So, a team-game right after having us beat eachother up? That’s kinda nasty.
Not to mention how physically intensive hunting would get. Isaac was sure everyone had enough of running around for the day. One thing was for certain: the second test was not testing for the same abilities as the first one. Cooperation was key, as was establishing a workable group quickly. Those who had made it this far with four people in a group; they could get to hunting right away.
This could be a problem. Maybe. Possibly.
“Hey Tom, want to join our team?”
“Yes.”
“Neat.”
They exchanged numbers. Isaac turned back to the group, glad that that had gone so smoothly, only to find a disgruntled mink in one of Sophia’s classic towel-turbans.
<>
Isaac blinked. “Well, sure, but he’s a minotaur. Just look at him.”
He was half a ton of muscles in repose. He’d saved Isaac, what was there to object against?
<>
Huh. If you put it like that, fair point.
<
Isaac relayed his question to Tom. The minotaur scratched his mighty chin thoughtfully, before pulling out his book again.
“The Way of Doa is my holy text. It was gifted to me by my great grandfather. The text describes how you can become the greatest you there is, through study of the retellings of the stories of heroes, such as Wolf-cloak-sheep-heart, Portobell Clovehoof, and Mooh-of-Meng, and many more. Among those are many stories of small-folk doing what even great exemplars could not. It was a practical decision first and foremost, though your bravery did strike a chord within my mighty heart.”
“I see.”
So, was he some sort of religious man, or warrior-monk? He didn’t have much armor, or clothing besides his pants. Then again, he didn’t need armor if no one dared to attack him. He was a minotaur after all, his arms were thick as tree trunks, and more than that, his people had a reputation as the most frequently represented among the emperor’s royal guard.
“Well, Andri? He’s a big guy who doesn’t even look tired after running an obstacle-course-marathon, even with lugging all this around.” He gestured to the chest, the backpack, and the minotaur sized bedroll.
Tom nodded wisely. “I come with much baggage. But I have a boon that allows me to function indefinitely as long as I have enough water.”
“Ooh, what’s it called?” Sophia asked.
“Steam engine.”
“Cooool.” Isaac turned to Andri. “Well?”
Andri grumbled and threw up his hands, shrugging Bird off his shoulders.
“I believe that is a yes,” Bird said.
“Great,” Isaac said. With a minotaur on their side, everything was possible.“Now, about the test. Does anybody know what a Pach—, Pachycephello… Sophia, help?”
“Pachycephalolepus.”
“Thank you. Anybody know what it looks like?”
He got blank stares from Andri, Tom, and Sophia.
“Shouldn’t you know that?” Andri asked. “It’s latin. That’s a human language.”
“Tom is studied in seven dialects of Gnorm.” If he was proud he didn’t show it. “He should have learned better Standard.”
“There there big guy, everybody has something they’re not good at,” Sophia said. “Heck, Isaac can barely whistle P’cleek even though Claire, our mother and a merwoman, has been teaching all of us for six years.”
Tom squinted as he looked to Isaac. “You don’t look very fishy. Can humans and merwomen…”
“No. Can we get back on track instead of discussing my origins please?” They would just get more confused anyhow.
Andri seemed to agree. He was draped over Tom’s wooden chest, probably because it was nice and warm and he was trying to get dry, which was just about when it started raining. Bird ruffled his feathers.
“Young Andri says: ‘Everyone is exhausted. Isaac is hurt. And the minotaur can be heard from a kilometer away. I have had to catch my own food since I was five.”
That sounds like… horribly irresponsible parenting. Then again, maybe they started off teaching him how to butcher things.
…that also doesn’t sound like great parenting.
“Since I can’t complete this task alone, you should all follow me, and stay perfectly quiet.”
Isaac put a hand on Andri’s shoulder. He bristled, but pointedly did not shrug him off.
“It wouldn’t feel right to let you do all the work,” Isaac said. “Can’t the master hunter find a way to make us help you hunt?”
Andri looked at him up and down, thinking deeply.
<
<
People agreed. After taking the remedies, Isaac was feeling better already. There was still a twinge in his chest that would hurt if he got kicked by a mule or tripped and fell face-first, but it was manageable. Everyone was still more than done after the marathon, so they’d likely have to take it slow today. He turned to the minotaur, who was brushing his fur down with some sort of brush made specifically for his big hands.
