Sophia expected the colorful critter to shy away from her voice, possibly even run. She didn’t expect it to lower its head, shake it, and then speak.
“Why are there two of you?”
Sophia stared for a long moment. “You can talk?”
The cute rodent’s head fell forward until his snout smacked against Sophia’s leg. The position made it very obvious that his mouth didn’t move when he spoke. “Yes. I can talk. I know I look like a chinchilla, but I used to be human and I’m still smart like a human. At least, I think I am. Aaah.” The rodent lifted one of his forepaws and dramatically covered his eyes.
“Chinchilla?” Sophia took a good look, then shook her head. She knew this wasn’t her mind playing tricks on her now; she didn’t know what a chinchilla was, beyond a creature some people kept as a pet. They were supposed to be cute, which seemed true enough. “I didn’t think chinchillas came in rainbow colors?”
“They don’t,” the chinchilla agreed, “but I am always colorful. Why are there two of you? Are you the bright spark or the outer shell?”
Sophia frowned, then shook her head. “I don’t know what you mean, but I don’t have time right now. I need to get this fire blazing; we’ll have a few minutes once it’s lit while we’re watching for corpsevines before we move on. We can talk then.”
She kept a piece of her attention on the sneaky rodent. She didn’t think he meant her harm at this point, but he’d already proven he could sneak past Amy and Dav and she really did need to keep an eye on the fire until it was bright enough.
When it was close, she called out quietly. “Amy! Dav! Fire’s lit. Do you see any?”
“No.” Dav’s voice came from the treeline. When she looked that way, Dav stood there, calmly watching her.
No, she was wrong. He wasn’t watching her. He was watching the chinchilla. She had kind of alerted him earlier, hadn’t she?
“I don’t see any either,” Amy reported from the opposite direction. She was in a tree that let her overlook a decent amount of the surrounding woods, as much as could be seen through the trees at least. She wouldn’t come to ground until corpsevines appeared or they decided to move on anyway.
Sophia headed towards Dav. Normally, she’d split off and watch a third direction, but if she was going to be paying attention to a gaudy rodent, she wanted someone close enough to watch her back.
“The other survivor. I do not remember your names,” the rodent stated calmly after he was close to Dav. “I am Taika.”
Taika sounded familiar, but Sophia couldn’t quite place the name. What did he mean, “other survivor?”
“You were one of the bandits?” Dav sounded surprised. “Wait, didn’t Sophia kill you?”
Bandits? The only bandits Sophia could think of were the trio who tried to destroy a dungeon and blame her for it, and they were lost in the Origin.
Well, actually, that might explain a talking flamboyantly bright chinchilla pretty well now that she thought about it. Anything could happen in the Origin, especially if you weren’t attuned to it the way Sophia was. Dav was changed by his time there as well, and Sophia had done the best she could to shelter him from it. The bandits were unlikely to have any protection.
Taika shook his head. It was a disconcerting movement from a creature as small as he was. “I am alive. I remember …” Taika trailed off. It took him a moment to come up with an appropriate way to continue.
“Foolishness. Mine and that of my companions.” He agitatedly pawed the floor as he stopped again. It was obvious that Taika was having trouble figuring out how to say what he needed to say.
Sophia glanced up at Dav, then back down at the chinchilla. She wanted to be angry at him; not only had he and his compatriots managed to fling her across the Origin to another universe where she couldn’t even call home, they’d done it while trying to kill Cliff.
The anger whiffed out as quickly as it started to form. If she hadn’t been flung into another universe, she wouldn’t have met Dav. She enjoyed the adventure, mostly; it was sometimes tedious but there were new people to meet and new dangers to fight. The corpsevines were the first enemy she’d seen enough of the first time she saw one; everything else was like visiting a dungeon she hadn’t seen before. Even the fact that she often didn’t know what she was getting into was exciting.
More than that, though, she just couldn’t quite be mad at the chinchilla Taika because of something the human Taika did. She wasn’t certain which of the bandits he’d been; she hadn’t really paid attention to their names. She also didn’t really care. He wasn’t that person anymore. That was obvious just by looking at him, and she suspected his mind was changed just as much as his body was.
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
She still wasn’t certain about Dav. He didn’t seem to notice anything wrong and she couldn’t point to anything; she simply hadn’t known him at all before that delve. Maybe he had changed, maybe he hadn’t. He’d certainly changed a lot less physically than Taika.
“That’s why I’m here. My companions, Sadik and Akmir, are gone but their glows still live and they hunt the bright spark you carry. I do not know why they do not see the other glows that I see, your second glow and his glow,” Taika gestured at Dav with his head, “but they only hunt the bright spark that sits in your chest.”
Sophia didn’t have to think to know what the bright spark in her chest was. “Cliff? Why would they hunt Cliff?”
