Naturum sat dejectedly in front of her whiteboard, trying desperately to focus amongst the sounds of her hamster, Your Thanks, having woken up and begun playing on his hamster wheel in Naturum’s bedroom. If he’d woken up, it meant that Excelsior’s sun would soon become Excelsior’s moon and that she should already have stopped working hours ago.
On one of her breaks, she’d found that Loma and Rizzlerich had already finished their work for the day and were gaming in Loma’s mountain home, and she somewhat longed to join them after she didn’t last night. She sighed and continued staring at her messy food web. She really wanted to add a fantasy creature to her ecosystem first though.
Well, technically she already had. After giving life to the ecosystem of mostly England native animals in time for Aomy’s hufolk to make use of them, she had come up with the idea of adding wisps. Floating, intangible, little creatures that glowed a soft glow at night in a variety of colours.
Even these had been somewhat of a bitch to add, given that they had the potential of fucking with some nocturnal creature’s stealth capabilities, so she’d limited the wisps existence to just some of the forests in Excelsior’s first country. And, well, she was sure they would add a nice bit of fantasy ambience, but they weren’t really a proper part of the ecosystem and in fact, were little more than cosmic set dressing.
And so, Naturum continued staring at her whiteboard, trying fruitlessly to fit some creature into an already complete ecosystem. But it turned out this was unnecessary. For at once, dozens of prayers jolted through her mind, accusing her of making beasts far too viscous and far too destructive. Naturum scrambled to her window and, in fear, stared out across Excelsior. Someone had already created a bunch of fantasy creatures. Someone was making monsters.
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Sinisay trudged through a beautiful forest at night, panting and cursing. His long mane of hair was an unnatural shade of red, his face grim and determined. Sinisay was an immortal. Not any old immortal, however. He had been the immortal first chewed out by Damon during the immortals’ first few hours of existence.
The image of that painful event was still looping in Sinisay’s mind “You will address the gods with respect!” he remembered that loathsome god crying. “All of you! We are, fundamentally, above you and I want all of you to be aware of that. You are our holy servants and I, your holy master.”
He shuddered at the memory. He had only been saved by sucking up to the bastard, and the ibis-headed god answering him and praising him for doing what Damon had so cruelly punished him for. Oh, Scientia. Great and wise Scientia. It was for him that Sinisay still followed the gods, still planned to survey this world and give reports. In Aomy’s gift of information Sinisay had learnt that the god he revered was the god of knowledge, and he had vowed only to gather the most obscure bits of knowledge for his deity.
This is why he had run to the north, where fewer immortals were. His advanced immortal body was both faster and had more stamina than the body of a hufolk, and so he had made it to where he was now by the time sun turned to moon. The only other immortal crazy enough to run this far was probably that blue haired freak. The moment new land began to be form he had sprinted across it, almost keeping pace with the speed of creation.
He really didn’t know how that immortal had managed it, Sinisay had been running at a much more sensible pace and was still beyond tuckered out. And so, cursing Zach’s unpunished hubris he stumbled through the forest, ignoring the pretty wisp lights, ignoring the beginnings of mist rolling in, ignoring anything basic that any other immortal could report.
He wanted to gather some information that other immortals may take eons to find, something that would quickly get him in his saviour’s good graces. He stopped, suddenly. Because he may have just found what he needed.
Lit by the wisp lights, in shades of faint blue and faint red, was a colossal pile of goo. It was tall, taller than Sinisay by at least a head, and wider at its base than its peak. The immortal thought the thing may be a pale green, but it was hard to tell without the strong light of the sun, and it just sat there. What could this be? It didn’t look like anything Sinisay had seen before, nor anything that Sinisay would have previously imagined could exist.
He approached it, only somewhat cautiously, confident in his undamageable body and tried to commit to memory its size, its shape, its location, etc. Then, to truly know all that he, with his limited experience, could learn about this mysterious feature of the landscape, Sinisay reached out to touch it.
It was now that the peak of this thing suddenly snapped to down to stare at him. The immortal’s eyes widened in shock. The pile of goo was alive! But his reflexes weren’t quick enough to jerk his hand back, so it continued into this strange creature’s side. And with horror, Sinisay realised that this thing burnt.
Desperately, the poor immortal tried to yank his hand back, but try as he might, it was completely stuck. The slime’s body began to contract, and with true terror, Sinisay realised that the creature was pulling him in. He thrashed and cried for help, but he’d ran so far, he was now completely isolated.
He thought about trying to pray for assistance, but with rage realised that he’d need both hands for that, and one of his hands were stuck. How were the gods so stupid as to create a system with such a glaring problem!? It was mere moments before he was completely engulfed within the burning acid.
