The Great Serpent.

But if the legends of the earth beasts are true, then what about the Juj?

Maybe it’s all a myth. I mean. What the fuck are these things. They’re hideous and terrifying and they don’t interact with us or anything. The boney one is huge.

I don’t know. Something is so uneasy about this, all of it.

I got a text back… it’s Olef, he’s coming back home from the mines, what the hell. I can’t believe it. These past few days, I just can’t believe it. Honestly fuck the monsters I’m more exited to see my brother come back.

--

Noisemaker’s cauldrons, full of wriggling larvae and regurgitated slop that glistened orange in the dawn’s light, oozed a scent of familial obligation so rich it was nearly unbearable except for Wings, maternal guardian of the pool. The gatherer giggled or chittered “Look at them.”

And Noisemaker, exhausted and hungry, gave no response save for watching the ceiling, would Wings donate just one spawn for eating?

At that moment, Arms came in, dragging a deer carcass with their tendrilous tongue, at the precipice of Noisemaker’s hopes and dreams, the carcass was unceremoniously thrown into the children-vat like a log into a pond. “Watch it!” Cried Wings. Noisemaker reclined, antennae sagging across the outcrop they lounged upon. ‘Eat up,’ was what Noisemaker smelled before a squirrel had been thrown at them like a baseball, their hands snatching it up delightedly. The worm didn’t care much for fat or muscle, but sweet sweet bones and hair, delicious, quickly engorged down a tubular mouth which shrunk and was covered with two hare-lips once again. They looked to Leader, who stunk of self-satisfaction, and was also glowing blue, particularly in the bloated head, while a rodent hovered half a metre to the side and off the ground. ‘Want another?’

‘Please.’ The rat was thrown forwards seemingly by nothing but a white luminescence of head, quickly joining its squirrel compatriot as Leader’s glow subdued. ‘Thank you.’

“I want to go visit the humans again.” Said Arms, to which Wings leaned forwards curiously. ‘No, it’s -’

‘Let them go, we need to discuss the situation.’ Then Noisemaker turned to face Arms, ‘Gather as much information as you can, we especially need to know if the humans here are travelling elsewhere.’

Arms chuttered their protective eye-plates and rocked from side to side happily, their backplates clacking together as they walked away. “Wings, are you coming?”

Wings forlorn clicks sounded like a dolphin’s or of a small whale. “Will they be safe?”

‘Don’t worry, we’ll keep them safe.’ Wings still didn’t know who to look at, still yet to discern the difference in smells between the pair. Leader showed off their prowess, lifting up a pebble with their mind. Wings still was reluctant to leave the pool, hypnotised by the swirling infants, but urgent curiosity moved them away and they left with Arms, whose heavy foot and handsteps could be heard from far away.

Leader sat themselves on the floor, Noisemaker curling up on the other side, resting their arms on their own coil.

‘We have a problem.’ Leader confessed.

‘Cannons.’

‘Worse than that. If they have cannons… they’re not a type 0.12 civilization, they must at least be using hydrocarbons or something.’

‘What’s a hydrocarbon?’

‘Like, fire, but the fuel is from the ground instead of wood.’

‘Huh.’

‘Our simulated expectations should be assumed invalid. We must prepare for an unknown threat, of unknown power. We might have fought melee combatants, perhaps small kingdoms and tribes, like the one our siblings are fraternising with, instead… instead I don’t know. They could have anything, it could be anything…”

‘So what are you suggesting, we plan against everything?’

‘It’s a boon to have had the enemy revealed, we must maintain stealth, as much as possible. No witnesses.’

The two looked wistfully out of the door-hole, in the direction of the village. ‘We move out?’

‘Lay-low, striking quickly will raise suspicion, wait, for the larvae to grow, strike, then leave, we can’t risk a trace. Scout out the area, Noisemaker?’

‘Sure, I’ll get started now, I’ll lay-low, not that it matters much.’

‘Scout the perimeter of the forest. I’ll talk with the advertisers.’

Leader walked against the larva-cauldron, blue glow reflecting in the pool, in a half-hundred unblinking eyes, the figure traced a bulbous tip of a finger around the lip of the pit, looking halfway between the darkness and the glistening wetness.

