The Dungeon of Earth

Hissss

The initial sound of the wreath startled her even more than the flashing of the violet sparks. But while Nellie was somewhat scared by this new development, she felt a primal longing, a natural instinct deep inside her that was happy about what happened.

Nellie stood stock still as she watched the newly changed wreath gain an oily sheen to it. Kind of like if someone sprayed soap onto a mirror and rubbed it in. She didn’t move a muscle as she watched and waited.

Minutes, then hours passed, and nothing happened. So she slowly approached the wreath and pressed her hand against the middle of the wreath, where the oily sheen was.

But nothing happened.

She didn’t know what she expected, but it wasn’t this.

Placing both of her hands within the centre of the wreath, Nellie pushed and shoved as hard as she could.

The more she tried to push, the longer she was at it, and the more adamant Nellie became that something would happen.

And it did.

Suddenly, the wreath moved five centimetres backwards, surprising Nellie, who suddenly released the wreath.

Hmph. Grunted Nellie. While it wasn’t what she wanted, being able to shift the wreath showed her that she could do things to it.

It was at that moment that a lightbulb went off in her head.

What if I push a string through it?

Quickly, she severed one of the circulating strings and, with steady hands, pushed the very tip of it through the wreath.

With a gasp, her vision suddenly tunneled right through the wreath, into an environment exactly like hers, except for some differences.

Nellie could only see a hint of ice, with some of the reddish-brown flecked dark grey stone. But she only had a hint of clarity within her own territory, within her own little cube. It was like seeing the world again as a human, with limited sight and limited ability to view closer than what the human eye could.

She watched this newness, this uncertainness of an area not of her own, not of her territory. But the more she watched it, the more certain Nellie became that it wouldn’t hurt her. Especially since as she watched and tried to perceive the surroundings, she noticed that one of her strings naturally broke out of its circulation, and made its way through the wreath, well portal more like, reached three millimetres away from the other side of the portal, and made its way back to her territory all the way back to her nebula.

A hunger flew through her as soon as that string connected back to her core.

A want. A need to grow and possess. So, after letting go of most of the strings that she wrapped around her hand, she kept one.

Nellie tried pushing her hand with the string further out, trying to get past more than three millimetres away.

But she was met with a strange resistance. Something stiff but strangely springy, kind of like jelly, resisted any of her attempts of trying to get past the three millimetre area past the portal that was hers.

Then an idea hit her. If she couldn’t get her hand through the barrier stopping her, then what if the string could.

Now, if I do this, I should be able to… She murmured as she straightened out the string so that it was perfectly straight with only a slight curve before she chucked it with all of her strength out of her territory.

With a wicked throw, the slightly curved string went about 50 centimetres out of her territory before coming back like a boomerang.

With much haste, Nellie quickly connected the string back to her core and watched what happened with an unnatural stillness.

She did not shift or even twitch as she watched as the violet sparks that made up the string began to circulate back into her nebula.

Nellie held her breath as she watched the deep violet sparks from her nebula core begin to circulate out of her core and through the path of the string out of her territory then back again.

As the deep violet sparks began to fully circulate, Nellie could feel the clicking of ownership of that small 50-centimetre long, 20-centimetre wide, and 20-centimetre tall arch becoming part of herself, part of her territory. But it wasn’t.

She could feel that the territory was hers, but she did not have the same ingrained control over it. The only thing that Nellie could relate to this awkward feeling of owning, but not being in control was when she was human and her hair would blow with the wind. It was a part of her, but she didn’t have total control over it.

But it didn’t bother her. With that little throw, Nellie could feel the possibilities of new territory and even newer things grow. It satiated that hunger inside her, and she continued her expansion with a passion she had rarely exhibited before.

With each throw, more and more of the reddish-brown flecked dark grey stone and the deep blue ice became hers.

Every shot she threw gained her at least a couple more centimetres of territory. Up and down, left to right, and as much around the portal as she could. And at this point, whatever passed for north, south, east, and west, the string went.

But, at a certain point, she hit a block.

Or a boundary.

Like the one she had just encountered, the barrier was rigid. As she pressed her hands and tried to move the strings through, it didn’t move.

The barrier prevented all movement, unlike when it was all springy and jelly-like.

Eyeing the barrier, Nellie huffed and decided that she would leave the barrier for now.

When she turned her back to the barrier, a cheshire grin grew on her face.

The territory that Nellie gained was large.

With the addition of territory outside of her cube, Nellie figured that she needed to have some sort of distinction between her territory that was inside and outside the portal.

I think I’ll call the cube the Inner and the territory around the portal the Outside.

While the Inner was completely her own, it was composed solely of solid ice and stone.

However, the Outside territory had potential, even though it was currently smaller in size than the Inner.

The Outside wasn’t a perfectly circular or cubed area, but that didn’t matter. Nellie thought the indents, grooves, and ridges just gave the Outside character.

From edge to edge, the Outside was 1.5 metres long. Top to bottom, one metre tall, and was 70 centimetres at the most expansive area.

Fascinated at what she had gained, Nellie flicked her eyes and studied anything that caught her attention.

And boy, were there a few things she wanted to sink her metaphorical claws into.