A Tale of One Deviant (Book One)

Chapter 127: Devastating Art Work

We couldn't resist going to the shrine...I mean temple-looking place after standing there for a while. Oddly enough we weren't attacked, and after a brief observation I noticed that there was no life that I could sniff out in the nearby area.

     Is it because it's winter or something?

     But it feels like a normal spring day...

     Don't be confused! Time is probably frozen for this place, look-the sun is in the same place as last time and it's a different time in the day.

     We trekked forward, avoiding everything that looked dangerous as we stepped cautiously, leaving behind plants that looked like they would happily gulp you up if given the chance. The shrubbery in some places was so thick that I didn't dare go in some places, for fear of being sucked every which way or gnawed at.

     This place was unlike any other. There were pink trees, yellow trunks, orange bushes (no fruit), palm trees lining the rivers and streams and lakes with sycamores and oaks everywhere, or what closely resembled those trees. There were purple gingko trees that had the branch placements like pines, moving from the very root of the trunk up, and rose bushes that were as tall as sequoias.

     It was amazing.

     There were flowers and trees of all kinds that I didn't recognize one bit, and all the ones that I did name had large variations from the originals. I only called them oaks and sycamores because they vaguely looked like them.

     The animals, however, could not be compared to anything on Earth. Spiders? Remember that thing that first popped up in front of me the first time I came here, the pink and yellow golf ball-headed turtle-spider?

     Yeah, I saw a whole clan of those things moving together in harmony, melding together in color so that you couldn't tell the brother from the cousin and the mother from the daughter. I think they forgot who each other were sometimes, because one moment their weird tail things would wrap together and they would be in harmony, and then another tail would wrap with theirs and then one would abandon the other to go with the newest one.

     Don't even get me started on the walking whales.

     Soon enough, however, I encountered a problem.

     There was a cliff that I couldn't get over when I was just barely high enough, looking back over the forest and seeing that everything was below me by now as I reached up and felt the clouds. It felt like the mountain had been growing as I climbed it, to the point that when I looked up and saw that I had five feet to go, the next time I looked up there was twenty feet.

     "This is ridiculous," I growled aloud at the air.

     It was your choice. Actually, there wasn't much of a choice.

     Ugh.

     But when I finally reached the top, I found that it was worth it. I think this was some sort of will test, climbing to the top after the time distortion has led you to believe you've been doing this for days.

     My arms certainly got their strength after this, even though I didn't eat.

     I didn't know why, but the lack of food was probably what led to me making the dumb decision to lean on the very tip of the cliff, basically holding on to the top of a bottle. It was a long way down, like the world's thinnest and most insane ramp. I looked behind me and saw thousands of feet of sheer cliff, looking at the perfect handholds provided to me all the way down.

     I saw nothing but a broken city down below, but it was the most fantastic city I'd ever seen. Sorry Roman left-behinds, you're nothing compared to this.