Fate Deals The Cards

Fifty-two Pickup part 1: The Lovers

Ch: 4 Dealer’s Choice

I spent a week at Klevin’s forge at the foot of the iron rich volcano, learning nothing of smithcraft; but picking his brains for every bit of info I could winkle out of him. He had a lot of material to cover and I had no way to communicate meaningfully or take notes.

My fine motor control in my crab body was crap and I couldn’t last long out of the water, or hold a pen… Ink I had aplenty, ironically.

“Aye lad, listen tae this old dwarf ramble… I got bumfuzzled last evening; never did I tell you the third thing that all monsters share.” He smiled, a weak and wavering thing this morning.

“Monsters, like isekai, like me and thee, they kinnae bear young, not by any wise. Even those who seem tae reproduce… They dinnae truly.”

He nodded to the deep stone pit near his hut. Long, sharp spiked iron blades stuck out from the lip of the hole, jutting inward and down. At the bottom, six long brown furred creatures circled and squirmed, their long, sleek bodies writhing and intertwining endlessly.

“

These be groundworms, lad. A common monster, an ye feed them food trash, fallen leaves, even the shite of other creatures, they live on and grow. An ye cut on ein half, ‘ere long ye hae two worms… And ye cut them again, ye hae more worms; ever eating an circling, making bonny fine fertilizer and mulch frae worthless things.” He grinned at me and chuckled.

“Dinnae fall in the pit lad, they can and will eat nearly anything, save each other. That be the trick; ‘tis only one worm lad, in six parts. So long as there be more than one piece of the beast, it will happily coil around and eat what be cast intae the pit.” He laughed and hurled a banana peel through the iron bars.

“So long as there be enough food, it will grow and thrive, until I must fish them out, one by one and cut them down smaller.” He smiled and scratched his big poofy beard.

“The extra worm parts I use fer fishbait… Though some poor, destitute folk do eat trashworm, poor blighters. ‘Tis usually orphans must dine on trashworm.”

He sighed and resumed his lecture. “An food runs low, all the extra parts die off first, tae keep one piece of the beastie alive. At that point, the beast will struggle tae escape bondage tae seek new pastures.” He shrugged. “Monsters be stupid and make no sense, save that he dinae get nor create young or offspring.”

The look on his face said he had another shoe to drop on me and was waiting for the right time.

“Like thee and me, lad. Thee and me, kinnae get nor sire young, fer we be monsters ourselves, technically… in our own way.” He nodded gravely.

“Aye. In human and dwarf society, we be almost always treated as monsters ourselves, an the truth be discovered. Hide yer origins and secrets well, brother. It will save yer life and freedom many times.”

He leaned closer, speaking earnestly. “The light cult does desire us very greatly as well. Fer their evil works and dark sacrifices, we are their preferred victims, as we bear the touch of the outer realms, ourselves. Watch yerself, an the cult be near, dinnae give them a fingernail’s width of yer trust, lest ye find yerself stretched on one ‘o their filthy altars, as I was… in another life.”

The old coot fell silent for a while, save for the hammering and the roar of his forge.

#

The days drifted by, while I studiously avoided the local colony of my relatives… The word that I was ‘different’ had spread quickly and they were pretty chill about the whole thing, they just kinda treated me the same as everyone else, mostly.

It was way too socially awkward, when an octo boy wriggled up to me and started flirting shyly. It took an embarrassingly long time for me to realize that was the deal and I had my own stuff to work through.

I brushed him off a little more firmly than I really meant to, but the whole episode was deeply upsetting, on a whole bunch of levels.

A few days later, the problem solved itself, as the adults vanished into their brood caves and started… brooding. I started hanging out around the forge even when Klevin was asleep or otherwise occupied with his work, simply because it was quiet and gave me time to mull over the new info I was being deluged in.

There was just too much to learn and there was no way the old coot would be able to predict all of my questions… especially the octo related problems.

Most especially the big question of why I was heading into my fourth year, while all of my kin were ‘going into the light’ after one full turning of the seasons.

Not that I was eager to explore the next life… the octos saw the racial memories they shared as a form of immortality. They claimed that the spirits of the ancestors even appeared to guide and instruct them regularly…

I was in no position to confirm or deny the truth of it, since I had no access to their ‘Akashic Record’... whatever that was.

Somehow, that phenomenon and their generally unambitious nature seemed to satisfy the happy little scamps. That ‘afterlife’ was denied me, given my unusual condition.

