Trail of Malign

[registry: brush him]

INTRO​

Two people stood a mere mile away from the border of the contaminated coast, unobserved and unchecked by the Invaders where the cancer had stopped spreading, and started festering. Despite the distance from the hellscape, it still freshly stank and looked as clearly like a jungle of mayhem as it would to the imagination, or up close. It would not measure up whatsoever to the inside.

"So that's the Malignance Zone," remarked the Resilient Composer, a human male with a burly, albeit nimble build, enhanced from years of evading the Invaders, who wore a warm jacket with a colorful undershirt. His name was Jacob, and after awakening in the plains of the American Wasteland, his purpose was to join his friends across "The Pond".

"Yeah. Are you sure you want to do this?" wondered his friend, the Quiet Scientist, a young woman with a black sweater and a filled satchel who assured his guidance to the border of the Zone.

The Composer looked back at her, and a weak smile came upon his lips. "I have to, don't I? The way East is a no-go."

"You could go home," the Scientist offered, her expression hardened.

"These people need me more," the Composer retorted.

"Very well. Do you have your supplies in order?"

"Right in this pack." He patted it with his hand.

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The tone of the ground he stepped on turned from hard dirt and puddles of mud into grassy, tendril-like vines reaching out from the Malignance Zone. He stared down at them, and then looked ahead. The Zone was no more than a few dozen feet away. He looked up at the catastrophic cancer, wondering how many biomes across Earth would soon become just like this one. Or how far it would spread.

Jacob breathed deeply, and then took his final steps. As he walked towards the Zone, he reached over his shoulder and into his backpack - specifically, into a certain slot where he kept his Respirator, and he wrapped it tightly around his head. Then he reached for the sheathe on his leg, where he had kept a salvaged machete. Ordinarily, for slashing through vines and rotting, droopy tree branches, now for cutting through barnacles or whatever else might impede the Composer's journey. He checked its sharpness, then put it back in its sheathe. Next, he checked the holster for his shotgun. Being left handed, he held the shotgun in a holster on his left hip. He pulled it out, inspecting it.

Since it was small it could easily be holstered or drawn, held in one hand. It was a Combine Shotgun, but it looked somewhat like a sawed-off human-made shotgun, with a magazine indicator on its back end. If he really needed to use it, it would be available, as would a cartridge in his backpack of nine bullets. Just nine. Good enough.

He knew he had his nonperishable food and water, he knew he had his compass, he had his map, and he had the Holy Bible, just in case he needed to convert for comfort during the journey.

It was time to stop taking inventory. He had arrived to the Zone.

He stepped beyond the green mist that welcomed him into The Malignance Zone.

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Jacob took a moment to look at the jungle barrier at surface level. It was like he'd stepped into a new world. He knew what that was like, and this was familiar to him. He'd seen Xen, and somehow, this was much more terrifying. Still, he found himself unwilling to turn back.

He heard the chirping of the wildlife above. Despite the zone being the cancer that it was, it was alive, its denizens strong. As he walked through the treacherous alien jungle, he pulled his journal out, and wrote as he walked, taking some notes on some of the things he saw. He kept his ears peeled, though, constantly looking up from it to ensure nothing was about to pounce him.

A page was made on the particular region of the zone he was in - he called it the Vibrant Thicket, for he knew this place would continue to grow, as would the wildlife within.

Something caught his eye, and he knelt down, tilting his head. There was something in the ground, against a rotting tree, growing from it. A lump, from which emerged a tentacle-like appendage. Jacob stared at it for a minute, before brushing it and watching it retract from its hand, avoiding him systematically. They don't like humans, he thought. Or maybe they just don't like ME. Curiously, he unbottled some water, and sprinkled it on the root of the bulb.

Suddenly, he watched it move towards the water, basking in the sprinkles. It "looked" around, feeling the air around it, until it eventually stopped again at Jacob's hand. He felt it coil around his fingers, almost as if lovingly.

The other Xen Bulbs awakened, reaching out for Jacob, and he smiled. This was a nice first impression of the Malignance Zone. It's probably going to get a lot worse, he thought intrusively... and correctly.

After moving away from the bulbs, he found himself stopping in the middle of "trail" of low-hanging roots. He wondered what natural entity had woven such a trail until he stepped forward, and stopped just in time to avoid a long, slick tongue stopping in front of him. He gasped, and then backed off, before looking ahead and noticing that many, many more barnacle tongues had descended from the branches above. He looked up at them.

