Looking at the horde gathered in front of us, I slowly removed my hands from the weapons that they had impulsively darted to. While my first instinct is almost always to be ready for anything, having just rolled over for a dragon, I was able to keep that humble feeling for now. Yes, while they were just rabbits, there were so many purple glowing eyes in front of us, I did not doubt that while Gaian might be able to survive with his thicker hide and regen powers… I wouldn’t be getting out of here if a fight kicked off.
Looking over to my brown friend, I again repeated my earlier question, “So how are the negotiations going?” When he raised his left paw, I thought about it and tried to clarify. “So have they not gotten started because of the force of nature that just departed, Or, have they already declined our offer of mutual aid?”
With his raising the right paw, following it up with a left. I breathed a little easier. “Can they understand me?” I asked the bear, getting a left paw in response.
“Damn,” I replied, I had hoped that I would be able to communicate our intentions to them myself. While I never would have made a good car salesman, as I was much too earnest and enjoyed being actually helpful. While the salesman’s personality might have been able to have gotten a better deal from the beasts, I thought my method and personality might be more useful in getting us, well me really, out of here with skin still intact.
“Can you ask them if they mind if we sit down?” I asked the bear, at his growl of derision. I countered with, “Hey, they hold the cards and we need their help. If we are going to be allies we have to be willing to sit and trust them. Either this will help us prove are good intentions, or they make the choice to stab us in the back and we will have learned something. Either way, we will have learned something. They have the numbers, if they want to take us out, they can accomplish the task if they are willing to take the losses. So let’s bury our pride for now and ask for help.”
When the bear gave me another look that indicated his unhappiness, I replied to him, “Hey, you put me in charge, if you want to take over be my guest.” When he looked away and growled a question over to the rabbit horde, one of the ones in the back screeched out a reply. When the furry rug’s butt hit the ground, I followed him down at a slightly slower pace in deference to my stiffer joints.
As I was settling down onto the ground, I looked over at our hosts, really taking the time to examine them in more detail than I had yesterday. Grey and brown fur that would easily have blended into the undergrowth had their numbers not been so massive. They looked to be about two or three times the size of a normal earth cotton tail. Other than their size, the only alien thing that stood out about them was the glowing purple eyes that a third of the bigger ones seemed to have. Looking deeper into one of them, the glow reminded me of the purpleberries I had seen on the brambles. I wanted to ask the obvious question but held off on the off chance it would seem like I was trying to gain proprietary information.
Looking back to my friend sitting next to me, I asked him softly, “Do you think they know we are from a different planet?” When I got both paws up in reply, I said in return. “Okay, well let’s assume they don’t for now and try and keep it that way. I doubt they would care, but we have no idea how the info might spread and I don’t want to end up some guinea pig locked in a cage somewhere because we couldn’t keep our mouths shut.”
“Let’s ask about something basic first.” I continued, “Tell them we are from far away and got separated from our companions. We have had several fights with the goblins and have come out the better every time. Ask them if they might be able to use our services in what seem to be their natural enemies.” At the bear’s questioning soft growl, I replied quickly. “What! It’s all true. We are from very far away, and we had plenty of other creatures make the trip with us, and we have no idea where they are. Just ask them already!”
As the growls and screeches went back and forth between the rabbits and my friend, I started getting a mild headache at the high pitch of the rabbit’s screech. Similar in pitch to their terrestrial cousins, there is a reason I never minded killing them off when they got into my garden. Rabbits back home are pure evil, they have no problem eating their own young and getting into the worst kinds of fights. Between their evil red beady eyes and a voice that rivaled hellspawn, I had no idea why children thought they were cute. Plus they had an amazing taste and were great diet food.
These rabbits I was willing to give a chance that I never would have offered to the terrestrial version for two reasons. One, while they had a similar screech to their evil cousins, the eyes that weren’t glowing seemed to have a multitude of colors rather, and none of them were red, which was the calling card of several varieties back home. While the glowing purple might have been worrisome to others, to me, it just seemed like a natural adaptation to their environment.
Two, there were easily five hundred rabbits in the clearing, with more having hopped in while the discussions were ongoing. The massive amount meant to me that these rabbits didn’t devour their own young, which also was a plus in my book. Also, they had the numbers to just take the two of us out, so in the might makes right world that we were living in now, it seemed like these guys were in charge for the time being. Their being willing to negotiate with us was just bonus points in my book.
When the bear finally raised his right paw as the cacophony finally quieted down, I breathed a sigh of relief. Pulling all of the varieties of flowers out of my pockets, I told the bear to ask them if anything was useful to the leporids. When the spokeshare sent one of the younger ones out to point to both the purple one and the bundle that had red clusters that I hadn’t been able to examine before I had been knocked out the night before.
