[Sun-Quest]
An invasive species grows over-populous. There is an ancient boar in the eastern shoreline named Kamahune. Slay him. (0/1)
Reward: Blessing of the Glutton.
I had spent the night resetting. There was little mana left in my reserves after planting the Worm-Maze and I had been counting on a windfall from the human’s hunt to replenish my stores. The ape had done no such thing. Even more frustrating, recording its Schema would have meant another level and another expansion of my domain– letting me harvest yet more mana from the fresh territory I extended into.
But I would have more opportunities.
In their camp, the humans were hard at work. They had caught and skinned a rabbit, they packed clay around its red, naked body, burying it in the fire’s coals to bake. The skin had been stripped of fur, then thrown in with water and the caustic peels of the massive thorned mangos I had grown to please my guests.
Apparently the acidic qualities would help turn the hide to good leather.
Everything they touched they turned into a tool. I could have made it easy for them; fruits could have fallen from the branches into their hands and hares ran willingly into their snares. But I was curious to see how they’d struggle along.
And besides, I did nobody any favors by hiding the nature of the world. It was more than a palace of easy meals and soft grass– even in these idyllic islands, every living thing struggled to earn its place.
Although I was steadily reshaping this island in my image, I had no desire to take the teeth out of nature.
If anything I would do the opposite.
I was close to needing to sink into torpor, but I could hold it off by force of will until the humans left, so long as my mana remained at least nominal. A core had to be deeply overtaxed to fall asleep while there was still danger about. Before then, I wanted to lay a few more seeds, set the groundwork of a few more plans.
Mana was only my second most precious resource. Time was far more important.
This quest struck me as a priority. Not only would completing it entail gaining a new Schema, possibly a new level, but it offered me something I desperately wanted– a Blessing for my creations.
As I gave shape and strength to my creations, a Blessing shaped the soul. They were gifts from the gods to help guide mortals through the perils of life.
Blessings could be large or small– but all of them improved the intelligence of the imbued creature. They clarified mind and soul.
So with a pair of humans accompanying me, I set out, guiding a pack of lumbering ground sloths through the spore-hazed eyes of my lemur. I had made two more of the lemurs with the mana gained overnight– the expenditure was justified more by my eagerness to explore than the true benefit. I had also joined my new cuckoo to the fungal network– he rode on the back of one of the sloths, preening himself and giving evil stares to Hani. For his name...
I had chosen Iokua, not a native name but an adaptation of one from far away: God Wills It was the meaning. A suitable title for a messenger.
The human had said nothing of anything that transpired last night, although he itched guiltily at the back of his neck. But now and again as they walked through the jungle Iokua would suddenly break into an rough, squawking imitation of Hani’s voice:
“Go away! Go away!”
I will admit. I enjoyed watching him flinch and glare daggers at the bird. Iokua’s sense of humor was vicious, and he needled constantly at Hani as the group moved through the jungle.
I could see now how little of the island’s ecosystem I had captured. Little streams tumbled down mossy rocks, hosting legions of small insects that fought among the shallows. Flightless birds kicked at treenuts curiously, testing for whether they would explode– an adaptive defense to being eaten before they were ripe and ready to be carried out into the world.
The expedition pushed their way through strange and massive grasses that curled into luminous whorls at their top, the spiriform heads covered in hook-haired seedlings that clung to the sloths’ fur. Nature was full of strange cleverness like that. In the tangled mass of the jungle, only the most elegant solutions could thrive.
In a matter of an hour we reached the shore, trees thinning back as the muddy earth made of fallen leaves and loam gave way to rocks, sand, and tangled mats of kelp. A scent of salt and brine overtook the wind as we stepped clear of the canopy and into daylight. The wild ocean beyond crashed against the boundaries of the lagoon, the ring of volcanic stones catching the waves and reducing them to a gentle roll of water that came sloshing up the shores.
It was a treasure trove. The lemur hurried forward, scampering past the humans and out into the surf. The muddy water was rich with novel bioforms. Countless shells lay half-buried, their rough oblong shapes striated with lacquered grooves of pink, red, and orange. The sand bubbled as they spat out water, cycling out tiny bits of organic matter to feast on.
They weren’t all small, either. Some of the specimens I saw, I mistook as large rocks through the muddy connection between me and the lemur’s eye. They grew to tremendous sizes.
Further in…
Standing boulders were encrusted in layers of wavy, paper-thin plant matter in the color of coral, shaped like a fan with many spines extending outwards and ending in rounded tips that sensed the air. As soon my lemur approached they shrank back, collapsing inwards and folding into holes in the volcanic pumice of the boulders. Beneath were layers of small, conical shellfish that extended thin nets of yellowish hair to catch small planktons in the wash of the brine. A touch confirmed– they stung like jellyfish.
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Wading deeper, tiny crabs peered up with beady eyes, their eyestalks allowing them to bury their full bodies in the sand. They were carrion scavengers with spiky bodies and oversized right claws.
Beyond, there were rocky pools where shallow water collected, hosting colonies of mussles, urchins, limpets– stony creatures clinging to the walls. Seabirds pecked them away from the stones and flew into the air to shatter them with a drop from great height. Snails wriggled slimy bodies through the gaps in their shells to slurp them up. Octopi cracked them with dexterous ease.
But there were plenty more. Every rock surface was coated in the intricate spirals and glossy black shapes of clinging shellfish, interspersed with weedy sprays of kelp and algae.
I took it in. Breathed in the salt, felt the water pooling around the lemur’s waist, drenching its fur.
