After the drotlings painted on a couple hundred more Locking runes, the beast was deemed sealed, and celebration ensued. A very polite celebration, of course, for it was the drotlings. It mostly consisted of the children gathering around in a circle, blinking slowly at each other, and shaking hands, as if they were businessmen who had just agreed on a company merger.
Meanwhile, the beast inside the cage had grown exhausted by its own yelling and panting, and had started speaking to Akemi in a very different tone. A slow, measured one.
“Human,” it said, speaking to her through the facade of the cage door. “I know you can understand me. I want to arrange terms with you.”
Akemi, who was leaning on a wooden pole next to the box, arms crossed, was surprised by the turn of conversation. She had been watching Bamo in amusement while he interacted with the drotlings; they had taken a keen interest in his wings and overall bat-anatomy, and were toying with him like one might operate the limbs of a large action figure.
“Terms?” she said, speaking back to the beast in its own language, which felt low and scratchy in her throat. “Now you want to negotiate? After all that screaming?”
The warthog blew hot steam out of its nostrils. The fog traveled out of the small slits of the cage, hitting Akemi’s face like volcanic smog. She grimaced.
“I can make a pact with you,” it offered.
“A pact with a demon. Oh, fun. Let me guess how this ends.”
“A demon? I am not a demon,” it said, greatly offended. “I am the one who has been cursed. You think I ravaged this stupid little village night after night out of my own volition? What a waste of my time that would be. There’s nothing of value here. These creatures taste like decaying meat. They are nothing but pure rot inside, fungus. Soil.”
Akemi raised her eyebrows. If Bamo is to be believed, that’s exactly what they are.
“Making a pact with a warthog sounds even less interesting to me. At least with a demon I know I’d get something, even if that something is probably the magical equivalent of an STI,” she spoke back, lowering her voice now. “What can a warthog get me? A bunch of bugs on a stick?”
While the drotlings were fairly distracted by their rituals, she still wanted to keep this conversation short. Hearing the sounds her mouth was producing to mimic his speech, the low gurgles and grunts and whines, it sounded like pure indigestion. They would notice it after long enough and grow suspicious of her. A suspicion she didn’t need.
“It would be a pact of transferral. I would transfer the curse from me to you,” it replied. “So that when the sun dawns, I will no longer evaporate.”
She laughed in disbelief. “So my reward is I get your curse?”
“Yes,” it said, as if this was deeply logical.
“You realize then I would evaporate when the sun comes up, right?”
Steam puffed through the cage again. “Only if you’re stupid. Once I give the curse to you, all you have to do is find shade and stay there until nightfall.”
“I really don’t think you understand the main reason why this sucks,” Akemi said, more amused than anything. “Why would I want the curse you are trying to get rid of? C’mon, hog. Think harder.”
Akemi brought her shoulders off the wooden peg, ready to end this conversation.
“Tch. Humans. I thought that part was obvious. Do you think I am normally this size?”
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
She paused. How was she to know? It wasn’t like she’d memorized Pyre’s encyclopedia of monsters. Big hog, small hog, demonic hog—she had no reference point for if one or the other was out of place in Kodra. This place was festering with all kinds.
“You’re not?”
“Of course not. But that Warlock had to go and make me so garish and unsightly. I’m usually much smaller, angular, and pretty. My fur is a very nice dark brown.”
“Are you speaking to the demon?”
Akemi’s breath hitched as Mort’s voice tore her out of the conversation. He was standing in front of her like a ghastly apparition, not a single emotion registered on his childlike face. The total apathy was somehow even scarier than anger or rage or suspicion—it was unreadable.
She knew her next move meant the difference between her accessing the fjord or being kicked out of their little party. She had to pick her words wisely.
So she sighed, and said, “Yes. The thing is trying to reason its way out of its cage. It corroborated my theory about it evaporating under the sunlight, though, so good thing you poked those holes at the top of the cage. Your warthog problem should be solved by sunrise.”
“I see,” was all Mort said, before giving her a considering look, and beginning to trail off toward the fjord, beckoning her to follow.
She didn’t give the warthog another thought before following him and gesturing toward Bamo, who was currently being dressed in a flower crown. He begrudgingly broke away from his babysitting to catch up to her, huffing as he matched her pace.
“I was busy,” he said. “They were about to teach me a new crafting technique.”
“Great. Don’t care.”
For a child, Mort’s pace was brisk; he threaded eagerly through the grass, eyes closed, whistling. His bare feet stepped leisurely over the long weeds, ladybugs and grasshoppers all flocking to his ankles. He seemed to attract wildlife wherever he stepped, like an insect magnet.
“Thank you for telling me the truth, Akemi, about your conversation with the hog,” he said, his back to her as they walked. “I would have known if you had lied. And a liar would not have been permitted inside the fjord. The moonlight purifies all, cures sin from the sinner.”
Her stomach turned. Thank god she had taken Bamo’s advice for once, then. She didn’t want to know what cures sin from the sinner meant in practice.
“How would you have known?” she asked, genuinely curious. “That I had lied, I mean.”
Mort abruptly stooped down into the grass, knees hidden in the weeds, surveying for something. A moment later, he reappeared, a beetle running along his finger. He brought it up to his nose and stared at it, examining. The beetle’s antenna sputtered at him.
“Beastspeech,” he said, before placing the bug down on the ground again. “You may be able to understand all tongues, but we are not so different. The drotlings can understand all the languages of the forest. If you had accepted the demon’s pact, even without choosing to release him, we would have understood. And we would have killed you for the transgression.”
“Oh,” Akemi said, blinking speechlessly at him. “A happy turn of events, then.”
“Indeed,” he said, smiled, and continued walking.
“You were considering making a pact with the demonic hog?” Bamo said, his voice shrill as he fixed her with a glare. His failed flower crown was dipping just over his eyes, which diminished the menace considerably.
“Of course not. But when someone makes me an offer, I usually have the decency to hear them out. It’s just the good, moral thing to do.”
“Moral? Good? Do you hear yourself?”
“Of course,” she said, smiling brightly and devilishly at him. “Gosh, it really is apparent how much you still have to learn. Maybe I should start tutoring you on the side, yeah? Ethics 101.”
It looked like Bamo was about to pop a gasket as Akemi came to an abrupt halt.
Her body had registered it before her mind did. The lush forest, the dense trees, it all came to an abrupt, sudden halt, as the forest floor took a steep dive down.
Her heartbeat hammered, her body forcing itself backwards as she faced down the dramatic edge of a cliff. She looked from side to side, unable to process what she was seeing; to her right and left, the woods ran in a straight line, and yet in front of her, bright and blue as day, was a giant expanse of blue. A ravine trapped inside of a forest.
And, stranger yet, parallel to their cliffside was another, identical cliff, with three figures standing on its edge: a child, a bat, and…
A woman.
That’s us, she thought, simply. Mirrored.
“What the hell is going on?” Akemi said, blinking. “Is this real?”
“I guess it is called the moonlit fjord for a reason,” Bamo mumbled, drawing his wings in.
“It’s time,” Mort said, then turned to them. His eyes were closed, and they remained that way as he crossed his arms over his chest, and began to back up slowly toward the edge. “Do as I do, and you will survive. In the name of the Dark Lady… grant me passage.”
“Wait!” Akemi shouted, stepping forward urgently as the child fell like a domino over the cliffside.
Her hand clawed around nothing but air.