Even with his speed, the worms were on his tail, a nearly solid mass that seemed to contort as individual worms surged forward with snapping jaws, trying to catch and slow their prey. If even one of them managed to grab hold, it would slow him enough that he wouldn’t make it.
As he careened down and made for the tunnel, Lucy concentrated on releasing her enzymes at just the right moment. The timing would be close, but if she could get a big blast off at the swarm before following Rikorlak into the tunnel, she could kill dozens of the worms.
Before he had even cleared the entrance, Lucy was moving, leaving a cloud of enzymes in her wake like a ghost as she shot forwards into the tunnel and gripped the sludgy blockage with her hands.
They sizzled on contact with the caustic material, but she hardly noticed as she pulled with all her strength to block the entrance. Behind her, Rikorlak’s momentum had sent him crashing into Sam, who’d been huddled up near the entrance of the tunnel.
As they tumbled a ways down the tunnel behind her, Lucy risked a glance outside as she started to heave the blockage shut.
The worms swarmed into the alcove, but unfortunately only a small number of them had been caught in her cloud of enzymes. Floating clear of the path to the tunnel to avoid a collision with Rikorlak as he barreled in, Lucy had released her attack too far to the side.
A decent few worms were still caught in it and dissolving already, but if she could leave a cloud behind dead center, she could cripple the entire group.
Still pulling on the blockage, Lucy primed her proteins and started to fill her fungal vacuole up with enzymes again.
She wasn’t sure she would have time to fill it enough, but even as they reached the tunnel entrance, the worms at the front stopped their momentum as best they could, unwilling to get any closer to the sludgy mass of acrid-smelling red slime and debris.
Unfortunately for them, the tangled mass of worms behind pushed forward heedless of any hazard, and it was only a momentary pause before worms were wriggling against and around the blockade.
But it was enough.
Lucy’s fungal vacuole had only filled perhaps halfway, but with the worms packed in this densely, the enzymes would do their work well.
It was a scene of horror even before she unleashed her attack, worms struggling to get free of the sticky, caustic red slime that draped them like gore and ate away at their membranes as they pushed in, widening the gap between the blockage and the wall.
They attacked her viciously even as their bodies were slowly eaten away, and their jaws damaged one of Lucy’s appendages badly enough that she was forced to let go of the sludgy mass.
As the gap widened farther, Lucy attacked, using only the cilia on the front side of her body. The liquid cloud of enzymes sprayed directly into the tangle of twisting worms.
As she pushed the last dregs of her attack through her cilia, she pulled the make-shift door shut with a squish, holding it in place for the sticky slime to adhere to the tunnel walls as worms died in droves on the other side.
Lucy collapsed, wedging her body up against the hard stone of the tunnel wall with her flagellum pushed up against the other side.
As Rikorlak and Sam made their way back over to her from where they had tumbled down the tunnel, she tried to give them a weak ‘thumbs up’, only to realize it wouldn’t have worked even if her remaining hand hadn’t been a sizzled mess.
Good thing I can regrow you, she thought, staring down at her other appendage, where the gelatinous green structure had dissolved to where her elbow would have been.
Blue points began to flow into her through through the blocked tunnel, and she sighed in satisfaction. The plan hadn’t gone exactly as she had imagined, but it had been a success.
The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
Then something strange happened.
As she had forced out the last of her enzymatic attack from her cilia, some of the streaming liquid had misted up against the against the surface of the blockage.
Where Lucy’s enzymes had touched, the slime had changed. What had only moments before been a sticky, goopy substance had darkened, turning a shade of near-black upon contact with the white enzymes.
And when Lucy poked at it with her spike…
It’s like stone, she marveled.
All across the surface of the blockage, the vibrant red slime had hardened and darkened, like cracks of molten lava spread throughout the debris had finally cooled.
Lucy wondered at the change. She had no idea what had happened, but clearly some kind of chemical reaction had changed the structure of the slime completely.
Then the consequences of that change sunk in, and she sighed.
We’re not going to be stuck in here, are we?
They weren’t. At least not for too long.
Lucy’s dagger chunked away pieces of softened stone. While the blockage had hardened into a material that seemed unfazed by her green corrosive, the stone surrounding it was as susceptible as ever, and slowly gave way to the chiseling action of her spike.
Behind her, she could just make out Rikorlak following Sam down the far end of the tunnel. After chatting for a few minutes about the terror of being chased by dozens of worms, they had decided to explore.
Lucy’s attack had been a success. She wasn’t sure exactly how many worms she had killed, but guessed it to be in the twenties, since she had gained 26 EP, bringing her total available to spend to 34.
She had gained a respectable amount, even if the plan had left her temporarily trapped in a cave. She would have had to wait anyways to make sure the worms lost interest and left, so it wasn’t much of a problem.
I could buy the Arm of Slivius now, she mused, as she continued to chip away at the stone.
It would no doubt be a help in combat, but she was still curious about the Fungal Web, and decided to save her points for now.
Finally, the blunted tip of her dagger broke through, poking a small hole into the rear of the alcove.
Seeing no worms except for the dead ones on the ground, Lucy wedged the dagger in and started to pry off larger chunks. Encouraged by these quicker results, she renewed her efforts and soon had cleared a hole just large enough for her to squeeze through.
She let her dagger, now blunted into uselessness, dissolve away into the water, and turned around to call to the others that the way was clear, only to find an empty tunnel behind her.
Curious, she made her way down it. It wasn’t like Rikorlak or Sam to leave silence unbroken.
So far she had seen only the digging creatures in the tunnels, but she reformed her dagger just in case.
She moved deep into the stone, and when she reached an empty chamber she started to worry that Rikorlak and Sam had wandered too far and gotten lost.
But when she called out, they answered, and after scratching a mark in the stone to show the path, Lucy followed the stream of their molecules.
When she finally saw the forms of her companions floating in the middle of another chamber ahead, she swam up to them, preparing to tell them the way was clear and they could all leave.
Then she came up next to them, and stopped dead in her tracks as she saw what they were looking at.
A patch of stone in the wall was glowing, casting a faint light that shimmered the water directly before it into a blue haze.
She watched Rikorlak wave a small arm through the cyan glow.
“What is it?” she asked, surprised at the feeling of energy it gave off. It reminded her of static electricity, tingling her cilia as she got closer.
Lucy found herself drawn to it. Even in her Awareness, the soft glow was unlike anything she had ever seen.
“Hmm,” he said, which wasn’t very helpful at all.
“It feels like magic,” he said, moving as close to the patch of stone as he could before rotating his body, apparently trying to get a better sense of the strange light.
Lucy felt her metabolism quicken.
She had always loved the idea of magic. And even if she hadn’t grown up casting spells using a stick for a wand, she would have been excited at the opportunity. If she could learn to harness magic as a single cell, she could only imagine what she would be able to do as a more complex organism.
Don't get ahead of yourself, she told herself. But even the stern reminder couldn't dim the excitement building inside her. Magic. Real magic.
“Are you sure?” she asked eagerly, the tingling in her cilia growing stronger as she swam closer.
If she’d stopped to think, she might have been more cautious about a glowing rock that emanated strange light, but in the moment, with mystery and beauty shimmering in the very water and brushing up against her, the potential danger of it didn’t even cross her mind.
Until Rikorlak backed away from the wall, and she saw that his once dull membrane had gone fluorescent green.
“Relatively sure,” he said, in a tone that didn't inspire confidence at all. “Unless…”
He backed away completely, and Lucy saw that the section of his membrane closest to the stone was now emitting a faint glow of its own, a hazy aura of bright green.
“…you don’t happen to have much radiation here on Earth, do you?”