In the immediate aftermath of the felling of the tree, Cas was in the apex of her apotheosis. In short, to the villagers, she was a god!
It made a certain amount of sense, what with her being from another world and displaying mysterious powers. After the first nights gift giving, she found herself being looked upon more favorably by the villagers. Some had even started a ritual of bowing and stepping aside whenever she crawled by. Cas would've been lying if she said it didn't feel nice, but she was quick to inform them that she, in fact, was not a god... she was just on a mission from god.
...what? She was trying to avoid execution over here! You try navigating this honestly.
Kari looked down at the bundle of slime and shawl in her hands as it murmured angrily to itself. Behind them both, the village receded a mile into the distance. Up ahead was a single house standing alone.
The shack brought up images of 'Nowhere' from Courage the Cowardly Dog in Cas's mind, right down to the ever present wind that ran through the space with a howl.
Outside a familiar girl, dressed in a patterned shawl that covered face, struggled with a pot of water she carried at her waist. She stopped at the sight of them, taking any distraction to put the clay pot down as they approached her.
The girl was a bit taller than Kari, and now that she was close enough to see through the mesh shawl, Cas could see the girl had light eyes and dark hair, though there was something in the whole of her face that seemed familiar.
"Sister," Kari greeted with a breathy note.
There it was. Cas perked up at that immediate explanation. Looking back through her rearview eye-hole in the shawl, Cas saw a plaintive expression cross the sister's faces, interrupted suddenly by a harsh voice from inside the hovel.
"Idiot girl! How long are you planning to keep me waiting!"
The girl looked back with a panicked note in her voice. "I'm on my way!" Hurriedly, she picked up the pot and -- sparing them a brief glance of embarrassment -- walked into the dark interior. Kari followed.
...
Of course, amongst the general reverie and respectful looks surrounding Cas, there was one face of dissent. That face was named Korivena, and it looked especially unhappy as Cas intruded upon her space. Unlike the tent that had been setup outside, the mud hovel -- despite being the same design as those in the village -- was exceptionally small, feeling almost cramped on the inside. Dust hung in the air, glimmering in the column of sunlight that shone through the door, and swirling into eddies as Kari made her way past.
"I apologize for keeping your helper," Cas preempted the girl's apology.
"It's fine," Korivena was busy on a small rug, "just hurry up and bring that jug here, damn girl!" The girl obliged. Korivena, working her body weight into a mortar and pestle, dipped a hand into the clay jug, and sprinkled a precise amount of water into the mortar. She intensified her grinding and a soft smoke began rising from the concoction. Eventually, the smoke grew darker, and hotter, and a pungent aroma of baked coal started to fill the room when Korivena snatched her hand away and a small fire leapt up into existence just after her. It burned smokeless and as steadily as a candle-flame inside the mortar. Carefully, the elder woman took the mortar up in her palms and placed it on a bare patch of ground, far away from any rugs. "What do you want?" she asked.
"I came because I had questions," Cas answered.
"Yes, yes, what-" Korivena seemed perpetually frustrated. Moving to stand, a jittery hand touched the jug a bit too harshly, and-
CRASCH!
A hollow, airy sound like a wind instrument heralded the shatter-fall of the clay container. A flood of water washed over the dirt floor and over the flaming pestle, washing muddy water into the surrounding rugs. Notably, the flaming pestle didn't even sizzle at the touch of water, simply burning steadily on, unbothered by all the chaos that went on around it.
Korivena, on the other hand: "Idiot girl!" she shouted. Her words whipped up to strike the older girl into a straight stance. "How many times have I told you to place that jug further away, huh?"
Stock still, the girl only looked at her wringing hands. "Just look at what you've done!" she muttered in disgust, shaking her hands clean and lifting her skirt to her ankles as she stepped out of the mess, nearly bumping into Kari. There, as if remembering her guest's existence, a restrained quality fell over the old woman as she looked down at the slime in her hands. "Yes... you were saying about a question."
Cas replied evenly. "It's actually quite a delicate matter. I'd like to discuss it with you alone. If you wouldn't mind sending your girl out." Looking up, she addressed her friend. "Kari, if you could accompany her."
"Very well," Korivena sighed. "Girl go out and tend to the garden. And clean my tent if you get done before our great Sage has finished it's entreaties." The woman's words were acid.
Cas's reply came quick and short. "Actually, I'd prefer if they went elsewhere. I'm not keen on the possibility of eavesdropping."
Korivena looked offended. "You think I can't control my own apprentice?"
"I'm certain you're an excellent teacher, elder Korivena, but children are children,' before Korivena could respond, Cas leapt in to sweeten the deal. "Why don't you send them both off to my house. I've been gifted a jug recently, and I'm sure it would find a better home here."
