The hastily-assembled posse had set out shortly after dawn, and Pacifica was alone on the farm. Mom and Dad being away, she was consequently laboring under close to triple her usual chore load to keep the farm running until they returned. She thought she could be forgiven, therefore, for not noticing that she was being watched until it was almost noon.
She was in the barn, mucking out a stall, when the hairs on the back of her neck stood up. Everything she was experiencing, everything she had experienced, suddenly assumed a terrible significance, a pervading and unsettling meaning. Everything was suddenly portentous. Ominous. Omeniferous, even.
How many chimneys did the house have, again?
She turned to look. One. One chimney. Not two. Certainly not two, and certainly the second chimney had not turned its head on its neck, and turned, and turned, to watch her. Certainly there had only been one chimney all morning.
She shivered in the cool fall air, and worked a little faster.
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The spiralling steps around the circumference of the dungeon’s main shaft slid back into the rock walls as the goblins hurried down them. Above them, the sky vanished as the hilltop slid shut, casting the interior of the dungeon into darkness. A light formation sputtered to life on the wall, marking a small niche. Within it, Nar-shesh could see the human slayer’s crossbow, the only weapon that had survived the cave-in. Kizurra stopped to hurriedly extract it before carrying on, quiver full of homemade bolts rattling on his back.
“Okay, second cave on the left,” Persephone said. “I was planning to turn it into a dormitory. It should be relatively defensible. Everyone in there and just hole up. Remember, the plan is to hide, not to fight. We’re not ready yet.”
A narrow, uneven crack in the rock led the goblins up a short incline into a modest-sized oblong cave. Another light-array carved itself into the ceiling, illuminating their surroundings in sickly grey-green. When they were all within the chamber, a low stone wall rose from the floor to obscure the entrance. “Hm,” Persephone said, and after a moment a second, lower strip of stone rose behind it. “I keep forgetting how short you guys are. Kizurra, you can stand on that. Shoot over the wall at anyone who tries to come through the passage, got it? But don’t waste ammo. Actually, now that I think of it…” The whole cavern shook alarmingly, trails of dust falling from the ceiling, as Persephone pinched the upper half of the entranceway shut. Before, an adult human could have stood upright and passed through it: now, even a goblin might bump their head. “Teekas, how we doin’?”
“Whah happeigh to eeeeeh?” Teekas whined around her mouthful of new teeth, tears and blood streaking her face. “Ah!” She winced again, hands shooting back up to her face. A fresh dribble of blood flowed down her chin.
“What is it, what happened?” Sarsu asked frantically. “Let me see.” Teekas obediently opened her mouth, revealing that the lamprey-like teeth studding her gums had now filled in multiple rows — the rearmost of which jutted from her palate and beneath her tongue, already stained red from where she’d cut herself on them. “Oh,” Sarsu said faintly. “That’s…a lot of blood.”
“Fuck,” Persephone hissed. “Fucking stupid… Hang on, Teekas, I know why this is happening. Don’t worry, you’re gonna be okay.” As the goblins watched, a flicker of azoth corpusant danced along the teeth that menaced Teekas’ tongue. In twos and threes, they fell from her mouth just as quickly as they’d sprouted. The holes they left closed quickly, as did the profusely-bleeding gashes on Teekas’ tongue. “Yeah, yeah, shut up, skill transgress on my dick,” Persephone muttered as she worked. “Okay, that should keep you from biting your own tongue off by accident at least. Hey, do you see an option to buy a skill called [Chow Down]?”
Teekas waggled her tongue experimentally a few times. “Ow, my mouth hurts,” she said. “Uh…yeah, [Chow Down], there it is. What does it… oh, ew.” She made a face.
