Jonas-thingy stop pointin’, an’ it hand fall. It go like darien-thingy… it no move. Why? Now me no know where go?
So me keep goin’. Dat smart.
Da small-big-stick gettin’ heavy… but if me drop it, it hurty. Jonas-thingy say it hurty less… an’ it friend… so me no let go. Da ground weird here. It not like bridge-ground, green-ground… or big-stick-place ground.
It… itchy. An’ it got rocks. Me gettin’ close to a big-rock… dat da big-big rock? Dat where darien-thingy help?
It no dat big… me could go up-up on it… but me no hands. Me giggle, an’ me put me foot out an’ me touch it. Den… me feel it. It… weird.
Den it move. Da big-rock move lots, it break an’ it go in two, den it go much up-up. It go, move with legs an’ den fix itself. Wat?
Me go over… an’ me do it again. It go. Why rock have legs an’ arms? Weird, silly rock-thingy. It big, but it not big-big rock. So me start to go… but then me confused. Jonas not pointin’ anymore… an’ me no know where he pointed. Me look… but dere only more big-rocks an’ small-rocks.
An’ a big-stick… but it only one, one an’ one. Dat’s… two? Me move head up an’ down. Me smartest troll. Den me look again. What me do now?
Me use finger to poke jonas-thingy, but it no move. Me go back big-stick-place? Dat easy, me see big-stick-place…
But… den snappy-jaw-thingys not help hurty. Me look. Me look lots… den lots-lots. No see big-big rock. Den me knee hurty… an’ me look down an’ see blood. Dere be a stick in it. Why dere be stick in me knee?
Den me back hurty… an’ it really, really hurty, so me jump away. Den me sees something… small thingy. It got lots arms… but two legs. Den it like jonas-thingy an’ darien-thingy… but dey no have lots arms. Me not count dat high, but dey have two two arms.
It pick-up weird thingy up an’ den me feel hurty… an’ a stick be in me gut. Dey… hurty me?
[ Cognitive Intelligence +1% ]
( Deduction )
Why? Why dey hurty me?
Da weird army-thingys run lots, an’ dey go in da ground an’ hide. Me close me hand. Me no want darien-jonas-thingys hurty. Me put da small big-stick in da way. Me not like dis play. Dis play hurty.
“…Troll… disgus… sav… darien…”
Darien? Me know dat word. Dey no speak right. Me no undastand dey mouth-sounds… but me do? Me no undastand other mouth-sounds… dey speak troll?
Lots sticks fly like flutter-floaties an’ dey hurty me. Me press da darien-thingy an’ da jonas-thingy in me chest. Dey’s gonna get hurty.
“…Darien… honoured…”
Me no know dat word… but yet me do? Dey darien-thingy friend? Den why dey hurty him?
[ Social Intelligence +2% ]
( Protecting Friends )
[ Cognitive Intelligence 1% ]
( Deduction )
Me want eye-hurty go! But me no make go bye-bye. What me do? Dey hurty me… what me do dey hurty friend? Den me no help dem an’ dey no help me.
Not-annoying-buzzy told me word… if me no know what do. So me big-speak… Freend. Freend, Freend.
Dey no stop. Me no wanna play. Me feel… weird. It like when me big eaty an’ me go in me cave an’ me go darky. Me… put… da snappy-jaw-thingy unda me… so dey no hurty. Darky Sleepy…
—
VAASTILIMI
The beast is down. The day is won. No longer shall the Ancients be disturbed.
“Free the Honoured from beneath the Sworn!” he shouts; an’ the bravest step forward. The rest stand behind. His father might have wished to see them forced to confront their fears… but Vaastilimi can barely stand the reek of the Sworn — the Troll — an’ so he has no right to force the meeker of his brethren.
This tale will be lauded. To fell a Troll is not something just to speak about; it is to be written in the pages, coalesced an’ stored along the other tales. Others of his kin look to him — and each other — in admiration. Yet the damage is evident. The Troll’s entire upper body is horrifically burnt; singed black or altogether missing skin, pulsating angrily.
To survive that kind of pain… it is impressive, even for a creature such as this.