A glint of greed lit the woman's eyes, and she tried not to sound too eager. "Very well. Yessina, pick up some Jantoo plants while you're there."
The girl, Yessina, bowed wordlessly and made her way to exit. Kari, placing Cas on the ground, moved to follow her but was stopped at the door.
"By the way. Kari?" Cas called, turning the girl's attention back to her. "I have many questions to ask the elder. Please make sure not to return until nightfall.
Nodding, Kari left and the white drape fell back to cover the doorway, filling the room with a diffuse light.
Growing impatient at the mention of a day-long conversation, Korivena was quick to the point. "What do you want to know?"
Cas only asked about the most natural thing. "Let's start with slimes."
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Cas had lied, Kari thought, as she lounged in the Oasis next to her sister. Slimes weren't exactly a very secretive topic. Still, she was glad for the excuse to spend the day with her sister.
The Oasis was brimming with children from all the villages, as always, but Kari and Yessina sat alone. How long had it been since Kari had seen her sister? She'd spent so many night fantasizing about the moment when she'd finally be able to be with Yessina again, but this moment wasn't anything like her dreams. In her dreams, Yessina had still had her smile, and there was never a dull moment, and Kari could actually think of things to talk about, things to do other than sit in the shade and wait for time to pass by.
Gingerly, Kari turned aside to look at her sister. Yessina had brought her hood down, so at least she wasn't against talking. From a side profile, she looked as beautiful as everyone said, and everyone had said that she was the most beautiful girl in the village. At least, everyone had said that until public opinion changed. An Unari could never be anything other than despised, after all. Last time they'd talked about it, Yessina had become very cross whenever Kari brought up the subject, even when she told her that the villagers were wrong. It became hard to think of anything else to talk about, however. The matter was everywhere in their lives.
"I don't like that bat," Kari settled for, at last. "I don't care what everyone else says. She's just a fool of a woman who's never done any good for everybody."
A soft reply came back, "you shouldn't talk about her like that," Yessina said, with soft admonishment in her voice. "If it weren't for her... I'm an Unari, you know? I'd've been sent out to the desert. So, how can you say she's never done any good? She saved me." Yessina was always the gentler of the two sisters. Though, that gentleness, Kari found, always got the better of her fire.
Kari shrugged. "I don't like how she treats you." She felt warm hands take hers in a gentle grip. It was a familiar gesture, excepting the harsh callouses that covered Yessina's hands nowadays. Silky tears flowed down Kari's cheeks like they hadn't since she was a child. "I don't like how you're always gone," she said with a sob creeping up your throat. "I don't... don't like any of this at all..
It was embarrassing. Yessina should've been the one crying after everything she'd been through. Kari should've been the one comforting her sister, but here she was, crying in the shade of a tree and the light of her sister's good graces.
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Sensitive to how much of Kari's day out was riding on keeping the elder occupied, Cas elected to ask her questions at a leisurely pace.
Korivenna wasn't pleased with the idea of spending an entire day talking to the local monster, but she was an easy woman to flatter, Cas discovered, and their conversation flowed surprisingly fluidly from the start. Korivenna's personal slime, it's sparkling interior glimmering as it crawled across the floorspace, was an excellent conversation starter. Korivenna gathered it as soon as the girl's had left, placing it in the middle of the mess and letting it crawl about, sucking up the mud. Soon, all the mud and muddy water had been taken up by the slime and dissolved, leaving it's formerly gleaming interior muddy with swirling clouds. From there, it softened itself.
The flow of nutrients, the density and presence of water, and the effort the slime exerted to harden and soften parts of itself. All these hidden details were intuitively visible to Cas's eye, so it was no mystery to her how the slime so quickly coalesced that muddy cloud into a dense ball of mud, and spat the mixture out as a bone-dry dirt-pile onto the floor.
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The slime, now clean, had ballooned into a massive, wobbling thing, barely able to stand underneath the weight of its own water, jiggled in place. Korivenna placed another jug next to it, touched it in a precise series of patterns with glowing fingers. Reacting mechanically, the slime stretched out a stalk, hardened everything but the water away from the tip, and in a familiar process dribbled fresh water into the resonant interior of the clay pot. Noticing Cas's intense interest, the woman smiled in a superior fashion and spoke up over the cacophony. "The water a Sakkari makes seems to be purer than anything you'll get out of a spring. Provided it's trained well enough, that is."
"Oh? I'd assumed you kept this slime to make that magic juice you drank when we first met." Purposefully, Cas constructed her question with annoying wrongness to bait an answer.
Korivenna answered shortly. "It's called a Sakkari. I've no idea what this 'slime' you keep mentioning is. And they're valuable as natural refractories. They can make the purest catalysts when trained well enough."