This was only the beginning of the sea. It extended out far deeper and further, to abyssal trenches, coral reefs, countless more islands. I could see the next step in the archipelago now, a shadow on the line of sea extending out to the horizon.
How much farther could I go?
— — —
We spent the morning gathering. Naia was born to fishermen, and with Iokua hopping along the rocks beside her she explained how to crack the shells and extract the meat of the various shellfish, showed him how to lure mud-dwelling fish up from the small burrows beneath the rockpools.
It might have been useless information to me– but it would be very useful to my creations.
We collected one of every specimen we could find, even the prickling sea urchins. They went into a basket slimy with seawater and strands of algae.
Hani and the lemur roamed out to search for the pig. What we had taken for rocks, Hani shied away from, and on closer inspection they were massive turtles with beaked, powerful jaws that shot out to crush passing crabs. We witnessed a bird with a strange multi-headed tongue that hung from its broad, flat beak into the water, resembling a waterfall of kelp. As small fish darted into the tangle, the bird would suddenly suck its tongues back in– dragging the fish into its mouth.
Reptiles bathed on sun rocks. Hermit crabs scuttled past in search of new homes.
Finally we found tracks, hoofprints stomping along the muddy sand in a long line. Following them we found signs of disturbance everywhere. They had ripped up the mud and left the chewed legs of crabs, fragments of shell, and other detritus everywhere.
My sloths lumbered slowly forward—
The sound of squealing and grunting soon entered the air.
There were stone caves along the coast, their walls shining with volcanic deposits of minerals. As we took our way up a pebble-clad hill, we came to a point where a breach in the shoreline led to one such cave, and looked down from above a steep cliff into a clamoring horde of pigs.
Kamahune had many wives and daughters. His sons must have been the wandering, outcast boars I’d seen around the island. The females followed him in a great herd, snuffling at the ground and butting heads over morsels of food, while the patriarch himself…
He was massive. Kamahune stood nearly six feet tall on all fours, with doubled horns that curved up and down from his jawline, and embers that dripped from his lips. He was the color of coal with blazing eyes and smoke rising from his nose. Carved into his skin were numerous scars, but none had ever killed the beast.
We may have underestimated what we were up against. Even if Kamahune himself was only the size of a single megasloth, his children and wives were huge in their own right, and the sheer mass of pork promised to bury us by stampede.
The lemur edged back from the cliff, moving in step with Hani. But the ground sloths were slow and clumsy. One of them brushed aside a rock– I winced as I heard it ring, ring, ring down the walls of the ravine, stone knocking against stone.
Retreat! I willed the lemur, who started jumping atop the sloth’ back, pulling at the ears to steer them away. Hani was already scrambling down the hill.
But I still thought we had time to escape, thanks to the cliff face between us and the herd.
I was wrong.
With a single, deafening snort, Kamahune kicked up and shot over the cliff. It was like watching a slab of pork perform a backflip. His whole body bent with the force of his back legs and he landed already galloping towards the nearest sloth.
My lemur didn’t need my command to take to the air in fright. A split second later, Kamahune slammed into the sloth he’d been riding– the massive, lanky beast was sent flying backwards, folded against Kamahune’s tusks. The boar flicked his head and those saber-lengths of bone carved upwards, flipping the sloth over his back with gaping tears in its belly and chest.
ATTACK! I could still give dim commands, through the threads that connected us. The sloths reared up as Kamahune galloped in a wide circle and came thundering back towards them.
They had the advantage of reach, but the pig had sheer mass and momentum rolling together. Still– two against one seemed like good odds.
Until the beast snorted and spat a stream of billowing, choking smoke from its nostrils, drowning the beach in a sudden cloudfront of smog full of drifting embers. The sloths reared back and cut around them in all directions, lashing out in sheer confusion.
The pig darted between them, slid past the one on the left, and dropped his head into a charge. A clean stroke, kicking upwards, smashed the point of his curving saber-tusk through the sloth’s kneecap and severed the entire leg.
As the sloth fell down, Kamahune darted past, more smoke pouring from his mouth and nostrils as he wove a gray trail around them. His eyes burned like streaks of flame in the dark. The cloud was thick enough to choke, and the sloth was struggling to breath. It tried to stumble free in a blind forward charge–
Kamahune came rushing forward. In one massive kick, he shot off the ground and their skulls collided with a thunderclap sound. With one quick buck, he drove his tusk straight through the sloth’s lower jaw and into its brain.
The motion, at the very least, slowed Kamahune. With his tusk pierced through the middle of the sloth’s face he had no easy way to land back on his feet– he hit the ground in a rolling tumble, twisting about and kicking his head to dislodge the tusk.
RETREAT. The other sloths were struggling away. Too slowly. They weren’t built for speed…
But I had sent one other messenger to this battle, and while Iokua was too small to fight, he was brighter than any half-wit pig. Through his eyes I swooped high above the battlefield…
And let out the snort of another boar, mimicking a pig’s battlecry at tremendous volume.
Instantly Kamahune’s head snapped around searching for this invader to his territory. Iokua flew farther and hid behind a rock before bellowing again, and then quickly shot away.
A second later the boulder was gone– split to splinters by Kamahune’s charge.
Leaping from stone to stone, Iokua lured the beast away as we limped back to the humans and led a spirited retreat.
But this indignity would not go unanswered. I would have my revenge on Kamahune– no, on his entire flock. Lineages of his children would be caged in pens and slaughtered as my cattle.
I was pissed.