He must have fought with the humans — then fled. The Honoured and the Honoured’s Son must have been caught out, an’ in trying to find a place to feed upon them quietly he had disturbed the Ancients. In doing so, it had created its own death-calling.
A youngling of the group comes to him; bidden by a quick flick of the ear. “Take the Salahous an’ reach the Elders. Bring them a message; conduct a ritual for a cart large enough to hoist a Sworn.”
The youngling drapes its ears over its eyes an’ den speaks. “Why do we take its corpse, Vahum?”
He turns, then lowers himself. This one has not even begun to grow its lower arms. He does not wish to scare it. “Do not fear; but the answer is simple. The Sworn still lives.”
A flood of fear sings through the arrayed As’tiki; through both young and mature. Not all have access to the tales; nor do all wish to read them. But they must know. He raises his voice. “The Sworn is not dead, merely asleep. You cannot kill a Troll with simple means. We must bring it back to Amorhai, an’ we must dispose of it.”
Two of the meekest of the braves jump back as a deep huff pours from the Sworn’s stench-cavity known as a mouth.
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He points at them. “Fear not. The stories speak; No Troll of any variety is immune to the poison that coats his veins. It will not move — so long as the dosage is maintained. Retrieve the Honoured, then take a defensive perimeter.”
One brave looks at him. “If it will not wake up, then why do we retreat?” Defiance channels in his eyes. That is the nature of maturity. To question; to seek. Vaastilimi turns to him, an’ speaks quietly and cleanly.
“Because the stories can be wrong.”
—
JONAS
He wakes to a delightful smell — nothing at all. For the last few hours, all he had smelt was Troll. He eyes widen, and he sits straight up before knocking his head on the ceiling, coming back down with a spike of annoyance — and then peace. The As’tiki still don’t know how to make beds large enough for the regular-sized.
Jonas pulls himself from the slit in the wall he’d been — no doubt carefully — shoved into. He must have fallen asleep… but the Troll must have made it to Thirstedge. The actual name is too difficult to pronounce for a Voidorne tongue, but Thirstedge is a good summary if not faithful to the true name. It translates, if done literally, to Mountain-That-Rose-High-Then-Higher-Then-Died-Low. Strange stuff.
Water. That’s what he needs. He stands up, and his leg clicks in sharp, painful stabs as he paces the room… there should be…
He grabs a handle, pulling on it, and placing his mouth straight-up. Water, smelling ever-so-slightly stagnant, drops from the ceiling and into his mouth. The As’tiki do not invite much in the way of visitation, and water is scarce. Still, despite the taste being more that of stone than clear fresh water, he drinks greedily, then continues pumping the water until it wipes the sweat from his body.
The As’tiki had stripped him, of course. No outside materials were ever allowed, period. Everything an As’tiki had; they had made themselves from local resources. Usually from their ’livestock’. He shudders.
He runs his claws through his strands, scratching his dry scalp and inflicting a wince of pain on himself.
Voidorne, despite reptilian origins, are not made for sun — a fact he is now reminded of as he feels the sun-burns on his scalp. The water calms them, at least.
It would not be hard to procure a cream for it here. After all, that is why they bargained with Grug. As’tiki medicine would be world-renowned, if they ever cared to share it. He turns and finds the customary box that the As’tiki always left.
Inside is a large bundle of fabric; spidersilk. He would simply need to exit this shelter and take it across to any Elder; and they would preform a ’simple’ ritual to transform it into a wearable article of clothing.
That, however, is not the problem. The problem is as ever; the walk to the Elder. He must do it in the same thing he smelt as he first woke up; nothing.
The As’tiki don’t stare… but that doesn’t make it feel much better when they look. He smooths his wet-strands back on his head, then knots them into a simple connection.
Of course, they had removed his bands. Because Agathor forbid the spiders eat something other than the Savannah-grass.
Letting out a sigh, he presses the door open, holding the box full of fabric and walking — with as little shame as he can muster — out of the shelter. To call it a home would be… incorrect. The As’tiki do not have homes. An As’tiki sleeps in whichever shelter they want to at the time; with a caveat or two.
His heart fluttering like a loosely-secured tarpaulin in harsh winds, he passes As’tiki, the highest of which come to his hip. A human has never — to his knowledge — step foot in a As’tiki settlement, but if they did they would tower over them.
