Born a Monster

Chapter 38: Born A Monster, Chapter 38 – Wall of Torches

Born a Monster

Chapter 38

Wall of Torches

There are many standards for torches; a common wall torch, for example, will burn for roughly two hours.

It took nearly two hours to complete a circuit of the town wall of Narrow Valley, replacing those torches. This is not coincidence, and those torches are heavy.

In normal times, the city either left them or only had every other sconce lit.

These were not normal times, and I was getting in my Physical Exercise Regimen.

.....

I do wonder, sometimes, where the money, or even the torches, came from. Eventually, I came to the conclusion that someone in Narrow Valley, probably several someones, made their living off of making nothing but torches.

Certainly, I wasn’t making a living by replacing them. The city and Guild didn’t even assess hazard pay unless there was a proven enemy force outside the walls!

That said, it was simple enough work. Like everyone else assigned to it, I tried to do what I could to make the work easier or faster.

Someone had already built the torch cart, and a harness to make it easy to pull. It held almost enough torches to make it from one gate around to the next. Almost.

The work left me exhausted; I napped in the dining area, so that I wouldn’t miss breakfast.

#

At first, I didn’t recognize I was dreaming. I was standing in smoke, perhaps a cloud, and silver words spun in a circle before me, like a mandala. Every item seemed to have a thin silver thread linking it to every other item.

For those not studied in magic, a mandala is a set of elements or domains, each feeding the next and fed upon by the previous. Or sometimes multiple feedings or fed upon links, but always in the same pattern.

The mandala of my System menu was impossible; I could recognize some of the symbols, but they seemed to be in every language ever written.

Inventory, one read.

Classes, read another.

Oh my. It was... everything I knew. This was my System, everything it contained. It slowly spun, and rapidly grew.

At the core... I couldn’t see what was at the core. It emanated light, of every color. And I mean EVERY color, and several other wavelengths I could barely detect.

I had to back away, to divert my vision, for fear of my eyes burning out. I had just regrown those!

The images came too fast for me to process. Too much, too fast! MAKE IT STOP!

Or ... not. What would help me absorb this information?

My awareness tried to split eight different ways at once, and that woke me up. I was in a cold sweat, unable to sleep until after breakfast.

#

My next evolution had been Agility, for its defensive abilities; I attempted to change it to Insight, but –

[Performing this change will require 35 biomass, and a penalty of 1 biomass per day until development is resumed. Attempt the change again to confirm this expense.]

What? I’d never seen that before. Had my System just hidden the expense in the Maternal Biomass Loan? What a pain!

I scheduled Insight and Resolve between Agility and Valor, and left it to continue its development.

[Maternal Biomass Loan Reserve: 4128/2500 used, 42 biomass per day interest (1%). This loan is in RECLAMATION status, and may not be borrowed against.]

I tried to put at least a few points toward that loan a day, without exhausting my reserves of coin. Physical health, mental health, magical health, and stupid financial health.

My debts weren’t literally killing me, but they felt like it.

“There you are.” Cosimo said. “You’re off torch duty. Go to Tangars and check out your shield and whatever weapon you’re best with.”

What? No. I needed sleep.

[You have marked six points each of sanity and serenity to deal with the effects of not sleeping today.]

“Where do I report, Cosimo?”

“Where else? The Brutal Boar.”

Tangars must have also been exhausted; he moved with excruciating slowness. Not having been told otherwise, I picked up five days of dried goods from Uloned.

I supplemented this with some boiled chicken and fresh vegetables from the farmer’s market, and reported to the Brutal Boar Inn.

“I hope you have some skill at riding, young lizard.” Philecto greeted me. “We have purchased a pony for your use.”

“Are you aware?” I asked it mentally.

It responded with INDIFFERENCE.

“It’s quite tame, and we are short on time.” Adara said. “There is a web witch setting herself up as a queen of spiders in the west.”

Web Witch was a divine caster class that slowly transformed one into a spider as your magic failed. Other than that, I guess the most congruent class was Beastmaster, although it focused on spider powers. Eihtfuhr would have regarded her as an ally.

I felt ambivalent about killing her. After all, by human definitions, I was by far more monstrous than she was.

“Isn’t she sentient? Doesn’t that mean there might be a diplomatic solution?” I asked.

Philecto laughed.

Gustavian helped me onto the pony. “You’ll see once we meet her. There’s stuff that causes Aura Taint, and that leads to Corruption, which ... you’ll see.”

I had avoided Aura Taint, mainly by never doing anything with Necromancy or Chaos that my Sin Armor couldn’t handle. But – what happened if I didn’t do that? Was there a way to purify or wash clean an aura?

There it was! Purifying Water, at a cost of – whoa... Yeah, those abilities were costly. I flagged every Purifying spell I could find for later review, but that was... not something I could afford right now.

And not a single one of those worked against Corruption or Mutations or Madness.

Wasn’t Madness just an absence of value in the sanity meter? Wasn’t it?

We rode out toward the west gate with a new companion, someone I hadn’t met before. She was short, and tanned, and clad in a mix of boiled leather and bronze. Her sword had a crescent shape at the end, that looked like it might be used for grabbing things, except that it was sharp.

“Why are you staring? Ride here, by my left side, and be my shield.” She said.

“Ah, this is my fault.” Adara said. “He doesn’t know his task yet. Marietta is correct, you are to be her shield bearer in particular. Just keep the spiders off of her so she can do what she does best.”