Speaking softly to the bear I said, “Ask them if we can shelter here, offer to either have us kill goblins or gather some flowers for them. Or mention we have cores we can trade as well.” While I didn’t plan on selling the cores in my pocket, I had a whole bag back in my pack and if we were going to be hunting goblins anyway it seemed like we would still end up with plenty.
As the symphony of discord started back up, I resisted the urge to plug my ears with my fingers. When a group of about fifty of the smaller plain eyed rabbits stepped out when the voices quieted back down, I asked the bear. “Do we need to escort them or is that the number of flowers we need to gather?” When he raised his right paw first and followed it with my left, I cursed under my breath. Fuck escort quests, I thought to myself, not bothering to censor the thoughts that were in my head.
“Tell him okay, but that gets us a couple of days of shelter and they have to provide us with some food and water. Also if any of them wander off on their own then their deaths aren’t on us.” At his questing growl and the rabbits bunching up, I shouted out. “No, I’m not saying they have to feed themselves to us. Just that they need to give us some fruits or vegetables that we can eat.”
When they settled back down as the bear translated for me, I relaxed from the near disaster that the omnivore had almost caused. When another twenty-five rabbits jumped out to join the ones that had already stepped forward, I took it to mean that they had agreed to our negotiations but were upping the price.
“Tell them, that if that many want to come, we will fight the goblins for them, but we can’t guarantee everyone will find what they need. Also, they get one expedition, but as soon as we draw down more heat than we can handle we’re going to have to book it, and it’s everyone for themselves.” I said, not willing to take the L if some idiot hopped off on his own and got himself killed. Escort quests were always a pain in games and I’ve dealt with too many groups to think there ever would exist one without several idiots looking to make things worse, whatever the species.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
As the bear sent over my counteroffer, I waited to see if they would accept or if there would be more negotiations. When the main speaker hopped over to me, I looked at the massive specimen. It was easily twenty pounds and looked to be on the larger end of three feet long, its ears came up past my knees as I hastily stood up at his approach.
When it bit its paw and held it out to me with several drops of blood dripping down from the self-inflicted wound, I didn’t hesitate. Whipping out my knife with my left hand, I pulled it across the palm of my right paw and held my hand out to the intelligent creature. Shaking his hand, I felt something settle around my core. It felt like someone was laying the thinnest thread around the massive structure that surrounded my soul. I felt like I would have no trouble bursting through the lighter touch, but let it settle down onto me. I was unsure if the beast would be able to tell I hadn’t let our treaty take hold of me and didn’t want to alarm it as I had every intention of following through on my part.
As it looked up at me with what seemed to be surprise in its deep purple eyes, it looked like it wanted to say something, but then thought better of it, and instead turned around and went back to his group, which quickly then dispersed through the surrounding woods. Leaving us with only of few of the purple-eyed variety and our group of volunteers.
Talking to Gaian I asked him to explain that we needed to go back out and get our supplies and bring them back. Telling him to let them know that we would need to execute our raid tomorrow and to ask what time would be best to depart, dawn, noon, or evening. When the bear raised his right paw indicating dawn, I grimaced. But if that’s what the clients wanted then that’s what they were going to get.
Speaking up again, I said. “Ask about the dragon, tell them our part of the world sees the creatures once in a generation, and ask them how often the flyovers tend to happen here.”
When the rest of the normal rabbits disappeared following their friends I took it as an assent that the raid would be fine happening tomorrow, turning to walk out of the woods with the bear to retrieve our (my) belongings we played twenty questions as I tried to decipher what he had found out about the dragon.
“What do you mean you don’t know what a year is?” I exclaimed, “Every time it gets cold and snows, that’s a year.” As he growled back to me, I remembered we had been taken from the coast and the milder weather meant that he probably didn’t even hibernate, I thought about it some more and came up with a better explanation.
“You know how every once in a while you find baby whales that wash up on the beach?” At his question again, “The giant fish that end up on the beach that are as big as twenty sea lions.” When he finally seemed to get it, I said. “Well every time you find the babies on the beach, that is the whales migrating in the spring, so that would be a year.”
Several more back and forths later we finally agreed that the dragon appears overhead about once every five years, and we had just been horribly unlucky about the timing. With several more back and forths, I was able to find out that it had been due and didn’t seem to have been summoned by our arrival. Also, there was only one of the creatures on the moon. I was somewhat surprised that the rabbits knew that they were on the moon and were so well versed in the greater dynamics of the surrounding world, but just took it at face value for now.