I knew it wasn’t happening just because I kept it in my octo pants. The other wrigglers who, for whatever reason didn’t find, or lost their mates also stopped thriving and started dying, right along with the others.

So, a couple weeks after I met Klevin, the locals no longer appeared when I shucked my crab and dipped into the water for a bit of free swimming fun. The crab’s body provided everything I needed, somehow, while I was driving… It did my breathing, eating and pooping, through whatever weirdness my ‘Body Snatcher’ and ‘Necromancy’ titles gave me.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

Not that it was the same crab… the coconuts were tough, heavily armored and stupid, they were also mindlessly cannibalistic. While Klevin was sleeping, or mining up in the foothills where I was too slow and clumsy to follow, I was busy trading up, one step at a time.

It was a gradual process, more like an accelerated molting situation… I preferred to think of it in those terms, since I left a trail of ever larger coconut crabs stumbling around, brain-dead in my wake.

Klevin noticed the change when I stomped up wearing my latest model; eighty pounds of chitin and claws, clattering on bluntly pointed legs that could spear lesser creatures, if I was too lazy to clamp them in my mighty claws.

“Ye got bigger, lad. Lots bigger! Hae ye been eating the other crabs that infest this speck ‘o land?” He chuckled merrily.

“Properly mean and hungry they are… and subject tae monstering up as well. I spend much effort keeping the island monster free ‘cause of the little turds.” He grumbled good naturedly, while he used a huge file to shape something, scraping with long, even movements as he talked.

I clicked my hefty new clackers to let him know I wanted more, and he obliged, rambling on about monster lore while I listened keenly.

“A monster does start as a normal, mortal beast or other living thing… ‘Tis a chancy matter tae predict and is impossible tae completely prevent.” He nodded with satisfaction, as he looked over his finished pickaxe, with his dead white eyes.

“Simple beasts and critters be most subject tae monstering, since they hae weak Minds and Wills… and a fragile Animus protecting them. Monstery be a disease or defect of the soul, caused by contamination of a new born critter.” He sighed, as he placed a fresh billet of iron in the forge.

“Soul contamination it be. Fragments of souls, all sorts and kinds of them are thick in this world… and in all dungeon worlds. Every living soul shed a few fragments of itself, every day, lad. Even thee and me. Those tiny, invisible bits grab onto souls they encounter, creating bonds and links of friendship and love, or animosity…”

He grinned and nodded. “Aye. An ye find yerself reaching out tae a new met person, ‘tis a bond of sympathy and compatibility. ‘Tis the same, an ye find some person or creature unbearable. Incompatible souls repel each other.”

I clicked to tell him to go on and he unloaded a full throated belly laugh that shook the jungle. “Gods above an below, lad… Whae kind of mad world did ye come frae, that this is new lore?”

He shook his head at my ignorance and went on, once I’d been sufficiently abused for his entertainment. “A fully developed soul kinnae be monstered, lad. Only the weak willed, fragile, mindless or nearly mindless may become tainted by and mutated by incompatible soul fragments. Any healthy soul will consume and incorporate the compatible bits and reject the rubbish… ‘tis how mortal souls grow an develop, as they pass through the endless cycle of life and reincarnation.” He smiled fondly and nodded in my direction.

“As we also do, lad. We be a dead-end tae the Akashic Record, but in the greater scheme of things… We will rejoin the universe after this life, or perhaps after a few more. ‘Tis only a blink of the eye, a mortal life, however long it may seem tae we mortals…”

He smiled warmly and chuckled. ‘Aye, I’m an old man, sen many souls born an die, friends, foes… all sorts. This I say as one who’s stared intae the blinding lights of Truck-Kun…” He said, solemnly and with great reverence.

“There are gods out there, beyond the gods we know, guiding the machinery of the universe. Vast and unknowable… but in the distant void, twas the servitor of such a one found poor lost Kitka… and made me Klevin. A blessing and boon delivered unasked and given freely by tha god and the nameless being he serves.”

I gave a rapid clicky clack, insisting that he tell me more.

“Ye dinnae ken Truck-Kun? Divine courier of the outer gods? He be the eternal deity ‘o interdimensional fuckery and mischief… The god of correcting such and returning mortal souls tae a mortal world where they can thrive.”

I reflected on the jokey memes and silly weeaboo nonsense on the internet, suggesting that there was and actual being named Truck-Kun… A mysterious delivery van responsible for nearly every ‘isekai’ story in the vast and poorly written canon of such works.

