7.11
“You cannot defeat us, Revenant King! For we healthily worked through our issues with good communication!”
“I wish you just said the power of friendship.” - Interaction between Imamu the Lone Swordsmen and the Revenant King during the final battle.
Utoqa was flexing his injured hand when my familiar noticed something. The toad ambled towards the smoldering ruins of the manor. My hand rested on its back, “What do you see?”
Rotten. Scent. Brimstone. Demon.
“The rotten smell of brimstone and demons?” I muttered.
“That would be me dawg,” Noam called out, he scratched the back of his hand. “Damn this thing is itchy.”
“He’s right,” I thumbed towards Noam, “it’s probably him,”
Half-blood. Fake. Imitation. Scent. Pure. True
“I need to mana bond with that thing, one sided conversations are just not interesting to listen to,” Noam said behind me.
Utoqa stepped up beside me, flexed his arm and ripped off his cast, what frightening recovery speed. “The woodskin senses danger. An old scent of predators.”
I gestured at the toad. “You understood it?”
“I understand the look of prey in fear,” Utoqa answered.
“He doesn’t mean offense with that,” Noam stumbled forward. “He’s just blunt like that Mr Toad.”
My familiar was silent, instead it started towards the manor ruins.
I shared a look with Noam, then Utoqa. Noam grinned, and I shook my head, he’s still recovering. Not even mentioning his skills, his body was just burnt out. Pouting, he went back to the camp and laid on a log, snores following soon after. Utoqa nodded, and I nodded back, he walked forward with me, flexing his arm and checking his range of motion. He drew a sword. “They stole Gift, I require it again.”
“Think it survived Noam’s napalm?”
“Fire will not destroy it,” the lizardfolk replied simply.
“Then let’s hurry, our window is closing.” The Travelers would have respawned by now, and had time to drum up a party to this location. Only distance separated us.
Seeing fire up close made me… nervous. It took me a while to recognize the emotion, but not long to realize it wasn’t mine, but of the body I inhabited. The heat was scorching, and part of my body demanded I seek moisture and cooler pastures.
The swamp elemental pushed forward, shoving away debris. It too was nervous, but it was an elemental of the hot and humid, it didn’t have as great reservations as the instincts of my myconid body.
Utoqa found his tomahawk ax quickly in the rubble, tossing the sword aside for the much more familiar weapon. Gift was still sharp, what little blackening on it was quickly dusted off, revealing pristine ivory white.
“What bone is that made from?” I stopped to ask as the toad continued forward, sniffing the ground like a blood hound.
“Dragon,” he answered.
My half-formed reply was cut short by a loud guttural croak. The toad was violently shoving aside debris. Utoqa and I rushed to it, coming just in time to see it reveal a great stone slab set in the ground. The toad’s tongue shot out, a long sinuous thing made from thick lengths of rope, it stuck to the door, and with a great heave it pulled the stone slap to reveal a passage underneath.
“This isn’t the burrow Noam and I escaped from.”
“Cellar or dungeon,” I corrected. “Trapdoor could also be correct, though you would be referring to the door in that case.”
Utoqa nodded, holding Gift in a guarded position. He didn’t have a chance to take point though as the toad rushed forward. Squeezing itself into the tight corridor.
I gestured at Utoqa to take the back. “We’re going to need to work on communication, elemental. Do you have a name?” I asked as I followed behind it.
It sent back a concept, too complex to really be simplified with a single word. Names were important to beings of its type. Most didn’t have one, and it was part of the majority.
“Want a name then?”
The toad’s rush paused, it turned awkwardly within the cramped space to look at me. Bargain? It asked.
It’s tongue flicked out and tasted me. Dustin the Thrice-Blinded.
My name, and it speaking it somehow encompassed the entirety of me. I shoved the tongue off my face, “No, you can’t have that one. I’m still using it. I’m offering something new.”
It turned around, continuing down the stairs, but there was a thoughtful glint to its eyes now. The next concept it sent back took a second to parse. “You prefer earning a name naturally through deeds accomplished in this realm, but you don’t mind someone with my title naming you?”
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Another concept, this time a ritual. It looked like a serious one as well, much more complex than my Summon Wisps. “And you want me to do it properly through a big important ritual.”
Affirmation. Deal.
And depending on how well I did the naming ritual and the ‘quality’ of the name provided, it would be willing to work for free?
“I’ll put it into serious consideration.”
We reached the end before long, the toad familiar letting out a threatening rumbling as it surveyed the room.
It was a chamber, walls of rough hewn stone blocks carved with intricate scripts glowed softly with pale golden light. The glyphs were beyond me, but I kept a mental note to compare it with Celine later. They ran the length of the walls and led to the center of the room where they climbed up onto a raised alter like intricate circuitry.
There lay a bloody tooth, a molar the size of my head, its roots buried in pink flesh. It was covered in the same scripts, but even as I watched it, I saw the scripts eroding. The glyphs were disappearing a chunk at a time, as if something were taking bites out of it.
I noticed my secret give a warning. The secret of Fenkai gave me knowledge of directions, time and weather when the world was ordered, but that sense was slipping, instead new magics were filling me. Undecided like a coin flipped still spinning in midair.
Utoqa gestured to a spot in the wall, where a droplet of melted slag had dripped down from above and ruined one of the glyph lines.
“Utoqa, elemental, we are leaving.”
The last glyph on the tooth disappeared.
There was a force, an indent on my cap, I saw it too on Utoqa and the elemental. A tracing of circle, pushing down on our skin like a maw of teeth. Utoqa’s Gift swung out, but it hit nothing.
