Chapter 13: Opportunistic Advantage Part 3

Lester was out of gold, and his spell of concealment was crumbling. He had scarfed the last one as Robby had trudged across the room to pick him up. The cost had flown higher than a bird trying to escape a predator as he was being directly interacted with. It had never been meant to conceal that much.

He had barely had enough mana to cover the cost as he was roughly handled by the boy. A disgusted rage had come close to overwhelming him at the affront of the human boy carrying him like a sack of potatoes. His claws had flexed at the first touch of the boy as he struggled to control himself. This was all for Gomm. He had to pull this off.

He had managed not to start slaughtering everyone in the room by using that impromptu mantra he started repeating in his head. This is for Gomm.

He couldn’t help smiling a little wider as the boy had taken him to another room, and the suspiciously observant, well-dressed woman had watched him along the way. Lester only had another minute or two left before he would be out of fuel for this spell or any other magic. He would have to be quick. He hoped this youngling was as naive as some of the dibbun from the settlement.

As the door closed behind the pair of them, the boy grunted,

“Why does she yell at me so much?”

The other two children, hiding from their mother’s wrath in the room, were grinning at their youngest brother and his burden. The girl, who couldn’t have been more than a few years older than her most miniature brother, spoke up unkindly,

“S’Cause yer ugly, stupid.”

Robby sat Lester in a chair in one corner and shuddered to look at him up close. Lester didn’t begrudge him the reaction. The burn scars had ensured he wouldn’t be turning any heads in a good way a long time ago. The boy grabbed a blanket from one of the beds and threw it over him.

This wasn’t very pleasant to the goom as now Lester couldn’t see. Ungrateful little whelp, Lester had spared his family. Humans had no manners.

Lester was trying to decide if he should try to breathe less. It might make his crumbling concealment magic last a little longer. The three children weren’t a significant burden for it now that he wasn’t directly interacting with anyone, but he only had a few minutes left.

Realizing he was an idiot as his antennae were propping up the front of the blanket slightly, hiding his breathing, he carefully did nothing. Robby spoke again,

“That thing is ugly. You get it so you wouldn’t feel alone anymore, Erika?”

What Lester assumed was the girl let out a hiss, and soft scuffling sounds were heard for a few moments. A new voice, what must have been the eldest, exclaimed softly,

“Stop it, you two! You wanna bring Ma’s wrath down on all of us? It doesn’t matter who bought it. We got company!”

The girl was still protesting against her youngest brother,

“I didn’t buy that thing, stop lying!”

The whispered shouts resolved the issue with one more thump from one of the children punctuating the quiet argument. Lester hoped it was the girl getting that last thump in. Robby had been quite rude.

A moment of silence was heard, and then footsteps moved away from Lester toward the dresser with a mirror he had spied when Robby set him down.

The girl spoke up quietly,

“What’s this all about, Robby? What are you doing?”

Lester could hear sliding drawers. A door opened and closed softly. Was the boy getting clothes for his expected journey? Maybe that was a closet door Lester had heard. Robby spoke up,

“Lord Adder sent his maid, Marie. That’s who the woman is. She said I’m going to be a Luciloo. I’m s’pose to leave in the morning for ‘vanced training.”

Erika’s voice, followed by the older boy’s,

“Bullshit.”

“That’s crazy.”

A pause before Robby responded,

“Thanks for the confidence, guys. I really ‘preciate it.”

Erika giggled,

“So, what? You’re just leaving in the morning?”

“That’s what ma’ said. So I gotta get my stuff ready.”

The older boy made a noise of derision,

“What stuff? Everything that’s yours used to be ours. At least Erika and me will have a little more room in the morning.”

Robby’s reply had some sadness in it.

“Thanks, Geary, you make this easier.”

A smack was heard. Had the older boy hit Roby? Maybe Lester was doing this kid a favor after all. Geary spoke again with a hateful tone,

“Shut up, Robby. I’m glad you’ll be gone in the morning. And it’s probably not “training,” Ma’ probably just sold you off. You’re gonna be mob food in the city.”

Lester heard a heavy sigh,

“That doesn’t even make any sense. Why would they bother buying a kid from the country? There’s probably more kids in the city who wouldn’t be missed just as much as me.”

Erika threw in her unwelcome two shillings.

“S’Cause mobs like ugly children the best.”

Lester thought she was an especially horrid little girl at this point. He regretted rooting for her to get that thump in earlier. Was this how human younglings treated each other all the time?

