The morning of the next day was a flurry of activity. Matron was directed to lay eggs for three broad backed labor beetles with tags suggesting quarry, mining, and logging uses. I had three hours before they would mature, and I intended to use them to gather information from my beleaguered prisoners. The fourth egg’s incubation took about ten minutes, and when it hatched I had a miniscule, transparent, wasp like creature covered in fine hairs and dozens of limbs of varying design and material. I made it fly stealthily over to the tick’s head, hiding it behind the antennae.
Sending the tick to stand near the penned up elfs, I used my new child to produce tones, warping and shaping its vibrations until I could manage something approximating a voice. This had the effect of further unnerving the elfs. While it wasn’t perfect, I managed to use my little signal fly to create a sort of buzzing, hissing, clicking approximation of a primate voice. I cycled through languages until I hit one that the elfs seemed to recognize, a sort of proto-celto-germanic pidgin trade language called “Gwethonk” by its refiners.
“We may provide food,” my buzzing voice said, “if you answer questions.”
The elfs looked at each other and muttered in their native language. Finally, two of them nudged the amputee forward, chattering another round of likely curses.
“What are your questions, demon?” the elf said, before its compatriots prodded it sharply in the stump of its shoulder, causing it to hiss in pain.
“Why did you attack my colony?” I asked. I was hoping that they were a lone tribe of creatures, and that their absence wouldn’t be missed. Of course, that wasn’t meant to be.
“We’re scouting and clearing the forest” it said, turning back to another elf for confirmation. “Our prince wants to hunt power hogs, and it is our duty to clear his path of trash and take any vagabonds back to act as rations.”
A cold fear shook me. “When is the prince due to arrive?”
“When we set out, the festivities were two weeks behind us,” the elf said with a toothy grimace, “they will arrive at the forest in the next eight to ten days, perhaps sooner if the prince grows impatient with the revel.”
“What forces does the prince command?” I asked, my fear only growing.
The amputee turned to chatter at its comrades, but I didn’t feel like allowing them to feed me false information. I had my pinecrabs create a defaning clatter, and then made Pinky and a green crab seize the amputee while the others were grabbed by their necks, the sharp serrations of my children’s claws poking small holes in their skin and restricting their breathing.
“Your friends will die unless you answer me truthfully,” I directed my signal fly to say, “I will question each of you separately. Whisper your answer and I will judge the value of your lives as hostages.”
Writhing in the serrated grip of my protectors, the amputee nodded. “His host numbers two thousand revelers and servants, three hundred and sixty warriors, a coven of witches and his own honor guard. I know not the levels or number of his extra forces, but the prince himself carries the level of twenty three and has the class of ‘Flawless Zephyr Marksman Prince.’”
Another odd class, like Pyre Archer. I wasn’t sure what that meant, but it sounded important. I only had one more question. “If I let you live, will you remain in captivity if I fight your prince?”
A hard look came over the elf’s face, and it said nothing. Not willing to chance tampering with the rest of my interrogations, I had Pinky grab it by the throat and haul it off into the trees. Turning to the rest of the elfs, I set to work.
----
The interrogations ended as I had feared they would. The rest of the elfs corroborated the amputee’s story, and none of them were willing to wait idle if I sent my children into battle against the prince. Not wanting to risk a two front attack, I ensured their permanent silence, piling their bodies with the rest of the dead raiders. Another eleven experience brought me up to thirty five total.
We buried the fallen yellow defender at noon. Not wanting to leave its marker without a name, I took the time to name each of my children. Pearl, Jasper, Jade, Flint, and Mica were my pinecrabs, Pinky taking the name Jade. My aciditos were Gus, Roscoe, Ben, Yolanda, Amelia, and Lina. Matron remained Matron at her insistence. Roach was Ralph, and Slug became Sam. Probe didn’t like any of the names I suggested, so it remained Probe, the signal wasp took the name Francis, and the tick wanted to be called Dick. I was debating that last, but it seemed to find the connotations amusing, so I’d probably give it what it wanted eventually.
