Born a Monster

395 295 – Dotted With Woods

Brownie had been right about the cart; it broke daily. Either the wood split, or a stray rock fractured a wheel, or the whole thing needed to be smoothed down because it hurt his delicate rump. For each complaint or breakage, I was there and expected to fix it.

Food, oddly enough, was not as large a problem as I had expected. Well, except for Manahuru.

You think with all the mothers forcing children to wash their hands that the outdoors would be full of disease. The truth is less one-sided.

Oh, there was the occasional ill wildlife, or fetid mound of compost.

Manahuru complained,

agreed Pink. Don’t ask me how, but he seemed to be able to hear Manahuru.

Ah, but I have unintentionally gotten ahead of the story. Let me step back to our first day.

Mother Bear had said, kindly enough. And I will be the first one to admit that my wards each had their own smell.

They panicked, as small creatures are likely to do near the mouth of a larger. Biter, of course, fwapped her uselessly across the nose.

.....

she asked.

And that was when the small miracle happened.

Glutton invited me to the group. I accepted, even though the wave of fear was... substantial. Of course it was. The only encounter they’d had with creatures of similar size was when they saw the rest of their siblings consumed.

I sent, grappling her around her neck. I shoved, and surprised us both.

She fell back a single step, possibly more of surprise than of any measure of my force.

she said. Then she shook herself, hurtling me into the air.

[You cannot currently get criticals on the Agility/Gymnastics/Falling/Falling Technique.]

[Champion Point Expended. You have achieved an ORANGE critical, and taken no damage. You have 3/5 Champion Points remaining.]

[Stealth Class ability unlocked: Graceful Fall. Enable critical successes on Agility/Gymnastics/Falling skill checks. Raw cost: 6, 1 per Use Per Day.]

I applied Mountaineering and Spelunking XP, and got two uses per day. I set the flag for the System to use the charges without being told. YES, that had been set on all of my powers by default when I was younger, as was the option to buy new uses as needed. Good for keeping reckless little children alive, but also SO ANNOYING to have points just vanish for no apparent reason.

Seriously, someone should write a user manual or something.

But none of that took more than the two instants to recover my breath. I rose to find Mother Bear just shaking herself back and forth, like shaking off moisture.

mocked Violet, whom I’d known as Biter up until then.

You see, one of the advantages of a System group is that you get to see people’s names and health bars. With the right System modules, or with Reticule.

Each of the children was a different luminescent color, like phosphorescent glows. I’ve mentioned Violet, Fearful was actually a shade of Pink (which he would retain for a while), and Glutton was actually Blue, like a diluted patch of sky.

Anyway, by the third day, they had lost their red camouflage as pieces of coral, and were all wearing very durable looking grey-green turtle shells. It looked ridiculous with little ribbon-heads, webbed flippers, and Blue not even having back legs, but it wasn’t hard to remember there had been a time I hadn’t even had a skeletal system.

I step forward to the third day because that was when the dire cockroaches attacked us. Perhaps they don’t have dire animals where you come from. And congratulations if you don’t, because dire animals seem to be the natural world’s reaction to tainted regions.

They are larger, often Awakened, and usually had abilities that their smaller selves lacked. Some, like hellhounds, were attuned to an element found in their environment.

Others had magical abilities that just stepped out of fairy tales. For example, the ability to shake pixie dust from under their wings. Which yes, the cockroaches that attacked us had.

There was little enough warning. A chittering and humming from high up in a tree.

said Mother Bear.

And then, the matching chittering from around us. From upwind, dust the colors of the rainbow and some which weren’t drifted toward us.

Brownie asked.

“Ah, crap.” I said. “Slumber. Resist Slumber.”

I still yawned, and for a moment my head lolled forward and my hands dropped idle to my sides. Then, Heart’s Protector was in my right hand, and I remembered clearly that the children were riding in the cart with Brownie.

Brownie and the kids were asleep.

Blackfoot and Mother bears snorted, snuffled, and sneezed, but were already smashing bugs about half their size, a little smaller than I myself was. For all that, their exoskeletons seemed both stronger and more flexible than my own scales. Perhaps rating four armor, with bonuses against crushing and impact damage.

For all of that, their mandibles only did six points base, which meant no damage unless they scored a critical. Or, as in Brownie’s case, he was helpless.

Tip? Never wake the sleeping bear.

And, should you ever, EVER, think that biting the small, helpless things that looked like turtles is the best thing to do with your time, be certain that they aren’t the siblings of the inhumanly strong thing with the sharp piece of metal.

And, when that first one dies, split from the top of the head to mid-body, don’t beg for...

I said, striking downward diagonally across its carapace.

Yeah, that didn’t do any damage, but the smaller one fled. it shreiked,

Mother rebuked as she mashed another against a tree, smashing it with its own belly plate.

And for a time it looked like we could win. THEN, the others in the trees woke up, began chittering.

Blackfoot said,

she asked,

I opened a System channel with her, shared the input from my Detect Beasts.

she agreed.

And we... well, we didn’t. Brownie couldn’t run, and I was worried that the children would be hurled off the cart. So I took rear guard in the center, Blackfoot to my right, and Mother to my left.

And the swarm pursued us for a good eternity that my System clock would later tell me was only eight minutes forty two seconds long.

“Huhh.” I huffed. “Huhh, huuhh.”

[You have 0/120 physical endurance. Your physical collapse is being held off by Stalwart Health.]

Blackfoot commanded.

he complained, lying on his side.

Mother urged.

We walked until morning, all but collapsing by the side of a stream. All, that is, except for Manahuru.

he exclaimed.

I told him. I released his... well, some summoners call it the Leash.

he said.

In the morning, he was gone. Just gone. In retrospect, I should be happy that was all he did. He left us with no parting gifts, no coughs, not even a case of indigestion. I still felt his existence, but he was far enough away that I had no sense of direction or distance.

It seemed obvious that he would return to the swarm, feasting until he had the power to move from spirit to manitou.

Yeah, we lost two days going around to the north, including getting the cart stuck in the mud at what we thought had been a fordable section of the stream. Turns out that even with one hind leg lamed, Brownie was a strong swimmer.

There were some very possessive deer, and they may brag that they ‘forced’ us to build them a stable in exchange for food rights. Firstly, nobody forces Mother Bear into doing anything, and secondly, we were all ragged at that point, so building a shelter we could heal in as well? It was a good five days of work.

Whatever else you can say about twitchy deer, when you harnessed enough of them together, they could move entire trees, stumps and all.

I’m not certain what manner of beetle the siblings found, but they all had Acid Bite evolved at level one, which allowed them to do three points of damage to pretty much anything they couldn’t just grab, crush, or bite. Or, applied JUST RIGHT, they could melt branches off tree trunks.

Do not mistake them for the Hounds of Hell, dogs possessed by the demonic equivalent of dogs, if not outright demons, devils, fiends, or... you know what, just say Denizens of Hell.