An island. She was on a fucking island. Liv walked the oblong borders of her domain, deep in thought. Truth be told, ‘island’ was rather generous. She currently resided on a loamy sand bar in a shallow, slow-moving river delta. If her measurements (taken by walking heel to toe) were accurate, then her proverbial kingdom was about forty feet across and just shy of five times as long.
As things went, it was a mixed bag. The slow current meant a constant influx of various fish, which kept Nicki and Masque well-fed, and brought regular bursts of SP. It also seemed to be an ideal environment for these mangrove trees, which flourished all along one side of her swampy abode. The problem was that Liv had yet to discover how she could expand into moving water aside from the expensive brute force method she preferred to avoid. So those trees who weren’t primarily on land were eluding her grasp.
Liv eyed her little personal display. In a fit of boredom, she’d written a header for it, dubbing it ‘Character Sheet’. She’d thought it was funny at the time, but then the realization that nobody else would ever see it sucked the humor right out.
—
[Current SP: 180]
[Max SP:180]
[Regen: 5.75 per hour]
[Time till full regen: 31h 28m]
—
Her recent efforts with the grass had provided enough data to give her a clear picture of how regen worked. Try as she might, though, she just could not seem to figure out the math surrounding her max SP. Something just wasn’t adding up. She was pretty sure it was directly tied to the total area she ‘occupied’. But back when she’d only covered about 400 square feet, her max had been 40. But if her math and measurements were right then she was at about 6000 square feet now, and only had 180 max SP.
“Is there a modifier I’m missing? Is it some convoluted logarithmic function?” Liv glared balefully at the mysterious number. She hoped it wasn’t something that complex. She didn’t suck at math, but she was no human calculator either. The sooner she figured this out, the sooner she could stop having to repeat the skeeter experiment every week or so.
“Stupid ravens,” She grumbled, arms crossed. “You couldn’t have left me a FUCKMOTHERING MANUAL?!” her gripe pitched up into a roar at the end, her vented frustrations causing the water near her core to ripple and bubble. A gasp of surprise caught her attention then, and the raging punk spun on her heel to spot one of those lizard people. The sudden appearance of a scaly green humanoid right behind her made her jump and the pool quiver.
“Holy Hella! You scared the shit out of me!” she exclaimed, hand over her heart. The lizard ignored her, seeming to fixate on the pool instead. Liv waved, but this one seemed oblivious to her presence. “Oh… Well, that’s no fun…”
Reaching into a pouch strapped to one thigh, the being removed a bobble of some kind. It bowed low, towards the pool where her first tree stood guard, and made almost submissive gestures as it moved slowly closer to the shore. Standing some kind of figurine up in the mud, it quickly backed away making plaintive sounds. Unable to suppress her curiosity, Liv lay down on the muddy ground to get to eye level with the odd thing.
It was a lizard person if a strange one. Painted with streaks of red ochre, it had an oddly flat face and pointed chin. The proportions looked wrong, but it was clearly supposed to be a lizard. A LADY lizard by the looks of the chest. She hadn’t seen any lizards with boobs when they went through before. She’d assumed they wouldn’t have any. Wait why would they-? Liv shook her head, dismissing the rabbit hole her brain wanted to tumble down. The lizard had a huge crest atop her head, and seemed to be wearing some kind of spiky armor…
“Hooold up!”
Liv scooched forward to look at her backside. No tail.
“Oh my gods! It’s ME!!”
The thing wasn’t a great likeness, but if the Druid lizard had told another of their friends what she’d looked like, and that guy had carved a statue based solely on that description, she could see where something like this might result.
“Thank-“ Liv turned about, wondering where the lizard person had gone. “You?”
She spotted him then, just barely outside the borders of her little world, shrouded in mist. He was taking a slender spear and jabbing at the shallow river water. When he’d arrived, she worried she’d have to make a call on whether to try and stop another Warband, but apparently, he just wanted to fish.
“Alright Kermit, do your thing,” she said by way of permission, trying out a nickname for her new fishing buddy. Looking over the little statue, she grinned and booped its non-existent nose. To her surprise, the thing wobbled slightly and felt warm to the touch. Blinking in shock, she inspected it now with that strange new sense of ‘knowing’ she was quickly coming to value almost as much as her eyes or ears. As the threads of energy all around her resolved into focus, she was gobsmacked to see the statue practically thrumming with power!