A door slamming from the front room interrupted further conversation. A moment later, everyone in the room could hear Kara Milligan shouting,

“She’s gone! Erika? Geary? Shandar? Adama? Get out here and eat before this damn soup gets any more burnt! Robby, finish packing, and then come eat!”

Shuffling feet could be heard exiting the room, and the door closed as Geary and Erika left the room. Lester waited until he could hear the last boy return to what he was doing before slowly pulling the blanket off his head. As the fabric slid to the floor, Lester was exposed to the back of the youngest Milligan boy. He was stuffing clothes into a pack while quietly making sniffling sounds.

He was facing away from Lester. That was a risk that had played out in his favor. He was having an unusual streak of fortune today. Terrible when his family and friends had been slaughtered and captured, now his plan to get the few survivors was working out smoother than he could have dreamed. At least so far.

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The god of luck, Milo, smiled sadly at the events unfolding. Jeph had better know what he was doing. Life changed in unexpected ways at random times, the god of fortune, fair and foul, should know, but his brother had him press reasonably hard on the scale today. He would have to balance it out later in a small way, or things would get dicey for more significant events.

Milo felt he was needed for a dice game in Purpolis between a goblin and a carpenter, so he turned away from the situation after giving a last breath of effort to control the outcome of these events.

The last of Lester’s concealment spell faded as his mana ran out, and he stood on the chair, disrobing swiftly. This was a miserably unfortunate little boy.

Lester spoke consolingly to the boy as he hardened his heart and focused intently on his goal of saving Gomm and Choch,

“I’m sorry, Robby. At least you won’t have to be sad anymore.”

The boy spun around with a panicked look that turned to horror as Lester leaped at the child from his perch on the chair. Lester’s deep pocket on his chest split wide as he soared through the short distance between them. Lester’s more diminutive form engulfed Robby’s frame to the waist like the winner of the disgusting, ugly hat contest from last summer’s festival that Robby still thought had been rigged.

Little muffled shrieks could be heard as Lester’s deep pocket swallowed the boy almost whole. Lester’s form stretched to accommodate the extra mass for a few moments. Robby’s face pressed faintly against the scarred skin of Lester’s back. The boy’s face bowed out the skin in a bizarre, ill-fitting flesh mask.

The little boy’s legs supported the goom in the air like a macabrely aggressive, deformed, scarred stuffed animal hat he won at the world’s worst festival. If it were an authentic hawker at the festival running the booth. Someone who was a true creep in this hypothetical carnival of unfortunate prizes would have named it the Horror Haberdashery.

The boy’s legs poked out of Lester’s deep pocket. The boy staggered toward a dresser in the room with a mirror and a miniature portrait frame. The partially conjoined mass of Lester and Robby started to morph and shift as the last length of the legs was sucked slowly into Lester’s body.

Lester knew he didn’t have much time to pull this off.

The wriggling mass bumped into the dresser, and the portrait frame atop it rocked then fell over, its glass front shattering. The muffled cries from within Lester grew quieter as Lester focused on speeding up the process. Lester’s form continued to shift and stretch as it fell to the floor. A shout came from the other room as the last bits of the legs continued kicking weakly as they were sucked into Lester’s deep pocket.

It was Robby’s father,

“You okay, boy? Need some help?”

Mistress Milligan replied.

“Leave him be. He’s just throwing a tantrum.”

“I’ll just check on him, Kara. This can’t be easy on him.”

Erika’s voice piped up,

“When Robby’s gone, what are we gonna do with his bed? Can we move it out tomorrow so Geary and I have more room?”

Another voice, maybe one of the older boys, spoke up. Lester thought this one sounded concerned,

“What? Where’s Robby going?”

Lester ignored the conversation and focused on the change. The boy didn’t have a lot of mass for him to work with, and he needed the transformation to be as seamless as possible in the last few seconds he had. A half-assed job would get him discovered, and then his plan would be over before he even found out where Choch and Gomm were in the city.

He only had one shot at getting this right and was glad he had taken the time to memorize the boy’s features earlier. The last of Robby’s kicking little shoes had been sucked inside his deep pocket. He drew out the boy’s clothing and placed it beside him as he worked. Lester got to work on the hard part of his plan.

Thankfully, the boy’s life force was sufficient to replenish his mana enough to fuel the change. Most of the skin he used to change his scars to smooth, healthy, pink human skin. He gave himself longer legs and a slimmer torso to match the build of the boy he was consuming.

