The humans, contrary to my fear, had not been delayed by hatching some plan against me.

They had been catching the pig that had run past them fleeing the ape. They carried the porkchop impaled on a spear cast over their shoulders. Meanwhile, the ape’s dead body was tied to the ground sloth’s back. The beast lumbered along under the ape’s weight, the dead creature’s lanky arms dragging the ground and disturbing the undergrowth in its wake.

“Spirit! Something is wrong in your house!” Koa called. “We found this creature poisoned with rage and evil magic. Look at it– someone has laid a curse upon the poor creature.”

As they untied the ape and let its body sag to the ground, I saw what they meant. The other humans gathered around, staring with disgust and fascination.

The ape’s body was branded with many charred black runes. They were dug slightly into the flesh, leaving the fur above patchwork and nearly bare in places. Blood had soaked everything through, but I could still detect sickened little pockmarks and still-fresh lesions around the runes.

The sight sickened me– very literally. Those runes warped the mana around them, causing the flow of magic to warp into rippling whirlpools. As they churned, forming distortions in my view of the world, they spat out clots of corrupted energy that drifted through the air.

To a creature such as me they had a particular stench. Rubber, ink, and burnt hair.

Not wasting time, I conjured a new cuckoo from a spiral of ghostly light. Even as he formed he was calling out– “Step back! This sickness could spread!”

The humans flinched away. Koa, reacting faster than the others, went to the fire to seize a torch and burn the thing. But– I hesitated.

This didn’t appear to be the same sickness the boy had. While they both polluted mana and sickened the body, the runes were something unique…

The best way to learn about this plague would be to absorbed the stricken animal. But that would risk true damage to my being; whatever this infection was, it sickened the mana it touched.

“Wait.” The cuckoo said, relaying my words. “We will first determine the nature of the sickness, before we purge it.”

My remaining lemur dropped from the branches, scuttling forward. My own vision was ruined by the distortions in the air– but I could see more clearly through his eyes. Emerging from or embedded into the ape’s flesh were lengths of white material. The lemur reached out to touch them and confirmed two things.

They were lengths of bone…

… and they were deeply cursed. A bitter energy radiated from the dead matter.

The bone was bitterly cold, but the lemur wrapped its paw around the end sticking out and pulled. With a sickly noise of flesh it came free.

“That’s…” Naia was struck dumb.

“It’s them. The dead of the village.” Maleko said, his voice low and full of dread. “They have cursed this beast. Spirits protect lest the same fate come for us in the night.”

“It must be burned.” Koa was determined. “And salt scattered among the ashes. I have told my father before, we should have cleansed this place long ago.”

“Why didn’t you?” The cuckoo asked for me, tilting his head.

He looked back, and sighed. “The ritual requires a great deal of magic. All our spirits have been taken; we have no sourcewaters. What power is left we must conserve.”

“I have magic enough.” I said through my vessel. “Make your preparations.”

The woman who’s name I hadn’t caught spoke now, bending to one knee. “If you will provide us your magic we will be grateful but… We need many things that we did not bring.”

I hesitated but…

This was a good thing. They wished for this evil to be cleansed, and they needed my help to do so. My goals aligned and now I had a chance to prove my power without making threats. “Very well. One of you may go.”

— — —

We burned the body, the stench of burning fur mingling with the smell of decay, like a rotten tooth. The bones pierced into its body split and the air shivered as each one splintered, releasing foul energy. Black bile ran from the firepit, threatening to extinguish the coals until palm fronds were tossed on, lifting the bonfire higher and higher.

Koa and the men drummed on their chest with one hand, the other pushed against the earth with fingers dug into the soil, bent like runners about to sprint. The women sung, chanting and stomping their feet. There was a power to the words, to the drumbeat, the rhythm– I felt the tension in the air begin to ease as the same words came again and again, building like the roll of the tides.

Until the shape of the ape’s body was collapsed in on itself, and there was only soft, crumbling charcoal among the bone splinters. Only then did the foul smell disperse.

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I felt something watching us through the flames for a moment, and then it was gone.

They mixed salt with the ashes, and laid fruits out on the ash-stained ground.

Before the night came they moved their tents away from the firepit and built a new one. Nobody would sleep next to the place where the shape of the ape’s body was still visible, a black shadow on the ground.

— — —

The lemur swung its arms back and forth like a pendulum, swinging from one foot to another in a lopsided dance. Its little arms lifted, wings unfolding, and the humans howled with laughter as it fell backwards onto its ass.

They had gotten my creation drunk.

Skewers of fish and mango sizzled over the flame, tended by Maleko. He was a proficient chef, his knife dicing, slicing, skinning. It had taken him no time to strip the fish of its head, incising the bones out from between two good filets and pulling out the worm-fat vein of the intestines with his fingers. He made a sauce from spicy peppers, their fragrant blossoms, and black peppercorns cracked with the flat of his flint blade.

