Chapter 2 - c - There's gotta be a monolith around here somewhere
The Steve
The Laughing Chicken
- Location
- Moar Invisitext!
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Patient's [Language Acquisition] was proceeding fairly normally, at least from what she could tell. It had been years since she'd had her own after all, and with her tribe being so close to the Human's territories, picking up their Manlang was pretty much a given.
The Humans there knew of her tribe's proximity and they knew what to expect when a pretty young and fresh Tro'Gorc wandered into town and needed 'Learning.'
A Tongue for a Tongue it was called.
Simpler barter.
The males of her tribe quickly learned that there weren't enough free range human women available, and that they had such odd rules about approaching them outright for such simple barter, often took up simple labour positions until they knew enough, or found an older "teacher". The world was a harsh one, and there were always widows somewhere.
The Humans probably had a different way of using their [Language Acquisition]. If it was anything like how they did many things, it would be both tedious and boring, involve a roaming gang of thugs they called a 'committee', and take a long time.
And time right now was very precious indeed.
It wouldn't be perfect, but they were talking.
Now questions could be crudely asked.
And subtlety wasn't exactly a strong suit for either of them.
"Where did you come from Human?"
---===---
"Where
---===---
He came from the sky?
There was more to it of course, many words didn't translate, but that much was apparent. As was the whistling sound he made as his fist descended and he made a [Fireball] sound and opened his fingers.
Patient came from black and fell from sky. Fall on Mimic. Talk to Demari. Get three bags and three canteens. Walk up (curving gesture with his hand) fucking bad bad fucking mountain. See axe. Walk up. See Tro'Gorc.
That explained both so little and so much.
For a person to meet an Amanuensis at his age like that, there were only two reasonable reasons. Not sane reasons, but reasonable in a sense that if you strung a lot of maybes in there, it might hold together. Maybe.
Either he actually fell from the sky, or, he was something that escaped from one of the many profane incubation pits in the Mountain and not only looked Human but thought it was Human as well.
Those were the worst. They didn't even know they were a threat.
But for one to trick an Amanuensis and the Gods behind them? To the best of her knowhow that had never happened, though it wouldn't be because it wasn't tried. Many a horror carefully stitched inside a childlike shell had been dropped off near the edges of the Dial to wander and find things with compassion to latch on to.
Tro'Gorcs were especially prized for these attempts, as a Dread could stuff a lot of nightmare into their skins because of their Skin. And there was always someone hard up who would let them get close if there was an offer.
It would explain his ability to pierce her skin, his Strength could be a hidden monstrous boost.
But...
But it had her, it had her. She was in his grasp and near zero and cursed and weak... any one of those would have been enough to trigger it. She should be dead and he should be trotting back to his Dread, corpse in tow, not understanding why.
Could it be an unfinished horror? Something that escaped captivity and had in fact fallen out of the mountain like she had? Could it accidentally be just Human enough to trick the Gods?
There would be only one way to find out.
"I fall too. From there." She casually pointed up at the Kingdom with her right hand, the left resting casually on her axe. "Did you come from there?"
---===---
She fell from that? I craned my head up until it hurt. This close to it, I wasn't seeing the top without starting to limbo.
I hope a raised eyebrow translated across the understanding barrier because that sounded as bullshit as my own answer, and I fell from the Cromdamn sky.
She gave me a pretty grin before her right hand rose up and rested on her collar bone. And then she started 'tumbling' the hand down her breasts, with her own crashing noises, before her hand 'crashed' on her good knee. An impressive rendition of a mighty fall, even if the mountain probably didn't jiggle like that.
"No, I did not come from there." I replied while shaking my head, noting how precise her 'casual' movements were. Minders did that here as well it seems, so that hasn't changed.
And, evidentiality, the mountain wasn't a place one wanted to come from.
"Did you?" Her smile didn't waver but her hand on the handle shifted ever so slightly.
"No." It's weird, as soon as I had decided that she was a Minder, it was hard for me to be firm in my voice. I guess that's what years in an institution will do to you.
"
At my blank look she sighed in frustration before leaning in close and clasping her right hand around my right forearm. A grunt from her and a nod of her head and my own hand clasped her wrist.
"Swear to the Gods, You dare not Lie, Pray for Death, Oaths Indemnified?"
The language was like what Mr. Puce used, perfect English, but the lips didn't match up.
