Over the next week, Terry noticed that the group started to find a rhythm with each other. It started with the monster attacks. Those happened with a frequency that he found both annoying and suspicious. He usually hung back with Haresh and let Jaban and Ekori handle them. He didn’t have anything to prove to anyone. Plus, the younger adventurers seemed to need the practice more than he did. They didn’t get any value from watching him punch something to death since it was a feat they couldn’t easily replicate. Not that I don’t need to practice. While he could outpower the other three adventurers, their actual skills made him feel like, well, like exactly what he was. He was like a grenade. All explosive force and zero finesse.
He suspected a bit more finesse, or at least more finesse that was under his conscious control – rather than some random thing that happened as a byproduct of psychic bleedthrough from the other-knowledge – would probably serve him well. Pure, painful experience had imparted some basic tactical wisdom, but it always came back to him doing something very straightforward. In other words, he needed to come to some accommodation with the other-knowledge and other-Terry. He just wasn’t quite sure how to accomplish that goal. At least, he couldn’t see a way of doing it without enduring the horror of having a conversation with that other personality living inside him.
It probably wouldn’t be quite the same awkward torture as dealing with strangers but that didn’t make it a pleasant notion. He’d never really come to grips with having a second personality knocking around inside his brain cage. There were words for things like that back in his original world. Clinical words. The sort of words found in fat psychology reference books. The kinds of words that got thrown around in legal proceedings before someone’s insanity defense got thrown out. He was almost positive that he wasn’t suffering from a personality disorder. Almost. The problem was that he couldn’t be absolutely sure. Getting sucked into another world might have overwhelmed his sanity. Then again, sanity did seem to be in terribly short supply in his new home. He might fit right in with all these crazy bastards.
Still, misgiving aside, he had the intuition that his survival might depend on it. No, he thought. It’s an absolute certainty that I will die if I don’t learn a reliable way to access that knowledge. This stupid place will organize it so that I bump into someone or something that I can’t just overwhelm with a frontal assault. Even so, he found himself procrastinating. It was just so easy to not do things he didn’t want to do. Especially when he was getting so much free entertainment.
“Look out!” shouted Jaban as he flopped onto the ground.
The bat-winged dog monster that was swooping down on the young adventurer missed by a few inches before regaining a little altitude and circling overhead with the other members of its pack. Come to think of it, what is a group of bats called? Terry searched his memory but couldn’t come up with a word. He turned to Haresh.
“Do you have bats around here?”
“Hmmm? Oh, yeah. We do,” said Haresh a little absently, his eyes still on the fight.
“What do you call a group of them? Where I grew up, it was always just bats or a bunch of bats.”
Haresh gave him a sidelong look.
“Is this a crucial question?” asked the adventurer.
“Probably not,” said Terry. “I was just calling those things a pack, but then I wondered if that was the right word.”
Haresh squinted a little before he nodded.
“Ah. I see the connection now. A group of bats is a cauldron.”
“Oh, that’s way better than a pack.”
Terry focused on the cauldron of bat-winged dog monsters for a while and suppressed his laughter as Jaban repeatedly failed to hit them with his magic arrows. The beasts were surprisingly nimble in the air for their atrocious aerodynamic design. Ekori had managed to draw blood a few times, but she also had to wait for them to get close. She could have probably speared one more thoroughly if she threw the spear, but then she’d be weaponless. Or not, he thought. She’s probably got more in that ring of hers. Either way, it was pretty hilarious watching them run around and dive out of the way. He supposed that sooner or later one of the monsters was going to get lucky. Since Terry didn’t feel like carrying either of them, he’d have to do something. He reached down and scooped up some bigger pebbles off the ground. He sorted out the biggest ones and dropped the rest.
If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
“What are you doing?” asked Haresh.
“I think this has probably gone on long enough,” said Terry. “Unless you want to volunteer to carry Jaban when he gets himself wounded.”
Haresh snorted and shook his head.
“The rocks, though?” asked the man.
“It turns out,” said Terry as he transferred all but one of the pebbles to his left hand, “that I’m pretty accurate with these.”