“Aw, c’mon, don’t be so squeamish,” Persephone said. “I think it’s neat! Er, wait, sorry.” The concerning enthusiasm and cheer that had suffused her voice faded, to be replaced with a more situationally-appropriate solemnity. “One of my skills did this. [Mutagenic Domain]. I didn’t… I didn’t think through all the implications, before I bought it. I’m sorry. Fuck, I’m so- I’ll fix this, okay, I’ll-” The dungeon sounded increasingly upset and guilty as she spoke.
“Not to interrupt your apology,” Nar-shesh said, interrupting her apology. “But how’s our humans problem looking?”
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In a world haunted by monsters, ravaged by centennial disasters, and where the ambitious, the blessed, and the mad could grasp the power of the Heavens for themselves, historians and scholars occasionally asked how it was that humanity as a whole had survived at all. The pious ones generally concluded, not incorrectly, that it was due to the favor of the gods, who in times of crisis would always intervene to protect their favored children — humanity. The cynics concluded, also not incorrectly, that on the day-to-day level human survival probably had a lot more to do with certain characteristics of the peasant classes — Villager, Farmer, Laborer, and suchlike.
One such characteristic was the class skill of all Villagers, their birthright upon coming of age. It was probably the most widely-held skill across all humanity, past and present, and certainly the most valuable.
The skill in question was, of course, [Angry Mob].
Temperance Blackwater’s broken arm barely hurt with the power of the mob flowing through her. Being a Mage, she didn’t have the skill herself, but everyone else in the rough-and-ready party of monster hunters did. Her good hand held a waiting [Fireball], twice its usual size and throwing off waves of heat. It was fully daylight and they’d not seen hide nor hair of the owl-monster since entering the woods, so it wasn’t as though she needed light or to defend herself, but her azoth pool was full to overflowing with the boost from [Angry Mob]. She was just burning off the excess — literally — to blunt the frenetic, instinctive drive to act that [Angry Mob] engendered. Her neighbours, boring little people that they were, had no such convenient skill outlets. They had to be swimming in their own agitated azoth at this point. Temperance had no doubt she was the most level-headed and forward-looking person in the mob right now. Thank Heaven she was the leader, or who knows what sort of fool side-quest they’d have all gone haring off on.
That said, she was just about out of patience: they’d been searching for hours and still hadn’t found any sign of the monster. James, her husband, looked about ready to bite someone in half. She reflected, not for the first time, on how much he and poor, brave, loyal Faithful had resembled each other.
They were both ugly, they both drooled, and they were both almost as stupid as they were mean.
“We should be close,” Old Thomas said. The old Hunter sniffed the air. “Smell the smoke?” The only thing out of the ordinary they’d encountered all morning was a column of smoke rising from the depths of the woods. Possibly it was just a Hunter or Herbalist’s campfire — but equally likely, it was goblins. The nerve of the filthy little things, roaming the land like they owned it. Temperance wouldn’t put it past them to have a [Goblin Witch] twisting animals into azoth mutants and setting them loose on good, hardworking human homesteaders out of nothing but pure malice.
They crested the ridge. James let out a low whistle. “That’s not right,” he said. That, here, was a large, low hill, flat-topped and perfectly circular, jutting from the forest floor like a boil on a face. This far inland, the coastal plains gave way to rocky, rolling hills, rising higher and higher as one left human-settled lands and approached the monster-haunted mountains. The hill before them was starkly out of place, obviously unlike its neighbours. Temperance saw bizarrely sharp and steep cliffs dug into the sides of the surrounding hills, as though someone — some thing — had scooped them out like soft butter to make room for this mound. What’s more, there were the clear signs of campfires, felled trees, and the beginnings of a log wall around the rim of the hill.
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“Witchcraft,” muttered Yens, the miller’s son.
“Goblins,” spat Temperance.
“Earthwork this size… how long’s this been here?” Old Thomas wondered, scratching the salt-and-pepper stubble on his chin. “It’s got trees atop it, full-grown ones. That’s decades, right there. This must be near as old as Reineplatz.” Reineplatz, the first human settlement in the region, its colonial capital and largest port, had been established 50-odd years ago, before any present but Old Thomas himself were born. “But why would the goblins build something like this and then abandon it?”
