By now, I should be immune to witnessing bodily fluids splattering everywhere, but I had to hold a gag upon seeing the tadpole spewing his meal for today. Amongst the tidbits of lettuce and broccoli, a white pearl perpetually gleamed as if to attract the eye of treasure hunters.
"This pearl needs to be returned to the Clam of Oceanus and Icarus' egg has to be reinstalled in my stomach."
"Where do we start?" I asked. "Wait, where is Seagar?"
Smoyashi and Aki shrugged, completely shagged out from earlier hostilities.
We were on the ground by the grassland. Bubbles floated along with the fishes. Golden fireflies made the tall grasses seem innocuous despite their intimidating height.
The tadpole took the pearl into its mouth and swallowed it. He glanced at Tethys lingering in the sky like a kite.
"We can find the clam in Atlarei city."
"Where is it?"
"You're looking at it," he answered.
Self-pity and horrification made my blood cold and my skin clammy. I knew where this was heading.
"It's inside of her, isn't it?"
Safety was not included in the vocabulary of this planet. My eyelids nearly tore from how I squeezed my eyes shut while the air currents glided past us. Aki was grasping the tadpole's tail. Smoyashi and I held tight on Aki's fur. While I was screaming in trepidation, Smoyashi was howling like a madman, only it wasn't a man, it was a bean sprout.
"Hold on!" Yang, as what he introduced himself before we decided on this suicide mission, instructed.
"I have no choice!" I was held against my will. Even if I refuse to come with them, where the hell will I go?
My left eye opened out of curiosity of how I'll die this time. There was a big black abyss and we were heading straight to it.
"I can't do this anymore!" I cried.
Yang, Smoyashi, and Aki chortled, with Aki heaving like a car engine that refused to start.
We slipped right through, my head bumping into Tethys' uvula. The sliminess, the feeling of smooth muscles squeezing us, and the fishy scent overwhelmed me, sadly, not enough to knock me unconscious. If this was the sign that I was by degrees getting used to revulsion, I did not know if I should rejoice for the growth or weep because I was damaged.
We squeezed through a narrow passage that was pipe-like made of soft muscles. I guessed it was the esophagus. Aki was as galled as I was. We were squiggling like worms and Yang and Smoyashi had no choice but to be squished like dough by two rolling pins.
A protective bubble enclosed us before we could drop dead into Tethy's disintegrating acid. My eyes instantly pinned to the view of white luminescent marbled infrastructures of what seemed to me as an abandoned city. With such luminosity emitted, it was almost as if the white structures were turning bluish pale. Many pillars maintained their stand while the rest either crumbled and collapsed. Sitting statues that were based upon charismatic people were carved within the walls of buildings. Each infrastructure had yellow domed roofs.
Moss grew vast, adding age to the city. The length of buildings were smaller at the outermost parts while the tallest could be easily located at the center. There were eight bridges connecting to more buildings outside of the main municipality.
"Be on your guard, Atlarei is heavily guarded," Yang warned. The bubble popped once we rolled onto a stable bridge.
"By what, oysters?" I was mystified. I didn't expect a city like this to exist within the whale's stomach. It was almost like we were sent into another dimension with Tethys serving as the portal.
"Smoy smoy smoy~"
"Meow."
The sprout and the feline were ahead of us, with Smoyashi pointing at buildings and saying something about them in its own language as if it was acting as a tourist guide. Aki was listening intently, obediently glancing at whatever the vegetable would point at.
Once we passed through the bridge and reached the intersection of buildings, pale hard-shelled creatures that were similar to sea cockroaches crawled in a herd on the streets and on the walls.
"I'll handle this," Yang said. The bottom of his body smoked, much like a wheel in friction against the street.
He disappeared and the roaches dislodged from their places. They were flipped on their backs in one swoosh. Loud sounds of cracks went on. Yang reappeared in a matter of five seconds with a smug grin.
"Impre—"
"I'm dizzy..." He said. His smug grin dropped in a second.
"Don't tell me..."
The tadpole fell unconscious. The sound we heard was no other than his skull. I didn't even know he had a skeletal system.
Loud and heavy snapping emerged along with the appearance of a gigantic blue crab with a golden sponge crown. We shrank from the shade of its shadow. I carefully picked up Yang and stepped back.
"We should run..." I murmured.
When I turned my back, the sprout threw a ball of light that gently smooched the crab and dispersed into hundreds of beautiful fragile glitters.
In exchange for the harmless attack, the crab growled like a wyvern. I dragged Smoyashi with me and climbed Aki's back.
"Fly and don't you dare try slapping that thing with water!"
Aki rolled his head along with his eyes and sprung. I glanced down, forming eye contact with the crab that leaped like a frog.
"Watch out!"
Aki dodged the crab leg that attempted to skewer us into a bizarre kebab. Instead of normally scuttling sideways like a normal crab, (foolish of me to expect normalcy), it hurdled like a kangaroo, demolishing buildings that were on its path like construction toys made of sand.
"We have to find the clam, do you have any idea where it is?" I asked Smoyashi. It didn't waste a second to point at the tallest edifice.
"We're almost there, hurry!" I ordered Aki who grunted in annoyance.
I kept looking back as I couldn't help but be overly cautious of the jumping crab. Next time I'd witness it fly like an eagle.
Long, stretchy, and coal black tentacles broke us apart into separate unyielding holds that took us all by surprise, except for the snoring Yang.
Six squiggly tentacles served as a beard to the giant squid head. It had a humanoid body that had spiky fins on its spine, arms, and legs. It was as tall as the edifice, if not more. How come we didn't see something so ghastly and huge?
"Smoy! Wh—What do we do?!" I managed to wheeze out. The tentacles were growing tighter around me.
The squiggly limb that held the sprout captive exploded with fire. Aki broke free from his restraints, latched on to the flailing tentacle, and feasted on the mushroom that was still ablaze.
In times of doom, trust a fungi to appear and save the day.