Was this special?
I could hear a rumbling like thunder far above my head, though the sky did not darken with clouds when I glanced up.
This had to be special.
"I have never been to that mountain. I came from the sky and landed on a Mimic." I placed my hand over my heart. "I swear."
Ooh, a new word. Swear.
Wait, why did the rumbling above me sound disappointed?
---===---
She could hear the rumbling recede as the God Indemnitus found nothing to flay him with his oath.
That was both good and bad.
It wouldn't be until the new year after the Festival of the Gods before she could demand someone Swear again. And, with him passing the Oath, Indemnity was owed to him. And with her Praying for Death...
She owed her life to him literally now until the new year. Twice because he had pulled the ring off of her, and fixed her leg, but that was just from her pride.
Pride could have been met with enough "paying back" when they made it to a town. Indemnity was not.
But she knew for certain that he wasn't from the Kingdom of the Dead.
That he was a Human.
And that his Word was good as Indemnitus hadn't warned her.
"Thank you."
---===---
After she let go of her very firm grip of my hand, I shook the pins-and-needles feeling out and got back to my pouch making.
This was the tricky part.
A good drawstring kept things tightly closed but a poorly positioned and holed one would slip open easily, or spill out when flipped over. Basically everything that you don't want in a pouch.
"So," I asked as casually as I could without looking at her. "Why is the Mountain bad?"
After all, she just admitted she fell from there.
My scalpel rested on my lap underneath the leather.
---===---
[Language Acquisition] could not happen fast enough.
- How to describe it with such few words available to her?
- How to explain the fact that a former holy Ossuary had reached critical deathmass and a Wizard had been the spark?
- How to cover the things that called that slice of hell their nest now?
- How to explain a Dread, each unique, each only identifiable by the literal feeling of dread one feels in their presence?
- How to explain the Dread War, when the Dreads all fought for dominion of the lowest floor, simply because it killed the most people? At how it ended when another Gods-be-Damned Wizard told them about something from his realm, an 'elevating floor' so every floor could be visited equally?
- How they sent congratulations to every nearby settlement on every milestone they reached, no matter how secretive their efforts. Hand delivered no less by a horror that burned in agony as it passed the Perimeter, knowing that burning into nonexistence by the fury of the Gods was the far more merciful fate they could have if they failed. All to deliver a card, some flowers, and a basket of fruit.
- How she had joined in a foolhardy attempt to plunder from the 41st 'floor', The Breathing Maze, and had watched her associates die, had herself very nearly died, and was only alive because of the strange Human who kept doing bizarre and impossible things.
"The mountain is a bad place." She concluded grimly. "Do not go there. Never go there."
As soon as possible.
---===---
Well, that wasn't too helpful. Still, some of the words were getting across.
And it was her turn for a question. I gestured towards her as I scooped up some loose gravel and rocks to put in the pouch to test it.
"What is
"That?" I guessed and got the word on the first try. Excellent. "That is a Mimic."
Well, what was left of it anyway. "That was from Bruno." I felt compelled to add. He had only three decent spines after all. I think it was the Spinalbeast which had hurt him, unless something else had giant quills.
"Mimic..." she said, and another word clicked into place. Eerily familiar, just a 'ku' sound on the end of it. "How?"
How? I stabbed it, that's how. And then they are Gone.
That's what you get when you stab something. Beauty, is all that remains...
Did she mean with what?
I reached for my spear, before having an idea.
Inventory, and only the inventory I thought carefully.
And sure enough, it popped up.
- Equipment
- Inventory
Well, the 'inventory' and 'equipment'. But close enough I suppose.
Staring at the air like a gormless idiot, I opened it up and noted that despite not being in my hands there was my spear, listed as a primary weapon.
And just like that, it vanished from my inventory the second she picked it up.
---===---
What was this?
It looked like a spear, but there was no way it could be a spear... could it?
She hefted it carefully and used her natural talents as a Warrior subclass to know the weapon in it's entirety.
But she'd seen and handled practically every spear sold, dropped, or Crafted in this area and the ones nearby.
And that was even before the jokes about what men had in their pants (typically they called it their 'mighty sword' or their 'thrusting spear', except for that one fellow who called it his 'fuckknife', a strange fellow.).
She knew her spears, they were part of the Slab trinity.
Big Hammer, Battle-Axe, and the Spear. We be a handful!