“I’m sayin’, it’s witchcraft,” repeated Yens.
“Shut your fool mouth, Yens,” Temperance snapped. Still, she made no moves to approach the mound. This smelled of strangeness.
“Whose are the campfires, then? If the goblins built this, then abandoned it, who’s here now?” Someone asked from the back.
“Still goblins, I wager,” someone else chimed in.
“Can’t tell from this distance,” Old Thomas said, his eyes briefly glowing as he activated [Tracking]. “Need a closer look.”
“If it’s goblins, could be they’re waiting to ambush us,” someone else suggested nervously.
Despite the instinctive spike of annoyance Temperance felt, she had to acknowledge that it wasn’t an unreasonable concern. Goblins were known to be underhanded, using traps and ambushes since their shrunken and malformed bodies made them unable to match humans in a proper fight. She chewed on it for a while, deliberating. It had been a boring and fruitless morning. Turning back at the first sign of something out of the ordinary would smack of cowardice, and cowardice would jeopardize the first scrap of power she’d managed to seize over her surroundings in years.
No, Temperance was the leader of this [Angry Mob], and this mob wanted blood. More importantly, she wanted blood.
“We’re going to check it out,” she said in a tone that brooked no opposition. The [Fireball] in her hand burning, she began to stride towards the mysterious hill.
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It was taboo to pry too deeply about someone else’s skills, even a lover or family member. Social convention enforced it, but the threat of Heavenly punishment always lurked in the background — though Pacifica didn’t know anyone who’d ever actually been punished for their sins against the Chain. Volunteering information about one’s own skills to others was much less scrutinized, especially among intimates, but there were still many implicit rules of etiquette about when and what was appropriate to share.
Consequently, Mom had never asked if, when Pacifica had reached level 1 — years earlier than her peers — and been granted her first two skills, she’d chosen [Early Riser] and [Diligence] like Mom had told her to. Pacifica never told Mom that she hadn’t, either. She’d wanted to. She’d been excited to tell her mother what she’d chosen, even. When Pacifica was younger, all she’d wanted was to make her parents happy, and grow up to be just like them. Moved by that futile, childish impulse, she’d chosen [Awareness], just like she knew Mom had.
She forgot why she’d decided against telling Mom, in the end. Probably something had happened, or someone had said or done something, and she’d been hurt or frightened and had buried that hope that Mom would be happy with her deep down inside herself where she buried all damaged things. Whatever the reason, that ship had sailed. As such, when Pacifica had received a skill evolution — not just early but practically unheard-of, for her age and level — she definitely hadn’t told her parents.
Besides, they were the reason her [Awareness] had evolved into [Prey’s Awareness] in the first place.
One advantage that [Prey’s Awareness] granted her over ordinary [Awareness] was that once she’d encountered a particular threat, it was carved into her memory forever, making it substantially more difficult for her to be taken by surprise in that particular way again. As such, when the shadow of wings once again passed over her as she was crossing the farmyard, Pacifica didn’t hesitate. She exploded into motion, sprinting as fast as her legs would carry her for the farmhouse. Idle thoughts of death aside, in the actual moment her every nerve was alight with white-hot, animal desperation to live. Something grazed the back of her neck as she dove through the door. She could feel warm blood begin to trickle down her back.
Behind her, there was a loud thud and an undignified shriek. Pacifica risked a glance over her shoulder and saw the mutant owl on its back on the porch, clearly having failed to pull out of its dive in time to avoid slamming shoulders-first into the doorframe. That had to have hurt. As she watched, though, it scrambled to its feet, the long talons extending from its wing-joints digging splinters from the wood. Pacifica bolted for the kitchen, an immediate left off the house’s central passage. The owl scrambled after her with another shrill cry, moving on all fours in an utterly un-owl-like way.
