Thesa woke up in the early morning. Another weird dream she couldn’t remember. She felt more awake than she should for how early it was. Suddenly she did have the wherewithal to realize that Merijest's boobs had been pressed against her back all night…
Luckily, by the time she woke up, Merijest had already moved. After a brief moment of privately suppressing her bodily urges, Thesa looked around. Merijest had rolled onto her back. Her blue stomach and…chest exposed to the world as always.
In that moment, Thesa felt a stirring in her chest. She wondered if it was some side-effect of being undead. She was surprised at just how much she wanted to remain there lying beside the demoness…
Then Thesa realized the monsters creatures non-sapient [Familiars] were gone. The Cow-Dog and the Chimerblin were nowhere to be seen. The Three-Eyed Grackle hadn't crowed at the first sign of morning, and the Hundred-Legged Snake hadn't– actually the Hundred-Legged Snake was off in the corner doing its creepy little thing. But the rest were still gone!
Thesa still wasn't sold on the monster petting zoo Merijest was amassing, but a sudden mass disappearance was concerning. I should wake her up, Thesa thought, but wait! Maybe they just wandered out of the room or something. I don't want Merijest to worry. Besides…it is sort of my fault. I freaked out yesterday and Merijest was so busy helping me that she forgot to put up her warding circle-thingy that she usually does. Probably I can do this myself and prove my worth as a party member.
The room with the pond had two exits, so Thesa checked the attached corridors with no luck. Everything was so quiet. It was too easy to hear her inner voice. Merijest’s distractions had helped her out of her thought spiral the night before, but it was first aid on a major injury. The wound, the source of the harmful symptoms, remained.
If my whole life up until now was just messing me up, she thought, then how am I ever supposed to be ok?
She tried to focus. Maybe there was an obvious explanation of the missing [Familiars] that she wasn't seeing because she was so distracted. She went to the pond to splash water on her face.
The water. It rippled. Fuck…
The tangle of algae and rock she had seen before was unfurled to reveal six strands of kelp, each ending in a horse's head. They were like floppy, underwater, carnivorous hobby horses. And the missing [Familiars] were being dragged into its underwater den.
“Merijest!” Thesa shook the demoness awake. “A Kelpie! It has them!”
Merijest opened her eyes to see Thesa summon her halberd and (hastened by her ruminations) dive headfirst into the water.
***
image [https://alicepow.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/monsters_kelpie-1.jpg]
Kelpie
Rank: B
Attacks: Bite, Entangle
Notes: A distant relative of the hydra, the Kelpie patiently waits. A Kelpie only strikes when its prey lets its guard down.
***
The sensations of being underwater were similar to most of Thesa's dreams. Dulled and hazy. Her hearing was muted by the suction of the water. Her vision blurry. Her body floating but heavy and slow.
She could just barely see a blurry shape that was probably the Cow-Dog. Thesa kicked her legs behind her, drifting slowly against the drag created by her tank top. She approached the struggling creature and the aggressive equine head clamped onto its hind leg.
If she grabbed the kelp-like neck, the head would probably let the Cow-Dog alone. But that was because it would turn toward her and she wasn't confident enough in her ability to cut it before it could grab her by the hair.
Swinging the spade of her halberd against the resistance of the pond water was out of the question, but she could manage a slow stab.
The Cow-Dog was still struggling, which was a good sign. Thesa stabbed at the Kelpie's neck, hoping to split the kelp-like structure. She missed. She pulled back her arm and stabbed again. A hit! The Kelpie's head remained clamped on and twitching but the Cow-Dog quickly scrambled to the surface of the water.
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Thesa started to wonder why she wasn't running out of air. Possibly Merijest had cast [Lung Capacity] on her from above, but there wasn't time to ponder. Her chest stirred again at the thought of the demoness’s support (although Thesa hadn’t realized that was why and anyways there was no time for that now).
She looked around and saw another blur of movement. She kicked toward it. The Kelpie's neck was coiled around its wings and torso. The horse mouth was chomping toward the Chimerblin's kicking claws, looking for a place to bite into.
The chaos of kicking and biting made Thesa's approach dangerous, so she looked further down the kelp-like neck. If she got too close to the base, the Kelpie's other heads would spring toward her. Kelpie's prefer to keep a few heads on reserve to defend their weakest point.
Because the Kelpie's neck was in a knot around the Chimerblin, Thesa aimed a little below the knot, just out of reach of the kicking legs. She grabbed the neck with two hands and pulled it apart with all her might. The neck snapped and the head went limp. A rope snaked through the water from above, looped around the restrained Chimerblin, and pulled it toward the surface.