Smash, Slash, and Stab.
Nothing was immune to all three.
The only reason she hadn't brought the other two was due to the nature of the monsters in the Breathing Maze, and that their leader as a Siege Archer had a better Pierce weapon than she did. Plus an axe could [Smash] things, poorly yes, but just try to cut something with a hammer.
And yet, this weapon was nothing like any of them. She glanced up at the creator, who was equally unique.
Think like a Slab, line things up and take them apart.
Firstly, he had to be the creator as this was no drop she knew of, and she always took great pains to know every drop on the boards, even the stupidly rare shit that'd conceivably never drop in her lifetime.
Because it had happened to her, one time, and she had been both too new and ignorant of what she had had in her hands and let it go for a song.
You only make that mistake once in your career.
So, hypothetically, it was possible that the spine was an ultra-rare drop that existed that just hadn't been discovered. Okay.
So why was he in possession of fifteen of them?
Plus however many he had used to make this spear?
Yeah, no.
Second, it was of [Low Quality]. That also didn't happen.
Rather, it did, but only randomly at a very small rate of [Crafting] attempts, unless the Crafter was under debilitating debuffs like [Drunk] or [Exhausted]. It was, she was told, both a reminder that the Gods held sway, and to remind the Crafter that his skill had limits.
You only really saw [Low Quality] weapons as drops from tool wielding monsters. They were collected and brought to a Vendor, who unravelled them for the hardened mana used to create them.
And again, while it was possible that he had run into a brand new species of monster that just happened to be carrying this as a weapon, it didn't explain the spines, the mounds of flesh, or anything else really.
So that was out.
Third, how was this a spear?
There were distinct rules for how a spear was a spear. The boundaries were always being tested but some things remained the same.
A Spear, no matter who crafted it or with what, had a two metra minimum shaft, then the pointy bit. Always.
If the shaft was even a centemetra shorter than that, it was a Short Spear, it lost two damage, and became a one handed weapon. If it went past three metra, it became a Long Spear, gained the [Bracing] effect. If it went to four metra or longer, it was a Pike.
That was how things went. It didn't matter if was a Human who did the [Crafting], or a Tro'Gorc, or a Drankin, amateur or master.
But this weapon didn't seem to care about that.
Yes, it had [Low Quality], so the damage was reduced one degree and could not acquire a socket nor an enchantment, but even with the tooth attached it wasn't long enough.
Her skilled hands worked the shaft, measuring the length, feeling the girth.
Nope. One-point-eight-seven metra with the tooth, and one-point-five-seven without. It wasn't the right size.
It should be listed as a Short Spear with a damage range of one-to-four due to it's quality. In fact, the value of 2CP meant it was classified in the same category as a monster drop.
But it wasn't.
And since it was [Low Quality] and could hold no enchantment, it couldn't have the theoretical [Mimic Bane] it would need for him to slay so many with what seemed to be his low tier of Strength.
And yet he had so many drops, seemingly wrought with this weapon.
Why?
Was it the nature of the item? She grabbed it just under the tip by the shaft and guided it to her tits. Her skin dimpled slightly and her Skin held. Nope, it wasn't the weapon.
She'd had to use [Low Quality] weapons on occasion, during a pitched battle, and they were just that, [Low Quality]. No hidden esoteric effects or granted abilities, but it beat using your hands and feet.
That only left the man, not the weapon.
Wait, he had finished something else. A pouch?
But... there had been no [Crafting] sound had there? And, he was able to talk while doing it?
You know what, never mind. It was his turn now.
---===---
Seeing her heft the spear only illustrated just how big she was compared to me.
A spear's shaft was, after all, supposed to be no longer than to a man's chin. I had been rather lucky that the Mimic's spine came to my throat.
At least, according to the books.
Looking at the weapon in her hand, I was actually quite proud of how well it had turned out. The only time prior I had made one... I hadn't been in the best of mindsets.
Thankfully no one had been hurt and my medication had been adjusted, and I healed rather quickly back then.
Ah, the follies of youth.
And with that, the sky started to tint around the mountain. Evening was coming to the desert.
Questions would have to wait until after I got things cooking.
And by things I meant Mimic. Hopefully my new Minder wasn't a vegetarian like the last one otherwise supplies might be wasted.
A little bit of Abagail tonight I think.
---===---
And now he was digging at the edge of the sand where it met rocks.