Pacifica stumbled into the table in her haste, scrambling for something, anything to defend herself with. Her fingers closed around a ceramic mug, and she almost whirled to throw it at the owl before freezing. She couldn’t do that. It was Dad’s favorite mug.
A cast-iron frying pan sat on the stove. That would do. She rushed around the corner of the table, hissing in pain and frustration as it clipped her hip, to grab the frying pan. Behind her, there was a loud crash and the sound of breaking pottery. There went Dad’s mug anyway. Pacifica, already in a bad mood, grabbed the frying pan’s handle with both hands and whirled, putting every ounce of her anger at the endless, unfair shitshow that was her life into the swing. The pan hit the lunging owl on the side of the head with an anticlimactic thunk that nevertheless sent the creature flying. It tumbled into the wall and slumped to the floor in an awkward tangle of limbs.
Breathing heavily, Pacifica saw a hazy string of letters appear beneath the owl’s status bar, that might have spelled “[Staggered].” Distantly, some part of her noted that this was the first time she’d had sufficient Chain-sight to see a status condition without someone pointing it out to her. She should probably go over there and finish the fight, right? Seize the initiative?
The owl, moving shakily, picked itself up and began to crawl away, positioning the overturned table between itself and Pacifica. Frying pan cocked and ready, Pacifica cautiously crab-walked after it. “Why?” she demanded. “Why me?! Why this farm, out of all the farms? Why today, out of all days?” She took a wild swing at the owl, which it flapped backward to barely dodge. One of its taloned feet caught her shin as it backpedaled, knocking her legs out from under her. Pacifica barely brought the frying pan up in time to block a beak-stab down at her face. The impact still drove the pan down onto her face, which hurt, but it hurt a lot less than a beak through the eye. From the sound the bird made, headbutting a cast-iron pan wasn’t much fun either. Pacifica surged to her feet, stabbing forward with the pan. Being a blunt instrument, not a knife, all this did was shove the owl backwards, but that was fine. With the space her attack had opened, she raised the frying pan over her head in a two-handed grip. “What did I do to deserve this?” she demanded, voice cracking with years of bottled-up fury, and brought the frying pan down with all those years’ weight.
Crack.
When Pacifica opened her eyes, it was not to the gore of the owl’s split-open skull. It was, instead, to a broken floorboard. Her arms still rang with the impact, the cast-iron pan lodged in the split. The owl, wide-eyed, stared at her where she knelt between its legs. Their chests heaved in an alternating rhythm of exertion and fear — in-out, out-in. It opened its beak, and gave a trilling cry that sounded almost…confused, even plaintive. Like it was asking her, too, what did I do to deserve this? I’m just an owl.
Before Pacifica could answer, the owl turned and leapt through the kitchen window, knocking the shutters open in a whirlwind of feathers as it fled. Pacifica darted to the window, and watched it retreat in defeat from Blackwater Farm for the second time in as many days. She watched the owl’s flight for a long moment before letting out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. She turned back to the wreckage of the kitchen and froze as a realization hit her.
The kitchen was a wreck. She’d broken Dad’s favorite mug, and half a dozen other dishes besides. She’d split a floorboard. Outside, one of the kitchen window’s shutters was hanging limp, secured only by a single loose nail.
Mom and Dad were going to kill her.
She could see it all now. Who knew whether or not they’d believe her that the owl had attacked again? They might — it would reinforce Mom’s persecution complex — but then again they might not — leaving to hunt for a monster only to have it attack again while they were out would make them look like idiots, and they categorically refused to acknowledge anything that cast them in an unfavorable light. No, she needed a defense. She needed proof, something they wouldn’t argue with — not that they couldn’t argue with, because they could argue with anything, but something that would make the cost outweigh the benefits for them.
She needed a monster corpse.
With a muttered curse, frying pan in hand, Pacifica took off after the owl.