Chapter Seven.

“We’re dead. We’re so dead.” Leigh was pacing back and forth through the alley anxiously repeating this mantra.

“What the hell is going on, man?” I snapped at him after a few minutes of this, my mood still horrible after the meeting at the guild.

“We’re dead is what’s going on!” Leigh shouted back. “I thought we’d have at least two or three days until the Marshals got here for us to get out of the city. Even once they arrived, we should still have had a few days while they investigated. This makes no sense!”

My temper was slowly draining out of me at the genuine panic on his face, so I forcibly kept my tone calm and tried to figure out what was going on.

“Ok, explain it to me then. I’m guessing the Marshals are some kind of… policing organization to investigate things like when I set off the Calamity ward?”

“Broadly, yes. They’re usually a bit more active prevention than investigation, but they always respond to an activated ward. I just thought that with how quickly the alarm came and went, their response would be more lukewarm. Again, this is an entirely out of proportion reaction. Why would they send the bloody Doombreaker to Delmoth!?” Leigh hissed out. Catching my inquisitive look he gave an exaggerated sigh.

“Lord Cael Hakkon, titled the Doombreaker for single-handedly holding back the Dread Tide until the Mysterium could respond in force. The only man alive to have stood in the face of a true Calamity and sent it back bloody. International hero and idol of millions. Which is why it is insane that he’s here in Delmoth of all places to investigate a potential Calamity. He’s not actually the problem we have though.” Leigh started pacing the alley again. “The problem is his team. They’re all auxiliaries set up specifically to get him where he needs to be and give him every advantage possible— trackers, spies, warders, and a gods-damned Oracle!”

Leigh was practically hyperventilating.

“The moment they arrived she’ll have started divining everything that’s happened and they’ll be after us… in… why are you smiling?”

I couldn’t help it. A smug smile crept across my face once I realized the source of Leigh’s worries wasn’t the uber-slayer of Calamities, but instead the Oracle helping him. That was something I’d been extremely upset about when the Void Leviathan had shown me a vision of how I’d been manipulated during my first life here. So I’d made it very clear that any mutual agreement of non-interference would include no more voyeurism of my life by the Spider or her cronies. It wouldn’t hurt to calm my guide down though, so I clued him in.

“Let’s just say that ‘bargain’ I mentioned yesterday precludes certain forms of… observation.”

He stared at me slack-jawed.

“You have one over on Fate?? Gods, what have I gotten into…” He mumbled out despairingly.

“Are you sure about this bargain you made? How did you— nevermind, I’ve decided the details are beyond my pay level and so long as we aren’t going to be seeing the afterlife shortly, they can stay that way. Please let me know if something from your past comes up and is about to kill us so I can at least meet my end with dignity.”

Leigh did an abrupt about-face and started marching determinedly out of the alley while I had to scramble to keep up.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“Back to Joan’s, because I might be able to deal with all this but I’ll be damned if I have to do it sober.” Came his biting reply.

Yeah, because you totally needed an excuse to drink more. Besides…

“Aren’t you broke?”

He halted in place like he’d run into a wall.

“Oh gods, I am.”

His shoulders slumped and I couldn’t help but chuckle for a moment. The hollowness in my gut swallowed the happy feelings up quickly, but they were nice for a bit.

I couldn’t believe how I’d acted during that meeting. Yeah, Grafton had been a grade-A asshole, but I’d almost killed him for it. Twice. That didn’t seem like normal, healthy behavior for dealing with hostile/aggressive people. There were probably a thousand better ways to handle that situation, and I couldn’t let my go-to response for people upsetting me be to straight-up murder them. Leigh interrupted my self-recriminations with a nudge of his elbow.

“Hey, don’t sweat what happened back there kid. First, Grafton coming over like that was definitely something worked out between the two of them beforehand. Probably a way to weed out people from more ‘entitled’ backgrounds. Second, Teadran robbed you blind.”

“What?” I blurted out.

“Yep. Going rate for a guild-certified warder would be around a hundred thirty marks a week. Uncertified, maybe a hundred. Even with passage, he got you for less than half the going rate. Things were a little… tense… when he made the offer so I figured we’d take what we could get and didn’t say anything.” He said with a consoling pat on my shoulder.