Instead of making noise or asking questions he couldn't understand, she just watched, trying to figure it out what he was doing next.
---===---
A Dakota Fire Hole wasn't normally made in the sand as it usually would be unable to keep its shape as it was dug out. But that was before one had both a nearby rock base for one edge, and, hypothetically had infinite amount of beer to pack the coarse sand down with.
Beer in a sippy cup that I did not let her see as I knelt with the poncho loose around me.
It's not too hard to make a fire hole, all things considered. You dig a hole about a foot deep and about half that wide at the top, gradually widening as you dig down.
Once that's done, you dug a smaller secondary hole at an angle such that it could collect a bit of wind.
If my memory served me, which was a hit or miss proposition due the medications being staggered as they had been this past little while, the reason why this was done was to stretch out scarce fuel supplies as well as have hot food without alerting others by typical signs like smoke. Also that it was created as an accident due to a gopher hole and a mishap with a fire-starting bow. At least that was how the old stories went.
I paused and carefully felt out the interior of the hole I had just finished. A bit rough, but more than enough for crayons.
Final step, you ring the top with small rocks for support of your 'cooking pot', which in our case was a fresh and ever so slightly larger smooth rock that I'd had found whilst hunting today.
Good ol' smooth rocks, still the best cooking surface I could find in the wasteland thus far. Mostly because any thoughts of using an empty canteen split in two as any sort of a cooking surface vanished when it did.
Still not sure how that happened, I would make a note to ask when I had more words.
Thankfully the crayons and their box would work as well as small twigs and pine cones for fuel. At this point, until I could properly explain the why's and how's of the beer and crayons, I might get called a Wizard, and that was something I wanted no part of.
Also, I found out that when I had finished, that another box of crayons had appeared next to me where I was kneeling, though the poncho covered both that and muffled the quiet clatter it made.
Rather, I didn't have to think of wanting more for them to appear like the first batch, as if me simply knowing about the fact that there would be more meant they would appear.
At least I think that was how it worked, based on things thus far. Well that, or someone was watching me right now and knew that I was using the crayons and was refilling them accordingly and knew I didn't want them to be seen.
One of those ideas was crazy, the other, crazy.
---===---
Okay, the Human meticulously made a hole, then another. Why?
Obviously something was in the hole, but what? There was only sand and rock.
Then he placed a smooth flat stone on top of that, sat down, and waited.
Was this a ritual? Something esoteric that a Speller did? She had been with several Human Spellers before, in both senses of the professional use of 'been', and all of them had weird little rituals they did in the early hours of the day.
But nothing like this.
After a few moments of silence and waving his hand over the stone, he abruptly reached into the pile of flesh that was resting on an oddly large raw hide piece, grabbed a few of the chunks, then dropped them onto the stone.
And they began to sizzle.
---===---
I ignored the odd choking sounds that my Minder was making, I was focusing on not burning the shit out of Abagail. She taught me so much, the least I could do would be to not turn her into char.
A Dakota Fire Hole cooked a lot hotter than my first attempt at a fire, mostly as all the heat was focused into a narrow area directly above the 'coals'. But it also didn't let out much in the way of smoke, or light. That was why they were used to cook in areas where light would give your position away.
I wasn't too worried, but I was much closer to the Bad Fucking Mountain, henceforth BFM, than my first day.
If there were eyes looking down, they would not see any light and barely any smoke.
Well, it would if Abagail would make nice here. The meat was cooking quickly, very quickly, and not having a lot of fat meant that it had to keep moving or it would stick. My first 'knife tooth' was being used in lieu of chopsticks.
Hmm, should the canteen survive and not vanish, I should look into hammering it into a crude wok.
Mimic Stir-fry.
Mimic Chow fan.
Mimic uhhh... low mein? I haven't been to a Chinese restaurant in over a decade.
Ah shit it's starting to burn.
---===---
He was [Cooking]... without [Cooking]?
See, this right here, this was why Slabs shouldn't woolgather. If she'd been paying proper attention to what he was doing, the strange [Crafting] alone would have sufficed to give her a clue that whatever something weird thing he had done to the ring, that wasn't all he could do.
Like this.
Somehow he was [Cooking] without proper ingredients nor a proper place.
