Asshht waited. He stared through the window of the closet door at the two predators working together to clear the floor of the apartment building. Asshht was duly impressed with their cooperation, able to succeed where alone they may have become prey. If they were alone, Asshht could become the predator himself, his Numbers high enough to kill either of them. But they remained together, and Asshht hid.

Once again, Asshht considered the possibility of working with others. It clearly could bring many benefits, would allow him to hunt in ways never before considered. But no, no others of his kind would work together. Even to Asshht, the idea was foreign, but for the last few days he was no stranger to foreign ideas. Less than two days ago he didn’t even have a name, but after killing many prey, something changed. His eyes became opened to a new way of thinking, a sense of self demanding he give himself a name.

He was satisfied with his name. He picked it himself, after the sound his claws made as they scraped along the floor.

His new thoughts had other benefits. Before, upon seeing the teamwork of the two predators Asshht may have fled or foolishly attacked. But now, he could wait. Let them search the halls for the prey. The Numbers those weak prey provided were barely worth the effort. But Asshht knew some of the prey were not without claws themselves, were actually predators in disguise. When the two predators found one of those, they would struggle.

And Asshht would be waiting.

- Asshht, Inclusion +3 days 09:52 hours

I walk along a dark path, shadowy trees on either side arcing over my head. I look behind me. Nothing is there. I walk faster.

I can feel the pressure. Something is following me, regardless of what my eyes can see. I know it. My heart beats heavily in my chest.

Up ahead, I see a fork. Three paths split in front of me. On the right path, I see my friend Mark. I haven’t seen him in months, not since I moved away from my old school, but he smiles in the exact same way that I remember. He is holding a football in his hands, and as I come to the crossroads he waves, encouraging me to join him in his game. I take one step onto his path, excited relax with him, but hesitate. Wasn’t I supposed to be doing something? I step back.

On the center path, I see two silhouettes. I lean forward, attempting to see more when suddenly they are illuminated. It is my parents standing side by side, facing away and hunched over something in front of them. They turn, revealing my baby little sister in their arms. She reaches out to me, smiling in the adorable way only babies can. I take a step to my family. I’ve missed them so much, I can’t wait to see them again...

Just before my back foot leaves the original trail, I pause. What is that noise? I step back and look down the left fork. Ahead on the trail, a battle rages. Styx, Melete, and Pallas stand back to back, swinging weapons at the darkness. Shadows dart forward in the shape of claws and teeth, attempting to reach my new friends. A spider-like creature with a single glowing yellow eye looks down from the branches, not moving. They need my help! I take a step onto the left path…

With a gasp, I awake and sit up. Pain shoots through my body from my thumb and my leg, and the world spins around me. I reach to my side for a weapon, unable to distinguish reality from my quickly fading dream. I have a sister? No, I’ve always been an only child. What’s going on?

“Whoa, Altlas, it’s okay, calm down.” I feel a hand on my shoulder, steadying me. Blearily I wipe my eyes, only to see Melete standing over me.

“Wha...what happened?” I ask.

“We won!” She smiles triumphantly. But then her smile dims. “Well, mostly. Pallas and I managed to finish off the queen and about a dozen smaller hive monsters. They all went crazy once the queen died, and luckily most of them ran away. Styx though…” her voice quiets even further. “She doesn’t look so good.”

I struggle to my feet, favoring my right leg. Out of habit I activate my skill to fix my wounded leg, but I wince when, instead of the normal pressure from my skill, I feel a lack of resistance of any kind. I attempt to flex my metaphysical ‘third arm’ again but feel no response. What happened to my skill?

Brushing the thought aside, I limp over to where Pallas is crouched over Styx. There are more important things to focus on. I clumsily step over bodies of the hive, the hive queen laying still off to the right.

“Hey Atlas,” I hear Styx say weakly as I walk up. “Good to see you’re all right.” Her face is pale and her voice is shaky, but she attempts a small smile as I approach. I try to muster a smile in return, but I don’t think it’s very convincing.

“Hey, how are you feeling?” I ask. Her shirt is pulled up a few inches where Pallas is holding a bloody cloth to her side. He’s wrapping another cloth around her to hold the first in place. Pallas’ face is stoic, but his hands shake as he works.

“I’ve been better,” She says, and then winces as Pallas uses a strip of duct tape to hold the bandage in place.”How are you feeling? Pallas said you took a bit of a tumble after saving me.”

“Saving you might be a bit bold of a description,” I say. Looking at Styx, I certainly don’t feel like a hero. “All things considered, I could definitely be feeling worse.” I bring my right hand in front of me and examine my thumb.

The skin all around the base is a mottled black and purple, and the thumb is still bent sideways in the wrong direction. My face pales just looking at it. I drop on my butt, sitting down. “Hey Pallas,” I say. “Once you’re done with Styx, can you help me out?”