Wow. Maybe I should revisit the whole ‘squishing people’ thing.

In the end, I could only sigh while he nodded commiseratingly as we made our way back to Joan’s; both of us dejected for our own reasons.

It was early afternoon by the time we made it back. The whole way, the city had been buzzing with news of Marshal Hakkon’s arrival. People walked with less reservation, and a palpable sense of relief was in the air. A ‘hero’ had come in the city’s darkest hour according to most, and everyone was looking forward to seeing him bring a decisive end to whatever Calamity threatened the city. My feelings were a bit more… mixed.

On the one hand, happy people were less likely to be jerks and form impromptu angry mobs. On the other, it was a little disturbing to watch the fervency in everyone’s eyes as they unknowingly discussed my approaching doom.

By far the biggest change though was at Joan’s itself. The place was packed.

I could hear the crowd as we approached from half a block away. It looked like the whole neighborhood had come out to celebrate, with people wandering around in various states of inebriation and hanging off each other in the streets. Roars of laughter and shouted cheers echoed out around us through the alleys around the tavern. Leigh shouldered his way through the crowded front entryway while I struggled in behind him. He tried to say something to me but it was quickly lost in the noise of the crowd.

“What??” I had to shout back.

Leigh leaned over to me and still had to yell to be heard.

“I need to find Joan! Wait here.”

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“Ok…” I mumbled as he’d already disappeared into the press of people.

The flow of traffic back and forth around me was disorienting. The main room, which had felt impressive this morning, now felt cramped and undersized. Claustrophobia gripped my chest in a vice after just a few minutes of standing there, unsure of what I should be doing.

I’m just gonna go to my room.

Right as I resolved to leave, a greasy hand clapped onto my shoulder and spun me around before a strange figure went in and grabbed me up in a bear hug.

“Rob!You’rn back! Why’re ya so shmall?” The words were shouted in my ear along with a deluge of booze-breath. He didn’t give me a chance to respond from the stunning effect of his breath before whirling to a group of his friends (still carrying me in a bear hug).

“Hey! Rob’s back! Look he’s right… *gulp* here.”

None of them seemed to hear over the din of all the other shouts, though they all cheered anyway at the stanger’s enthusiasm. I struggled free after a moment and the man gave me a bleary look before patting me on the shoulder.

“There’sh a good lad, Rob. Always… lookin’...” he trailed off as he toppled over like a tree, hitting the floor with a thud and a roar of fresh laughter. Two of his friends grabbed him up and dragged him outside, while a third hopped up on one of the tables and lifted up a full mug into the air.

“Here’s to the Marshals, and death to the Calamity!” He shouted out to a rousing cheer from everyone around. I stood frozen as a feeling of unease crawled down my spine. Suddenly the smiles around me had edges that had been hidden from me before. A cold realization dawned on me that these people would all be celebrating just as hard around me being burned at the stake.

I need to get out.

Pushing my way through I darted up the stairs to my room almost at a sprint. I struggled to breathe and my hands shook while I fumbled at the simple latch for an agonizing eternity until it finally gave way and I could lock myself inside. My back was pressed against the door when the strength went out of my legs and I felt myself slide down to the floor. The events of the last few weeks crashed through my memories like a wave and left me feeling like a wreck, stranded and being slowly smashed apart. It increasingly seemed like everyone in this world was against me somehow, and every mistake I made just drove me back out. Those people might have been cheering for something abstract to them, but to me, they might as well have been calling for my head. I was surrounded by more people than I’d even seen in months, and yet the hollow emptiness where my [Blightlings] should be left me wracked by loneliness.

I don’t think I’m ok… I need you guys.

There was no Skritter or Theo to break me out of my mental state. No Pollo with his snooty, cat-like form of love. No dog-pile of support or cries for affection to pick me up when things were at their worst. It was just… me. And I didn’t know if that was enough. The only thing I had right now was my hate for the monster that took them from me, but it was so hard to focus on a goal that was so nebulous. Despite the progress I’d made up here, I didn’t feel any closer to reaching Veris and I still felt pathetically weak.