Across the web and around the world… My old world, anyway…

Freelance writers, angsty teens and pot smoking hobbyists were busily tapping out tales of men and women lost in magical worlds, granted fabulous powers, almost all instigated by being run down by a truck… a divine truck from beyond our world. Thinking back… it happened to me too.

Though, for some reason… or maybe by just random chance, I’d lingered on for four years after that blinding, devastating, non-survivable crash, and that cold distant place of bright lights and the sensation of eternal movement…

Klevin was still talking, while I felt my mind whirling down previously unsuspected paths. I tuned back in, trying to recall what he’d said.

“Frae a wandering mote in the darkness, he found me… ‘Twas an odd thing to look at, all white and square… There were a wide, glass window at the front. In that pane, I did see a kitty cat sitting pretty an waving at me in welcome; calling me near, his iron bell singin’ my name…”

He was still waxing poetic about this god of his a while later, so I settled in to wait and listen for any actual info I could use. Tales of box trucks with paw waving, bell wearing kitty cats on the dashboard were too much for me to handle, on top of the rest...

#

The new crop of Octos hadn’t emerged yet, so I took a good long swim, keeping fit and flexible was one of the things Klevin insisted on. He even tried to get me to join his startlingly vigorous workouts, done every morning and evening without fail.

The old man was a beast! He ran a half mile to warm up, every damn morning, did sand sprints, a full calisthenics circuit and then he hit the mountainside, mining the iron outcroppings with his pick until noon. After lunch he would lecture me, while smelting, casting and forging the endless list of projects he had on his workbench.

Each evening he’d run a quarter mile to cool down, bathe in the lagoon and run a whole pilates clinic in his hut before bed. He ate simply, lived quietly and spent his free time meditating, sketching new projects and otherwise chilling out.

“Cultivation, lad… that’s me last lesson fer ye, ‘ere we part ways.” He rumbled in his pleasant, bassy voice of gravel and slow moving stones.

“There be much hoo-hah and falderal around the arts of cultivation… most be complete bunk. Magic pills and medicines do exist an are worth yer attention, but the fundamentals… ‘Tis simply fitness; mental, physical and spiritual fitness. Strong body, strong mind, strong soul…” He tapped his head, heart and belly as he spoke.

“Any person kin achieve any or all of the three with self reflection, hard work, diligence an study. The tricky part is getting all three an balancing them all taegether. That makes a normal person intae a cultivator.” He grinned and nodded. “Yup, simple as that. Ye kin read the sutras an chase after hidden scrolls of mystic arts, but yer fundamentals… That be the true secret tae a long, healthy life.”

I clicky-clacked my interest and got the full rundown. He rambled about his workout plan and stressed the importance of flexibility, stamina and control, rather than simply focusing on strength. “Pure physical power is tempting lad. Ye kin bulk up an swing yer hammer like the fist ‘o an angry god, but then ye wind up unable tae scratch yer own arse fer the muscles. Nae, there will always be summatt stronger, bigger, faster or tougher.”

He nodded gravely and smiled, as he did a slow, graceful dance, whirling with delicate precision through his workshop on silent toes.

“Balance, lad. Balance, control, grace and a clear mind will serve ye well, no matter yer form or shape.”

I sat there silently considering his performance, wishing I could cry… crabs and octos aren’t equipped for it. In desperation, I began clicking and clacking, tapping out a rhythm for the beautiful part of himself he’d just revealed.

It was unexpected and perfect, as if the clouds drew back from the sun on a stormy summer morning drenching the world in light.

I wanted more, needed more… So I kept the beat rolling on, playing with the structure and time signature, drawing him into the embrace of old man rhythm with my castanet claws. I finally had to do it, I dipped into a classic from the disco era. The Bee Gees ‘Stayin Alive’ caught him by the booty and pinched his ass into a whole new vibe.

We learned a lot about each other that sunny, peaceful afternoon, as he danced to my wandering groove.

#

“Were ye a musician, in yer previous time, lad?” He gasped, as he sagged to a stool. I was still lost in the boogie, entranced by the subtle stirrings of… something deep inside me.

“It did feel like ye had some subtle gift or magic woven in that strange music ye made… Ye follow me?”

I clacked twice, then after a long pause, once. I was uncertain and deeply confused by the strange and beautiful thing we’d shared. The pretty cat-girl, dancing for the human boy in a hut by the sea… and the old craggy dwarf, dancing to the tune of a monstrously large and hideous crab. Two things can be true at the same time, my friends.

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