Our fallen hero was named Galahad, who ascended from the plane of the living in a righteous quest. I didn’t think any of the brood understood, but they seemed content with the feelings it evoked. With an infusion of potent catalysts and enzymes, Sam was able to fuse the quartz and mica in the soil into a large crystal with trulang characters spelling out Galahad’s name and invoking Systemic memory of its deeds. We placed the crystal atop a cairn, with the brood falling into an odd melancholy.
The hatching of my new workers seemed to be just the thing my children needed to get them out of their funk. They filed out of the nursery, broad flat ovals with huge mandibles and thick, toothed tentacles protruding from their front end, alongside a smaller set of pincers on their rear. Their shell was black scale, and they had a partition on their abdomen that opened to reveal a pair of iridescent wings. Two meters long and a meter wide, they stood a meter and a half tall when their legs were fully extended.
I gave my brood a few minutes to get to know their new siblings. Probe was enamoured with the colors of their wings, the shifting polarization mesmerizing the little thing. Ralph seemed to take an older sibling sort of role towards the new babies, though their age difference could be measured in hours. Matron, for her part, fussed over their shells, sending her hive to clean away any hard to reach birthing nectar. The defense forces stood by, a fierce protection instinct filling their minds, though apparently the aciditos felt the sheer size of my new young was intimidating. They took the names Poppy, Daisy, and Lily, an interesting theme for such big lugs.
After my brood finished their wordless welcome, I sent my new workforce to gather logs. Sam and Ralph went with them, the former to pick out the correct sizes and the latter their to ensure that no hidden defects caused a dangerous situation. At a hundred meters out, the links dropped to the periphery of my mind. I could detect their overall status and how hungry they were, but feelings and senses required an expenditure of stamina, exactly as it had with Probe.
Dick, who cajoled me into accepting its name, seemed to have an odd, nagging issue. Its ability to communicate it to me was limited, but there was a sense of something missing imposed over a Probe view of my cone shell, then a cascade of my brood with feelings of rightness, ending with an image of Galahad’s headstone with particular focus on the trulang symbols comprising its name. It took me perhaps a full minute to realize what it was trying to explain to me; I still hadn’t named myself. While it wasn’t an issue to me, the sense of special connection my brood had to their names seemed to improve their overall moods, so I shrugged mentally and went to set my name.
I wanted my name to suggest the peaceful existence I wanted for my colony and brood. I decided on Nest, which seemed simple enough that it was unlikely to be misconstrued, and generally had neutral connotations in most languages I could gather. Directing this information to the sim’s artist, it updated in my Info:Self. I assumed that any agents capable of scanning my information would be informed of it.
At that thought, I mentally facepalmed. Taking direct control of Probe, I focused on Matron and invoked the nearly universal command, Scan.
Name: Matron
Type: Abomination, Minion
Class: None
Level: 1
Health: 20/20 +0.1/min
Mana: 20/20 +.01/min
Stamina: 20/20 +.5/min
(Improve Scan Skill for more)
Skill: Scan has reached level 1!
I could level skills. I could gain skills without external training. I’d been sitting on my shell, playing with my babies, while the power to improve our survival chances was a thought away. I spent the next few minutes scanning everything in Probe’s impressive sight range. It seemed that living trees and grass didn’t show up on Scan at all, and dead things required the use of Appraise. My Scan increased to level three, and appraise reached level two by the time my workers had felled the first tree and dragged it back to the clearing. All of my brood carried the types Abomination and Minion, though their resource pools had differing sizes. Dick and Probe had stamina pools of fifty, and the pinecrabs health pools of seventy.
Despite everyone having the same regeneration rates, all of my brood had full health pools apart from Roscoe, the acidito with the missing limbs. Its health had a debuff to it, but the regeneration rate was point five per minute. It looked like whatever substance Ralph produced gave a massive buff to healing rates, good information to have in case anymore of my brood was injured. The nursery returned only my name as owner, with a Factionless tag appended. Nothing about its materials showed up on Appraise, and Scan gave no stats for the nudibranch within.