“Anything useful in that trunk of yours?” he asked.
“She is not mine. Just carrying her.”
The chest giggled, and this time Isaac knew he hadn’t imagined it. Its lid opened just a crack, exposing pointy teeth and a fat, pink tongue that lolled out across Andri’s forearm. He launched off of the lid like a rocket. With creaks and rattles, the chest shivered in seeming delight.
“You called~,” drawled a sleepy, inhuman voice. It was warbly and artificial in a way that told Isaac that the thing in the box didn’t have a mouth to speak, or even vocal cords. “Hello~.”
“Mimic!” Andri dove behind Isaac, holding him in front of himself like a human shield.
Ow, ow, claws!
He was yapping and saying so many things very quickly. Isaac turned to Bird, who landed atop his head with regal poise.
“Ahem. I quote: ‘Heard of carcinization? That’s mimics and rifts. In time, every rift will have mimics.’”
Isaac frowned. He turned to Sophia.
“He’s not exactly wrong.”
“‘They are dangerous,’” Bird continued. “‘Still wild, barely civilized, not even.’”
“Is, uh, that true?” Isaac asked the chest.
Its tongue retracted ever so slowly into the gap between lid and trunk. Somehow, he got the impression that the mimic was… sulking? “I am Chessica, a good mimic. I do not eat people. I am a good representative.”
“Representative of what?” Isaac asked, plucking cat-claws from his shirt.
The lid sprang open a bit again and Isaac got to see a whole row of jagged teeth like a crocodile’s. “Mimics. Duh. We have our own continent on our nursery world—
<>
<
Andri’s voice was starting to reach heights inaudible to the human ear.
An entire continent — it was hard to imagine. Was every mimic shaped like a chest, or were there mimics shaped like other furniture? Would traveling to a planet like that mean that he would be driven somewhere by a car mimic, walk past a door-mimic to sit on a chair-mimic and have a cup of juice or something from a juice mimic? Where would the juice come from, did mimics domesticate other animals? Obviously they did, but how if they didn’t have hands or legs, and what animal, and how much…
“—and everyone really wants to integrate into the empire, but we need to prove that we’re civilized first. And so, there’s is me, here to show that you can rely on your mimic pals. And I — we — don’t eat people.””
“Saying that twice makes me less confident.”
“I am frieeendly. I have a prehensile sticky tongue. Think of me like a frog. And I do not eat—”
<
<>
<
<
His pupils dilated into huge saucers. Isaac had to look away.
“So, not to be rude, but I’ve never met a mimic before. How do you even move?” he asked.
“Those who want to move get a [Telekinesis] skill or something similar, since our shells count as objects. It makes hunting a lot more fun, y’know.”
“Uh-huh. And when you catch your prey, do you....”
“Eat it whole? Sometimes. Table-food can get so boring, y’know? Sometimes, you just need something with bite in your teeth, something wriggly, something gushing with juices and fat and…”
Chessica looked around. Even Sophia was starting to look uncomfortable. “Please ignore that. I was thinking loud intrusive thoughts.”
<
Isaac considered. On the one hand, he mimics were widely known as staple rift monsters, and any attempt at uplifting and integration couldn’t have been started that long ago, meaning they were still partially feral. On the other hand, a mimic on their team could be useful in… some ways.
She wasn’t absolutely exhausted, for one. And her Standard was pretty good.
Isaac looked to Andri, who shook his head, and Sophia, who was shaking just as violently. Tom seemed unbothered, possibly because he trusted her, but probably because he was too big to fit in her mouth. With a sigh, he turned back to Chessica, who had her slab of a tongue and mostly closed her lid.
Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.
Probably a sign of politeness for mimics. Same as how merpeople are told not to smile too much.
“So,” he asked. “Mimics are ambush predators?”
“Oh come on.”
<
<
He trusted Tom. And giving people a chance was as important as anything.
It’s what Claire would have done.
“Oh, very. We have no smell, make no sound when we’re not distracted, and can strike very quickly. And I have two skills, that’s right, two.”
It wasn’t a plan, just little threads that loosely fit together. Isaac was cooking up an Idea, and Andri was looking like he was dreading it. It was his call in the end. They had agreed that he would lead this hunt.
“Can you work with that?”