The most basic would be a [Campfire] needing three logs and two fistfulls of grass, and the food would be Harvested plants and small first-Tiered animals. As resources acquired and skills grew, more elaborate things and ways of [Cooking] and [Crafting] and [Harvesting] and [Growing] and [Fishing] and [Mining]... just as the Gods designed.
Anyone could acquire the means to survive, and Groups and Guilds and Tribes and Towns were simply extrapolations of a single person with a single will. Like the tiny grain of imbalance that eventually created a Pearl.
Like the power that had tied the ring to her arm.
He seemed to ignore many things indeed.
She accepted the tooth, a slightly burned 'thing' dangling from it.
It smelled like meat, though not particularly of any good quality. But even the lowest [Cooking] could impart some flavor...
Nope. This tasted like crap.
But it beat going having a [Hunger] Debuff.
---===---
Well, she could eat it, even if she didn't look particularly thrilled about it.
That meant as long as we could get some source of water, we should be able to survive at least until we either found way out of the desert, or wherever she came from.
A quick shake of the upside-down pouch showed that it held and didn't let the pebbles dribble out. Success there as well.
We ate, her naturally more than me, and upon tasting my portion of Abagail I suspect my first setup was better for cooking Mimic. A Dakota Fire Hole was better for cooking pots or flatbread, not strips of flesh. Maybe it was the beer wash of the stone. I'll test it next time.
The remaining sky was dimming twilight when I turned back to the second tooth, my next attempt at the awl.
Hmm, no way to finish it before it went dark. Then it'll have to wait until tomorrow.
But wait, I had someone awake now. I could test things. If she could heft a fifty pound axe like it was nothing, then perhaps...
---===---
"You want me to do what?" His gestures didn't look like a handjob, unless he was packing a tree stump in his pants somewhere.
---===---
"Pick up that rock," I pointed at the modest windsmoothed boulder nearby that I knew was loose. Maybe a couple of hundred pounds from how little it wiggled when I pushed on it earlier. "And smash that tooth."
Odds were the tooth would be useless fragments after a rock like that, but the fact that it looked like it grew like am inverted spiral instead of rings like human bones and trees did, well, I didn't know what it meant, but if she broke one roughly in half that'd save me hours right there.
When she looked at me uncomprehendingly, I sighed, grabbed her free hand, leaned her over while ignoring just how much of her frame pressed against me, placed it on the stone and with a grunt made it wiggle.
"[Smash]?" She had been trying several other words at this point, and from the gesture of her wrist, I don't think it was what I wanted at the moment. But that last one...
"Yes. [Smash] that tooth."
It was strange. As soon as smash clicked into [Smash] I knew the word was special. Not just a verb, but something more. Like a verb that this delusion, this world used. A primal thing, something that the vial energy of life was spent upon.
As my Minder shook her head and muttered some words I didn't know yet, it made me wonder.
Could I [Smash] things?
- Smash
Apparently points don't only inflate the bullshit numbers.
So, I could in fact [Smash] things, if I bought this... ability.
Hmm, and it costs HP. If my Minders was low, she might not want to waste her precious bullshit numbers on it then.
But that lead to an important question.
A very, very important question.
Could I smash things without [Smash]?
---===---
As soon as he blinked and his gaze started moving, Baphema felt an odd sort of relief come over her.
He had a Status screen, thank the Gods.
Monsters didn't have those, only People did.
It might be possible to fool an Amanuensis, but to fool the Gods who granted and attached the Status to your soul. Plus, you had to have a soul for it to attach to.
Whatever madness the Human was, there was something tending to his light.
She felt his gaze upon her face once more, he was done reading.
"You [Smash] no, smash yes?"
Interesting, he was struggling with the limited language he knew in such strange yet intuitive ways.
So, don't [Smash] it with the skill, just lift the rock and bring it down? She'd humor him.
Wouldn't do anything. A Mimic's tooth needed 75 Strength to harm, which she couldn't do at this point even with a [Smash] and her [Heavy] axe.
Still, it might shed some insight on how he was doing whatever it was he was doing.
---===---
I stood up and watched as my Minder shifted over to my spot using her good leg to slide over, then bent over and awkwardly lifted the hundred plus stone like it was made of Styrofoam. The awkwardness came from her breasts naturally, as she was trying to heft a boulder with two already strapped to her chest.
Crom, if she was that strong, how had I squirmed out of her grasp when we were wrestling there? Was Mimic that slippery?
