Mouse Tale: Into the Everbloom (Arc 1)

Chapter 3

Time hung still for a moment as the powerful scent of vanilla and flesh drifted over the mouse girl. Turning her head ever so slightly, she was just able to see the massive red maw-like flower now craning over her, petals outstretched as it moved towards her ready to snap shut. The world around Oishi seemed to speed back into motion as she leapt to the side, tumbling and rolling through the blood crusted grass as the sprawling jaws of the lizard snapped shut.

Oishi's heart jumped in her chest as she sat up and pitched a tightly packed cloth ball of flour at the false flower head. The ball exploded on impact creating a white cloud that hung in the air for a moment as it doused the creature in the white powder. "It was still camouflaged," Oishi's mind raced, "this should scare it off!"

As she finished her thought, the cloud split as the lizard leapt through it, towards the mouse girl, with jaws spread wide. Taken by surprise, Oishi pushed off the ground with her right arm and rolled to the left as quickly as she could, narrowly scraping by as the lizard crashed into the ground. The mouse's ears went rigid as the jaws snapped shut only a foot away from them.

Quickly rolling further away, Oishi sprung to her feet and teetered clumsily from the maneuver, eyes washing over the valaris as its tail twitched. It was abnormally big, and way too long– and it was moving fast! Her eyes shot wide as she toppled backward onto the ground, ears pressed flat against her head as the ripsaw whip of a tail split the air overhead, right where her chest had been a moment prior. The deafening CRACK that sounded overhead resonated through Oishi's bones, chilling her blood. Her eyes left the now empty air overhead and snapped onto the aggressive valaris, who's shark toothed tail danced through the air like an extensive ribbon behind it. Her heart pounded as she began to crawl backwards through the tall grass, terror welling up within her.

Oishi's eyes were drawn immediately to its maw, the vibrant pink flesh and golden tongues contrasting violently against the rest of the flour coated creature. The lizard stared at her with its jaws hanging open, a surplus of thick purple-tinted saliva flowing from the edges of its petal-like mouth in a viscous waterfall, with its brightly colored tongues snaking through the air before it, tasting the scent of the mouse girl. She could see the all-too-large chasm that was its throat, a tunnel of velvet that squeezed shut and gaped with gurgled hisses as the flow of saliva cascaded down. The thing that unnerved Oishi the most, however, was its eyes. Valaris eyes are usually pitch black and indifferent from the spots that cover their head, possessing irises that can glow but rarely ever do. The eyes that stared at Oishi were black holes with a messy, glowing spiral red ring. Its irises seemed to spin and vibrate, as if a jumble of lines constantly sketching over itself around a pitch black dot in the middle. Its eyes were locked on the mouse girl, and they were filled with a rampant, ravenous hunger.

It prowled towards the crawling mouse, twitching, as a low, gargled hissing resonated through its fleshy tunnel of a throat, partially drowned by the thick river that flowed down it. "What is wrong with this thing? This... This isn't normal! Not at all!" Oishi thought, continuing to back away from the monstrous valaris. Peeking down at her potion belt, her hand fumbling around the bottles, she realized that none of them were of any use here. "Shit! Make potions for self defense next time, idiot! Ok, then, dagger it is..."

As her hand went for the dagger handle, Oishi was finally able to get a good look at it in its entirety. She realized just how large the valaris really was. Her hair stood on end, her pupils shrinking as her breath hitched; this valaris was over twice the size of the previous ones she's seen, its thicker tail more reminiscent of a razor-covered bullwhip than the usual thin toothed lash, and its head... Its head was enormous. The mandibles had shrunk into thin "petals" that sat adjacent to a massive scoop-like jaw, which looked like it was as large as Oishi's torso. The opened jaws were large enough to encompass half of her body. Its throat was significantly thicker towards its head, tapering towards its body like a pitcher. The golden white tongues that snaked through the air in front of it were less like faux pistils and stamen, but now more akin to the thick vines that hung from the jungle trees. Its torso was longer than it should be, its scaly belly swaying just above the ground, carried solely by two sets of comparatively short but powerful limbs. The lizard's uncloaked skin shifted constantly beneath the flour coating in a chaotic storm of tree bark browns, ashy grays, and maroon reds flowing and blending in wild waves. Its spots were barely recognizable– they were messy and broken, constantly growing and shrinking, splitting and merging into one another, distorting and collapsing into new patterns in an ever-flowing current along its body like lightning in a ball. Against the bright red of its head, the spots' chaos was most clearly seen and almost mesmerizing. Audibly, saliva dripped and plodded onto the ground like thick rain from the beast's mouth as strings stretched from the scaly lips and fleshy muscles; it was salivating by the bucketload. Its crazed, distorting red eyes were locked on the girl, unmoving as it crept forward in seeming slow-motion. Its body twitched as it moved, its torso, neck, and tail spasming in small rigid jerks as the muscles beneath the smooth scales rippled under its skin. It looked like it was being electrocuted, or simply insane.