+++
There was something about this world that had Samantha Hallows, aka. Miss Miff, restlessly twirling her locks. Trickles of water ran down the invisible barrier of force of her rainshield as she inspected some movement on the hillside two kilometers out.
Just a rabbit.
She turned back to her sheets, trying and failing to get the numbers to work. Not enough drones, not enough assistants, no emergency-teleport allotment from Numa 2, spotty records of this barely two-hundred year old world, too many problems, too few adventurers. They lacked the specialized personnel required to set things up. Numa 2 couldn’t even spare them an earth shaper. Gods, she hated the adventurer exam, hated what it had become, and what people were twisting it into.
She’d only volunteered for exam duty because the pitch seemed perfect. ‘Get out of the office, go to a tourist-friendly low-tier world, wrangle some kids, then enjoy your vacation’. It was the perfect timing, since the dragon invading the nearby planet meant that as a former combat-specialist she needed a damn good reason not to participate in that endeavor.
Not being suicidal was supposedly not good enough. She just wanted a bit of quiet after all the stress of adventurer life, the rifts, the challenges. One time, she just wanted something easy, once.
Being an examiner was not easy. It was less a vacation, and more like wrangling a hundred full-grown children trying to kill each other. With magic and knives and whatever sharp or blunt object they had nearby. The prep alone was exhausting, and worst of all, the ‘tropical island paradise’ had been nothing but cloudy and rainy for the past two months.
“Samantha! My chummiest compatriot. Are you doing alright on your end?” came O-BEE’s clattering voice from a nearby drone. It hovered in place, offering her a glass of mana potion diluted with a local brown juice.
She took the pitcher, emptied the brown slurry in three big glugs, then slumped into her Tier 11 lawnchair, the only comfort she’d found on this planet so far. “No, no I am not.”
“Oh. That is sad to hear.” A pause, a distant cry. “Do you wish to talk about it? I have recently completed Advanced Human Psychology III. I am a good listener, even without ears, ah-hah-hah.”
She was about to say something when her augs pinged her. A nearby drone expanded into a screen many times its size, showing three different perspectives of an ongoing ambush. Every adventurer was familiar with kill teams, but this time two of them were going at each other with clear lethal intent, despite knowing that she was watching and that they were going to get their entire bloodline banned. But sometimes, there were factors at play that made throwing away the future of a few assets worth it.
Ugh. Politics. I’d rather be doing spreadsheets all month.
With a groan, she lifted her hand, and some three hundred meters further into the forest three contestants rose, confined in soapy bubbles. She checked their names just to be sure and yep, the assailants all had throwaway cover names.
Maybe if the big-wig adventurers stopped screwing with each other’s kids so much we’d actually have time for a more thorough inspection of the local competition.
A flick of the wrist sent her bubbles and their cargo careening over the mountain range.
“I don’t get it,” she finally said. “We go out of our way to visit low tier planets for our exams. ‘A lack of means drives creativity’ and all that. But then a third of the slots end up being taken by those who can afford to follow our ships from nearby planets, and another third come from the loins of our very own houses of D’Haag, Merrimen, Yikzit, et cetera.”
“I understand your concerns. You are valid.” There was a crackle as he zapped something on the other end of their comms link. “However, there were less than a thousand adventurer-scions from Numa 2 at the start of this exam. It is a good thing so many of them regularly make it this far. It shows that whatever squabbles there might be between us, that we are doing something right. And don’t forget, many among those who fail will have to leave Numa 2. There is simply not enough space.”
Samantha slumped down further, until she was barely holding onto her chair. “I’d like my next assignment to be on a real pleasure planet. I want to go see tourist hotspots and lose myself in the crowd. I want to eat ice cream and pretend that my biggest worry is what I’ll put on my plate at all-you-can-eat buffets. All this planet has is water and islands, islands and water.”
“And systemic corruption.”
“And that.” Oh, the corruption was going to bite someone in the ass someday. The governor was dragging his feet, or diverting resources to personal projects. “In confidence, O-BEE? I feel bad for our contestants. It’s not their fault local subcontractors bailed on us and left this course half finished. You improvised well, but the people trying to exploit the exam are ruining it for everyone. And now, now everyone’s going to fail. It was a mean choice of the board to decide to let Madame Alis proctor another group.”
“Is she that bad a teacher?”