They looked nothing like the ones he had seen thus far - more green, more vicious-looking. Even their tongues seemed sharper. He had to get through them without cutting them - he wanted to use the machete as a last resort, and he didn't want to risk losing it, either. Jacob stepped around one tongue, and then around another, as narrowly avoiding them as he possibly could. At one point, he even shoved a branch into one particular tongue, allowing it to pull up against and rip off the branch, pulling it into its gob, never to be seen again. Though by the time it released the branch, it surely wouldn't have noticed that Jacob was gone, having ventured past the trail.

He turned around, looking at the end of the "Barnacle Trail", and he yelled a victorious "Ha!" as he watched the barnacles scramble with the severed tree branch, passing it to one another and repeatedly confusing themselves. Dumbass tongue monsters. I am so damn clever, he thought.

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The Composer had been venturing through the outer regions of the Malignance Zone for a few hours at this point. Traveling across the Vibrant Thicket, he ran into surprisingly few adversaries - the occasional barnacle trail, the less-than-occasional headcrab. But at this point, the journey would surely become more treacherous. Jacob prepared for this outcome.

He heard a bellow like a dying deer as a viny ward to his right started rustling. His heart practically stopped, and he started backing off, wary of the encroaching beast. This was no cartoon - it would not comically turn out to be some wayward rabbit lost just as he was. And indeed, it wasn't. The vines burst forward, parting the way as an antlered beast like a stag, with four great eyes on the center of its face shaped like diamonds tore through them, charging Jake.

An attempt was made to leap out of the way, but its antlers pierced between his backpack and his back, almost goring him on them. Jacob let out a gutteral "Oh, FUCK!" as he realized he was being carried in the direction the beast was headed. He heard cries through the green mist and writhing tendrils around the expanse the "Blackantler" was taking him through. And then it dawned on him. It's not trying to hurt me. It's running away from something, he realized.

Thinking fast, he reached his hands over for the antlers of the Blackantler, and then forced against them, making the beast turn left as he mounted it, securing his backpack. "Alright, listen here!" he called out to the animal. "I don't know what you're running from, but-"

His gaze averted upwards as he heard loud hissing, and he saw the pursuers. A pack - indeed, a pack- of blue and violet alien animals, roughly the size of panthers, with vibrant red eyes, leaping along the tentacle-enveloped trees, some hopping onto the ground to continue chasing their next meal. Oh, that's not good. Jacob barely had any time to think, but he knew he had a goal - survive and reach the other end of this zone. So he reached over for the deer's right antler, causing it to yell out in discomfort, but eventually steer right... right, right - until it had turned to a 180 degree angle, headed Westbound when Jacob checked his compass.

"Alright, you giant moose thing!" He called out. "We're in this together, so for god's sake, don't die!" He shouted this order as if the Blackantler could understand him.

Hungry Panthereyes made roaring calls to their brethren as they changed course to continue pursuing the deer. Jacob watched as they past by expanses of cascading tentacles and trees that moved with great glowing holes in their bark as if to watch the passing animals.

Jacob looked ahead, and his eyes narrowed. He saw a very unwelcome sight.

Barnacle Trail, he noticed grimly.

"Brace yourself, Blackantler!" he shouted, steadying himself on the running animal's back as he reached for the machete at his hip.

His punctual timing pushed in as the alien's antlers were forcibly stopped, nearly snapping the creature's neck as barnacles wrapped onto them. Jacob extended his arms over, severing one of the four barnacles constricting the Blackantler. He grunted, and then severed another, looking back. The Panthereyes were getting dangerously close.

He moved over to the other antler. "Come on, come on, come on..." He brought his machete down on the second to last one, looking back at the encroaching Panthereyes. So close. Huffing, he raised his machete, and swung it with both hands against the last barnacle tongue.

The creature, loose, lurched forward. Now that it was aware of the barnacles, it ran around them expertly, with Jacob still on its back, tearing through some with perfect momentum and simply evading others. "YEAH!" Jacob called out victoriously, relishing his success, his survival. He looked over his shoulder as he watched the Panthereyes leap headlong, unaware, and struggling, into the grasps of barnacles. Only a few noticed and escaped, but the ones that didn't were devoured soon, leaving only chunks to tell the tale.

"Nice work, Blackantler!" His heart raced from the narrow survival. It seemed, for a fleeting minute, perhaps a fleeting hour, that there was hope - that he would make it through the expanse of The Malignance Zone. That he would survive.

