Chapter Text
Traveling with this group has been... strange to say the least, not bad but just, strange.
Before this group he hadn't seen a scug, well maybe that's not true but he can't know for sure, but waking up in this barren waste he calls home probably isn't somewhere scugs would be, aswell as anything else like him, and he can't exactly recall anything before that, but besides that he thinks he gets along... fine? With the group, when he first met them they needed to get out of the rain, so he helped them out, he didn't like being stuck in the rain either, but as it turns out, sharing a den with more than yourself and a few items was entirely nerve wracking, the biggest of the scugs had stared at him until he went to sleep, utterly terrifying.
The other two where a bit less tense, the red one at first seemed weary of them but eventually warmed up to him, and the fluffy one was not exactly nice at first, but didn't tense when he was around either, she would sometimes point at something and warble something that he was actually starting to understand, it had hurt at first to speak in the scugs language, but that was mostly from him not making sound for a long while before they met.
The scugs didn't have many words and usually the sounds they made where just sounds, but those also had meaning, and honestly getting to learn how to understand these other creatures was much more fun and pleasant then being alone, he wasn't sure how long he was here in the wastes, but he knows it was a very long time, living here was dangerous but he got used to it, and it had even become repetitive at some point, meeting the scugs had been a very big surprise to say the least.
Currently they were going up the leg of the giant stone corpse, or at least he thinks that's what it is, whenever the others try to explain it to them they just say "rock" and "friend"... he doesn't know what he is supposed to get from that, maybe there's something inside of it that's alive but from far away it really looks like a corpse? It's not laying on the ground but maybe it died standing up, why else would it not be moving?
Although it does seem to be always breathing out clouds, so maybe it's just injured?
Either way it doesn't really matter, because at the moment he needs to focus on not falling, from far away the beast seems a lot smaller then it is, because he's pretty sure they are halfway up and the ground has almost lost all detail.
Before starting the climb up he had never seen a black or white lizard, mostly just grey lizards, but they really must say, not very fond of them, white lizards can perfectly color themselves the same as whatever they are near, and are unreasonably fast, and while black lizards are blind, they can track any of the group from the slightest sound, at least there were no grey lizards here for some reason.
Although one upside of the lizards is that they where small and not entirely hard to kill, so at least he and the others haven't starved yet, the wastes don't have much food so it wasn't unusual for them to simply not get enough food while wandering the area, at least before meeting the scugs, being in a group actually heightens your chance of survival, who knew!
A sudden harpoon hits where he was about to step and he startled back, he quickly chittered in warning as he was leading at the moment and dropped into a tunnel, the others following lead, he's pretty sure that he was put in the lead at first because the group didn't really trust him yet, but now they just trust his quick reaction time, it makes him feel weirdly warm and full of energy whenever they think about them trusting him.
He's not going to look too far into that for the moment.
The group collected themselves, now much higher up, they looked around and paused, their head hurt again, it had hurt when they started the climb up before going away, and just like last time they felt almost they had been here before, but the feeling soon left, just like last time, and just like last time they didn't question the instinct to look up, and for the first time in their memory they did not see clouds, but instead all around was an almost fog, but it was not stagnant, it was thinner then fog usually was as rare as fog was in the wastes.
They knew they must go higher still.
Red lizards are now the bane of their existence he has decided.
Seeing them when they reached the roof had been a surprise as they had never seen such a vibrant color outside of a few plants and the scugs, but seeing as the way to wherever they need to go is through the city, and the city was teeming with them it was inevitable.
Experiencing the novel pain of jaws on his head from above was not something his wished to experience again, because he didn't even die right away, two other red lizards had gotten in a fight over him and he got trampled, he wasn't really mad about the dying part, he had died plenty to grey lizards, no he was more mad about the fact that when he woke up in the last shelter so had the scugs in such a manner that implied they too had died, and The Cleric seems incredibly shaken about it, actually crying as The Scout consoled her.
And for that the next red lizard he sees it will be on sight.