“They want to eat the bright spark.” Taika’s mouth twitched. His entire face was very mobile, and while the expression wasn’t the same as a human frown, Sophia could still recognize that he was unhappy. It was something about the whiskers and the ears. “Who is Cliff? Is Cliff the bright … are you pregnant?”
Sophia frowned at the question. Why would he think she was pregnant? What did that even have to do with anything?
Was that a giggle she heard from Dav?
“Cliff is probably your bright spark, if you’re seeing me and Sophia glow. Her mana core is a lot brighter than anyone else’s I’ve seen. I’m pretty sure that’s because Cliff augments it.” The amusement seemed to drain out of Dav’s voice as he continued. “If your former friends want to eat Cliff, we’re going to have to stop them.”
“Why are you telling us?” Sophia didn’t really want to ask but she had to. “How did you find us, anyway?”
“I followed your sparks,” the chinchilla answered the second question. “You are clear to me. They are not my people so you must be.”
“What.”
Before Sophia could say more, a shout came from Amy. “Giant cat!”
Sophia hid herself behind the tree she stood next to and watched as a decaying sabertooth cat zombie stalked into the clearing. Unlike the bear, it seemed a little more alert to danger; it moved slowly and even though the head didn’t turn, Sophia had the impression that it was looking around using whatever senses corpsevines had.
Hearing didn’t seem to be one of them. Sophia had never seen a corpsevine react to noise. She still tried to minimize the noise she made. Not only was it good practice, it was possible that their hearing was bad rather than nonexistent.
Sabertooth Corpsevine [https://i.imgur.com/9udhx7w.jpeg]
“It’s wrong, like the bear,” Taika stated.
It seemed loud in the quiet, but when Sophia really thought about it, she wasn’t sure he made any noise at all. He was speaking in her head, wasn’t he?
He didn’t seem to be able to read her thoughts, only project his own, so it was merely annoying rather than problematic.
Wait, how did he know about the bear? Did he watch or did he mean a different bear?
“How so?” Dav’s whisper was a quiet rumble.
“All of its life is in its shoulders, with only thin strands everywhere else except the head. There’s a bright spot in the head that ought to be in the chest, where its mana is.” Taika sounded frustrated. “I haven’t seen the glows for that long but I know that’s all wrong.”
“The plant is alive, not the cat,” Sophia told Taika. “And that says the important point to destroy is either the head or the shoulders, probably the head. Ready?”
“Yeah.” Dav triggered the Thorn Emitter he’d placed on the other side of the fire. That was the signal to start the attack.
Dav and Amy charged towards the plant-infested monster cat while Sophia sent a pair of Force Bolts at the plants coating the sabertooth’s back. She wasn’t going to be able to get through the skull as easily as Dav’s sword could, but she could destroy some of the vines that might try to restrain him and stop him. That was her job until Amy was close enough to take over. They’d found that an early attack on the vines made everything smoother.
Everything seemed normal until the moment Sophia’s Force Bolts and Dav’s thorns hit the giant cat. They shredded several vines, but the cat didn’t charge either attacker or keep heading towards the fire. Instead, it seemed to become aware of Dav and Amy almost immediately.
It slashed a paw at Dav’s charging form. Between his shield and his armor, he didn’t seem hurt, but he landed on his side about ten feet away from the cat. At the same time, the cat somehow twisted out of the way of Amy’s leap; her teeth caught only a single vine, which broke the moment she tried to pull on it. The cat followed Dav to the ground, almost like it had planned it.
“Fucking hell,” Sophia whispered. She hadn’t seen any of the corpsevine-controlled animals move that quickly. She’d thought they couldn’t. There wasn’t time for more curses; she had to do something about it.
This time, she had to get Dav out of trouble.
Sophia sent her Animated Blade closer. While it moved, she threw another pair of Force Bolts at the creature, but this time she aimed for the head. One of them hit, but the cat managed to get its head out of the way fast enough that the slightly delayed bolt from her Animated Spell Blade only grazed the side of its skull. Even the one that hit didn’t penetrate the bone. She knew it would take multiple strikes, but at least it was a start.
Amy leapt for the back of the giant cat. It tried to slide out of the way without letting Dav free, but it didn’t dodge far enough. Amy didn’t get a good grip on the cat’s shoulder, but she did manage to bite the vines that whipped through the air right above it. That was enough; Sophia knew she could ignore the vines for the moment. Amy would handle them.
The cat twisted and bit the nearest part of Dav, which turned out to be his left leg, just below the hip. Sophia expected the bite to be mostly stopped by Dav’s shield, but although it became clearly visible for a moment, the two large spikes at the front of the cat’s mouth went straight through it.
They also went right through his armor and into his leg.
Dav howled as he tried to push himself up from the ground with a pair of spikes anchoring a giant cat to his leg. He managed to get to his knees, but the damaged leg and the weight of the cat made anything more difficult. He managed to swing his sword with a single hand, but all he could reach were some of the vines flailing at Amy.