The return of my logging team set my colony to work. The flower crew crunched through the massive yew with ease, sawing with their tentacles and tearing bark away with their mandibles. Sam and Ralph went to work assembling the rough planks into a wide base that I’d soon be resting on, Sam’s thick mucus acting as a fast, air drying glue and some sort of thin lacquer filling out any ridges or valleys. The widest end of the tree was cut into six disks of nearly equal size, Sam evening them out with discrete expulsions of some sort of caustic paste. Three young trees were ripped from their roots, my laborers quickly shaping them into axles for my new mobility cart.
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When all was said and done, only a few hours had passed and we were into early afternoon. A rolling ramp was built out of leftover scraps, and with a heroic effort from my whole brood I was pushed onto the cart. The only snags were when the lean-to caught the sleeping platforms and had to be scraped off my shell, and when the rootworm woke up part way through, a long section of its body already dragged out of its burrow. Convincing my limpet like symbiote to dump its excess water and join me on the cart was an ordeal unto itself, but it gave up and came along before I had to command obedience.
Once everything was set on the cart, we bid the nursery a fond farewell and set off through the forest. Luckily for us, large trees were far apart in this area, and my flower crew more than had the strength to remove any saplings in our path. The aciditos flew overwatch, spotting nothing but small mammals, birds, and insects in our way. Their senses weren’t even close to Probes, but I feared that the tremendous racket my cart made would attract predators and spook any large beasts on our route, so I kept it back to act as a spotter for our procession.
We were three quarters of the way down our route when my fears were realized. The family of power hogs we had spotted earlier were headed out way at a quick trot. Pulling back my overwatch, I had the pinecrabs form a rough crescent to wrap around our possible aggressors. My noncombatants were stationed underneath the cart, with the flower crew closest to the possible defense line, their thicker shells and powerful appendages our last hope if everyone else was lost.
As they thundered toward us, I Scanned the boar.
Name: None
Type: Beast, Electric
Race: Power Hog
Class: Berserker
Level: 10
(Improve Scan Skill for more)
Skill: Scan has reached level 4!
By itself, the boar was a possible match for my pinecrabs. I held them back from launching their rage volleys; I wasn’t sure I wanted to cause a berserker to rage even harder. As the hogs got close enough to see us, arcs of energy flared from their tusks and bristles. The hoglets squealed and bounded out of sight as the boar tore at the soil with his front hooves. My crustaceans synced their arhythmic clacking, weaving and snapping their claws in a show of bravado. The boar must have taken this as a challenge, as he squealed with impressive volume and charged the center of my defensive formation. At five meters out, the arcs of electricity pouring from his tusks ramped rapidly, and with a powerful toss of his head he gouged a large crack into Jasper’s green carapace, leaving with a faceful of quills. Jasper spasmed, the shock scorching its innards, causing it to fall back and protect its wound with its claws.
The other pinecrabs leapt forward, furious at the monstrous boar’s callousness. While any one would have trouble holding the beast, their combined strength was more than enough to restrain it. Roscoe and Ben, my two bravest aciditos, swooped down to quickly stab at the boar’s hindquarters while Pearl and Mica kept his legs still. Only a moment after their jabs, the boar squealed tremendously and tore its legs free, stamping and kicking fiercely to drive my flying defenders off of it. They retreated not a second too soon, as arcs of electricity began to rain freely down the beast’s hide, forming a cage of lightning around it that burned quickly through my pinecrabs’ health.
Directing them to let go and back away, I found that two of my pinecrabs couldn’t respond to my directions. Quickly scanning them, I saw that they had the Effect: Electrical Convulsions, their wire like nerves unable to provide enough power to override the electrical energy surging through their claws. Still able to move their legs due to the compartmentalized nature of their control systems, they began writhing with as much force as they could, trying to rip their claws through the boar’s tough hide like meat knives. Jade was lucky enough to tear away, but Flint had managed a tighter hold and was stuck fast.
