Chapter Text
The sickness pulsed like a heartbeat.
The Hunter had been aware of it for many cycles now. It had started with a dull queasiness, a persistent nausea pinpointed in its secondary stomach that ebbed and flowed with time and with cycles. As the miles stretched on that dull churning sharpened, spreading, blooming into an endless ache that nestled across its side and coiled around to its back. These days, sores and pimples peppered its skin, growing and fighting each other for space as the sickness inside wrought havoc. Inside, tendrils and tumors wormed their way through its flesh, slowly creeping and spreading with every cycle and every breath like ivy through the cracks of a crumbling factory.
Despite its agonies, despite its illness, and despite the impossibility of its task, The Hunter marched on. The sickness, while unfortunate, was irrelevant to its goal. Nestled in its secondary stomach, right alongside the origin of the sickness itself, its Purpose hummed and clicked away with a continuous, humming presence. The Purpose needed to be delivered; and thus, The Hunter journeyed on.
Though its destination was in sight, it had many cycles and many miles still to trek. Two iterators loomed against the horizon, stark blue-gray and shrouded in the vapors of their exhales. One stood tall on familiar struts, the other collapsed in a heap and half buried in the muddy earth, hardly recognizable. Even from this distance, the rain of their breathing was proving to be dangerous. It had been a long time since The Hunter had been close enough to an iterator for the rain to pose a threat and the change was as unwelcome as it was motivating.
Being this close to another iterator meant its journey would be over in a number of cycles. But which iterator was its Purpose intended for? It just hoped its body would hold out long enough to visit both.
It had already journeyed far and seen all kinds of terrain, but the place it had stumbled into this time was different from any it had seen before. The land here was relatively flat, interspersed with patches of hungry, grasping worm grass and regular metal pillars and humps. The tendrils flexed greedily in its direction, desperate to drag it in and pull it under. The Hunter skirted wide around them, eyeing them warily. They stunk of decay, of rotten flesh oozing with digestive enzymes and left to spoil in the hot, humid air. Many other creatures had fallen victim, but not it; not this time.
So focused was The Hunter on avoiding the grasses that a different, more hair-raising stink escaped its notice. The wind suddenly changed and it caught the distinct and unpleasant reek of a lizard, acrid and rotting in its own way. A slow shuffling sound from above made its fur prickle with unease, and as it looked up at the rectangular metal structures surrounding it the head of a green lizard loomed, silhouetted against the weak sunlight. It hissed, its liquid black eyes homing in on The Hunter and its jaw opening to taste its scent in the air.
The Hunter scrambled for cover. The lizard reared back, powerful haunch muscles tensing to strike, and launched itself full force at where The Hunter had been standing just moments prior. Its heavy, armored skull smashed into the rusted steel wall with a terrible clang, scattering dusty red flakes onto its head and back. It shook, shedding disorientation and rust alike, turning for another strike.
By now The Hunter was long gone. It had scrambled up the nearest pole with a pounding heart, looking down upon its foe with distaste. Its stomach grumbled; the infection spreading through its body only served to sharpen its appetite. These days, even the sinewy flesh of lizards was appealing. Not this time, though. The scent of rain was in the air, and a green lizard was too dangerous of a meal to risk when there were so many other easier meals scurrying around.
It left the green lizard hissing and snapping below and slunk off. Here the worm grasses were growing thicker, taller, their hungry stalks grabbing more aggressively at anything within range. The stench of their digestive enzymes was stronger now, nearly overpowering, and The Hunter’s nausea increased tenfold. It squeezed its way through some ventilation shafts and found itself in front of a wide open plain dotted with the occasional pole and pillar, blanketed with a thick, unbroken sea of worm grass swaying and glistening. It paused, bristling slightly, and climbed up onto a nearby pillar for a better look. The sea of grass stretched out for what looked like miles and miles to either side, utterly impassible.
There was no obvious path. How was it supposed to cross? How much would it have to backtrack if it couldn’t progress this way? It could feel the slow, twisting, squirming sensation of its disease gnawing at its second stomach. There was no time. It would have to find a way through this plain, or it would have to die trying. Potentially many, many times.
In its sinking dread, it didn’t notice a sudden shadow looming above it. It flinched, grabbing at its spear, whipping around to fend off what it thought was a vulture, when—something new. Something huge and black, with intelligent orange eyes peering down from high, high overhead. It stepped delicately over The Hunter as it scrambled for cover, and its long legs picked their way onward into the plain. The Hunter watched in amazement as the worm grasses reached hungrily for its plump body—suspended delicately just above them—but left its sticklike legs entirely untouched. Lurchingly, the beast wandered away, uneaten and unbothered by the worm grass, and every so often it stooped to graze on a spore puff.
The Hunter scrambled back up onto the pillar. Behind it, opposite the direction of the worm field, there was a small herd of three more of the beasts coming this way. Already a plan was forming in its mind; it remembered a cluster of spore puffs it had seen in the ventilation shafts it had just crawled through, and went back to grab some. It held its breath as it tugged the spongy masses free, trying not to breathe in the acrid spores, and deposited them on the pillar just as the first of the beasts approached.
Their eyes immediately locked in on the spore puffs. The great black head of the first beast bowed as it grazed them up, its antlers dipping low. Before it could doubt itself, The Hunter scrambled up into that canopy of antlers with a thundering heart, clinging tightly should the beast try to shake it off. It was surprised when the only reaction was one gentle orange eye rolling up to examine it with a detached curiosity, then back down to its meal, uninterested and unbothered by its passenger. It raised itself up, then—they were off.
The swaying, lurching gait of the beast was strangely relaxing. The whispers of the worm grass below and the soft, whuffling snorts of the beast’s breath lulled it into a tranquil state, the most peaceful it had felt since it had begun its quest. The sun was warm. Its pain was minimal. The air was fresher up here.
It was too soon that its ride ended. The endless, whispering plain of worm grass grew shorter and gave way to clear paths and open ground. Ahead, the land rose up into tall, spindly projections, a seemingly endless cloud of struts and girders supporting islands in the sky. Just beyond that was the sheer, cliff-like side of the iterator itself. The lands beneath iterators were dark, foreboding places; sunless, deadly, and teeming with creatures that featured in The Hunter’s worst nightmares. Could this path be safer? Would it be better to climb up the outside?
It leapt from the antlers of the beast and down to clear ground. The creature shook itself, huffed, then made a keening cry from its small mouth that sent the fleshy protrusions on its underside trembling. The Hunter flattened itself to the ground as the herd picked its way past it and on toward another distant plain of worm grasses.
By now the sky was growing dark; there was an electric thrill in the air, the heavy, overcharged fullness of rain and thunder brimming. The Hunter shook itself, stood, and scurried off in search of shelter.