They clamber out of the shelter and make their way back to the city, grabbing rudimentary spears along the way, The Scout just grew her own and The Cleric had two bricks, so mostly it was just themself with as many spears as they could keep on the dry sticky fur on their back, but The Fighter had also grabbed a spear and had put a weird red cloth he found around the tip.
Going through the city was a headache inducing experience, both literally and metaphorically, almost anywhere they looked had given them a headache at first, and as soon as he tried to chase the familiarity the pain left and so did his recognition of whatever caught his attention, so he's just ignoring the feeling for now, the lizards however are just a pain, true to his self made promise the first red lizard he saw got a nice few spears for even trying to hunt them, but every other lizard they usually snuck past, or knocked out, there was just a lot of them.
Finally they get to where they needed to be, a unsuspecting looking pipe that they somehow knew was exactly where they needed to go, they drop in and are deposited inside of the structure, the others follow and he started to lead them through a seemingly random assortment of pipes and passages, before pausing when The Cleric let's out a startled sound, the group looked and saw the weird worm thing sparking and jittering a bit, he has only seen it once or twice since he met the group but the scugs seem pretty worried at the sight, it dipped into the group only to startle The Traveler by popping up on his shoulder, it made a motion that implied to keep going, they were hesitant, but seeing as it wasn't doing any harm he decided to let it be.
Continuing on they start getting to rooms where when they jumped they all became light enough to float, this also caused metaphorical and literal headaches, for whatever is nagging at his mind, he has so far become much better at ignoring the want to know, he needed to be here with the scugs, he can't afford to be distracted, oh also because they are all floating around they were all constantly spinning around, bumping into walls in a dizzying vertigo inducing trek towards wherever they needed to go.
He could feel they were close to where they were going but as they got farther something arrange started to happen with the world around them... it was like the world itself was starting to warp, at first almost like the metal was bent like rippling water, but the farther they got the more... organic the shape of the world became.
Corners became bends, hallways became twisting loops, pipes bent in strange ways that made his body hurt to crawl through, and poles became flexible and soft to the touch, add all of the factor into the fact that they all had to float and push off any surface they could to get where they were going meant that the progress was slow, although a benefit of the strangeness was that his head isn't hurting anymore, he doubts that he has ever seen something like this is the past, so at least now he can focus more than he had before.
He saw a pipe ahead that just felt right, he knew it was their destination, he pushed off a wobbly pole and just barely grabbed the edge, inside there was a strange feeling that made him both want to run and go closer, he didn't like it, he held out and arm for the scugs to grab onto when they got close enough and one by one he helped them inside before following after, when they were finally floating inside the strange room their vision was immediately consumed by bright light.
The being was not much of a who anymore, something about them strikes The Traveler as more of a what, but even that didn't fit, not entirely, a who is somebody with a mind and will to act and is here in the now, but this before them, something about them felt... not lesser or lacking, but more like... they aren't here yet, and that normally is a strange and objectively wrong statement, but this being before him felt...
Wrong.
It didn't even have to do with the fact that their head was a mass of coiling white light with tendrils tipped in gold whipping around, or how the air around them seems to ripple like water, although their looks do remind him of echos in some way, but echos are just as the name implies, they are something that still stains the world after what made it has passed on, only a remnant.
But this being felt like they were somehow the opposite, instead of being what comes after the end, they feel like what comes before a beginning.
They are snapped from their thoughts by a voice that sounds like dawn and growing plants, they feel an itch on their mind, but don't quite get what they are saying, they know they should, but they don't, they startle again as the worm thing that had been hitching a ride suddenly sparks and becomes a lifeless floating pearl, huh... learn something new every cycle.
Suddenly they are all dropped onto the ground, he staggers up quickly, he hears the others do aswell, but quickly lets out a confused chitter as he was suddenly pulled into the air by nothing, he can see out of the corner of his eye that The Fighter had been yanked up aswell, he looked at the being and suddenly it was like he knew what was about to happen despite never even knowing something like it could, and from and fearful growl near him, The Fighter knew aswell, but it's not like there's anything he could do to stop this, it's going to happen, weather or not he wants it to doesn't matter now.
He wasn't even able to yelp before pain filled his mind and everything went black.