With no other apparent options, I instructed Flint to detach its claws from the rest of its arms. Four wet, sucking pops resonated through the trees as Flint effectively removed itself from the fight. While its scent glands and quill spray might still be of use, it had eight health remaining, and even attempting a distraction would be too much of a risk unless there wasn’t a choice. I directed Flint back to the cart, hoping the higher ground would give better chances of landing volleys in the hogs’ sensory organs.
The acid my flyers had injected was starting to seriously inhibit the boar’s rear legs, the tendons and muscle fibers degrading into a blackened sludge. Without the leaping trample, the lightning cage fizzled, only the ladders on its back bristles still showing. The sows still hadn’t joined the fray, prowling around in the surrounding bush and hiding behind trees. I hoped that if we managed to defeat the boar, we’d end the engagement altogether.
Wary of the beast’s tusks, I had my crustacean grapplers move slowly towards him, flinging quills and shell shards the whole way. While no single puncture would do much against the boar’s thick, fatty hide, the cumulative volume of spikes in its skin would hopefully slow its movements and drive it mad from the itching.
Jade, Mica, Pearl, and Jasper descended on the boar with zealous fury. Unwilling to allow them to become stuck again, I directed them to slam the spiked undersides of their chelae against the boar’s face and head, taking turns battering the blinded aggressor so as to keep up constant pressure from multiple sides. Flint continued raking its shell with its rear legs, rapidly delivering quills to ensure that any dislodged weapons would be quickly replaced.
When the boar seemed too dazed to move, I directed Mica to attempt to choke the beast while Jasper and Pearl held its head still. Carefully avoiding the flaring arcs from the tusks, my defenders closed in and began the work with stoic efficiency.
The battle seemed over, so I sent Gus to ensure the boar was ended. An instant before it would have landed at the base of the animal’s skull, a beam of golden light lanced from the largest sow to the boar. To my horror, wounds all over the boar closed, pushing blood covered quills and dissolved meat out of its body and reknitting its flesh and hide almost instantly. I ordered my babies back, but it was too late. Arcs of electricity poured from its bristles to reform the lightning cage, searing any defender within a meter with renewed vigor.
Jasper, Mica, and Pearl, forewarned by Flint’s sacrifice, opened their hold before they could be caught by the convulsive power of the hog’s defense. Jade had already been moving toward the sows, intending to scare them away from our convoy. Gus wasn’t so lucky.
The lightning cage caught Gus as it was landing, and while its wings were supremely powerful for a creature of its size, physics doomed the poor hero more than anything else. The needle sharp legs it would have used to pump acid into the boar’s brainstem plunged into the beast’s thick hide and stuck fast. With no defense against the attacker’s power, and a direct conduit between it and the boar, its health dropped to nothing in under a second.
The moment after Gus’s death, the alkaline solution inside of its cyst was flushed into its fully stocked acid bladder. Nothing could have prepared us for the sheer force of the explosion, the potent chemical bomb detonating with far more energy than I had expected. The shockwave drove the acidito’s namesake in a sphere ten meters across, driving its needle legs deep into the boar’s neck and splashing the trees and pinecrabs with the caustic mixture.
Jasper, already injured, was lucky to have scuttled back further than its siblings, and only took enough damage to reduce its health to fifteen. Mica and Pearl caught a larger portion of the splash, their health totals dropping to four and seven, respectively. Jade was far enough away to lose only three health, bringing it to twenty six. Even I took a point of damage from the blast, though the acid pitting on my scales looked much worse. The noncombatants and Flint were spared from the blast by the carts massive bulk, though Ralph’s plaintive hiss at the carnage tore at my heart all the same. Probe was too high up my shell to catch any of the acid, and its tentacles seemed to be vibrating with rage.
I scanned the sow responsible for our loss, instantly understanding my massive mistake.