That brings his mind to another destination. Why had the human attacked? There was no reason; all laws of traversal were obeyed as set in script by Supremious. There was no good reason…
Though the rules had applied to many — but rarely humans. Perhaps it had just decided on murder for the day’s activities. Humans had more brutal past-times… probably. Domination and torture, to name a few. He knows he shouldn’t look into it. It was random, nothing more. Ignorant creature probably mistook him for the various animals they love to slaughter for fun.
Yet that ’random’ act nearly cost both of them their lives. If the human hadn’t run from Grug…
He spots an Elder, who turns to him. He walks up, being careful not to kick dust in its face — he’d done that once when he was younger, on his second ever visit. He looks closely at the Elder… it might have even been the same one for all he could figure. He could not, even if his life depended on it, pick between them better than random chance.
He pauses. Father can. Always.
There is always more to learn, isn’t there?
He places the box down in front of the elder, then puts both his legs under him as best he can. Voidorne legs and As’tiki legs are much different. Theirs fold, for one. Their uprise had come from a god of the Solar Realm; Carra’ghous. The Devourer-Worm. Yet they, as all uprisen had done, eventually converged into a humanoid form.
The result is a creature with two forward-facing arrays of sight-nodes. For to call them eyes is to underplay the complexity. Four eyes are for far-sight, two for near and then three to five for ’normal’ sight; all compacted into a single well of well-compacted space.
No simple cartilage forms their noses; instead having a smelling organ similar to fish gills that only work when they move through the air and ’taste’ it; formed on the sides of their faces.
Their convergence is… less than stellar. Where the Voidorne had formed gracefully into a more humanoid appearance, complete with a face that is relatively homogeneous with humans beyond a longer snout and reptilian scales, the As’tiki had… not.
Their stature is small, their bodies forced to grow bones and muscles despite their invertebrate origins, and their organs a strange mix of human and whatever they were originated from.
Remnants of wings are held likes cloaks across their backs, but if they function, no visitor has ever seen it. A long tail runs down the entirely of their back like a spine ejected from their body, and continues a decent way down until it reaches just a little beyond their feet.
Father had told him about it on the same night they had first visited. Jonas had been terrified of them.
Look at one now, it was no wonder. Still, he pushes the box forward and places his hand out. The Elder places a single, perfectly-round coin in his palm then sits down itself. Over the box, it holds a hand and begins to speak. The voice that comes is sharper. A male’s would be grittier; so this is a female Elder. Not that it matters.
It speaks calmly, brokering a deal between an Administrator from the Material Realm. Material rituals are simple affairs; and normally a matter of bargaining.
Here, however, it is even simpler. The administrator makes no haggle — nor does the As’tiki. The reason why is only known to the Current Gods
It happens so quickly that he doesn’t even catch a glimpse of the realm-shift back and forth. The materials would go in; then the Material realm would process and spit out a completed garment — keeping some of the raw material in payment. Grug can do the same… only even faster and cleaner than this.
His conversion to string was near-instant and near-imperceptible. Whatever connection he had to the Material Realm, it was strong. He’d ask Father about it. Maybe he knows a way to divine it?
The Elder stands and walks away. Even the friendliest As’tiki rarely speak to the ’Honoured’. Darien — and thus Jonas — are not kin; they are not friend… but they are allowed.
He looks up at the ceiling, watching the spiders above and the As’tiki flitting among them, collecting web to make into the premiere As’tiki fabric. He pulls on the clothing — which amounts to little more than a jumpsuit — and immediately his shoulders drop and the feeling of constant eyes upon his body dwindle.
Thin enough to allow the thick air in, but thick enough that the relatively cool sorta-cave doesn’t chill him to the bone. A youngling swings from the bars of tightly-secured wood above, then falls down onto his shoulder. Suppressing a deep, primal reaction to something insectoid in feature coming anywhere near him, he looks at it as it speaks.
“Protector Vaastilimi calls for you.”
It’s, generously, a third of the size of the Elder, small enough that it can stand on his shoulder comfortably but large enough that it’s not completely comfortable.
“The Honoured Wakes. Come, come.”