Optional Music to Accompany the Chapter:
Breathe (Legends of Runeterra Version)
https://youtu.be/e4dZVZP-v2c
Chapter 20: The Touch of Breath
Mid Morning - Early Summer : Year 0 | Month 0 : Sector J14
World: Leviathan | Rank: ERROR | Population: 22
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*T-T-T-Tap—WOOOSH* Zipping across the constantly thinning, dipping, and rising mountain ridge as if it were no different from the plains at the horizon, my eyes wandered across the expanse below.
Protected almost completely from the winds, the mossy, weed covered mountainside dripped with the dew of pressure-curled clouds, funneling and flowing down to the forest before accumulating into puddles that glistened through the canopy like glimmers of silver and sapphire.
It was a quiet and tranquil morning, one where the only living creatures in sight were at the scale of rodents or insects—beings who couldn't recognize the looming presence that their predators had fled from in my passing.
Once again thanks to the furry panther draped around my body, my pace was slow, excruciatingly so, yet I despite the extra time, I never gave my mind a moment of rest. With every step, my eyes darted over the forest like a machine scanning for colors, searching for not outcrops of civilization, but petals of pastel anywhere I could find them.
However, rather than expecting to find anything, it was merely to occupy my mind while I retraced my steps north.
By then, it had been a few hours since I picked up Bella and got moving, but while she had resituated herself a number of times, she had yet to speak a word.
Perhaps thinking my mind was occupied with running, she simply followed my gaze with her own, keeping to herself despite her mind appearing to take a dozen steps every time my boots took one.
However, that all changed when we finally reached the place I was looking for a number of hours later.
Finally slowing down again after the sun had climbed into the sky, my gaze turned up from the forest to land on a wide crevice I had simply strode over in my first passing.
Bridging both sides of the ridgeline, it was a wide, and deep crack, but without the shielding of any ivy on the windy-side of the mountain, the wind that curled over the peak prematurely condensed its moisture into a thick mist that settled into it, filling it with water and cultivating a thick layer of moss and algae that flattened its surface and shallowed its depth.
"Woah..." The first sound to leave Bella's mouth was simply a breath of awe.
The place was practically its own ecosystem, one unlike anything else I had seen in my travels through that world.
But while not particularly fascinating to me, it was what I was looking for.
All across the wide bed of moss sprouted plants, some weeds, some ivy's, but most importantly, an expanse of pale blue flowers that held their unbloomed buds in the fog of curling moisture.
*tap-pat* Finally hopping off, Bella was quick to walk ahead, parting from my touch and freezing at its edge as if contemplating whether to continue forward before I got up next to her and squatted down.
"What a fascinating place..." Her eyes gleamed like a child as she spoke.
But I never responded.
Looking over the bed of flowers, I analyzed everything I could about the patterns of their growth, the way the buds aimed at the sun, where they grew thickest, how they bent in the breeze, and breaking down their color and texture to figure out what they needed to survive.
'What was their paradise?'
The question dragged through my mind like a massive comb, scraping up knowledge I hadn't mustered in eons to deduce every factor of growth I could possibly glean from the impossibly rare environment.
The thing was, a god that appreciated beauty would be one that'd be nearly impossible to track on its own... Despite having long-since grown desensitized to it myself, I knew some beings considered grand vistas the most beautiful, while others perhaps preferred expanses of vegetation or unique formations.
However, I couldn't check all of those. I needed to merely figure out what the god liked.. and find the place with the conditions necessary for the ultimate paradise to form.
And the key to it all was flowers...
Despite looking vastly different from those I found out in the plains, they were actually quite similar, if not identical. -The petals' patterns are the same, the colder temperatures could make them bloom later, and the water could have diluted their pigment...-
Reaching down, I casually plucked up one of the flowers that bloomed near my feet before pulling it into my palm and crushing it. *Splurt...*
Then, upon opening my hand, rather than finding the faintly blue petals of the rest of the flowers, I found damaged and darkened, but faintly yellow petals akin to those of the flowers in the plains. -They're practically the same flower...- Their pigment was merely diluted from red depending on how much water it got, eventually turning blue rather than white from the deep glow of the sky. -So where could their paradise be...-
*Vwoop* Opening up my system, I was quick to navigate to the map of the world, quickly finding where we were before looking around exactly as I had done many times already.
What I needed to find was a place of larger scale than the pillars in the plains or the mossy crevice before me...
I needed... -A valley...-
And while there were many of them on the fuzzy globe before me, one was far deeper, thinner, and more encompassed than the rest—situated to the north where some of the tallest peaks on the planet bordered the ocean directly... -Perfect...-
It was our next destination, thousands of kilometers away, across lakes and seas alike.
Though, such impasses weren't much of obstacles for me.
Quickly getting back up, I motioned Bella to climb back onto me, and without a word, she did and we got moving again.
But this time, I wasn't going to accept such a snails pace.
Keeping my eyes on her grip, giving support with my hand as needed, I accelerated as fast as she could handle, until we were at a speed where she had to squeeze and tuck behind my body to protect herself from the wind, never planning to stop before we reached our destination in about a week.
