"You guys want to follow me?" Wutak exclaimed in surprise at the dozen or so Moongods who had followed him.
"Unlike them, we lived on the island disguised as a primitive tribe our whole lives. We had some interaction with the humans in the past and could understand the threat that they pose to us." A man at the lead of the other Moongods said.
"Honestly, it would not be impossible for us to kill the humans for the sole cause of eradicating them. We can suppress our instincts generated by the 'Power of Creation' to a favourable degree, although not to your extent." The man in the lead continued as he scratched his head. The contact between the armour on his head and his finger produced grating sounds.
"Just capturing them is fine. It's a waste to kill them outright. As long as they aren't given enough time to develop, they wouldn't pose much of a threat to us." Wutak said. Even though he could suppress his primary instincts, he wasn't completely free of their influence on his subconscious. The 'Power of Creation' gave them the ability to create miracles but also at the same time forbade destruction.
"But, our armours are unusable. They would shatter into pieces if we were to use them even once." Wutak stopped the rambling of the Moongod in the lead as he motioned for them to look into a certain direction in the seas.
"We aren't going to do anything reckless until your armours have been repaired. I will first capture the humans on the ships that are stationed nearby. It's an irony that they were stationed there to protect us in the first place." Wutak laughed in disdain as he took off into the skies leaving behind the laughter of the dozen Moongods.
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"Ugh" Anita woke up as a groan leaked out of her mouth. Her body felt heavy as she tried to move up to a sitting position.
"Tsss" As Anita used her left hand as support to prop herself up, a sizzling sound came from her palm that had come into contact with the water puddle around her.
As Anita gazed at the palm of her left hand in confusion, she saw small droplets of water get absorbed into her wounds and immediately kick start a healing process that was so rapid that it was visible to her naked eyes.
There were various scars on her body that were sustained when she had charged through the horde of ants. But now, most of them seemed to have completely disappeared, and her skin had reverted back to its pristine state.
Anita inspected the water to check if it had some sort of elixir mixed into it but her inspection revealed nothing of the sort. The taste of the water, its colour, its smell, and its feel to her touch were all just the same as what she had been accustomed to till this day.
"Does that mean regular water could heal my body?" Anita puzzled her thoughts as she got up and did some light stretching. There were some parts on her body that still ached a little bit, but she was feeling healthy for the most part.
Anita inspected her surroundings and found some moist saw wood, some books that were damaged as water had seeped into its pages, and moreover, there were no enemies in her surroundings; much to her surprise. She couldn't even spot a speck of either an ant's shadow.
'B-Boom'
'Crackle'
There were loud sounds of thunder in the skies that almost made her ears deaf and the heavy downpour continued unceasingly. It didn't seem to want to let up any time soon.
Anita walked a few steps to her left, picked up her refill and proceeded towards the wall of the bookshelf where the termites had engraved beautiful contours into it.
"Huff" Anita took a deep breath, held her refill in between the joints of her limbs and began to climb up the wooden wall of the bookshelf once again.
Her rate of climb this time was significantly higher than her previous climb when she had been exhausted and also had sustained numerous injuries throughout her body.
As she was in the middle of her climb, Anita went into a trance as she recalled how the termites moved around her fingers during her climb and how they scaled the walls without any support. Unknowingly, her speed shot up as Anita began to climb the wall as if she had done the same hundreds of times.
Purple mist seeped out of the pores of her body and coagulated at a tiny spot on her right arm. The purple mist condensed to a liquid-like state in the form of a circle as it attached itself to her arm, wriggled in place as it began to shapeshift.
Numerous thread-like appendages shot out of the purple circle as they began to mold themselves and layer atop each other.
A flash of light went out as the purple figure now looked exactly like the 2-d image of the top view of an Ant, the only difference being its purple colour. It was as if Anita had stuck a tattoo of a purple coloured ant on her arm. The tattoo which was 4 millimetres in length shone with a purple radiance which spread throughout her body in a loop once; it then seeped into the palms of her hands and the soles of her feet.
Immediately, small hair-like appendages grew out of her palms and the soles of her feet that secreted some viscous fluid. These numerous hair-like appendages along with the viscous fluid they secreted helped her cling to the wall without even using the contours as support and climb the wall like a house lizard.
Anita had only realised this strangeness when she had already reached the hole on the ceiling that led to the roof of the bookshelf.
After she had climbed out of the hole and rested on the floor at the top of the bookshelf, Anita gazed at her palms where tiny hair-like appendages slowly disappeared. No, they looked like they were absorbed back into her body.
Immediately after that, she saw a purple mist leave her palms and flow back into the ant tattoo on her arm. As she saw this strange phenomenon, Anita thought to pull out her 'Record' when immediately, purple mist seeped out of her pores and condensed into a display of texts and figures.
Ant-265 (1.01%)> Anita noticed a sharp decrease in the numbers next to Ant in her attribute called 'Karma'. It had decreased from its initial 324 to the current 265. The more she thought about it, the more she felt the likeliness of her assumptions. Anita gazed at the ant tattoo and willed for it to activate. Nothing happened; the tattoo just looked like a dull monotone coloured picture. Anita then willed for the hair-like appendages to grow out of her palms as she gazed intently at it but nothing happened even after a few seconds had passed. Her gaze hardened as she thought back to when she was climbing up on the wall of the bookshelf. She wanted to replicate the series of actions she had taken then along with harbouring the same mentality of that instance but she restrained herself from doing so. Her first priority was to find out about the whereabouts of her son and her maid Diana. A part of her wanted to believe that they were safe and sound since Diana had a good head above her shoulders while a part of her prepared herself for the worst. Anita wanted to clear away all the negative thoughts plaguing her mind but they just seemed intent on damaging her mental stability like a wild torrent. It was the visage of the Owl she gazed at earlier that was the source for all of her negative thoughts. She wanted to hope, she wanted to believe the survivability of her family as Anita inspected her surroundings to seek out some clues. A large part of her feared about discovering clues related to the doom of Diana and invariably, her child; while a small part of her didn't want to find any clue and wanted to stay ignorant and hope for a miracle to occur. There were corpses of ants everywhere; some termites were also included in the mix. She also saw a couple of yellowish tails of what appeared to be house lizards. Only the tails of the house lizards seemed to be present which were in the middle of a small pool of red blood that was further diluted by the rainwater that had seeped into the bookshelf. As Anita walked further and continued to inspect her surroundings, her legs almost gave away in despair as she saw small puddles of water that were in a mild shade of purple. The only source of the colour purple in their surroundings was their own blood. Even if they had been diluted by the water, one fact still remained clear. Diana had been injured and she was bleeding. An Anita walked further; she saw more places where the puddles of water were in a mild shade of purple. Anita followed after the puddles that had a shade of purple no matter how diluted they were as she went around in circles for some time until she finally reached a spot near the window. The window sill was at the same horizontal level as the surface of the bookshelf. Since the bookshelf was attached to the wall of their house, she could easily walk over to the window if she ever wanted to. As Anita walked to the edge of the bookshelf and gazed at the area adjacent to the window, she saw the water that was circulating there seemed to be in a dark shade of purple. There were also numerous bird feathers lying there and floating on the water surface that seemed to have originated from the owl. Since the rainwater had mixed with the blood droplets, Anita couldn't determine the life and death of Diana which could have been done by visually analyzing the splatter of blood. Anita picked up one of the feathers and sniffed it a little. There was only the scent of a bird emanating from it and not the scent of blood. This fact alone eased up her tensed nerves to a certain tolerable degree. The feather she had picked fell down like a broken leaf as Anita stepped onto the window sill.