Koa danced first, and grabbed the others to pull them up into his arms and swing them about, forcing them to dance with him.

He was fighting to keep their spirits up. Naia was quiet and dark-eyed, and she was shaken by the spiritual sickness. I had seen her gazing into the fire as the ape was incinerated– and I had seen her eyes widen, as if she had caught something I missed.

The other woman, Alani, was lighter of spirit. She was Koa’s favorite. She was always whispering into the other’s ears, making smiles break out on their faces as they tried to remain serious. When Koa came to grab her she flopped back to dodge his hand, rolled up onto her shoulders and did an agile rolling flip back onto her feet.

She came at him then, swinging playful, half-hearted punches as he backed up, dancing around the new fire. Her spring-light motions and lithe limbs belied something though– she was a real fighter as well. A scar ran down the back of her calf, raised and rough.

I watched them with a strange curiosity. What energy they had. They seemed to be wrapped up in an endless series of private games, private jokes. I understood their words…

But not perhaps the meanings behind them.

Maleko was simple enough. In truth I liked him best. His hair was shaved down to a single topknot atop a sleek, walnut-shaped head, and his cheeks were tattooed with twisting patterns. He had been the first to rush towards violence when I confronted them; but as soon as Koa had signaled to him to step down, he had, and since then he showed no signs of worry or scheming.

Instead, he and his knife tasted and chewed everything he met in this world: chunks of fruit, the heads off flowers, bits of bark, whatever might have some unknown flavor.

He was a man who knew his strengths and worked them without ego. I admired such a mind.

The last of them was Hani. Despite his name, he was a slight and nervous man. He seemed to find no peace within my territory. Every birdcall was a pang of terror in his heart– I could hear the beating and smell the sweat on his skin. In truth the others didn’t seem to like him much. They enjoyed surprising and frightening him until he grasped his heart and gasped like a fish on land.

His clothes were better than the rest– I thought maybe he was the son of someone who mattered. The old hermit had encountered many such men in his time before retiring to the farm. They sailed easily through life, rarely having to steer their own vessels, drinking up the achievements of those around them as if it was natural they be awarded credit for others’ work.

I watched them from a distance. It was natural to be curious. Animals I understand with a precise and surgical knowledge. Humans…

Could they even be understood? I think not a single person around the fire could know the others for sure.

I think I understood then why dungeon cores feared and hated humans so easily: we were used to controlling every aspect of our world, to knowing the minds of those who walked our earth, and ruling over them. We were generous gods– we could give miracles with ease– but we were jealous and paranoid.

Humans were minds we could not understand easily. They took effort…

I had nearly made a grievous error and slaughtered them all. I did not think, now, that these were spies or servants of the empire. They did not mean any harm.

Except for one.

— — —

That night, Hani crept towards my dwelling, a piece of bone clutched in his hand. It was one of the bones impaled into the ape’s flesh, stolen from the fire and hidden among his clothes. He wielded it like a dagger and held it in front of him like a sacred charm.

I allowed him to walk past the fenceline. He imagined I must sleep– that there was an hour where I was not awake and alert.

But he bent my grass under his feet, and I knew every step of his approach.

Was he an imperial traitor– or was he simply so sick of being the weak one, the frightened one, that he wanted to prove himself in my blood.

The wind whispered and wings fluttered through the night air. He heard nothing.

Tiny legs landed on the back of his neck and it was too late. A sting pierced into the base of his neck– he muffled a scream and clapped his hand against the wound, crushing the small, chitin-clad black body of the wasp. He stared down at his palm and flicked it away.

I mercifully did not tell him he was dead.

In fact, I would tell none of them that I had chosen to execute this assassin. They might plead for mercy– which I had no intent of giving– or they might revolt, but either way, it would only sow discord to show them I was truly willing to take a life.

I intended to let him sicken and die on the return home.

A croak from a nearby tree sent him whirling around. My cuckoo perched above him, chuckling with laughter. “Aren’t you away from your friends?”

He reached for a stone, but as he turned back up the cuckoo had fluttered up into the air. “Go away!” He hissed.

“The spirit sees you! Don’t think there is sleep enough to hide your footsteps, little man…” I had given the bird instructions to scare him, but I was seeing his sense of humor now. He truly enjoyed watching Hani’s face darken. His words were little jabs and lances of cruel laughter. “Return to your camp! Lay your weapon aside! So long as you speak to nobody of the crime you have committed, there will be mercy. Do not force the spirit’s hand!”

I saw it in his face. The defiance, a brief flicker. The sickening dread. The collapse– giving away, his hands falling limp to his side and the rock rolling into the grass. He bowed his head, about to thank me.

The cuckoo cut him off. “Tomorrow, you will discover a bone that escaped the fire. It will be destroyed. Say nothing more– and begone!”

I watched him limp away, cursing his fate.