‘How are you feeling. How are… the memories?’

‘Arms and Wings don’t feel them, do they?.’

‘How much. How much do you feel. How much do you know.’ But before Noisemaker could respond, ‘Nevermind, just go scout.’

It was a command pheromone.

‘I will,’ answered Noisemaker, their lower-body trailing behind them, around the mouth of the nest, then gone.

The conversation was had in silence, Leader only listening to the slaps of their paddle feet, somehow it was different when they were the only one listening to their own smacking skin. The maggots that watched Leader first impressed on the creature through the fear pheromones exuded by it.

Noisemaker wasn’t impressed, crawling in the brush, wrapping beneath the twigs and all-sorts, grasping arms used to filter and scramble through the dirt. They could tell Leader had some anxiety about these new memories, but what, why, they contemplated the information stream bubbling up in their brain like bubbles in a bog. The boiling point of water. Dictionary definitions of words. Directive. Pre-digestion protocol. Proceed with minimum caution. Returning back to the real world, they were shocked to find themselves at the edge of the forest again. They arched their torso upwards like a cobra, into their neutral position raised up human-like. They couldn’t help but watch the river which ran past the forest’s west border. The river must have circled around the whole forest, before escaping into the human village. The city on the other side looked different in the daylight, half of it was blacks and blues reaching out like graspers to the sky, over the enormous hill in the background of it, but the other half was a field of brown and orange strewn horizontally, flat, like dry clay ground to dust. Something was escaping that flattened desert, a little black thing walking, Noisemaker scuttled round the trunk of a tree and splayed across some branches like a vine, watching from above as the black creature ambled to the edge of the river on the other side of the forest. Some mad impulse overtook it and, for some reason, it threw itself into the water. Noisemaker was amazed, distressed, concerned, and watched for a while, stunned. But. Soon after, with a shifting, the black thing emerged maybe 20-40 metres on the opposite side of the river. It crawled out on its knees, coughing up water and steam.

It was built with the kind of anatomy humans and Leader had, two legs uplifting a torso, but it had some notable details. For one, it had wings, like Wings’, absent of feathers. Its Wings were blackened, with a sheen of blue escaping underneath, and it had six of them, very small. Which is weird, because from how it sunk and walked under the water, it must have been very dense and therefore should have much larger wings, no?

Also, it had three arms, one arm like a human’s, resting on a shoulder by a kind of pectoral and shoulder muscles, Two arms were behind, with their own pectorals connecting to the upper-back, the spine rather than the sternum, which gave the creature’s upper-rear a sort of bulging bulbousness as the back-arms shifted, carrying some kind of rebar hammer. The creature’s head, too, was unusual for a human’s, as it had a beak like Wings’, but while Wings’ beak was nearly perfectly round, this one was angular, pyramidal, like a wedge, with the flat sides on top. The back of the head had two fins, with four long tentacles dangling off from where the neck joined to the ‘jaws’. Its feet were human-like, with five fingers, two of which were big toes, on opposite sides, in fact Noisemaker noticed that all of its hands and feet were equipped with double-thumbs. The feet were hoof-like, with discernible digits, just, very thick ones, and with the a digitigrade sort of stance, the toes were sort of like a camel’s. Noisemaker thought about camels. Perhaps Arms would like camels.

The five-limbed beast ambled towards the forest, something which alarmed Noisemaker quite much, and they masked their pheromones as hard as they could. The black creature carefully got to its knees, then looked at a plant, then scooped the plant into its jaws, including a lot of soil. Noisemaker was sickened at the thought of what stomach damage such a habit would cause. For a split second, as the creature looked up with pitch-black eyes Noisemaker froze, as the eyes seemed to look right into the tree. Maybe they had looked right into the specific tree that should not have been looked at. Maybe it was just tired. Maybe…

The creature clambered back onto its legs, then fell back down, then got back up again. It then walked away, to the left-perimeter of the forest and snuck into the trees, grabbing a creeper and pulling the vine from the top of the tree to the bottom like unfurling a loose strand from torn cloth. It piled the plant into its mouth but then clutched its stomach and pulled the weed back out. The sight was most unsettling and, for some reason, the three-armed creature then grabbed a rock and ate it, whole, without chewing, the muscles and skin of the neck stretching and deforming to contain the thing, pushing it down. Noisemaker was going to be sick. The creature then, for some reason, began chewing and eating moss off of the floor.