Terry drew back an arm and whipped a pebble at one of the monsters. Another half dozen pebbles swiftly followed. There were wet, hollow, thunking noises as the pebbles brained the monsters. They fell out of the sky. Ekori let out a shriek as one of them almost landed on her, which just set Terry off into a fit of laughter. Based on the baleful look she shot him, he decided that he should probably make his own dinner later that day. Still, he had killed these things, so he should probably go take something off of them to prove he’d done it. He glanced to the side of the road where head sack was sitting. It was overstuffed already.
Sighing to himself, he went over and decapitated the monsters just to be sure they were dead. He was disappointed that he couldn’t absorb the cores but took them anyway. He’d seen the others taking them. He assumed that they must have some kind of value in trade. He frowned down at the corpses and tried to decide what to take as proof. The bat wings did have talon-like structures at the very tips. Those would probably do as proof. He cut those off and then gestured to the bodies. Drumstick came trotting past the other adventurers. Their complete lack of reaction was a sure sign of just how non-threatening the chicken-lizard was. Well, that and the fact that Dusk was proudly perched on top of the beast’s head.
Drumstick had gotten too close to Terry a few days earlier and gotten a swipe across the beak from the tiny predator. He honestly doubted that any physical damage had been done, but the huge monster had recoiled from the kitten like she’d smacked it in the face with a burning brand. That had begun a campaign of psychological dominance that ended with the kitten claiming the top of the chicken-lizard’s head as her throne. She didn’t ride the monster all the time. In fact, she seemed to prefer Terry’s shoulder or the inside of his robe. If he was otherwise occupied, though, she would stalk over to the relatively mountainous monster and stare up at it. Drumstick would dutifully extend a wing, and Dusk would regally stride up it. That little display of dominance had put the nail in the coffin of any fear the other adventurers had of the cock-a-somesuch. I really need to remember what the hell these monsters are called.
He watched as Dusk descended from the top of Drumstick’s head, down a wing, and onto the ground. She haughtily went over to one of the slain monster heads and sniffed it. Like it was the most natural thing in the world, she reached out a paw and batted its nose. Apparently satisfied that it was dead, she turned her back on it and started making her way over to Terry. As he slipped the talons into head sack, he called out to Haresh.
“How far is the next town? This sack is over capacity, I think.”
“Another day or two.”
“Is there a guild hall there?”
“There is,” said Ekori, who stopped to scoop up the kitten.
Terry pretended that it didn’t annoy him when the kitten immediately lost interest in him and started purring as the young woman pet her. Ekori shot him a triumphant smirk. Geez. Talk about vindictive. It’s not like I aimed that stupid monster at her. Now, she’s trying to steal my cat. He gave Ekori a look. He wasn’t sure exactly what it was, but it seemed to amuse her.
“Yeah, yeah. Laugh it up, cat thief,” muttered Terry. “At least, we’ll be able to empty out head sack and get paid.”
“I like getting paid,” said Jaban.
“You like going to the tavern,” said Ekori.
“That’s where the women are,” said Jaban.
“Hey,” said Terry, walking over and plucking Dusk out of Ekori’s hand. “She’s too little for that kind of talk.”
“She’s a cat,” said Jaban.
“No. She’s my cat,” said Terry. “And my cat is too little to be hearing about your lechery.”
Ekori’s eyes lit up, and she immediately changed tacks.
“Yes. You and lechery should be quiet.”
“Why are you ganging up on me?” complained Jaban.
Terry and Ekori traded a look, shrugged, and spoke in unison.
“Because it’s fun.”
“Fun for you, maybe,” grumbled Jaban.
“No, it’s fun for all of us,” said Haresh.
“Why isn’t anyone on my side?”
“Maybe Drumstick will be on your on your side,” suggested Terry.
They all looked over at the chicken-lizard. It was pulling a wing off one of the monster corpses. Jaban shuddered.
“I think I’m okay.”
“Beggars can’t be choosers,” said Terry.
The other three stared at him like he’d said something utterly profound and not tossed off a cliché.
“What?” he asked.
“That’s a great saying,” said Haresh. “I may need to use that.”
The other two were nodding. Terry stiffened. He didn’t know which one it was, but he could feel a trope hovering in the air like the presence of damnation. Fucking things are bad as mosquitoes.