Thesa looked around for the Three-Eyed Grackle, but as a smaller creature it was difficult to locate. She kicked in the direction she thought she'd seen it from above, but didn't see a thing.
None of the Kelpie's heads were extended very far from the core. She kicked downward, closer to the tangle. There, trapped and motionless, was the Three-Eyed Grackle. Two Kelpie heads began ripping the dead bird apart for food even as Thesa wrapped a hand around the bird’s head.
Before she could get another hand on the creature’s corpse, one final rope snaked down from above and wrapped around Thesa's torso, pulling her to the surface with only the skull of the Three-Eyed Grackle.
***
On the surface, Thesa and the other surviving [Familiars] sat by a warm fire. Merijest, who had been commanding the ropes by magic, now cast a cold spell over the surface of the water, creating a thick boundary of ice across the whole pond.
“It won't hurt the Kelpie,” Merijest said as she joined the ring around the fire.
Periodically, the Cow-Dog stood up, shook off some water, then returned to lying down.
The Chimerblin laid on its back, licking its fur. When it had first breached the surface, the creature had the most pathetic look on its tiger-like face.
Merijest was still facing the pond. “I can't revive it. The sigil I gave it must have already cast a [Half-Life Revival] on it before we even knew what was happening.”
“I'm sorry about your [Familiar],” Thesa said. She held out the Three-Eyed Grackle’s skull. “Should we try to kill the Kelpie?” This was Thesa trying to make Merijest feel better.
“It's an animal. It needs to eat. I bear no ill will towards it,” Merijest replied with a shrug as she lifted the skull from Thesa’s hand.
Thesa tried to say something about how much Merijest cared about her non-sapient [Familiars]. She really, truly meant it as a compliment. However, because of the…everything about her…it came out as, “you're so much more forgiving of monsters than people.” Thesa did not realize this was a weird way to say it.
“Well ‘monsters’ have always been more forgiving to me than people,” Merijest shot back.
“Wait! That's not what I meant, um…” Thesa racked her brain trying to rearrange the words to reflect what she actually meant. “I meant it as a good thing, kind of.”
Thesa tried copying Merijest's actions from the night before, wrapping her arms around the demoness’s adorable tummy torso. However, she had forgotten she was still soaked in pond water.
Luckily this made Merijest laugh. As the demoness shook her head, she turned around and looked at Thesa’s long hair, tank top, and shorts all dripping water.“You know your clothes would probably dry faster if you took them off.”
This had the desired effect of causing Thesa to turn bright red, jump back, and start mumbling something about staying ready in case of…something? Merijest smiled at her dopey, amusing [Witch] who had very stupidly leapt straight into the water with a Kelpie to save her [Familiars]. She enjoyed Thesa’s freckles and earnest face. For just a second she felt a seed of hope in her stomach.
As day turned to night, Merijest prepared a brief ceremony for the Three-Eyed Grackle.
Thesa wasn’t sure what death rituals would look like without [Holy Deliverance], so she started looking around for a box or something.
Merijest, however, was something of an expert on the subject of death… With a canine tooth, the demoness bit the palm of her hand. Her mouth remained over the wound, allowing saliva and night-sky blue blood to mingle. Into a handful of dirt, she worked the mixture until it was clay.
At some point, Thesa had just started digging a small hole, still unsure if it was necessary.
Merijest pressed skull into clay, folding it in so they were completely enveloped. She placed the embalmed lump into the hole Thesa had created. Then she replaced and packed the loose dirt. With both claws resting atop the fresh grave, Merijest muttered something in the Dead Tongue.
Thesa and Merijest sat beside the fire along with the Chimerblin and Cow-Dog. The demoness regaled her [Familiars] with anecdotes about the Three-Eyed Grackle. They had all been there and Thesa was the only one who could understand spoken language, but it was necessary.
Overnight, something sprouted and blossomed atop the grave. A scaly stem like an avian leg was planted, stationary, in the dirt, black feathers positioned like petals around a single eye. A new species of creature in the shape of a plant with the building blocks of a bird. It would propagate here in the dungeon.
"Is that..." Thesa hesitated. "Is that the Three-Eyed Grackle?"
"No. It is something new," Merijest replied. "Death always begets."
***
image [https://alicepow.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/monsters_gracklelily-1.jpg]
Grackle Lily
Rank: D
Attacks: Psychic Poison
Notes: Grotesque and beautiful, the stationary Grackle Lilies spread quickly and exude a powerful mind-virus.