Name: None
Type: Beast, Electric
Race: Power Hog
Class: Blessed Mother
Level: 9
(Improve Scan Skill for more)
My brood’s rage was only eclipsed by my horror, the sick feeling of loss warring with the fear of knowing that there was little chance we would escape this fight without losing more of my precious children. With my most durable defenders down to a total of sixty health and the lightning cage precluding an aerial attack, I felt like the best plans would be a matter of lowering our final body count.
The flower crew was shaking, their instinctual fear of combat warring with their fury at the animals who would take our family from us. I had to clamp down hard on Ralph and Lily or they would have thrown themselves into the fight in hopes of preventing the deaths of their siblings.
The boar squealed again, rage meeting with an almost laughing grunt. The beast must have been aware of our feelings, or maybe it knew how injured our remaining defenders were. Either way, the staccato grunting burned through my horror, transforming it into a blind hatred. I hated this beast, for killing Gus, for maiming Jasper, for forcing Flint to dismember itself, and for making the rest of my children feel this way. The hatred ignited something in me, something primal and dark. With a low creaking noise, my shell opened.
The seam between scale and base was jagged, the rib-like spikes of black shell material meeting the rippled silvery bone unevenly. From this dark maw, I extended three long, multi-jointed arms of no color; they simply reflected and refracted light endlessly, a distorted kaleidoscope of shattered mirrors with no fixed shape. Ended with anthropic hands of five lithe, thick knuckled fingers and no palm. Each finger was tipped with a pair of thin claws a third of a meter long, coated in a viscous black fluid that spasmed and twitched. The liquid clung to the serrated edges, flowing like oil but never dripping, movements keeping to no pattern a rational mind could unravel but felt so tantalizingly familiar. A moaning roar tore from the darkened recesses of my shell, and I felt a hunger like I never had before.
Afflicted with Status: Insatiable Hunger (Duration: Indefinite)
Bestowed Status: Inescapable Hunger (Duration: Indefinite)
Status Suspended: Sessile
Status Suspended: Senseless
Status Suspended: Fortress Shell
Bestowed Status: Unveiled Voidmaw (Duration: Indefinite)
Wind whipped into my new mouth, bringing with it the flavors of prey. I could taste the nerves in the sows firing as a sudden fear overtook them, the lightning cage of the boar a spicy tang, the disruptions their bodies caused in the currents of power a palate of textures I’d never before experienced. My children caught echoes of my insatiable hunger, their minds lighting up with reverence and devotion, their senses coordinating to direct me to the choicest morsels they could find.
I dragged myself toward my meal, the animals pulled toward me by currents of air and twists of gravity. Dirt, stones, and leaves disappeared into my gullet, each leaving me with a distinct texture and taste. The boar was the morsel I wanted most though, and I flung clumps of earth and trees away as my bulk lurched to him.
Grasping the first part of my meal, I ignored the pain caused by its cage of lightning and squeezed. My jagged claws ripped through the beast like it wasn’t there, black fluid entering the animal’s wounds and ripping free a gossamer wisp that writhed and shook. Delighted, I shoved the thing into my gaping hollow, the beast folding in on itself and disappearing in short order. The glowing veil was the last part to go down, its indescribable flavor one of the most wonderful things I had ever tasted.
The sows were shaking now, as without their protector in my way they had no defense against the feast. The ‘Blessed Mother’ was first, the spirit I rendered from its flesh an even greater treat than the boar’s had been. The remaining three sows were less wholesome, but anything was better than the endless gnawing pit my gut had become.
In the distance, I could sense more food. Rabbit, deer, hog, wolf, human… anything would hit the spot, as long as I could reach it soon. I began pulling myself toward the nearest concentration of life I could detect.
Stamina Depleted!
Status Suspended: Insatiable Hunger
Status Lost: Inescapable Hunger
Status Lost: Unveiled Voidmaw
Status Resumed: Sessile
Status Resumed: Senseless
Status Resumed: Fortress Shell
Afflicted with Status: Unconsciousness (Duration: 4 Hours)