Last winter, in my underground hall, Simefirmi read book for me. He looked bored. I poured some riesling in an empty can and fed him. He looked refreshed then.
I see the roadblock and police cars, damaged by weather and beasts, when I am driving to the hive for honey combs. A shopping cart rests there. It carried my welder and toolbox from my shrunken van to here. I then built a new car. It was half a season ago. I dove to the bottom of a distant lab, where robots shot resurrecting scientists. I came back with new mana and new spells. I haven’t seen new NPCs in quite a while. It must be harsh to survive in the jungle of the dying and grassland of undead.
I arrive at the hive. It is beside a farm. Bees are splattered along the wax walls as I walk through the many rooms of the bee fortress. I eat some honey comb and put some in pockets, blundering in the wax maze like a little bear. Then I walk back and drive home.
“Simefirmi, come with me”! With my book-reader in one hand, a gallon jug in another, and a chemistry set in arms, I walk to the swamp east to my hillock. While helping me with cooking bleach and then distilling royal jelly from honey comb, Simefirmi fights stray zombies that keep coming to us. Night is falling! We come back with bleach and royal jelly.
Simefirmi reads The Compleat Trapper, while I sort through the hoard doing bookkeeping. I suddenly see 3 pairs of eyes in the dark corner of the stone room! They are Gattsu, Arroyo, and [NPC_NAME]! Still watching alertedly as I ordered, in the little alcove I mined for them. They must have been there for a whole season, without moving, eating, or sleeping. I make some royal beef( giant dragonfly steak, actually), and let everybody have some and take a rest. Tomorrow I have a place to go.
I start the car and drive to the early sun rising to the blue night sky. After crossing 2 empty fields and 1 populated town, I come to a lab. This one is not a valuable warehouse, but a prison for monsters, pink, red and blue! I descend the dim stairs with jackhammer and the rest of the royal jelly in my pockets. Then I walk north and descend the stairs. Then I walk southeast and descend the stairs. Then I walk to another room and descend the stairs. Then I walk south and see a large room. A beam of light casts from my forehead, and I look through the open doors across the spacious room. The monsters are squirming and flailing behind the glass panel!
I observe the small wards. Three of them in a row. In the east one the blue eye stares, in the west a pink serpent. The middle one is empty. TATTATTATA! The jackhammer breaks the eastern wall. Concrete falls on me. The eye tazers me with unspeakable horror. A new ward reveals itself behind the wall! There must be yet 3 behind the 3 I see! In this one a red kobold barks at me. Half buried, I swing my legs to blindly attack, with the movement of a cornered scorpion! The fat eye rolls and trembles under my attack. Then my blow sends it reeling! Does a glowing blue eye ball of vicious radiation also reels in the socket of an ethereal whale in an alien dimension?.. I free myself from rubble, and see the pulped eye on the ground, dead probably. I turn around and kick the on-coming red kobold. It flies away and disappears. I walk to the west.
TATTATTATA! The pink serpent is freed. The long body embedded with two lines of razors slithers around me from all sides. My kick flows through the dancing vine of blades, denting the firm body here and there. It is of unearthly material, but is no less fleshy than mundane meat. Then I turn away, run from the room and close the metal door behind me. I take a 5 minute pause. The serpent’s razors flap like little wings, but it has no hand to open a door. Then I open the door and kick and punch and knock it across the room. I charge and knock it to the corner. Then I kick until it disintegrates.
The eye, dead; the serpent and the kobold, not existing anymore; a ward, empty; I assume that there are two wards left. There is no glass panel to them through which I can see the prisoner. What power do the lurking abominations have? Only one way to find out… TATTATTATA! Concrete and rebars fall. A pink demon rushes out with incoherent ranting. I kick and it hits the wall and bounces back and forth between me and the wall until it stops speaking and moving.
The jackhammer hits and the wall falls. The last prisoner appears, another eye! I swing my legs to attack, with the onslaught of a scorpion! The fat eye rolls and trembles under my attack. Then my blow sends it reeling! Does a glowing blue eye ball of vicious radiation also reels in the socket of an ethereal whale in an alien dimension?.. I see the pulped eye on the ground, dead probably.
I butcher the two eyes and find a stomach in each of them. Maybe they are a pair, but I don’t know if those alien creatures have more or less than two eyes.
Standing in the emptied carcery, I feel mushroom in my mouth. I ingest the royal jelly. This clears the bad taste.
On my way back, I pick up some battery and useful CBMs.
It is noon when I come to the surface. I drive back to my hillock, where I then treat the stomachs with pine bough and inscribe with coal: “Flaming eye” and “Flaming eye”. They are now two wineskins holding the riesling. Simefirmi needs the wine when he is bored.