However, that pace turned out to be hard to keep.. not because I got tired.. but because the girl on my back didn't know what she was feeling.
Feeling a tug on my collar after a couple days of running, I looked back to see her biting into it with her eyes closed like she was trying to meditate and focus to settle something...
Something that wasn't entirely a mental battle.
-Ah...- It took me a while to recognize it.. but it didn't eventually register. -She must need to eat.-
Unlike all the living robotics I had in the past, she wasn't constantly bathing in blood that had the nutrients to sustain her flesh...
So, we had to inevitably slow down—though never to a halt.
The next lake we passed, rather than merely skipping or running across its surface, I stomped on it with as much force as I could without risking the recoil hurting Bella, and practically inverted the entire thing. *WOOM-PPPSHHH*
The plume of water that sprouted in my wake was hundreds of meters tall, filled with the blood from fish near the surface being reduced to mist, and the chunks of fish that resided deeper.
But it was precisely what I wanted.
Circling back, I hopped through the mist and grabbed a large chunk, about the size of my torso, before landing on the other side, tearing off a chunk and handing it to her.
Little did I know, she already had a small fish squirming in her mouth.
...At least that was the case for a moment.
*CRUNCH* Biting through the tough flesh and tougher scales like they were nothing, she decapitated the squirming creature before chewing through and swallowing it nearly whole—snapping her gaze to the deep red chunk in my hand before snapping her jaws on it like a starved gator.
However, my fingers were unfortunately in the way. *sNaP*
Like daggers slamming into an immovable wall, her front teeth that hit my fingers bent with some malleability before snapping and splintering. *crrrunch*
"ACK-" Jolting her head back with a pitiful whimper, her eyes, previously thinned to needles, flooded with regret.
Tucking her head and pressing her snout into my back, she trembled for a moment, trying to deal with the wash of pain before eventually forcing herself back up.
But this time, rather than a feral snap, she carefully situated the corner of the chunk—away from my fingers—beneath the unbroken canines on the side of her mouth before forcing them through with a wince.
It was a painful lesson, but one well-learned.
Eventually chewing through that piece, she shaved off another, and another, each calmer and more controlled than the last before slowing after devouring more than her body weight.
By the time she stopped, she was drowsy, but no level of mental exhaustion could hide the regret that filled her eyes.
-What an odd thing you are...- Sometimes, she acted wise, like she had a lifetime of memories behind her, but others she would be a naive being who didn't know what it meant to be alive.
It was interesting, yes.. but also.. quite cute...
Even if it'd take some time for me to realize that.
"Next time you get hungry, just tug on my collar, alright?" *Vwoop* Tossing the remaining meat into my inventory, I turned to gather a couple more chunks so we wouldn't have to slow down as much in the future before finally getting back to the trip.
But unfortunately, the huge volume I had grabbed was hardly enough for a couple days, and while we did eventually make it, between collecting more food, and stopping to let Bella use the restroom, which.. in her only half-developed body, came as puking.. the original week-long trip stretched into nearly three.
...And while I was nervous it would be a waste, as we reached the top of the desolate, rocky mountainside of the mountain away from the winds, we found our journey to not be so fruitless.
*Wooooosh...* The wind on that peak was slow but firm.. cool but damp, carrying an intoxicatingly thick stench that wasn't bad so much as oppressively strong.
But the scent was the last thing I cared about.
Protected on all sides by mountains that stretched higher than the clouds, the basin before us was completely unlike anything else I had seen on Leviathan. Its floor wasn't barren stone, endless forest, or vast prairie, but a sea of color. Pastel flowers in every hue from red to yellow, white to blue, painted the land in shifting waves, their blossoms rippling as if breathing in unison.
The sight alone took Bella's breath away—her claws subconsciously kneaded into my shoulder as she rose to shine her wide, glimmering eyes over the expanse. "How.. pretty..."
It was simply an ocean of petals, broken only by the ripples of wind, and lifted traces of collapsed walls, ruined towers, and fractured monuments...
Just like in the plains.. a city was buried there... One swallowed by vines.. eroded by weathering.. and decayed by time.
What once was a civilization's pride had been reduced to rubble and overgrowth... Streets were gone, buildings were flattened, and every monument, without fail, was toppled.
All that remained was the silhouette of the shape it once held.. dozens of centric rings only broken by roads that lead to a center mound of rubble which a grand oak had sprouted from...
From the peak, it didn't look huge.. only standing half a kilometer tall beneath peaks towering dozens.. but its wide, round canopy unlike anything else I had seen on Leviathan gave away what it was... -What a small world tree...-
Though only looking like a sapling, it was one of the hearts of this world.. laid over the dead as if trying to teach them how to breathe again.
...Or perhaps.. laid to give those lost souls a new home.. once again under the protection of the being that once watched over them... Under the looming presence of the white, fuzzy silhouette at the base of of the tree.
A distant, elven man sat as if to rest.. whose eyes were locked on me like the distance between us was irrelevant.
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