If I could tag it with a scent-mark, I could keep scouting while remembering its position… Noisemaker thought to themself. Something told them to fear this creature, possibly the giant teeth, big hammer, or the impressive height of the thing, but they didn’t want to kill it outright, Noisemaker was hungry, but not for that thing. They took a chance, slowly creeping on the trees above, relying on the three-arm not looking up. Noisemaker sat directly in a big clump of leaves, found an opening, and stuck their head out, watching a loogie dangle off of one of their split lips. The glob grew heavier and heavier, its tail stretching before it fell silently for a few paces, then it not silently splatted against the head of the black creature, the pheromone Noisemaker chose, meaningless, in case the creature understood the language, was ‘Camel’ Just in case.

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--

078 looked up at the canopy, patting the back of their neck with their primary hand, “Wuh?” They voiced. The wetness on their palm must’ve been a drop from last night’s rain. The rains were nice and cold but that glob was notably warm. Disgusting. They were so hot… The original plan, hide like a bitch in the woods, seemed further and further away.

If I see a human. If I see a human. I hate them. I hate them and they deserve worse than what I’m going to do when I find one.

--

Noisemaker watched as, for some reason, being spat on caused the weird human to walk on its hoof feet away, on the edge of the forest and the river, in the opposite direction that would have led it to the human village. Well that’s a problem solved, they thought to themselves.

They watched the creature walk away, smelling ‘camel’ becoming quieter and quieter, before scouting out the edges of the forest. They kept walking and walking and they saw more fields, but no village, just fields and fields, with dirt roads between them and ugly stone walls. One of the roads had trees on either side of it, leading to another little forest. Noisemaker realised that the entire area of the forest was on a distinct slope, with the land on one side of the forest cresting in a hill. Therefore, the hill on the other side of the city, well, that city was sat right in the valley. Hmm. Leader would probably make some tactical decision about that.

Soon, Noisemaker watched another human village, it also had a little wall, with a bit knocked off of it, and… hang on… that was the wall that Arms knocked over. It was the same village. Noisemaker had spent just a few hours walking and had rounded the whole forest, which was a circle. It wasn’t a forest at all. It was a reservation. Not a good hiding spot. With little food. Uh oh.

--

Arms let the humans paint spirals on the very paintable armour, like flat slates. They and Wings had been fed well, and Arms had even been washed, as they looked up they saw Wings had gone back to their offspring, having played with the humans enough, and Noisemaker was in the trees like a frightening vine, dangling down slowly to the ground, before silently moving over the toppled wall. If a person could move “motionlessly” then Noisemaker was doing that. No head bob at all.

‘We have problems.’

“Hello. What problems?”

‘The forest is a tiny circle. We don’t have any space, also, we have to move away and hide, and we can’t be seen any more than necessary.’

A human, the human from before, the girl with the pantaloons and the paper, she was wearing a cloak now, and she approached Noisemaker, tentatively.

‘Anxious’ is what the worm smelled like. ‘So, we should probably…’

Noisemaker stopped. “If you can just do this for me…” The girl was saying, halfway to herself and to the creature before her. “I would give a thousand prayers and a hundred offerings.”She looked up at the sky.

Noisemaker, who normally would just dedicate an eyestalk, shifted their entire body to face the girl, who was half a head taller if not for the engineer’s fronds and tubes and feathers.

“Do what.” Noisemaker responded in a vocalisation… Why can I understand what she’s saying.

In half of a second the girl jumped up like she’d been electrocuted, “what! Shit! I mean! Sorry!” She rushed out a word a second, “I just. I needed to follow you to give an offering and…” She became a statue, mouth agape. The old lady with the stick and turban sat up from her bench, where she had been watching the beasts carefully. She too let her mouth fall agape, which intimidated Noisemaker. The worm got used to using their lungs for speaking, forcing the air out, their spoken language was actually quite similar to humans’, unlike Arms’ tooting or Wings’ stridulating and clicking.