“Worse. She used to be the leader of Infosec before her retirement. She isn’t supposed to be on the combat track, but she’s all we could get.” And she’d been lecturing on the Numa before it was known as Numa 2. “There are microphones and loudspeakers hidden all across the forest. I don’t think she is even giving them a chance.”
O-BEE’s silence spoke volumes.
Well, if she fails everyone, I might be able to go on a real vacation.
+++
Morning had come and gone hours ago, as had Bird, who upon hearing the renewed cries of the kookaburras in the canopy had raced off like a bird-shaped arrow.
Isaac had combed Baphomet’s info pack and come to the conclusion that every adventurer exam test unit was insane. One of the previous tests had required people to learn how to walk on water in four days. Isaac didn’t even know that you were supposed to do that without a skill.
I wonder how hard it is to actually be an adventurer, he thought as he shot through the forest.
They’d spent over an hour trying to actually find out what they were supposed to hunt, when they overheard another group talking about how they had finally cornered the right type of wolf. When they snuck closer, they didn’t find a trace of them, but everyone agreed that bagging a wolf was their best bet.
They were on the hunt, all five of them, including the mimic Chessica. The plan was simple: Tom would scare their quarry, Sophia and Isaac would run up along its side to prevent an escape as they led it to where the expert hunter mink was hiding in ambush.
The one creature they had found that maybe fit the name Pachycephalolepus was a wolf that roughly went up to his hip, or Sophia’s chest. Unlike most known canines it was a solitary hunter, and Sophia confirmed that it came from offworld. A predator like that had to be bad for the local biosphere, right?
The specimen currently rustling through the underbrush a few paces to his side was rather smaller, likely a young adult. It juked to his side, and Isaac made some noise, scaring it back towards the middle. They were almost there, almost…
A blur of something fell from the tree tops. Andri caught the wolf, or would have if it hadn’t stumbled and veered off to the side.
“Shit!” he heard Sophia swear, followed by the sound of a collision, and canine yowling.
He rushed for them, finding Sophia on the ground, an innocuous chest sitting with the back end of a wolf hanging out of it, and a tree shaped like a spider, eight palm-fronds grasped around Chessica like a cage.
“I got the dog,” she said a bit muffled. “I am a good mimic, a very good mimic.”
The spider palm picked her up.
“What the hell?” Isaac asked. “What the absolute fucking hell?”
<
<
“And Chessica, obviously.” Isaac ran up to the tree, which he only dared to do because its one mouth was full, and bashed it with his bat.
The bark was barely scratched. Andri’s Chakrams didn’t do much either, and when he tossed one up to cut into a frond, it got stuck there.
“Out of the way.” Tom walked over and punched the tree. It did a lot more than Isaac’s useless flailing, but the palm was bendy enough to cushion the impact. His brows furrowed, and Tom took a step back, reared a fist back, and punched. “[Bash]!”
The tree dented. It splintered roughly at the base, bending down slowly as the fibers connecting it couldn’t bear the weight anymore. Its palms were contracted like a dead spider on a stick, but together they tore the awfully sharp leaves and stalks off easily enough. The inside looked like a horror-movie anemone, with tens of spider-pedipalps ringed around a hole that led into a central digestion chamber riddled with bones and a yellow, decayed sign reading ‘Danger - Spider Palm infestation’.
The bites had done barely anything to Chessica besides leave a few pin prick marks.
“Itsch alive,” Chessica said around her prey. A pitiful whine escaped from inside her mouth.
“Right you are.” Isaac wiped his forehead. Going above and beyond was not going to be possible for them. They’d have to make do with just passing this time. “Let’s get this one back and call it a day.”
The plan… well, it had worked, kind of. Andri was a good hunter. Tom was reliable. Chessica was loyal. He had done his best, as had Sophia. Now, everyone was pooped, but they still found the energy to haul the wolf back to camp.
I wonder how they’re going to prepare wolf meat in a tasty way. I hear it's gamy. Maybe I’ll get to see some high tier skill shenanigans.
“Fail!” he heard a voice yell from across the impromptu gathering of tents and cooking spots provided by the examiners. People were presenting all kinds of animals, from geckos and birds to fish and in one case, a deer covered in moss-like green fur.
“Fail. Fail, fail, fail.”
Jeez. I hope that eye-twitch means she’s in a good mood.