From there, Cas let the conversation go into a thousand tangents about Korivenna's work and the nature of alchemy, the history of the village, and any topic that she felt would be able to hold the older woman's interest. Soon, the outside cooled, however, and night was falling, and Cas could no longer hold herself back from asking the question that had brought her here. It had been a long conversation so far, though despite it, neither Cas nor Korivenna seemed to have warmed up to the other to any degree, both talking on simply for their own purpose. Eventually, they'd both run out of interest in any topic, and a periodic silence would fall over the conversation.
It was in one of these silent moments that Cas broke and asked plainly:
"Korivenna... how do you kill a Sakkari?"
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'Everything dies,' had been Cas's unofficial motto.
It was an all-purpose spear she used to deflate her troubles. After all, one could hardly mind a traffic jam, storm surge, or bad supervisor when their doom was assured. 'Everything dies,' was as close to a religious statement as she could bring herself to accept. It was why Korivenna's answer had seemed so non-sensical to her, and -- like all nonsense -- had taken residence in her mind for far longer than it had in the mind of the person who said it.
Death was an appropriate topic to be thinking of at the moment. Looking up, the buzzards circled on black wings in the evening air. Each one had four wings and hungry eyes and a croagy, bald head that hung below the body on a curve. Well, truly speaking, they weren't buzzards, and their quarry wasn't truly a calf.
Either way, it had been a miscarriage in the herd of not-sheep, and everyone steered very clear of the Oasis, citing bad omens.
Cas was ashamed to say that she was uncertain about these bad omens. Considering she lived on a world with monsters and demons, she thought it might be prudent to stay away from all the bad mojo. So, it drew a nervous yelp from her when her uber driver turned suddenly towards the Oasis. "Kari, where do you think you're going."
"Oh," Kari looked down in surprise at the slime in her arms. "I have to take the dead calf out to the desert. It's going to dirty the Oasis, otherwise."
Uhm, what? Cas thought.
"Uhm, what?" Cas said, putting a bit more sass into it than usual. "Why are they sending you to do it?"
Kari grew abashed, squatting down to place Cas in a shaded spot next to a tree. "Oh, sorry, I guess I should've asked if you wanted to come along. I'll just go do it by myself and come back for you if that's ok." A short moment passed between the two of them, one where Cas looked on with disbelief at the uncharacteristically fragile expression Kari wore. It was the look that seemed bare to all criticism, one which quickly crumbled under the seconds as Kari's face scrunched up in a failed attempt at feigning pride. "I'm sorry... I guess I should've told you sooner, huh? I thought you knew... I mean." Panicked, words and lies streamed out of the girl's mouth before Cas had a moment to even process them. "I thought you could've guessed at least. I mean, I'm sorry, I... I'll just go."
At this Kari turned and quickly moved to leave, which brought Cas back to her senses, and her emotions back online.
"Where do you think you're going?" Cas yelled. Kari turned back, and was met with the perfect expression of worry. "If you leave me alone in this haunted forest, you can consider our friendship done with, got it? Not get back here and talk to me properly!"
Cas was surprised to see the demure look Kari kept as she went back to the slime. "You said friendship," she noted, looking down like a kicked puppy. "Does... that mean we're still friends?"
With as much condescension and anger as she could muster, Cas answered: "Obviously!"
...
"My mother shouldn't have married my Father."
Kari looked like any other child sometimes, especially at times like these, where she sat on a tall root and kicked her legs while telling stories. And, being a child, she sometimes needed more prompting to give her explanation properly.
"Why?" Cas asked, trying to project a therapist's manner and failing.
"Because she was meant to marry a man in the Fari village," Kari shrugged, digging out a dried jerky from her satchel and sucking on the salted treat. "The village elders said that she had to because he was the furthest from her family tree. But, my father was, too! He was only her third cousin. He said that they only punished him because they were... were... I don't remember the word he used." She looked frustrated at herself.
Cas nodded, trying to make sense of the girl's story without asking too many personal questions. Cas looked around at the expanse of waste that isolated the villages. It seemed the Village elders had taken it upon themselves to make sure nobody inbred too much. It made enough sense to Cas, though it seemed the powers they'd granted were open to abuse. "Is that why you have to handle all the dead animals."
Kari shook her head no. "My sister... she's an Unari, too. She was supposed to be doing this, but when I was born... because of my lighter hair. My mother said I should be the one to stay alive."
Cas looked quizzically at the girl, and a disappointed breath from Kari preceded the answer.
"My mother and father... they were allowed to marry despite everything, but their children -- Yessina and I -- we were both born... broken. My sister.. she always struggled with talking to people. She wasn't shy she just... couldn't talk to anyone that wasn't me. And me..."
"And you?" Cas asked.