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The Blackantler that Jacob was riding might've knocked him off at this point, but it seemed rather docile. After taking a rest, settling from the chase, it and Jacob were on the move again, Westbound through the treacherous Malignance Zone.

"I'm guessing we're not in the Vibrant Thicket anymore. Or just then," he commented. "That would've been, uh... the Panther Canopy. Did you notice all the leaves up in the sky? Blotting out the sun?" He pointed upwards. The Blackantler, as expected, didn't comment - this is because it was an alien moose, and alien moose tend not to understand the English language.

The Composer dug into a can of baked beans as he scanned the area around him, and noticed a suspicious lack of wildlife. There was no distinct chirping, no emergent bulbs, not even a preying headcrab. And somehow, that was more frightening to Jacob than the events prior.

"Blackantler, stop." Jacob pulled on the antlers, causing the beast to moan in discomfort, and then stop. He reached into his bag for a small box of apples, opened it up, and set it down next to the Blackantler.

It sat down to dig into them while The Composer went off to scout the area.


After some minutes of investigation, he came upon something strange - a cavern, looking like it had been recently dug up, torn open by Xen tendrils. In this empty branch of forest, that seemed impossible. The cave, pitch black, revealed nothing to him, so he took out a flashlight, and shone it into the cave.

The texture within was not rocky.

It was fleshy.

Jacob recoiled in surprise as a vast rumbling overtook the area. Sprouting from the "cave", dark tendrils emerged from around, like the limbs of a cascading mouth, peeling up from the ground and reaching down from the trees. The cave began to raise, expend - Jacob had only scratched the surface of its mass. The mountainous hill the "cave" connected to were enveloped in Xenian flora within the blink of an eye, and the surrounding trees warped into corrupt alien forestry in a practical instant.

The Composer tried to run, but his legs were snatched by gripping appendages, and he was dragged back yelling in horror, fazed and terrified as he was held by the ankles, upside down and dangling with his wrists bound. The appendages brought him forward, bringing him closer to the toothy maw of the massive atrocity.

"Do not struggle," it suggested to the man in a clear tone. "Your energy is best conserved." Jacob sighed, and finally surrendered, no longer struggling. "Yeah..." he tiredly exclaimed. "Sorry, I didn't realize this was the... regularly scheduled hentai monster grabbery."

The horror, genuinely amused, let out a sound like a laugh. "It has been years since last a Terran wandered into my domain. Tell me," it started, bringing Jacob slightly closer. "What inspired you to venture into our territory?"

"Nnh. Not this," Jacob muttered. "I just want to get to the other side, and... get on a boat to Europe, I guess."

"What in Europe did you deem worth throwing your life away?" the living cave curioused.

"F-Friends." He replied. "Why, uh... why exactly do you care?"

The cave monster twirled the man about idly, pondering on the question. "Curiosity," it eventually replied. "The dominant species of this world fascinate me. Your ingenuity. Your superstition. How strange that your race binds them together, hand in feeble hand."

Jacob shrugged. "I mean, I wouldn't really know."

The beast extended a grabber around Jacob's back, rooting in through the backpack, pulling it open.

"What are you doing?" he asked, wiggling for a moment before the cave monster pulled out the Bible he had brought along.

"You claim that you would not know, yet you carry this around with you. For what purpose?"

"Uh. Honestly, I don't think I even should've brought that. I'm not religious."

"Then why did you see fit to bring it?" The living cave questioned. "I don't know... comfort?" He shrugged.

"Comfort. Precisely." The cave hummed as it flipped through some of the pages of the book. "Surely if it is so meaningless, you would be willing to part with it in exchange for your continued life?"

"Abso-fucking-lutely. PLEASE let me go."

"Very well. One final condition-" the creature began, the vines pulling Jacob even closer, close enough to smell the talking cave's breath. "-you may stumble upon the more sapient denizens of this crooked jungle. I want you not to tell them of my presence here. More importantly, I would like you to return again... by that point, you'll have something quite valuable to me."

"I mean, if I said no, I'd die, so... I accept your turns, funky cavemonster."

"Good."

The vines loosened, and The Composer was suddenly dropped onto the ground, letting out an "Oof!" as he hit the floor. When he looked up, the Cave became dormant once again.

Long moments after the smog cleared, he brushed himself off and picked up his backpack, sighing quietly as he backed off.

When he arrived back to where he'd left the Blackantler, the alien moose was still there. Taking a minute to let relief wash over him, he hopped onto the Xen stag, pushing it forward.

He rode deeper, deeper into The Malignance Zone.