where you think you're going | Glowfic Constellation

"Even if you kill everyone from this planet, the purity-keepers of the other inhabited planets will know. Will you go to all the planets and have the purity-keepers kill everyone until only a handful of befouled cowards are left?"

"Doomed!"

"Shut up!"

"Doomed! Doooooooomed!"

"Shut up [profane intensifier]!"

from_scratch

"I don't want to. But I will not let anyone who is going to attack humans do that."

"Are you a human?" wonders the spokesalien.

from_scratch

"No."

"Why do you want to [untranslated] them, then? Aren't all the other kinds of filth creature just as foul to you as you are to us?"

from_scratch

"No. That's a specific problem only you have."

"But..."

The spokesalien seems to have trouble processing this.

Meanwhile, behind the spokesalien, a scuffle breaks out between the doom-wailer and the doom-wailer-shutter-upper. It continues for a few seconds and then ends in an alien shoving past the spokesalien and barreling out onto the street, yelling about doom.

from_scratch

Eh. Cam lets it go. It wasn't contributing anything to the conversation.

"Humans don't think you're filthy, or that I'm filthy. I don't think you're filthy, or that humans are filthy. This is a you problem."

The doom-wailer flees. The spokesalien stutters perplexedly. "But... but..."

And then, from behind Cam: fwm

from_scratch

Flomp.

When Cam wakes up:

It is slightly more than twenty minutes later.

All identifiable technological objects on his person have been smashed, and someone has piled miscellaneous heavy trash on top of him, but someone has also put a pillow under his head.

All of the aliens who were cowering here have run away.

His comm relay network is down.

from_scratch

Damn it.

He wriggles out from under the trash, accompanied by blasts of hot air to push it out of the way, and makes for the portal to go get a string of relays in place and find whoever wrecked them.

The section of the maze closest to this portal is just as he left it, but three steps in along the fastest route to Suranse, some clever soul has started slathering the ground with some sort of burning goo that produces intense heat and noxious fumes. There are dead aliens near many of the goo puddles, charred and corroded.

from_scratch

These aliens have terrible workplace saftey standards. Cam overflies it and makes himself air en route for comfort and replaces relays.

In places where the ground and the portal are close enough together, the goo interferes with relay placement. It melts most things that touch it. He might have to find an alternate route once or twice. And time is ticking.

from_scratch

Ugh. It's probably faster to just keep layering stuff onto the goo until he finds something it doesn't melt or it runs out of melting capacity than it is to expect alternate routes to be any better. It probably doesn't melt literally every element on the periodic table.

It melts this and that and this other thing and when this substance touches it, it causes an explosion that spatters the vicinity with noxious burning goo. Also, some layers that aren't melted by the heat are corroded by the fumes. It takes a while to hit on a functioning insulator.

One of the smaller Spheres a little farther along the route is filled with goo. It's oozing slowly out of the portal, but he'd still have to wade through chest-deep goo to cross this one. Odds of successfully bridging it with relays seem low. On the other hand, maybe restoring the network in the maze isn't as important as getting back in contact with Suranse so the Aluvai don't panic.

from_scratch

Yeah. He just makes air around himself as he wades. It won't kill him or anything but he's not fond of this stuff. Is this napalm? Maybe, he can make some to compare later, whatever, wade wade.

After that it's all puddles for a few minutes, and then the next Sphere small enough to fill with something has been filled with oily black sand, and the sand then lit on fire.

from_scratch

Fuck this. Cam is just making a tunnel with air in it and crawling through that.

The sand is heavy and threatens to collapse his tunnel once or twice, but is ultimately no match for his magic powers.

On the other side: more puddles of napalm-like substance.

Also, it has now been two hours since he was stunned.

from_scratch

Well maybe they don't have really accurate clocks onward.

Goo, goo, puddles of goo, another Sphereful of goo, a big heap of burning sand piled up over one of the portals on his route, more goo. Two hours and ten minutes. Two hours and fifteen minutes. Two and a half hours.

At two hours and thirty-six minutes, Cam is dismissed.

from_scratch

Cam hopes that the one triplet did that on purpose and the aliens aren't just filling the clam planet with napalm.

He's not in particularly tidy shape. Quickest possible shower while they draw his new circle. If they draw his new circle.

Inlaith Kevarsin

bright-morning