But what can I do?

A ray of late afternoon sunlight broke through some light clouds and shone through my room’s window, illuminating my hands. I stared at them for a minute, even though they seemed so human… I knew what was underneath. Tendrils shifted beneath the skin as I focused, writhing agitatedly with my pent-up emotions. Frowning, I considered what I actually knew about my new body— which was basically nil.

It’s time to change that.

Another cheer rumbled the floorboards beneath me.

Ok, maybe not now, but after dark…

I wasn’t really feeling better, but having a short-term goal— even one as simple as finding out what I actually look like— helped. Leaving the door latched, I made my way to the bed and carefully stripped off my borrowed clothing. Despite all the noise and the light still streaming into the room, I felt exhaustion pulling at me and I collapsed into unconsciousness.

I slept fitfully, my dreams skipping randomly in a mish-mash of jumbled and anxious thoughts. Swirling lights and patterns of color paraded through my mind before fleeing from memory like ghosts. Flashes of color and emotion burst like stormclouds across the fractured landscape of my dreaming thoughts. Whether the unsettling events of the day or just the strain of the last few months catching up to me I couldn’t be sure, but when I finally awoke to a dark night sky I felt like I hadn’t managed to sleep at all. I groaned involuntarily and sat upright on the bed.

I could still hear people downstairs, but it was much quieter than earlier. There wasn’t a clock so I had no idea what the actual time was, but it felt late, and peeking out the window showed almost all the traffic from earlier was gone. Feeling paranoid, I took one of my blankets and hung it over the window after closing the shutters to block out any potential witnesses. I stripped out of the last of my underclothes and moved to the center of the room, standing awkwardly for a moment before gritting my teeth.

Let’s get this over with already.

I transformed. My skin split down previously invisible seams, shifting from an unhealthy pale tone to a deep grey as it receded from sight. In a burst of movement, my body swelled outward as a muscle I hadn’t known I was tensing relaxed. Quick as a blink, it was over, and I squirmed around to catch my reflection in the tiny mirror mounted to the wall.

Completely transformed, my new body was just over four meters in length and a dark shade of grey flecked with tiny white spots. Two extra-long, spindly arms still came out of a vaguely hominid torso, but that’s where any similarities to humanity ended. My legs were gone, replaced by a quartet of segmented tentacles that were so long I had to curl them around me to fit in the room. Hooked suckers lined the inside of the tentacles like a squid, each one looking wickedly sharp and three-to-four centimeters long. Several more tentacles lined the sides of my chest, similar to the ones that had replaced my legs but only a bit longer than my thin arms. Spiked, chitinous plates covered me, though when I poked at the ‘armor’ it flexed easily with a rubbery springiness— the only parts of me that refused to flex were the hooks on my tentacles. A smooth layer of nearly transparent chitin went from the base of my neck and wrapped up over the top of my head, stopping just above my mouth. My neck had widened significantly and angled forward which gave me a hunched, predatory posture. Barbed chelicerae lined the underside of my head, and the reflective orbs of my eyes shone out through the diaphanous chitin ‘hood’ covering most of my face. Overall I looked like a horrifying, eldritch sea monster, which left me with one burning question…

How in the hell did anyone look at this and think, “oh yeah, that one looks friendly.”

The answer came almost immediately in the form of another question.

Actually, how much worse do all the other Outsiders look that this would be the friendly one?

At least there weren’t any killer-instincts buzzing in the back of my mind like the [Corrupted Blight Pit] form I had before, but still, there was no way I could show this to people I didn’t trust explicitly. The only downside I noticed so far was an odd sensitivity to the lingering presence of people nearby, some enhanced sense picking up odd bits of conversation and background that grated on my nerves. Nothing specific, just an uncomfortable pressure like I was stuck in a crowd that was just a little too noisy. Moving on, it was time to do some tests.

My first thought was wondering how all… this, fit inside my human form and was pretty easy to figure out. I was basically like a cephalopod now, in that I only had a few real bones while the rest of me was rubbery tissue or surprisingly pliant chitin. This meant that despite my increased normal size I could actually fit in smaller spaces than a person could. The image of a giant octopus squeezing into a mason jar popped into my head, and I shuddered with a brief burst of claustrophobia at the thought.