Noisemaker and the girl were equally panicked, though they themselves didn’t realise that, the girls wide eyes and awkward smiles seemed somewhat intimidating to Noisemaker who only saw baring of teeth and displayed observation. To the girl, the bugs’ rigidity where previously it writhed and undulated, that seemed like a bad sign indeed.

‘Help me. What is happening.’

Arms spoke, not in a language humans understood, “What is going on, why are you making sounds at the human.”

‘I can understand it. It understands me.’ As well as a hefty dose of ‘Fear’ pheromone. “err.” The worm said. “Err I don’t really know what’s going on.” The girl laughed nervously.

“You and me both…” That was oddly comforting. “With all respect, great earth-beast, our tribe humbly accepts you and we are willing to serve you however you wish.” She bowed at the hip, a hand outstretched, bereft of pinky finger.

“We don’t…” They stopped themselves. “We would…” Leader’s going to kill me. “What would you like in response for helping us?”

A crowd of humans watched the situation in a semi-circle, they all sat or kneeled to be shorter than Noisemaker and the cloaked, shirtless girl, she bore her teeth, “We request nothing in return, we humbly accept you into our community.” Noisemaker struggled to believe it.

“We…” Noisemaker made a coil with their centipede-half, resting on it, making themselves taller than all the humans, really, what a ridiculous proposition to serve you however you wish, obviously that wasn’t true, and now to guesstimate where their limits lie, as well as making the most of the offer. It’s a kind of awful thing to say to someone, really, maybe it’d be better just to say hey we can atmost give you this much and this much then fuck off. And it was worse knowing that the humans couldn’t be trusted not to tell anyone of their vulnerabilities, if they were told of them – and making the family seem strong might intimidate the humans into snitching.

“We’ve come here just to find a place for ourselves, for now we just want to live and feed, but we’re quite afraid of…” Noisemaker stood stock-still, “the local military.”

The local elder came forth, with her turban and her staff, something about her gave Noisemaker a buzzing headache. She beamed a smile. “You have enemies in the government, earthly divines?”

The worm’s throat was getting dry from all this talking. “We have reason to fear them.”

“Ah of course, divines, we too suffer at their hands. You hear their bombs?”

“We do.”

“They bomb our families, our brothers and sisters. If you are their foes, you are our allies, earth divines”

Noisemaker’s curiosity got the better of them. “What is it that you’re calling us?”

“It is a tall tale, worshipped one, the great and divine beasts that exist deep beneath the earth. We see your resemblance to them and are ready to venerate you if the stories are true, you have the look of the great serpent, esteemed one.”

“And what would you have us call you by?” The elder laughed.

“I am our community’s remaining humble guide. Come, come, we wish to have you.”

Noisemaker winced as the woman turned away, looking over her shoulder. “We wish not to be seen, humble guide, even being part of this community brings us fear.” To not be seen as vulnerable or powerful… “We fear any and all conflict, which we have reason to believe will certainly happen. The bombs…” The older woman gave a serious look, and that girl kept damn writing everything down. Oh, what’ve we gotten ourselves into...

Suddenly a bell rang, and Arms raised up, painted half blue, giving a cow-like grunt.A man’s call echoed down, “They’re here, they’ve come back! From the city!”

The woman looked with crescent lips. “Our family have come back. Great divine, your secret is safe with us. If you wish, you, serpent, and the blue man, he can come with, the two of you have small bodies and can fit in our homes, we would gladly give you offerings while we feast with our beloved family. I bid thee farewell until your decision is made.” She bowed at the hip, displaying a three-fingered hand, and she guided the others away.

In the near-distance, amidst the houses, groups of people, with skin grey as stone, had appeared – some with big bags, some with only dirty clothes. One of those people had an additional eye to the right of their right eye. The people laughed and yelped and hugged one-another. A cry of a young man was heard, “The bombs! The bombs I told you didn’t I tell you. I told you ahaahaa – come here!” And the man threw a toddler up in their shoulders and danced around.

‘Arms?’

“Yes.”

‘What is on your face?’

“It’s… paint… of flowers, I believe”

‘Cute. Ignore me. Leader is messing with my brain.’