“You can talk!?” Harlow gawked at the hunched and depressed Stonisse. The Juvenile Databeast was a goblin-like creature covered in rugged stone skin punctuated with little pebbles. They weren’t the strongest of the Juvenile Databeasts but they had strong Techs and were crafty, so even the experienced adventurer had to keep his guard up about them. Harlow had never heard of one talking before though.

“...me… talk.” Said the Stonisse. It was evidently struggling, but it understood words enough to respond in kind. But, Harlow supposed, most Databeasts understood words fairly instinctively. How else could a day old Databeast understand instructions from its Tamer?

Harlow mentally ran through his options of what to do with this Databeast. He couldn’t defeat the Stonisse, could he? It didn’t want to fight back and it could talk. But was that so different from the other Databeasts? Why did that make it so worth saving? Besides, it had asked him to destroy it. Admittedly that was a rather strange proposition, but why should he turn it down? He mulled it over.

“And why do you want me to destroy you?” He asked, still confused.

“Destroy me.” The Stonisse replied, shrugging.

“Well that’s not helpful.” Said Harlow. “I’m not going to destroy you.”

The Stonisse fixed him with an evil glare briefly before looking down again. It didn’t try to convince him. It didn’t seem to care.

Harlow stood there for a while, staring at the Databeast. He really didn’t know what to do.

“I’m not going to attack you so don’t attack me, okay?” Said Harlow.

“Okay.” It said, not really caring. Harlow was almost sure it rolled its eyes.

“Okay.” He said back. “I’m going to put a cover over, to hide this little passage. It should stop Databeasts wandering in here.” He said. Then realised there already was a Databeast in here. “Other ones, I mean.”

The Stonisse shrugged. Harlow took some steps back towards the entrance before taking a deep breath and turning his back on the Databeast. Every instinct he’d had drilled into him over the past few weeks told him this was a bad idea. Yet he did it anyway. Or at least briefly, because he turned to side eye the stone goblin. It was still watching him, but it wasn’t making any secret moves to come and attack him. He still had an idea in the back of his mind that this was some elaborate ruse to catch him off guard.

It wasn’t. He set the stone grey tarp up with no problem. It wasn’t a huge deterrent but it would be well enough to hide from any Databeasts that weren’t looking closely at the walls. Which they usually didn’t. It was a fairly standard piece of adventurers kit, lightweight and mobile and affords a lot of protection for the little effort it requires, which was just attaching some holds to a rock face or other semi-flat surface.

Harlow didn’t really know what to do now. He’d had a vague idea that he would make his way somewhere safe that Rizzo couldn’t find him in case the mad captain decided he wanted to chase Harlow down. The nutter might be crazy enough to try, though it’d be a wild goose chase finding anyone around here. And then once Harlow had found that safe place he’d curl up and sleep. Now he wasn’t sure he’d be able to, but he didn’t feel like he could leave this odd situation alone either.

“I’m having a heck of a day.” Said Harlow, not necessarily towards the goblin but towards the world. He just had to declare in a statement this absurd fact of his existence.

First he was mind-controlled, then he was fighting for his life - and actually defeating! - a Vanquisher Databeast, and now he was sitting in a small cavelet with a Databeast who could talk and seemed to have lost the will to live. Any one of those would have made it a notable day, and yet they’d all occurred in the same! Or perhaps they hadn’t. Down here days could be anything and he wouldn’t know. Periods between sleeps you could definitely call them.

The stone goblin didn’t reply, but it didn’t seem bothered either. Harlow had only really got it motivated when it talked about him destroying it, which was a behaviour he didn’t feel like encouraging. But he still wanted to engage the odd Databeast. Seeing that it didn’t seem to care about him talking, he decided to babble about various things to see what might provoke a reaction from the Stonisse. Or maybe he just wanted to hear himself talk. It had felt like a while since he was allowed to cut loose.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

He was rattling on for a while about everything, his leg and his life, Brand and Tommen and chasing them down, Rizzo and Watchdog. Where he went to school Everything.

“Rizzo tried to convince me to get an earth element stone. I thought about it. It could be fun - I like stone actually. I wouldn’t have minded if it turned into a Stonisse. You guys are cool.” Mulled Harlow. “I got a wind one instead.”

Suddenly the Stonisse’s face lit up and got closer to Harlow’s. “Wind! Me wind!”

Harlow jerked back, unsure of what suddenly transpired. He decided to take it chill and try and slowly explain whatever misunderstanding there was. “You’re an earth Databeast, not wind.”