“I’m guessing that’s killing spiders?” I asked.

“Killing mages. Marietta Magellos, or Marietta the Mage Slayer. So, what counter-magics do you know?”

#

It was impossible to auto-forage while mounted, at least at the pace we kept.

There was no road between Narrow Valley and the un-named farming village to the west. It was a town well with four or five handfuls of houses clustered around it in a mostly straight X pattern.

They spoke a mix of Grot and Latvian, so I didn’t understand the negotiations. But after talking to the woman in charge of the community, we set off for a wooded valley she indicated.

We didn’t make it far before we had to set about tending our mounts and making camp. I needed to borrow a brush from Philecto, and took great care combing briars, twigs, and seeds from the hair of my mount.

“What is his name?” I asked Philecto.

He shrugged. “Didn’t ask, guess he’ll need a new one.”

“Mask.” I said, without hesitation, naming him for the distinctive spots on his head.

Mask assisted me in putting on his feed bag, and set about eating as though he were me.

Dry wood for the fire was sparse, but it could be found as long as you were looking, rather than just letting your System find it.

Dinner was a reheated meat pie from the inn; supplemented with the food the guild had provided me, I got just barely enough to pay my daily biomass consumption. My System wasn’t happy about that, and warned me there were penalties for not paying the minimum of the Biomass Loan.

I was up late that night, but I found a patch of wild cucumbers. Six of them was just enough to shut the System up.

“Weapons out.” Adara told us as we entered the wood the next day. “We’re looking for a stream, which we follow up the hill to its headspring.”

“Shield for you.” Mariella told me. “You’ll need the other hand for your mount’s harness.”

There were no webs, but not all spiders left those lying around.

We let the horses drink at the stream when we found it.

“Where are all the spiders?” Philecto asked. “I know the Guild has been clearing out nests, but wasn’t the area infested?”

“Yeah, and last year these same woods had a wolf behind every tree.” Gustavian replied. “But yeah, we should be seeing at least something this close to a nest.”

Adara kept her eyes on the treetops. “Be ready for an ambush. Remember that the nearby spiders are going to be under the control of the web witch.”

“At least initially.” Mariella agreed. “We should probably stake our horses somewhere rather than have them panic.”

“If we stake them now, we might find them all dead when we come back.” Gustavian said.

“So what?” asked Philecto. “We tie the harnesses together to keep the horses in one group?”

.....

“The saddles.” Adara said, and this was done. She sent some mental pictures to her mount, who began leading the others back the way we had come.

“What is that in your hand?” Mariella asked me.

“A knife.”

“Torches, new person. Spiders are still wary of fire. Don’t light it yet, we could be fighting a while.”

#

The web witch had the long ears of the elves, and the pudgy body of a housekeeper. And, I noticed, was a he.

Adara smiled. “Telefaunad!” she called out, waving.

“Adaraniel!” he replied.

The two of them embraced like long term friends.

“Don’t look at me.” Gustavian said, from behind me.

“There.” Said Marielle. “Just inside that crevasse. See them?”

“No help for it, if we’re to protect Adara.” Said Philecto.

Adara and Telefaunad chatted in rapid fae-tongue. As they did, spiders began showing themselves at the wooded edges of the glen.

“How many torches do we have?” Gustavian asked, pulling three from his pack. We had a total of ten between us.

“What are you thinking?” asked Philecto.

“We prop them up between the rocks, too close for the spiders to want to pass. A wall of torches.”

“More like a hedge, but better than nothing.”

“Not you, shield. Stay near me.” Marielle reminded me.

Adara went through her pack, handed over a jar still half full of honey.

“Masterful.” Said Philecto.

“You okay?” Gustavian asked. “Not your usual word choice.”

“Go lick a toad.”

Mariella squinted at the falling sun.

And in the light of that sun, by the burbling spring, the two of them laughed and joked, poked each other in the arms and ribs, nibbled on carrots dipped in honey...

“Should we set up camp?” I asked.

Philo stretched. “We could sit back to back.”

Marielle ran a finger along the side of her weapon. “This does look like it will take a while.”

As the shadows stretched eastward, spiders moved forward. Compared to my first visit, there weren’t many of them, nor were they exceptionally large. The shadows were a third of the way across the glen when the conversation took an awkward pause.

“Telefaunad?” Adara asked, barely loud enough for us to hear. “Telefaunad, hana.”

Nobody needed to tell us to stand, to ready weapons. Gustavian began lighting his torch wall.

Telefaunad said a final phrase in fae, as spiders began emerging from their lair.

Adara lept and sprinted to join us, tears forming in her eyes. “He will not see reason.”

“When do men ever see reason?” Marielle asked. “Okay, shield. We’re going to use Flash Step. On Three.”

“I don’t know Flash Step. I have Fleet of Foot, I’ll catch up.”

“Go now, I’ll Flash Step in when you’re close.”

It must have looked hilarious, me charging someone twice my size with a round shield and torch.

He waited there, his hexagonal staff set to receive a charge.

It was then that I realized I’d never received a party invite. I wanted to check over my shoulder, to make sure she hadn’t just used Flash Step to bypass the cordon of spiders. But the rocks were treacherous underfoot, so I kept my gaze forward.

And then, with a gust of wind, she was there, exchanging Flurry of Blows with him.

#