Born a Monster

215 Servant of the Axe – Before the Week of Snows

Chapter Type: Time Skip

There was no actual snow during the Festival of Snows; but I’m getting ahead of myself.

At the night of the new moon, I reported to Manajuwejet. “Uh, kid, you don’t HAVE to supply the Celestial Heavens mana each visit. I’m well paid for my services.”

“I can’t hold onto it once it’s formed like this; it’ll just slip away from aura and become a bit of wild magic in the world.”

“Well, for future visits, then. Minor mission from Anansi, not even a quest.”

“Tell me.”

“Turns out there’s a big spider in one of the bunk rooms of Tiburon de Mar. He wants you to get it safely to the land.”

“Sounds simple enough; we’re not expecting a storm. Anything from Serquet?”

“Nothing for you, yet. Turns out that Sobek setting up a shrine has Pongo and the local spirits all kinds of angry.”

.....

I sighed. “I suppose I can see Pongo tonight.”

“Kid, he’s mad at you. Give him a few months to calm down. It’s not like you need the Unapongo title back, right?”

“I just learned about Titles; I’m not sure what I need.”

“How is that shrine coming along?”

“Show me a map of the island, I’ll show you where the new shrine is.”

“Kid... reshaping dream stuff to resemble the real world isn’t one of my strengths.”

“Oh, reshaping dream stuff. Okay. If this piece of string is the river, and the river is laid out like so, the shrine is right here.”

“Why there? That’s outside the city.”

“It is, but it’s also where all kinds of amphibians and lizards were gathering, and it has a node there for river mana. So, we hired some homeless lady to tend the site, and put the prayer tablets up against some trees. We’ll be starting services only after we get them translated.”

I sent him some mental images of the site, which caused sharp pains in my pineal gland.

“That’s not a lot of progress, kid.”

“It hasn’t been a lot of time. The storms are growing both worse, and more frequent.”

He threw up his claws. “I got nothing for contacts with storm gods.”

“Wasn’t asking for that. By the way, would a god of vengeance try to sever my ability to mentally speak?”

“I suppose. Maybe. Most of them would show their displeasure in more direct ways, but yeah, there have been cases before.”

“And would that be much different than a human curse?”

“In scale and force, probably. Beyond that, a curse is a curse.”

“Tell me about any gods of octopi that you know about.”

“Well, there’s Kanaloa, but locally the Kraken takes up most of that worship.”

“The Kraken. Father of the Kraken-spawn, who is leader of the Cult of the Octopus. Who has mortal servants... I am so dumb.”

“Kid, you’re going to learn that most of us little guys spend a lot of time being dumb. Okay, maybe you’ve got longer to go than most of us, and maybe you’re getting there slow. And maybe you end up with a lot of brain damage... I’m not helping yet, am I?”

“Not in the slightest.”

“Good. I’m your guide, I’m not supposed to carry you. Oh, and...”

He darted forward, and stung my hand.

“OW! What the HECK!”

[Gift of Serquet, one charge, cannot purchase Uses Per Day.]

“You’re welcome.”

“Thank you, Manajuwejet.”

“I’d use that sooner rather than later, your hand’s gonna hurt until you do.”

“I have a decent amount of pain tolerance.”

“Anything else you want to talk about?”

There was, but that discussion doesn’t impact the story.

#

The captain of Tiburon de Mar didn’t want to let me onboard until I said I was there to deal with the spider. I can understand why; his men (and it WAS an all-male crew) smelled distinctly of brine and slightly of ammonia.

Thank you, Anansi, but next time just TELL ME that my enemies are in port.

Anger-Omen was half and again the size of my hand, but more importantly, he was AWARE. And he was hungry, and scared, and liked thought pictures and stories about Eihtfuhr.

When you later see him riding around on my backpack and living in my bedroom, please realize that both of these were supposed to be temporary arrangements. I began tutoring him in the ways of the Hunter (which, yes, I needed to learn myself), and cautioned him well about using his initial development points carefully.

He never did join us on a ship, though, and said the shrine radiated hostility toward him. But, for the winter storms, he stayed inside with the rest of us.

#

Roughly three days a week, there was some manner of rain or squall. The actual storms would come in at irregular intervals, but never lasted more than a day and a half before passing onward to other islands.

The houses were sturdy, for the most part. True, there was a shingle or more missing from the rooftops, but the timbers of the roofs themselves were left intact.

There would be a day or so of sweeping debris into the gutters to either side of the road, and people employed by the city to empty those gutters out. It was a pattern, and the people of Neo Esteban were used to it.

With each pause between storms, we would acquire more food, slowly rebuilding our larder rather than all at once. Oddly, the inn next door was already fully stocked, so there wasn’t a lot we needed to do there.

Fortune smiled on us, as the Ocean’s Black Hag limped into port after one of the storms, listing badly to one side and missing a quarter of her crew. Her cargo of grains and fruits, while profitable, was not expected to pay her crew through winter.

“I’m going to wait a day or two.” Gamilla said. “If they get desperate enough, we can get them at a bargain.”

“Or you could strike while the iron is hot, and get them before they find another way out of their dilemma.” I said.

“Is it Thawing already?” she asked. “Then back off, ambassador, and let me do things my way.”

And she was right. We had a full crew, including officers. We had to go on half rations for a week, and the adjacent innkeep wasn’t happy about suddenly losing her ability to take on new tenants, but it did all work out.

Or rather, it worked out for them. But I’ll get to that in time.

#

“Madonna? I have the wickerwork box you asked for.”

“Oh, that’s for you.” She said.

I squinted. “Why do I need a wickerwork box?”

“Part of your Lifeshaper training. Capture a pregnant mouse and witness her giving birth.”

“Where am I supposed to find one of those?”

“Husband, not all of your problems are my problems.”

While mice are rare in most urban environments, their larger cousins, rats, are easier to find. Especially on abandoned ships in dry-dock, such as the Outrage. Capturing them? Maybe that merits a side story, but let’s just say that even rats can get underneath your scales and hurt you if there are enough of them.

Remember when I told you my System had its own way of dealing with diseases? The rats had something called Blood Fever that I actually needed medicine for.

Blood Fever, in spite of the name, doesn’t actually make you sweat blood. However, it DOES cause your blood to clot in your veins, and to come out through both ends of your excretory system. About the only good thing about that is that diseases are living things.

Yes, Lifeshaper XP for watching a disease try to kill you from the inside. Also, kind of creepy watching how my System would just liquidate parts of organs, and then rebuild them from the proteins thus gained. (And new nutrients as well, I only regained about half the nutrients from the recovered flesh.)

I couldn’t see the living warfare going on inside me, the creatures involved both in the disease and my response were just too small to see, even with magical assistance. But it got bad, then it got worse, and then I started tapping myself for Disease mana, a corruption of life energies. And, as is the nature of tapping energy from living things, the Blood Fever lost a little bit of energy every time.

Turns out you can boost your immune system with Disease mana, which of course I did. In the end, I learned a lot from that infection. Things my System just wasn’t set up to report to me, at least not without another sixty development points.

It was a bit more involved than I’m describing it, but in the end the Blood Fever only kept me in my bed four days. And once it was broken, it was just DONE. My body was putting out some critters that ate the ones the disease was made of. Those little sub-visual gluttons just ate and ate, and then I could no longer find the disease anymore.

Lifeshaper was sitting at 92/100 XP to first level. My first Accolade, Path of the Polymath, was something I could gain before winter was over.