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A while later, Clive strolled through the village that Aomy had, mere hours ago, visited, the light of the moon reflected by their shining bald head. They were tall, their face striking, sharp and androgynous, and if their quick pace and grin of anticipation were any indication then they contained a boundless energy, just barely held in check.
Their destination was the edge of the village, where two, frankly ridiculously buff individuals were waiting for them. The first, a giant of a man, with wild shaggy hair was practising waving a pointy stick. He wanted one day to wield a spear, but in these early days of creation, even though the knowledge of how to create them was commonplace, the means to do so was not.
This man’s name was Martha. Aomy hadn’t bothered giving her people knowledge of gendered names because she found the concept somewhat weird, and so Martha had been accepted by all in the village as a grand, heroic name. Martha was the name of a warrior.
The second, a giant of woman, with wild shaggy hair was leaning against a colossal makeshift axe, that was close to the size of her, and thus, a head taller than many other people in the village. She had practically threatened the poor person who had signed up to be the village blacksmith, demanding his first order of business was sharpening a huge chunk of stone so it would be sharp, and sticking it onto an appropriately sized stick.
This woman’s name was Odysseus. When Aomy had given the hufolk knowledge of names, she had included names common to her homeworld, Earth, but she had also included names from fantasy and mythology. Clive was pretty confident that most people in their profession had chosen names to sound cool and warrior-like. Which made Clive’s name all the more of an oddity.
But that was Clive in a nutshell really. No one in the village, or probably the world were picking names like Clive? They picked that name. Everyone in the village was using their hair to express themselves? Clive cut theirs off. Most people wanted to stay in the village? Clive wanted to explore.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Although, that had little to do with Clive’s contrariness. Looking at the forest behind Martha and Odysseus, mist dramatically billowing out, the lights of the wisps giving the area an eerie, yet enchantingly magical glow, Clive was reminded of that incredible call for adventure. They grinned, their inner energy succeeding in breaking out just a little bit more.
Clive’s contrariness had begun early in their life, which is somewhat true of all the hufolk’s natures as they were all still in the early stages of their life, but Clive’s nature still had an interesting origin, unique amongst the people of their village.
While most hufolk around them had been content to live in the gender matching their bodies, Clive had quickly found that both femininity and masculinity were broadly unappealing to them. Initially, this had had them at quite a loss, and they spent a lot of the first day away from the village, scanning Aomy’s imparted knowledge for any clues as to the way they felt. And, after descending down an incredible rabbit hole, Clive found a treasure trove of applicable information.
There was so much of it, that Clive legitimately thought Aomy may have left the hufolk with more information on gender identity than say farming. Which, even in spite of Clive’s gratefulness, they thought was a little peculiar. And within these great gifts of knowledge, Clive had found it.
Details of the people like them, who had to fight for their place in a society that broadly refused to acknowledge their existence, their very presence turning many so-called rules of society on their heads. The discovery of their identity was almost overshadowed by the incredible revelation they had accidentally stumbled upon. People, societies, whole worlds that had existed before their own!
Millions of thoughts and questions had raced through their head. What had happened to these civilisations that predated their own? Did the gods come from these worlds? Did these worlds still exist, were they visitable? Or, and this was Clive’s personal theory. Were the gods the last survivors of a destroyed universe?
In case this was the truth, Clive felt a duty to preserve the scant few memories of the old world Aomy had gifted, vowed to upturn the rules of society, just as their heroes had in the world before. After all, none of the other fields of information hinted at worlds before theirs, Clive and people like them may be the only ones with this bit of incredible trivia. It had been difficult so far, as with civilisation in its infancy there weren’t a great many rules to upturn, but Clive had done their best, even if they were more a quicky individual than an inspiring rebel. Still, it was a start.
Seeing Clive approach, Martha cried “Hey boss!”
Odysseus grinned and added “Yeah, hey! ‘Bout time you showed, I was getting bored. Let’s go fight some stuff already!”
Martha nodded. “Yeah, you did take yer time! Any longer, and I woulda been beatin up Ody, and that wouldn’ta been good for her!”
The jacked woman stopped relaxing on her axe and clumsily aimed it at Martha. “Oh yeah?! My axe is fit for a king, how can your clumsy stick compare? I would destroy you!”
The relaxed atmosphere generated by the pretty lights and the quiet sounds of nocturnal creatures was destroyed almost immediately, as the two warrior aspirants tensed and awkwardly aimed their weapons at each other.
Clive sighed, although their grin did not leave their face. “You two realise we’ll be lucky if we even encounter a badger, right? There is no need to get quite so worked up.”
Their group had been formed out of those with no clear place in the village. Martha and Odysseus strived to be fighters, which was viewed as more of a hobby than a true profession by the people of the still mostly peaceful Excelsior. Clive wanted to be an explorer, and then later, a paladin of Aomy’s will. The closest fit they could find that still gave them a use within the village was hunter, and so they planned to set out at night to supplement the meat that the hunting parties which had left during the day had provided.