Kari pulled her hair back, revealing a hole in the base of her left fox ear. "I've never been able to hear out of my upper left ear." She ran a finger over the ear with a familiar dissapointment, pressing it down. "Mom had hopes... sometimes kids get better as they get older, and she thought I had the better chance to heal so she decided to keep me and let Yessina go.
"They were going to have Yessina walk into the desert like a twin. But.. she had a talent for magic, and she was allowed to train with the elder. I'm... I can't do magic. I can't sew, or make pottery, or farm. I can't get married either." Kari chuckled suddenly, a jaded impression strange in a child. "And I never even healed my ear. All I can do is take care of the dead until I'm an adult."
"Until you're an adult?"
Kari shook her head. "I have to go take the calf," she said.
Cas, braver now, moved forward. "Take me with you."
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In the middle of the Oasis was the lake. Even having never seen it before, Cas could tell it was a shadow of its former self. Having dried up so much, a clearing of flat ground now stood between its edge and the tree-line. Still, it protected a cool and peaceful atmosphere. It was a well chosen place to give birth. Tragically, it was also a good place to have one's final moments. Cas wondered if the mother knew the fate of her calf as she looked down at the poor creature.
The air held a bloody smell, and the sense of death. The calf, curled into itself with it's head resting on its haunch, had the look of an effigy of a living figure. In it's presence, the surroundings seemed a pedestal for the tragedy, as three buzzard circled the creature.
Moving without hesitation, Kari stepped forward and took hold of a hind-leg. Lifting it up, she began to drag it back, leaving a short trail of dried blood and slime just as a soft wind wafted over the creature's figure, causing Kari to put a hand up to her nose and recoil, even as she continued dragging it back.
To Cas, it looked, and seemed, and smelled... delicious. Cas couldn't explain it to herself, but as she stepped forward, she gestured for Kari's attention and said.
"Hey, Kari... hear me out."
...
The process was both slow and quick, and Cas started first with the rear leg, the hide and meat quickly disappearing, and her new, larger figure engulfing the whole rear, then the ribcage, then the whole of the figure as she expanded into a messy blood balloon. Her interior, being filled with a cloudy smog of viscera, Cas couldn't see outside of herself anymore, but she could still hear the retching and regretful words of Kari as she stumbled back away from the 4-D experience that was Cas eating.
"Sorry!" Cas exclaimed, watching as the cloud cleared and second by second, she began digesting the pool of matter that floated within her.
All in all, it was a decidedly calm process for her. Despite the obvious dissimilarities, it just felt like a lazy Friday afternoon after she'd finished a big meal. It was... peaceful.
At least, that was the case until she felt a sudden heat build up inside of her, and the blood cloud thickened in a frenzy of activity, and in front of all that, filling her world with all the dazzle and gleam of casino lights, her status screen exploded.
Hardening XP Cap Reached Level 3 -> 4
Hardening XP Cap Reached Level 4 -> 5
Hardenin - Level - Cap Rea- Hardening - XP Cap - Level
Hardenin - Level - Cap Rea- Hardening - XP Cap - Level
Hardenin - Level - Cap Rea- Hardening - XP Cap - Level
Hardenin - Level - Cap Rea- Hardening - XP Cap - LevelHard- Level 9 -> Hardeni 9 -> 10 Hardenin - Level Cap
Hardening XP Cap Reached Level 10 -> 11
Often, Cas was excited when she had her best ideas. She was never the type to sit in a reclining chair and think cold thoughts to herself. No, she did her best work when she was jittery with enthusiasm and barely able to contain herself from leaping up and shouting obscenities at someone. Most often, that someone she shouted obscenities was herself, as it was right now.
"Idiot!" she yelled at herself. Of course her hardening was being limited by raw materials!
The admonishment was brief, however, washed away in a thousand other brilliant lights that chimed for her attention.
Shape change had also levelled up some. Absorption was now level seven. She'd leveled up twice.
All of that was in order, and honestly quite as expected. However, shape change just had to hold another surprise. It was honestly the first time in a long time she found herself doing a double-take as she glanced over the spot on her screen that read:
Shape Change: Level 10 Capstone
Hardness: Level 10 Capstone
It was strange, a new table had opened up where the two sections intersected that read:
Skill: Body Print:
Following the body's memory, you can perform Shape Change feats up to Level 60 as long as they conform to the body memory embedded in the mind.
The description was vague, but Cas's feeling of power was similarly vague. She just felt like she could do something new, like she could something she'd never been able to do before.
It wasn't until she thought about it a bit more, until she paid attention to the phantom limbs that were now suddenly so accessible that she finally understood, and with a *ping* the character screen updated to confirm her new understanding by saying, directly underneath the new skill:
Skill: Human Figure Unlocked