Then it was their turn to present their catch of the day. Madame Alis stared at it the same Claire had once stared at him when he and his siblings presented her with a bucket of slugs they’d caught for fishing. She was staring for such a long time that Isaac was starting to gain hope.
“Pachycephalolepus,” she eventually said in a voice like a popping vein. “Lepus. Not Lupus. I asked for a rabbit and you bring me its predator, you imbeciles, you clods, you absolute philistines!”
“But—”
“Does this look like an escaped pet to you? That’s a wild animal with a concussion! Fail, fail, fail!”
Isaac opened and closed his mouth wordlessly, but the examiner was already going off on someone else. A blip on his trusty brick informed him that their group was assigned tent 27. The walk there didn’t feel quite real as they settled down around it, and let the silence speak for their frustration.
It wasn’t fair.
He was hungry, he was moderately pissed, and even the rain stopping wasn’t enough to lighten his mood. He looked over to Alis, who was sitting imperiously on her stool like a petty little empress. She was high tier, and an adventurer. What did he know, compared to however many decades, centuries, or millenia’s of experience she had gathered?
“So, we’re just going to take this lying down then?” Sophia asked bluntly. “If this were a written test, we’d have missed the mark by one damn letter.”
A few gloomy faces met hers.
“Sometimes, luck is the greatest skill,” Tom said with downtrodden evenness. “Tom should have learned latin.”
<
Andri let out a frustrated cry as he typed in their group chat.
<
<
“Shhh, she can hear you,” Chessica whispered.
“So what? Doesn’t change that our answer was wrong. Doesn’t change that we can’t do anything about it.” Sophia’s eyes followed Isaac as Isaac stood up.“Where are you going?”
“Nowhere in particular.”
I’ll get up. I’ll get up and tell her that I think the instructions could have been more clear. If she yells at me, I’ll know that she’s just an asshole. And then I’m going to go to sleep, and worry about life tomorrow.
All didn’t seem well in adventurer-town. The three examiners were bickering as he approached. O-BEE was the only one looking happy about it because his mouth was mechanically incapable of frowning.
“It was a simple trial of misinformation and critical thinking!” said Madame Alis, arms crossed.
“Nobody knows latin except people who’ve taken the course on Numa 2!” Miss Miff countered. “I can abide you hiding loudspeakers through the entire forest spouting bullshit, but this is blatant favoritism. Is your nephew perhaps attending this exam?”
“Pah,” said Madam Alis, and then said it again, because she could. “They should have figured it out. Some groups did. Yet none of them actually bothered to read through the itinerary saying that today’s main dish included rabbit meat.”
We have an itinerary?
After a moment sorting through his various mail, he discovered that they did. It was an innocuous document hidden in plain sight. And on page twenty three, in tiny script in the margins, there was exactly the information they would have needed. The madame had even given them a hint, empathizing how their goal was to make dinner.
He felt a bit stupid then, which didn’t change his opinion about her.
Their three examiners had come to a conclusion that ended in Miss Miff phoning someone through her augs, pacing around and gesturing in frustration while annihilating a floating bowl of dark chocolates.
I guess adventurers are just people too. They can make mistakes. He frowned. But I’d hate to be the one paying for those mistakes.
A second later, his brick got a ping. The second test was being redone under the purview of a new examiner. When he looked up, Miss Miff had walked straight over to him and was staring down at him as if there was no other path she could take, and he was in the way.
“You look like a person-shaped question mark” she said with a tired sigh.
“I, uh…” What a weird way to ask if I have a question. “Is the next test being held now?”
“In an hour, once Slipstream arrives.”
“Oh. Ok.” Isaac blinked. “The hero of the Zumarr famine?”
“The very same. Now go and rest. This alternative test is practically a free win if you aren’t too stupid to eat food.”
If that was her way of apologizing, Isaac took the dark thoughts brooding in his mind and put them in a mental bin. When he returned to the party to spread the good news, he was met with tired cheers and grumbles. Andri had found Isaac’s sleeping bag, so Isaac made himself a bed of backpacks and found enough fight in him to at least do some light reading.
Not gonna get surprised like that again.
As he lay on his sleeping bag, reading through the various handouts and Baphomet’s info pack, his stomach grumbled, and he found himself distracted more than usual.
If Slipstream was their proctor, they were sure to be fed well. But the question remained: How did someone make a test out of eating food?