And I felt something bite.
A chunk was ripped from my cap, same as Utoqa and the elemental. Our flesh went flying, and the flesh on the molar grew.
Utoqa was already running, leaping off the elemental to gain distance. I followed close behind, a Misty Step teleported me beside the molar just as Utoqa reached it. He slammed down with Gift, carving a deep chunk as bone proved tougher than enamel. Tracing my staff, I cast Shillelagh and threw my own blow. Enhanced by magic, I widened the gap.
It wasn’t enough, I felt another indent on my arm as phantom teeth prepared to Bite.
Rot Spores putrefied what flesh the tooth had, sloughing off in great blackened oozes. A mana headache staggered me backwards.
Utoqa delivered the final blow, his ax split the black miasma to reach the tooth underneath. Striking the carved channel, he broke the tooth in two.
It only unleashed what was within.
Phantasmal teeth spilled out, tearing at us and the ground beneath. Lashing out in hunger and rage. Like a swarm of piranhas they tore through my barkskin armor. An ivory whirlwind that stripped and tore. Utoqa disappeared under the blinding assault, buried under teeth much like I was.
A long tongue pierced through the enamel walls, sticking to my back as the elemental pulled me out. I landed with a thud, ichor bleeding through my wounds and already congealing. The elemental had pulled me out first. “Get Utoqa you idiot!”
It quickly complied, fishing the battered lizardfolk out. “Next prioritize my non-Traveler allies. I’ll be fine dying a few times.”
The attacked slowly petered out, leaving only a bowl shaped hole where the alter had once stood. Other than the split tooth, everything else had been ground to dust or covered in teeth marks.
“Something strange has happened,” Utoqa said.
I scoffed, “Tell me about it.”
The lizardfolk took me literally and pointed behind us. Where the light of outside filtered through the stone door frame. The staircase was gone, instead only three steps lead to the outside.
“Oh, you meant that,” I knelt down, feeling the first step. “Some kind of space fuckery? Explains how the slag got down here.”
The glyphs had ceased glowing now. I took three short steps and found myself back on the surface. “The basement must’ve been directly under the manor, the magic made the staircase unnaturally long, when Noam burnt the mansion down he melted some magma that dripped down and ruined the magic circle. Leading to whatever was that tooth breaking free.”
The toad hopped up beside me. Demon. Fragment.
“If that’s the case we’re withdrawing,” I answered. “We’ll get Johnny, Celine and Tai and leave this city.”
“Why?” Utoqa asked.
“I read about demons in books.” One of the first things I did upon entering Indiri was absorb every piece of information I reasonably could from a library. “Thought most of what was said about was exaggerated. After I met that hydra monster in Lake Bayt, I think differently. Even a weak lower circle demon would be beyond our ability to fight. Let’s just run, our lives aren’t worth risking.”
“Noam would disagree.”
I paused in surprise as I turned to Utoqa. “You disagree also?”
“No.”
He didn’t elaborate, so I pressed. “Then why did you say that?”
“Because Noam would disagree,” he answered in his characteristically literal way.
“Only if we tell him.”
Utoqa stared at me with his blank, reptilian eyes. “I will tell him.”
I clutched my staff tighter. “Why? And give me a good reason. Don’t just repeat yourself.”
He tilted his head, a habit he’d been picking up. After a moment of thought, he answered, “I trust Noam more than I do you.”
I paused, his increasing skill in conversation almost had me forgetting how blunt he was. “For what reason?”
Utoqa thrust a finger towards my chest, the gesture forced me back a step. Then he pointed at himself. “We’re both…” he paused in thought, “...hardskins. We would both betray the other to ensure our own lives. Noam would not. He is similar to Naukoth. Softskin. He cares about the pack.”
“What I am suggesting is to ensure the survival of the party.” I stepped forward, even standing as tall as I could he still dwarfed me a good few feet. “Are you suggesting I don’t care?”
“No, you care about just two of them,” he answered, shrugging. “You would’ve abandoned me in the stomach of the memory eater. Even when you suspected I existed, because it risked you. It was Noam that made you save me.”
The fact didn’t bother him at all, he just accepted it as a fact of life. After all, he would’ve done the same thing in my position. It’s why I couldn’t even muster false anger against him, he was just too reasonable.
The swamp elemental moved to stand behind me, glowering at the lizardfolk. The distance between us was close, dangerously close, I would not win a melee against him. “Did you think telling me this would lead to a good result for you?”
My grip tightened on my staff.
Utoqa’s hand fell to his ax.
I blinked first.
Sighing, I collapsed on a nearby stone, “Go and tell him then. You are being a fool. You think telling Noam would ensure your own survival because he cares about you, but he is not a creature of rationality like you or I. I’ll tell you how this will go, you will only invite greater battles relying on Noam.”
“I left my nest to depart from this rationality,” Utoqa answered as he strode off.
“Then you may be the smarter one of us two,” I sighed. Stroking the swamp elemental’s back as I watched him go, disappearing past the smoldering ruins and back into Noam’s clearing.
“Am I bastard?” I asked the elemental. I shook my head. “No, don’t answer that. I lost in ethics to a cannibalistic psychopathic lizard, whose only priorities in life are survival and scavenging. He might even be better than me on the basis that he’s at least honest about his psychopathy.”
When I followed back, Utoqa even had the decency of pretending the confrontation never happened, or maybe it genuinely never occurred to him to tell Noam I briefly thought of knocking him out to keep him quiet.