"Patient." She balanced the boulder casually on her good knee and gestured for me to bring the tooth over to her.
I obliged, then stood back as it was lifted easily over head without a grunt of noise or a hint of strain, then brought down, hard.
Both on the tooth itself, and her good foot next to it.
---===---
A good smooth rock this was, fairly chuckable, if she were a Chucker she'd probably keep this.
It's damage range would go up one per 2 kila, so this was probably by the feel a 60'er?
She checked with her Warrior's intuition.
She looked up from her Status Window at his surprised and somewhat alarmed face.
Why was he alarmed? She'd made a bit of a racket with the stone, but not that much. That was why her foot was there after all.
He was pointing down and she felt his gaze move like a line, down her face, her tits, to her leg, the thigh, the knee...
Oh, oh.
He didn't know about Slabs did he? Or her Skin apparently.
Should she shriek and moan and wail like she'd seen the human women do when they got drunk and thought it was a good idea to fuck a Tro'Gorc instead of a Tro'Gorc?
Fun as it might be, too many cries might entice a Quillbeast, and she was far too weak to deal with one of those right now.
Instead she flexed her foot and watched the boulder move off, showing no harm to either her foot, or the tooth.
---===---
And just when things were getting almost comfortable, the bullshit returns.
Her foot should be a flat thing with meat and scraps of bone and blood squirted out. She should be screaming as the pain went up to her brain, and I should be looking at the mess and contemplating whether or not I'd have to hack the foot off and cauterize the stump using the heat from the stone over the Dakota Fire Hole.
Instead she snorted and used her completely undamaged foot to push the boulder off her instep like it was again Styrofoam, showing both her perfectly fine foot, and the completely undamaged tooth next to it.
All right, ignoring the foot, which was bullshit previously discussed, the tooth hadn't taken a scratch. But I'd used the same rock from the same outcropping and taken chips out of it earlier this day. Tiny chips yes, but that was with a rock that fit in my hand. So hardness wasn't an issue.
To paraphrase a show I had seen through the Minder's glass pane on the little televisions and eventually phones they snuck into their monitoring stations, something's fucky about all this here.
Was it her bullshit foot?
"Again." When she looked at me uncomprehendingly again, I rose my arms up. "Smash again."
As she hefted the rock into the air, I bent down and grabbed her foot and pulled it to the side, splaying her legs almost obscenely.
"Smash." I commanded.
The rock came down, much louder this time with no foot there..
Again no damage.
She chuckled at my annoyed expression. She stopped when I took the tooth, placed it on top of her boulder, and brought down the five pound rock I had been using prior.
"See?" I said, holding the tiny chip up to her eyes, a bit of a lean required due to her chest, before depositing it in her hand. "It's just a tooth, and rock beats teeth, even if these ones are really hard."
She looked at the fragment in her hand for a moment, large fingers surprising graceful at twirling the thin splinter.
"Patient," She said after a moment, choosing from my limited vocabulary carefully. "You [Smash]?"
The question sound plus the special word. "No. I just brought the rock down."
"You... smash?" She used the non special term but still the question sound.
"Yes." I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. "Patient smash."
If anything with her wardrobe and height she was closer to being the incredible Hulk than I was.
She-Hulk rather.
Big tits She-Hulk.
Tit-Hulk.
Andre the Giant with tits.
My musings were interrupted as I found my hands engulfed in hers, and I was again surprised at how soft and uncalloused they were. Even the newest nurses had rougher hands than this girl.
She placed my hands on the sides of the rock, then casually hefted it onto her knee. With a bit of finagling, she got the tooth on the ground -away from her feet- and then lifted the stone up high enough that I lost sight of her.
Then she let go.
I nearly yelped as the very fucking heavy stone came down with a respectable crash, nearly missing my feet this time.
"What the fuck are you-", Was all I got out before she grabbed the boulder and pulled it aside with all the ease of a garbage can lid.
The tooth was a broken pile of bits.
"See?" I said at last. "It's just a tooth, and rock beats tooth."
---===---
With the sun gone, and the shadow from the mountain gone, the desert cooled quickly.
And she was alive. Alive, slowly healing, fed, and confronted with a puzzle.
What was he?
Humans couldn't do this, or that, or the thing with the meat, or the ring, or go through a Tro'Gorc's skin. What he was wearing was impossible, the weapons he made were impossible, Hells, everything he did aside of breathing was impossible.