Moving in this form was surprisingly familiar to my former blobby-ness, the sheer malleability of my new body oddly comfortable. The only downside is something I discovered a long time ago, the reason everything on Earth with tentacles is aquatic— tentacles are terrible for moving around out of water. It’s doable for sure, but I can already tell that the best land speed I’ll be able to pull off is a brisk jog. I guess there’s a reason we have bones to walk around, who knew?

The big benefit to this style of movement is that I wasn’t limited to horizontal surfaces, which I promptly tested by crawling up and hanging from the rafters of the ceiling. It would probably have been more fun if I wasn’t still reeling from the day’s events, but even depressed as I was it was still kinda cool.

More physical tests would have to wait until I had some space, maybe outside the city? But for now (and still hanging from the ceiling, because it’s fun and I can), I moved on to some ideas I had to shore up my magic.

Summoning up a single hexagon of my shield spell, I stared at it contemplatively. Hesitantly, I reached out and ran a single, clawed finger down the edge to see how sharp it was.

Nada. Couldn’t cut butter with this.

I’d hoped that I could weaponize the hexagons to give me more options, but the edges were thick and blunt while having essentially no weight. Focusing in on the glowing shape, I tried to thin it out to give it a cutting edge, but there turned out to be significant overlap between ‘thin enough to cut’ and ‘brittle enough to break from air pressure’. There was a point of thickness where the hexagon gained enough resilience to act as a shield, and unfortunately everything before that point just shattered under the slightest impact. I had no idea how it worked, just that it was annoying.

Is it a problem with my visualization? Or the spell? Damn it, I need Veris…

Thinking back to the old man’s lessons, I tried to find a way to use this more to my advantage. And I had a thought. It wasn’t something he’d taught me, more something he’d actively warned me against and I’d ignored his advice. Elemental Destruction.

It wasn’t working for my ‘aura tentacles’ right now, but maybe with a few alterations…

Dismissing my ward, I tried to summon it again— this time, carefully infusing the spidery black energy of Elemental Destruction into the signature hex shape. This change took like it was made to do so, and a dark reflection of my only spell snapped into being inside my soul-space at the same time as the hexagon in front of me filled up with darkness.

That’s more like it.

It was like a hexagonal dinner plate made of vantablack hung suspended in the air, drinking in even the limited light around me. Of course, I poked it. A harsh buzzing sound grated out for an instant before the hex violently shattered, fizzling into a small cloud of black smoke that rapidly evaporated. I palmed the chitin covering my head.

Duh. Destruction doesn’t like you, Ray. At least it didn’t explode like the knife…

Wincing to myself, I resummoned the black hex and tried to find something less… reactive to poke it with. Pretty much the only things I had in the room were all Joan’s, and it felt wrong to potentially destroy them right after she’d given them to me, so I wound up tearing a strip off my old doner ‘pajamas’ and wadding it up. Tilting the hexagon with a flex of my will until it was flat in the air, I dropped the wadded cloth onto it, where the cloth promptly evaporated in a small burst of black smoke. The hex was weakened by this, but only a little bit.

That’s definitely more like it.

Cost-wise it was a little bit harder on my mana reserves, but this would be way more effective both offensively and defensively. At least as long as people didn’t take one look and start shouting ‘demon!’ or something, Veris was a little vague on details for destructive magic other than my aura being a no-no, but in the worst case I had to keep it hidden and it was another ace up my sleeve. Potential uses and scenarios flitted through my head, and some weight disappeared from my shoulders at this expansion of my options.

Thudding footsteps came from the hallway before someone stopped and began tugging on the latch to my door. I rotated warily, paranoia making me pull myself upwards into the darkened ceiling and pressing myself against the rafters. A burst of light came from the lock before it abruptly disengaged and Leigh marched into the room. He looked right at me, eyes seeming to pierce the dark and skip over my current appearance (and the fact I was hanging from the ceiling) without so much as a blink.

“Get dressed, quickly. We need to hide.”