Lester briefly debated shedding his claws and didn’t think he would have time to hide the leftovers, so he started them on being retracted into the base of his fingers. He grew a head of black hair and started to work on his new face. He thought he had the details mostly correct.

He could hear footfalls coming toward the door and the voice of Roger Milligan.

“He’s only ten, Kara. I know you think it’s best to let them find their own way, but a little encouragement won’t hurt him.”

Lester struggled with the last of the shift, his throat becoming a priority for his focus. He coughed and tried out his new voice box quietly,

“Nothin’, Ma. I swear. I been good all day.”

Lester thought he had nailed it, but any slight difference might be overlooked as a youngling being distraught at the events of leaving home. He didn’t think anyone besides the father and maybe that older voice he had heard would notice any difference.

A soft knock on the door, Lester glanced into the mirror on the dresser. His antennae! How had he forgotten to get rid of those? They bobbed out the top of his head like two long, thin flags of betrayal, signaling to the world that this little boy wasn’t a little boy anymore.

Should he cut them off? No, the blood would give him away. His belt knife was across the room by the chair anyway, and damaging the sensitive appendages would impede his magical senses. He would have to absorb them back into his body. He needed more time.

He stepped from the mirrored dresser to the bed, bowing his head as he drooped the appendages toward his chest. He clutched his new human-looking hands around the base of the appendages and started absorbing betrayal stalks into his skull.

The door finished opening as Roger stepped into the room with a question,

“You okay, Robby?”

Shit, how had the boy addressed his sire? Lester would have to guess on context. He threw in a sniffle and tried to sound sad.

“Yeah, Da’. M’okay.”

Roger glanced at the shattered glass of the portrait frame atop the mirrored dresser, and his face scrunched. This must be hard on the boy. Roger knew finding out life would change in the morning was a hard pill to swallow sometimes, even for adults…Why was his son naked? Had he been changing?

Roger sighed as he gathered the piled clothes near the dresser and set them beside his distraught boy on the bed. The older man watched as Robby continued clutching his hair in distress for a few more moments, then he dragged a pair of pants from the pack and started to dress.

His boy was trying to hide his tears with his head bowed as he stood over the half-stuffed pack on the bed. Why had he let Kara insist the older ones picking on him would strengthen the boy? When had he gotten so tall?

Roger tried to put comfort and understanding in his tone,

“Ah, my boy.”

Roger stepped forward and put his hands on his youngest son’s bare shoulders. The boy tensed at his touch but only raised his hands to clutch at the hair on top of his head again. Lester felt a pang of sympathy at the familiar gesture of his youngest.

“It’s not so bad. The others can be rough on you sometimes, but they love you. They’ll miss you just as much as me and your Ma. You know that, right?”

The boy let out a shuddering breath and dropped his hands to his sides. He took a big sniff and was quiet for a moment.

Lester gambled on sympathy while trying not to sharpen his teeth to maul one of the hands-on his shoulders. That would be a waste of mana and would ruin the charade. He needed more information. Lester started a new mantra in his head. A little boy. He was a scared little boy.

“Maybe, Da’. Doesn’t always feel like anybody cares ‘cept you.”

“Now that’s not true. Adama has been helping you with your letters, hasn’t he? And he’s been teaching you the quarterstaff. I know Shandar’s a little distant, but he’s focused on learning to run the mill from me, and there’s a lot to take in. Erika and Geary…well, they’ll grow out of being hard on you, and your mother loves you the same as I, even if she doesn’t always know how to show it.”

“We will all be writing you while you’re gone, don’t you worry. We won’t be too far to visit on the solstice, neither. I promise. You’ll have a lot of fun once you get used to being away from home. I love you, son.”

Lester tried to relax as the large man embraced him with a hug from behind, wrapping one arm around his arms and the other draped across his head. At first, he hated being touched by the treacherous, murderous, greedy human. He wanted to turn and rip and tear at the man’s flesh. He wanted to go into the other room and slaughter them all.

Then he let the comfort the hug was supposed to convey touch on some of his pain at all the loss and horror of the past day and enjoyed the stolen solace. For a just moment, he let the love the man felt toward what he thought was his son wash away just the crusty scab of his emotional wounds and let out a genuine, heartfelt, strangled sob.

Roger murmured,

“There, there, my boy. It’s all right. Let it out.”

A monster clothed in human skin cried as he was held by the father of a boy he had consumed. A cruel, divine laughter went unheard by the caring father and distraught monster.