“Woah….”
—
Liv sat near a small campfire, enjoying the smell of cooking fish while she pondered the statue in the flickering light that staved off the night. She’d been whistling the partial bar of ‘It’s Not Easy, Being Green’ when her attention was drawn back to the visitor. The lizard man’s head had snapped up, reacting to something Liv couldn’t sense.
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“Sup, Kermit?” she asked, trying to follow his gaze. It was pointless with the misty barrier but she still tried. Kermit gave a deep, angry hiss. As the sound of distant footsteps became audible to her, the lizard dashed for the water and slipped almost soundlessly into it. Liv could see the shifting silhouette of Masque, preparing to attack the thing that was too close to her core for comfort, but she waved him off.
“Not yet! If he tries for the core, take him out,” she commanded, breathing a sigh of relief as Masque withdrew back into the den. The steps turned to frantic splashing, then into the hollow clopping of very shallow water.
Emma staggered out of the veil, half tumbling into her tiny glade. Liv was on her feet in an instant. She couldn’t let these two see each other! They would murder each other! The rest of the party wouldn’t be far behind Emma and Liv wasn’t about to let that slaughter happen in her own home. She was about to call for Masque to get between them when Emma dashed towards the fire like a bat out of hell. In the firelight, Liv could see how filthy and battered the tiny woman looked. The muscular Halfling’s eyes were bulging with terror, and she spun about frantically.
“HELLO?!” Emma called, hoarse and cracking. “HELLLOOOOO?!” Liv knelt to inspect the woman who she knew couldn’t see her. The Halfling was practically hyperventilating now. She took a deep breath and shouted as loudly as she could “HEEEEEELP!!”
“Masque. Nicki. Bob,” Liv listed off her biggest and baddest companions, in a voice made of steel. “Get ready.”
“ANYBODY!!!!” Emma shouted again, clearly looking for whoever made the fire. In the distance to the west, a myriad of voices began to faintly echo.
“Holy Hella, gurl, how many people did you piss off?!” Liv voicelessly asked no one. Emma’s breathing sped up even further, and Liv could see how shaky she was. She wondered just how long this little woman had been hoofing it. The voices grew closer still, and while Liv could make out the cadences and pitches of what sounded like dozens of people, she couldn’t make out any words.
“OH GOOOODS!” came Emma’s strangled plea to the divine, tears leaving slightly cleaner tracks down her filthy cheeks. She grabbed a branch from the fire and held the blazing end westward.
“Pleeeease…” she whimpered. When last Liv had seen this woman, she’d been strong and proud. What in the hell was chasing her?
The voices were getting louder now, though, over Emma’s choked sobs, Liv could only make out occasional words. ‘Breathe’ ‘eaten’ ‘please’ the jumbled voices spoke over each other, atop a chorus of moans and groans and wailing. Suddenly Liv’s fear vanished. She knew what this was! It might be creepy, but there was no way her crew couldn’t handle a little horde of zombies!
Emma clapped her hands over her ears, holding the butt of the torch to the side of her head as she fell to her knees.
“Don’t worry. I’ve got you,” Liv said confidently, placing herself between the Halfling and the sounds of the horde. Emma had her eyes clenched shut, keening and rocking slightly. She didn’t even notice as the various beasts of Liv’s domain emerged from hiding and stood abreast.
“We’ll have to hope Kermit is smart enough not to try and start a fight while the zombies are around. They’re slow and stupid. They don’t breathe, so Nicki, don’t bother constricting their chest. I want strafing runs. Target the limbs. Once they’re immobilized, Masque you grab the head and barrel roll.”
Liv took a wide, low stance. Her eyes were blazing with adrenaline and her crooked grin was all pluck and bravado.
“Alright crew!” she called, teeth bared. They were almost here, she could hear the water splashing as they passed the outer mangroves she couldn’t reach yet. “LET’S DO THIS!” Liv roared, charging towards the western veil in a low run. The hissing and spitting of her land-bound companions were drowned out by the trumpet of the huge, taloned Bogtrodder. Bob swooped low, about to land the first blow on whatever emerged from that mist.
