Yukipo Short 4: Heart of Sludge
Yukipo followed her chosen pathway without being distracted by any of the weird, scary and unnatural constructions entering her line of sight. Under any normal circumstances, she would have taken her time examining the entire inside structure that opened up to her. Unfortunately, the circumstances were not normal and very dire, because these insides belong to a creature that is, right now, destroying Yukipos home.
Thus, these interesting appearances and designs disappeared as fast as they showed up, as Yukipo was running past them.
Because of her injured knee, Yukipo wasn't running as fast as she would have liked to. The pain was drilling itself into her leg and forced Yukipo to not focus on it. Luckily, this was rather easy to do right now, since her love for the forest she cared so much about, kept pushing her forward, giving her the endurance to overcome any kind of pain she felt right now.
She moved along the rusty old hall, until she was met with a big brown iron door, which was just too big and heavy for Yukipo to pull open. She did notice the age of it though, and the possibility of being able to tear a hole into the rather old material.
The further Yukipo had gone into the belly of the beast, the more dilapidated the whole structure became. The structural integrity of the place was so neglected in fact, that even the floor was unstable. Yukipo had to carefully make sure, to only step on floor parts that still seemed relatively intact. Thankfully, Yukipos own weight was very helpful in this regard. She barely weighs anything, so the floor was much more forgiving than it usually would have been.
Also thanks to the manginess of the pipes, some of them were so loose, they could be easily broken off.
Yukipo used this to her advantage and started pulling on the more loose pipes. To her surprise, the Pipe actually broke off and fell on to the floor.
Bewildered she picked it up. "Maybe this is why the monster destroys everything. Everything is so rotten here, it can't be healthy. It must be in a lot of pain." Yukipo wondered as she was looking at the ruffled end of the pipe she had just ripped off its original spot.
With her hands she groped the doors surface, inspecting it for any weak section. It did not take long for Yukipo to discover a part of the door which was extremely thin and breakable.
Yukipo lifted her pipe up and positioned herself right for a nice hit at the iron door.
Like a golfer she swung the metallic tube, with all her might, against the door. One time, two times and even three times.
The door had given in a little, but not enough for Yukipo to force herself through.
The swinging had made matters worse for Yukipo. She was already exhausted before, but now she was breathing heavily and the toxic atmosphere had filled her lungs with nothing but smog, making her cough involuntarily.
Her arms were too tired for another swing, so she instead opted for using the pipe as a battering ram, with which she intended to break through the already dented door.
"Aaaaaaaaaaaah!" Yukipo let out a small battle-cry overshadowing her tiredness and ran, or at least limped, because of her hurt knee, towards the door.
*crunch*
The door had finally completely given in and Yukipo broke through it like the Kool-Aid Man.
The pipe Yukipo used as a ram, fell, because of the velocity of her door slamming, out of her hands and down a black pit in the room beyond the door.
Further inspection revealed, that the pit was inhabited by another weird creature Yukipo had never seen before.
This one was made out of a bunch of strange zigzagged circles grabbing on to each other and slowly spinning. The spinning created a clunky clicking sound, that echoed in the entire hall.
This was the rumbling Yukipo had felt earlier and which she had thought to be a beating heart. This was definitely not a heart. Every part of it moved and its dark oily outside made it look like a nightmare. Yukipo gulped.
A long grim chain connected the clicking nightmare with the ceiling. This was convenient, because Yukipo had to get done there anyway. To her best of knowledge this could be the heart she was looking for.
The several links in the chain were rather large compared to Yukipo, so it made it easy for her to climb down. Still, she needed to be careful not to slip and fall. The bottom of the pit was so far deep down, that she wasn't able to see it. Falling from such a height would definitely result in an uncomfortable landing.
The chains were sticky and rusty, something Yukipo was used to by now, and slowly climbed from one link to the next, always making sure she had enough grip and good footing.
On her way down Yukipo came across her old pipe she had taken earlier. It was laying on a small jut in the wall of the pit. Yukipo needed some kind of weapon to take the heart out, so she picked it up again and tied it with some left-over bandage to her body, so it wouldn't bother her mountaineering.
There were a few times during the climbing where Yukipo almost slipped. Some of the chain-links were oilier than others. She did not know what this substance was. The only things she knew about it were, that it made her clothes dirty and it smelled awful.
"There...we...go." Yukipo was relieved as she took her last step down the chain and finally managed to put a foot on to the Heart of Sludge. Gears were spinning all around Yukipo now. The spinning made the ground vibrate.
Our young adventurer examined the several gears and came to the conclusion, that they must have something to do with the inner workings of everything she had encountered so far. She had to stop those gears from spinning.
Yukipo carefully slithered around the gears, looking for a place where she could turn the Heart off. She found nothing. But not all hope was lost as, instead, she found a small hole in the middle of the structure.
Through the hole she could see more gears, but these gears were a lot smaller and looked more fragile.
"Yes." Yukipo brashly unsheathed the pipe she had carried down the chain and inserted it into the gap in the ground.
As she intended, the pipe deadlocked the gears and they somewhat stopped moving. Well, they still moved, but it was more of a struggle than actual moving, because the metal-pipe made any movement into either direction impossible.
The forest-dwelling Yukipo pushed the pipe deeper into the gear-set until, with a surprisingly loud bang, the gears stopped moving entirely.
This, as a consequence, made all the other bigger gears stop dead in their tracks as well.
"Is it over?" Yukipo wondered as she looked for signs of a possible halt.
Out of nowhere, the ground Yukipo was standing on, and everything else, started shaking much more violently than before. The constant noise the beast emitted had changed into a screeching, accompanied by, what sounded like, a Starlings whistling.
The shaking got worse by the second, and Yukipo was desperately trying to get a hold of the chain again to climb back up. This proved to be an impossible endeavour. The Sludge Heart was swinging around the pit like a pendulum. Poor Yukipo held on to some gear she could reach, in order not to fall off.
At this point, the hissing of the other pipes got also worse and one after the other ruptured from the immense pressure mounting up in them. In tiny explosions, very hot air shot out of hundreds of crevices in the walls. Crevices that were not there before.
"Aaaaah." Yukipo was frightened from the sudden scary turn of events. She held on to the gear for dear life, until the chain broke on which the beasts heart hung from.
"Nooooooooooo!" Together with the entirety of the apparatus she had just stopped, Yukipo fell deep down the pit.
...
"Huh, what...what happened?" Yukipo was laying with her back on a small hill near the desolated site the monster had devastated.
She had been unconscious for a while and she did not know how she got out.
From the hill Yukipo could still see the beast, but it had stopped. Much more than that, it was burning and black clouds of smoke puffed out of it.
This made Yukipo little bit sad. She did not want to take this creatures life. Killing is awful. But Yukipo had no choice.
Her temporary melancholy was quickly overshadowed by happiness. Happiness over having saved the forest. "I did it." Yukipo smiled.
This adventure had damaged our forest saviour badly. She was bruised everywhere, had burns on her arms, red watering eyes and oily black clothes. After trying to get up several times, Yukipo also had to realise that she was missing a leg.
"Oh no," Yukipo frowned," this hurts."
With her last bit of strength she crawled, with both arms pushing her forward, back into the forest, where she quickly dug herself into an abandoned rabbit-hole. It had to do, as Yukipo was on the verge of fainting and could not wait any longer.
Deep in the former critter burrow, Yukipo curled up on the wet earth and fell asleep.
THE END