He nods and turns where he’s sitting to face me instead. Styx has closed her eyes, lying silently on the ground. Asleep or just resting, I’m not sure, but I’m comforted that at least she’s still breathing.

Pallas looks at my thumb, wincing himself. “Same as last time?” he asks. Hesitantly, I nod.

“Wait, take this first,” Melete says, handing me the bottle of weak painkillers we stole from the gas station so long ago. I awkwardly attempt to open the bottle with just one hand until Pallas takes it from me, opening it easily and handing me two pills.

I swallow the pills dry.

I’m not sure how long it takes for painkillers to normally kick in, but I learn today it’s definitely longer than five minutes. I hold in a scream as Pallas wrenches my thumb back into place, the strap of a backpack between my teeth. At some point, Sam has reappeared, and it stares as I struggle with the pain.

Once straightened the thumb hurts much less, but it still throbs painfully if I try to move it. Once again, I try to activate my skill. This time I at least can feel the pressure, although it’s much weaker than normal. I’m unable to fix my thumb.

Before, when attempting to make modifications with my skill I would only have trouble if the change was too large for me to handle. I could still attempt it, but the weight of the change would be too much for me to bear, causing me to quickly give up. Now, however, it feels as if there’s something blocking me from pushing with my skill at all beyond a certain amount. It isn’t that my ‘third arm’ is too weak, but rather as if my ‘third arm’ isn’t even touching what I’m trying to lift.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

I roll up my right sleeve to look at my tattoo and gasp. My tattoo is the same shade of green it was before our battle, but it is significantly lighter in color, almost transparent. It seems to blend into my skin in a way it never did before.

That, however, is not what startles me. I gasp at the new tattoo adorning my arm, curly script wrapping around the top of the older tattoo, the bright red color shining in the morning light.

I blink, and suddenly Sam is only a foot away, staring at my arm. “A new skill?” It says. “What does it say?”

I startle at Sam’s unexpected closeness, but answer its question. Staring at the tattoo, I feel the knowledge of the new skill rise from within me. “It says ’Bond: Mental’,”. I pause for a moment, parsing through the foreign, yet somehow familiar, information. “Apparently it lets me form a mental connection with other creatures, letting me communicate and share certain senses.” Melete and Pallas are also listening in, but Sam is the only one who speaks.

“Interesting, interesting. I assume it is from the queen and her bond with the rest of her hive. Do you know what senses it is able to convey? Can you have multiple bonds at once? Is it just one-way communication or can the senses be shared both ways over the bond?”

Sam’s questions continue, but I just shake my head and roll down my sleeve. This skill is exactly what I needed...an hour ago.

Knowing now what I do about skills, I can pinpoint exactly what caused me to acquire it. The second before the queen attacked, I needed to warn Styx. I was too slow to yell, but some other form of communication an instant earlier might have saved her from her injury. For a moment, every fiber of my being wanted to be able to warn her, to somehow convey the information needed for her to stay safe. And that desire must have created enough of a resonance to reward me with this skill.

I can’t appreciate the reward, however. It just feels like a slap in the face, taunting me with power too late to be of any use. I ignore Sam’s questions. Right now, I have no desire to explore my new skill.

Instead I turn to Pallas. “How bad is Styx’s injury?”

He just shakes his head, answering quietly. “I don’t know. I don’t know anything about medicine. I just wrapped it up to try to stop the bleeding. I don’t know if it will help, I just…” I place my hand on his shoulder and pull him into a short hug. Once we separate, he seems to have gained a bit more composure. “It’s a big hole in her side, Atlas. I don’t know much, but it didn’t look like something she’ll be able to just heal from. We need an actual doctor. A surgeon.”

I sigh. Sam’s questions trail off into silence upon my blatant disregard, and instead it sits next to us, eye flickering from me, to Styx, and then to Pallas. Melete sits quietly on the other side of Styx, for once not humming or singing.

“Did they have a doctor back at Carscott?” I ask.

“Yeah, they had a guy they called Doc. I don’t know if he was a real doctor before the inclusion, but he at least knows how to sew up wounds and kept tabs on all of their medicine. They definitely didn’t have any place to perform surgery.”

“It’s still better than what we have,” I say, and I grimace. “What’s her charisma at right now?”

Melete flips over Styx’s arm and pulls back her ever-present sleeve, revealing Styx’s Numbers. “One oh two,” Melete says.

I wince at Styx’s lack of reaction to Melete’s touch. “And she has, what…” I lean forward to get a better look at Styx’s palm. “Fifty-five she can spend.” I glance down to my own palm with the Number one-hundred fifteen. She must have already added the Numbers from the battle with the hive near their burrow. “We can’t even get her charisma to two hundred.” We sit in silence for a few moments.