The Stonisse’s face dropped and Harlow felt awful. It scrunched up its face as if thinking about something with great difficulty. “Me stone… not wind. Me…” It’s brow squeezed with exertion.

Harlow tried to help. “You want to be wind?”

The Stonisse was excited again and nodded up and down vigorously. “Me want!”

Harlow didn’t know how to break it to the little creature. “But you can’t be wind if you’re stone. You know that right?”

“Me know.” Said the Stonisse, dejectedly. “Me want… destroy.”

It suddenly dawned on Harlow what this whole thing was about. “You don’t want to live because you’re stone and can’t be wind!?”

The Stonisse shrugged. “Don’t want to.”

“That is so dark, little one. Why would do you want to be wind so badly? Is it really that good?” Harlow asked, shocked but also morbidly curious.

“Want wind.” It replied, scrunching its face up again. Harlow realised his mistake, the Stonisse didn’t have much in the way of vocabulary unless it was using words he’d said to it recently. Still, it managed to get another sentence across. “You want wind. Why?”

“Why did I want a wind element stone? How do I even answer that?” He mulled.

“Answer that.” Said the Stonisse. Harlow laughed.

“Well really, I suppose a big part of it was shoving it in the guard captain’s face, and his ideas about Cabletown…” He trailed off when he saw the Stonisse’s face scrunch up again. “Okay, okay. How do I even explain that? So where I’m from, Cabletown, of course you have to do what you can for the good of the town. You have to sacrifice so the town can prosper. But people like the guy I was travelling with until just now, they have very rigid ideas about how you should do that. His way is by everyone cutting back and being super strict on themselves, being efficient and cheap, being… whatever. So he wanted to force me to use an earth element stone-”

The Stonisse spat its disgust.

“-for the sake of the town. My parents on the other hand got me a cosmic element stone, which is about as much of a luxurious and expensive stone as you can get. They wanted to be able to show me off to their friends at parties, Harlow the guard with the cosmic element stone. Might make them seem like they were keeping up with everyone else, hah.” He joked dourly. “Wonder what Rizzo would think of their extravagant parties. Maybe he knew. Maybe that’s why he took pleasure in making me march out with a destroyed knee.” He gestured to the exoskeleton supporting his damaged leg. The Stonisse poked it and hummed, not sure what to make of it. He pointed to his own knee and stone grew around that leg to mimic the exoskeleton. He looked up at Harlow.

“Woah. You must have crazy control over earth to be able to do that!” Harlow exclaimed. The Stonisse pulled a sour face at being reminded of its elemental predicament and let its leg revert to normal. Harlow tried to distract the goblin again. “Anyway, I’m getting sidetracked, I partly wanted a wind element stone just to shove it in the face of everyone in Cabletown who wanted me to have something else for petty reasons of their own making. Wind was… freeing in a certain way. I guess wind is like that anyway. When I feel the energy flow through me my leg bothers me less. I can move better, I’m more weightless, I’m more…” Harlow trailed off as the Stonisse had been slowly leaning forwards towards him, eyes wide as if entranced with his words.

“Free?” It asked, sounding almost hopeful.

“Yeah, exactly.” Said Harlow.

“Want wind. Want free.” Stonisse said, defeat still in its voice.

“Hah! Well I have a wind element stone and you’re more free than me.” Said Harlow.

“Want more free.” Replied the Stonisse.

“Well maybe we can make you more free?” Said Harlow.

“With wind?” Asked the Stonisse.

“Erm… maybe? I think if you defeat a lot of wind Databeasts you might unlock a wind variant? It’d be a lot of work. But it might be possible.” Said Harlow.

“Defeat wind? Defeat free?” Asked the Stonisse, disappointed at the prospect of having to destroy what he loved to become it.

“Well, I’m not sure all of them love freedom as much as you do…” Said Harlow, a little unsure of how wind Databeasts thought about the world.

“Where wind?” The Stonisse waved to the area around him. “Earth.”

“Well okay, down in the bottom of the mountain there aren’t many wind Databeasts. But if we leave here we’re bound to run into some!” Said Harlow.

“Leave here? We?” Asked the Stonisse, perking up slightly. Harlow just realised what he’d said and offered to the small stone goblin. Well he couldn’t back out now.

“Yeah of course. We. As long as you don’t mind journeying around with a cripple. I’m even less free than you, haha.” Said Harlow.

“We.” The Stonisse nodded and cemented the partnership.