Still, she was alive, and, with that blasted shadow gone, almost comfortable. Whatever the condition [Ministrated] did, the pain was still there, but a lot less than it had been before.
Hell, with a beer, this day might even be passable.
"I'd blow someone for some ale right now." She voiced to world at large, followed with a sigh. "Or even a beer."
"Beer?" He had another word it seemed. Turning, she saw him looking up from fiddling with small pieces of the broken horn. Probably up to something impossible no doubt.
"Yes Patient. Even a beer." She snorted while rolling her eyes. "And unless you have more impossible bullshit up your sleeve no fun times for you." She hesitated slightly. "Unless you want me to start paying you back now."
It'd be awkward with her leg, not to mention painful, but she'd managed in worse states. Even on fire one time, though the less said about that the better.
Her lips quirked slightly. She still won the bet.
Her musings were interrupted by a thunk on her Skin. She leaned back to look at what had been placed into her lap.
Her canteen?
It took her a second to notice the difference in weight.
It was full.
A glance at her inventory naturally didn't say anything, contents of items were never mentioned without special appraisal subskills buried deep in their trees. Half the assassinations performed took advantage of that.
Still, nothing much to worry about. Even if he transferred water in, it would be better than nothing.
It took until the second swallow before her brain caught up with her tongue.
Beer!
Blessed beer!
Literally.
Some God somewhere had blessed this. Priests did this often to help ease their parish budgets, as blessing anything made it raise one notch of quality.
Had his strange box been full of blessed beer? That'd explain why he put up such a fight for it.
Or, had it been her words?
Best not risk it.
"C'mere stinky."
---===---
After a brief and horrifyingly skillful lunge and some fumbling at my pants, I managed to get some distance from her expert hands.
Thank Crom she didn't know how a button-fly or zipper worked.Yet...
"None of that now." I barked a touch harshly, slapping her hands away. "Just drink your beer and like it."
Stepping even further back from my pouting Minder, I went back to look at my fragments in the gloom. Hmm, nothing much could be salvaged from this one, but I had more teeth. As long as one of them was a decent chunk I'd be fine and it'd save me hours.
But that could happen tomorrow.
As I prepped my sleeping space with sand to cover the worst of the rocks, it took me a moment in the gloom to realize I'd done it again.
Where would my Minder sleep?
I hadn't made anything for her.
I really needed to work on remembering that now.
After putting down the now half empty canteen with a slosh, she showed me by pointing.
A hole in the overhanging rock.
Maybe I could squirm into it, maybe. I didn't have any claustrophobia to worry about, but still, that wouldn't be pleasant. Especially as it was shielded from the wind, so it wasn't like it was smooth in there. Hunching down, I ran my fingers along the roof of the hole. Nor on top for that-
Wait. That groove.
Are you shitting me?
I had to see this. There was bullshit, but this was bullshit bullshit.
---===---
First, after hobbling over and awkwardly sitting down, she gestured for me to turn around with a twirl of her fingers.
I heard her top get placed on the ground with a heavy thump.
Then there was a grunt from her, and the sound of grinding stone.
I didn't turn, not for a minute, I just let my mind try and fail to put a picture to the sound. It was sometimes the only entertainment one got in the asylum after hours.
Had I really felt a nipple groove in the rock?
"Patient." I heard her call over to me.
I turned and saw nearly exactly what I thought I'd see.
My Minder, breasts squashed against her chest so hard I wasn't sure how she could breathe, grinding and sliding sideways into the hole.
And she was gesturing for me to join her.
---===---
"No." Was all that the strange Human called Patient said, while shaking his head.
What would he do?
If he was a StoneSpeller, he'd just make a hut out of a bubble of rock.
She watched as he went and gathered more sand to cast onto the rocks.
A Warder would layer upon layer of defenses, aversions, and illusions.
He shifted his poncho and found a modest rock to place upon the bottom.
If he was a Priest, he'd make a circle and ask his God to make it a Sanctuary.
He curled up into a lump and used his box as a makeshift pillow.
And if he was one of those horrors from the Kingdom, now would be a perfect time to tear off it's skin. Mcpoopin!
But she had axe tucked away for that.
He tucked his head in and had his tooth-spear jutting out of the mouth.
And went to sleep.
She watched him from the corner of her eye for an hour, just in case, before she joined him in slumber.
---===---
- Baphema
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