“Hurts-“
“I “Help… me…” “S’thalessa.”
“Eating me…” CAN’T “Momma” “Inside me!!!”
“Run, Emma!” BREATHE!” “PLeeEaSe…”
Whispers and groans became a howling torrent. From the mists of the unknown beyond a gelatinous pseudopod erupted, like the tongue of a most fetid and fecund toad. It looked wrong. The motions of the thing were somehow off, in a way that was hard to focus the eyes upon. It was over so fast. One moment, Bob was swooping in, talons out and ready. Then the fleshy tendril touched him. A mouth full of tobacco-stained teeth bit down on the great bird’s foot, and yanked, twisting in ways that hurt the eyes. What landed near Liv’s feet was a writhing pulp. She stared down at it in uncomprehending shock. Then the fleshy mass gave a muffled and agonized trumpet.
Liv felt a shaft of ice run through her as she watched the mass struggle before the world went mercifully silent. Silent like the void those ravens had sent her though. Silent like the grave. Silent like her…
Flecks of water fell slowly all around her. The lizard man was emerging from the pool, spear held aloft like it was a lightning bolt from Zeus rather than a flimsy sharpened stick. The water… The water was frothing, the green scum of it dancing like a living thing. She wondered why it was doing that.
Turning back toward the west, she tracked the motion of the thin spear as it sailed through the air and struck the slick skin of a thing that had no right to exist. It oozed and contorted like some unfathomable amoeba, a visceral mass of pleading eyes and hungry mouths. Bare gums and fleshy lips flapped wetly as they gibbered and screamed.
The tide of offal surged forward, and her mighty guardians rose up to meet it. The soft density of the quivering mass didn’t roll or stretch. Instead the agonized faces unfolded into being. It didn’t move, it emerged. A distant memory brought her the image of a shifting cat scan, phasing through a skull in wriggling cross-sectional lines. Nicki was in its grasp now, held by reptilian teeth and being impossibly folded inward towards the thing’s center. Her mind refused to allow sound to pass through her perceptions, but she felt the vibrations of snapping and crunching of bones as it rolled over Masque.
The reptilian visitor had moved, taking the torch from Emma’s hand and shoving her eastward, away from the depravity made flesh that was invading her world. The battered Halfling ran, and Liv could see the lizardfolk’s craw ululating in a battle cry. The cold-blooded confidence was short-lived, though, as a ropey mass of tissue pierced through his torch-wielding arm. The scales bulged, then sunk inward, as the monster began to pull at the bones within.
With the determination born of an unfettered need for survival, the scaled warrior drew a flint knife and plunged it into the crux of his own elbow. Liv returned to the world as the wet snaps of cold-blooded veins pulled taut and gave as the warrior sacrificed a limb for the sake of life and charged northward, into the mists. The amalgamated mass chewed on the morsel, babbling madness before it began to ooze inward. Tortured mouths ate ruts into the grassy turf and blindly begged as they were rolled into the pond to drown.
Liv could practically feel its gelatinous bulk as it passed within mere feet of her core before it continued eastward in pursuit of the bedraggled Halfling. Even as it left her realm of influence, the mad screaming remained in its wake.
It wasn’t real. Couldn’t be real. It was a game. A stupid, stupid game. Liv folded in on herself, clutching her head as new sounds joined the mix. This was nothing more than a nightmare. In a moment she would wake and turn on her lights and snuggle her cat and laugh. Laugh at how ridiculous this was. Laugh at how she thought such a thing could ever be. She told herself that the cries she heard were a product of her own imagination. A distant feminine voice wailed in a wordless plea for death. The moaning sob of one whose fingers lay on the doorstep of blind and indifferent gods. Nobody could REALLY make such sounds.
Liv curled into a fetal ball beside the roiling pond and the scar of desolation. Above her head, half-formed thoughts drifted like embers from a flame. They took shape, forming scribbled words in jagged lines.
NOT REAL
NOT REAL
NOT REAL
NOT REAL
NOT REAL