Martha shrugged, relaxing again. “Whatever boss. So long as we can do somethin’.”
Clive’s grin widened. “To tell the truth, I’ve been itching to explore all day. Shall we set off with haste?”
The two warriors cheered, and the odd group marched eagerly into the mist, the stomping sound they made more than enough to scare off any animal that the group would be able to hunt.
Because of this, it took a long, yet enjoyable, amount of time for the party to encounter anything of note. After perhaps a few hours, Clive held up their hands to stop their allies in their tracks.
“What is it boss?” quired Martha.
“Look up ahead, it looks like there’s something between those trees.”
“Yeah, I see it!” cried Odysseus, pawing the ground, like a bull about to charge.
“No!” hissed Clive under their breath. “And also, shh. Stay put, we approach it slowly, or else whatever it is will run.”
“Whatever you say, I think I could catch up to anything that runs” she grumbled, but she acquiesced, and the three of them slowly crept up to the shape amongst the trees.
It was tall, green, goopy looking, and trapped within it was a furious looking red-haired man, who was writhing and struggling constantly.
Bursting out of cover, Martha yelled “Don’t worry boss! I’ll save ‘im!” much to his boss’s despair. He thrust the makeshift spear into the slimes side and predictably it was immediately stuck, and, despite Martha’s considerable strength, the spear was immobile.
“Martha, get back, we need to properly assess the situation!” cried Clive to little avail. Scanning the trace amounts of brain Martha had been given for ways to damage the creature with his weapon stuck, Martha arrived at the brilliant conclusion to try and just punch the thing. With a mighty strike his fist smashed through the slime’s goop and to the surprise of nobody, except perhaps Martha, that too was stuck.
He let out a wail of pain as unlike Sinisay, with his immortal body, Martha’s hand began to slowly melt in the slime’s acid.
Bursting out of cover like Marta had done, Odysseus raced towards her friend with a shockingly familiar cry of “Don’t worry Clive, I’ve got this!”
She raised her axe up, before swinging it down onto Martha’s not slimed bit of arm causing a sickening spray of blood to spurt from his new wound. He screamed and fell back, his arm at least free now from the slime, although he wasn’t immediately grateful for this, occupied completely with rolling around on the ground in pain.
Menacingly, the ooze began to slowly slide towards the pair, building up speed as it seemed to wake from its comparatively peaceful state.
“Shit. Get back to the village both of you, Martha needs immediate medical attention!” shouted Clive, now breaking cover themselves. “I’ll kite this thing so you can escape!”
The others nodded as Odysseus supported Martha and they hobbled away. Clive wrenched a slapdash bow from their back and began desperately firing arrows into the beast to get its attention, before dashing away in the opposite direction to the village.
The slime took the bait, despite most of Clive’s arrows missing, and quickly began to catch up with Clive as it accelerated. In response, the hufolk kept firing arrows into it, before breaking out into a full-on sprint as the slime began to reach ungodly speeds.
Realising that they couldn’t escape, Clive skidded to a halt, turned round and, in what they expected would be a futile last stand, unloaded a volley of arrows into the creature’s still undamaged body. To Clive’s great surprise, the beast exploded, spreading its acidic projectiles across the forest. Clive leapt from their position and dived behind a tree, avoiding the brunt of the damage. And then a golden light filled the forest.
Stepping out of the shadows and into existence came Clive’s hero, the goddess of civilisations herself, Aomy. Her body was tense, not in her usual unsure way, but instead in the way that someone who anticipates danger might stand.
“My goddess Aomy, if you are looking for the monster here, it has just exploded” announced Clive from the floor behind the tree.
Their goddess nodded, cried “Thank you!” before winking back out of existence.
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She’d been doing this for hours. Aomy teleported to wherever her powers told her people were close to monsters, in order of amount of people affected, and bestowed their warriors with enough temporary power to repel the new menace while not violating her contract to not interfere. This seemed to be going mostly well, even if the work was frantic and desperate.
While she worked, she downloaded whatever information her omniscience provided her about this threat into her brain and found that they had just suddenly popped into existence, and had begun seeking out and attacking all animals, prioritising those which were sapient.
They were unnatural and strange, a fact clearly emphasised by the fact they seemed to have hit points, like monsters in videogames, dying at an arbitrary point after sustaining enough damage, regardless of how pristine and unblemished their bodies seemed before.
There were many types. Aomy had seen the slimes, as well as strange lizard creatures with teeth as large as their necks, their head bulging with their oversized mouths, and what appeared to be a cute mix of puppy and kitten, which Aomy found adorable and harmless but the hufolk seemed absolutely terrified of. She had no doubt there were many more out there, so the stressed god continued working deep into the night.