“That’s not enough to recover from this alone,” Melete finally says.

I nod. “We’ll have to go back to Carscott. Melete, see if you can add her free Numbers to charisma while she’s unconscious.” Melete taps on Styx’s forearm, only to immediately turn back to me and shake her head. “Thought not. When she wakes up, make sure she adds those to charisma first thing.” Melete nods in affirmation. “Let’s empty out the wheelbarrow. It may not be the most comfortable, but we can carry Styx in it.”

Melete gets up and dumps out the supplies from the nearby wheelbarrow, picking up the blankets and laying them across the hard surface. I nod in approval. That should keep her at least a little more comfortable.

Pallas’ breath hisses between his teeth as he gets to his feet. Between Styx’s and my own injuries, I completely neglected to check on him and Melete.

“You okay?” I ask.

“I will be,” he says. “I got hit in the side pretty hard. I think I bruised a rib.”

I clench my hands at my sides. The payout in Numbers from attacking the hive was huge, but it was a foolish mistake. “You gonna be able to make it back to Carscott?” I ask.

Pallas nods. "If I can't go fast enough, you can take Styx ahead. I'll catch up."

I don't know how to respond. Part of me recoils at the thought of leaving Pallas behind again, but if it saves Styx…

I busy myself with my own pack, adding some of the more essential supplies from the wheelbarrow and Styx’s pack to the side pockets. It’s easy enough to manage the zippers with just one hand as long as I go slow.

I don’t go slow, and wince each time I jostle my right hand.

Finally, I manage to get my supplies packed and ready to go. I pull the backpack on my shoulders and limp to where Melete is packing her own bag. Pallas is waiting for me, and gingerly we lift Styx from the ground into the wheelbarrow. As we set her down, she shifts in place and lets out a small grunt, but she doesn’t open her eyes.

“Ready to go?” I ask. Melete and Pallas nod.

“Before you begin,” Sam interjects. “I may have an alternative solution.”

I look at Sam, almost having forgotten that it was even with us. A surge of anger fills me as I look at it: after all, it was Sam’s information that led us to believe we’d be safe from the queen after leaving the burrow behind. But I push my anger away. Now is not the time for blame, it is the time for solutions. However, I make a note to myself to take all future information provided by Sam with a grain of salt.

“Yes?” I ask skeptically.

“Last night, I explained to Atlas that my colony of Alatir is nearby, and requested that we visit my leaders. He declined, stating it was too far out of the way to visit.” Sam is talking to Melete and Pallas, and I nod impatiently. “One thing that may change your mind: we have a healer.”

“What?” Pallas says. I just keep staring at Sam.

“One of the Alatir from my colony has a skill that allows them to restore other creatures to optimum health. I believe this may be a better option for Styx than returning to Carscott.”

“...are you sure it will work?” Pallas asks. I remain silent.

“As long as she is alive upon reaching the colony, the healer should be able to heal her. While it takes time and energy, I have never known the skill to fail to heal a wound,” Sam responds.

This sounds too good to be true. “Yeah, but it’s still two days travel away, one day more than Carscott. Is it worth the risk?” I say.

There is a moment of silence.

“...It is actually only about one day’s travel from our current location,” Sam finally says.

“Wait, then why did you say it was two days away last night?” I ask.

There’s another pause until Sam finally speaks. “I apologize, I have been deceiving you into traveling to my colony. The ruse is no longer needed, however, as the Alatir healer presents the greatest chance of survival for Styx.”

It’s been deceiving us? Wait…

“That’s why you wanted to know all about the maps!” Melete shouts out, voice angry. I frown at Sam. “How do we know that this is not a lie as well? How can you prove there really is a healer?!”

“Unfortunately, I cannot provide any evidence aside from my word.”

We just stare at Sam. The anger I pushed away earlier returns with a vengeance. Manipulating us into visiting its colony...and now expecting us to trust its word without any proof? Putting Styx’s life on the line?!

I prepare to tell Sam exactly where it can shove its ‘word,’ but Pallas cuts me off.

“Atlas…” he looks sad and his voice is resigned. “I don’t have much medical knowledge, I want to say that now. But I watched a lot of war movies, and every time someone had a stomach wound like Styx’s…” He pauses before continuing. “They need serious surgery to survive. I don’t know if Carscott will be able to help.”

I pause, conflicted. Part of me wants to still yell at Sam, to ignore its offer of healing as simply another lie. But another part of me, the part of me that has only become stronger as my wisdom Number has increased, whispers caution. A small war wages within me between my prideful anger and my worry for Styx. But before it even starts, the war ends. Styx's health comes first.

I turn to Sam, and through gritted teeth say, “Lead the way.”

S: 102

D:100

W: 321

I: 102

C: 72

115 (+115)

Skills: Adjust:Self, Bond:Mental