On the other hand, when that flying disaster is the epitome of the worst case scenario, I can only imagine that everything on this moon tried to find out everything they could about it. Speaking of which, I asked the bear. “Did you feel the dragon pulling any energy out of you?” I didn’t have a lot of hope for a positive answer as the only energy the bear had been able to identify so far was the hell energy from the troll core. So when he raised his paw I almost missed my step and nearly fell over in shock.
“Wait, you actually felt that? What can you tell me about it, that is the first time I have noticed it since the ball closed on us back on Terra?”
As he growled back at me, another round of twenty questions started. As we approached the border of the trees and grass, I felt that I was starting to gain some understanding from him. He didn’t think it was anything like the primal energies I had dealt with. He seemed to indicate it was what he used to power his healing as the dragon had left him mostly drained.
He hadn’t been weakened physically, but he had been brought down to a bare minimum of the energy he needed to keep his regeneration going. Stepping out of the woods, I looked in the direction of our camp to see a hazy cloud of smoke coming from that general area. Even though there wasn’t any definite proof that the camp was gone yet, with my luck, I wasn’t holding out much hope. I could only conclude that something from the area had angered the dragon. Despite the massive destruction, I had no doubt that it had been magnanimous in its judgment, only sending out enough flames to destroy a couple of acres instead of laying waste to the entire valley. I could only be thankful for the rain the day before, the water from the sky no doubt being all that kept the fire from spreading. I didn’t have much hope that our stuff was still going to be there, but the supplies were too valuable to us, not to take the time and head back to make sure.
As we continued our way back to the ruined campsite, I went back to questioning the bear about the energy that had been dragged out of him. Fortunately, we had a long walk ahead of us, because with my not being able to understand his growls, confirming the smallest bits of information seemed to take forever.
So far I had found out that the weakest energy that I had encountered in our time on this moon, was what the bear used to power his spells. He didn’t think it affected him in any other way, the only thing that had happened when he had been drained was he had gotten some pain in his head. When I asked if that was where he felt his core was located, wondering if he was more like the shaman rather than the troll, he gave me the negative signal. After more questions, I was able to find out that he felt that his core was located in his heart area just like my own.
The energy seemed to be something that was running through him and when he sent it to his core it collected the healing into it and he was then able to send it out. He wasn’t able to cast it out past his body, but he had found he had some leeway, and that’s why he had been licking my leg. Realizing he had the equivalent of a healing touch, I was more grateful I had left the better core to the bear rather than trying to take it myself. If the other component to the spell was touch, I doubted it would be very useful to me if I was trying to stay a range fighter.
As we came up to the ruins of where our camp was located, we could feel the heat still coming up from the ground. Looking at the crater that formed the center of the disaster zone, I concluded that the impact of whatever the flying god sent down was what had caused the shockwave that knocked me over.
Looking around it seemed like everything was vaporized, with the crater as deep as it was and the surrounding splash of whatever had it burning the grass back several acres, I couldn’t even use the path I had made to triangulate whether the impact had been the destruction had been the pile of troll bodies or our off world equipment.
Heading up the mountainside to collect the small bit of stuff I had dropped, I continued to question Gaian while going over in my mind the events. Hindsight was working in overdrive, I couldn’t tell if I had been lucky or unlucky. If I hadn’t gone for the sand would we have been closer to the rabbit wood and have been able to make it there with our stuff? Or would we not have noticed the dragon until too late with the hills in the way and would I have been off to see what happens in death and finally find out what had happened to my children?
Unsure which answer would have made me happier, I could feel that I regretted the loss of my things, but still being raw from missing my family, I couldn’t bring myself to care. Climbing to the point where I had dropped my burden, I thought about dumping the sand, but if I was going to be liberating more weapons from the goblins on the morrow, I was probably going to need it to repair the loot.
Heading back down the hill with my spear over my shoulder I could feel the bear leaning in to me. Thankful for the encouragement, I spent the hour walking back to the woods telling him stories about my kid’s childhood. Grateful for the bear’s ability to listen and understand, I asked him if he had any cubs of his own. When he indicated that he had a couple, I asked him if he wished they were here or back on earth. When he indicated Earth, I agreed with him. I hadn’t raised my kids to be hard enough for what looked to be necessary to survive on this planet. I thought to myself. I wasn’t sure I had been raised hard enough either…
But at least I knew that I might be missing what it takes. Sometimes the knowing of what you lack, is all you need to make the gains necessary to get you through your trials until you find that you have grown what you needed inside of you.