Next to the cheapest inn in all of Honeytown (the one that had rats[1] in the cellar, bats in the attic, and brats in the ground floor, all of them thoroughly unvaccinated against rabies) there rested an alley. It was more than the space between two contiguous buildings, more than a dark stretch of a settlement where crimes were eagerly begotten. It was a place of gathering, a place where lovers met each other (and got robbed), where the homeless could find refuge from the cold winds of the morning (and get robbed), a place where drunkards purged their stomachs from the night’s catch (and got robbed), and were robbers hanged out (and got, you guessed it, robbed). Now, it was also the place where two children, a girl and a boy, that avoided robbery because the girl bullied the thieves into cutting their own throats, spun a Rottweiler puppy on a spit, the girl pouring a tiny amount of salt and spcies on it now and then.
Jagger watched the heinous act with jowls pursed. Maybe it was the up and coming cannibalism, maybe it was seeing his peer being slow-roasted over the crackling fire, or maybe it was that, despite the act being so wrong, it smelled delicious.
Brunhilda was in charge of whetting the knives her pupil and Samari had borrowed from the innkeepers. She lay in the middle of the alleyway, forelegs crossed, and haughtily stared at the blades, bluntness scurrying away from them as she held her judgement. “Burr.”
Kalon’s Avatar had gotten a piece of rope from scrapping a stray memory, and now looked about the infrastructure of his mind for a place to hang a noose from. To his misfortune, it was all an open nothingness below and clear void above. Except for the skeleton of a wolf or dog that lied, bleached by the scorching sun and denuded of the last gram of flesh by mind flies, around a kilometer to the east.
The puppy being roasted had opinions, legend tells. Had. Before being skewered by Samari. I know roasting puppies isn’t very heroic of an act for our protagonistic group, so, for the sake of your moral high ground, let me ease your worries with the following: The puppies were Nazis. You may not believe me, and that’s okay, because you would be believing a lie. But, for the sake of your peace of mind, think of the puppies as being worse than Hitler.
Samari spun the disgraced Nazi slowly over the fire. The puppy didn’t don a snazzy uniform, nor proudly displayed swastikas on its coat. It had even killed less Jews than pathogens considered mostly neutral or philosemitic. But it had changed breed in front of Samari’s eyes, and if that’ wasn’t evidence of delicious internalized bigotry, nothing was. OF course, Samari had no idea what a Nazi was, because Cabaret didn’t have world wars: it had angry cultivators causing the damages equivalent to an army, gods against which hatred was more than justified, and Brunhilda.
The girl’s mouth watered as the poor thing slowly cooked over the fire. She hadn’t even skinned it, as in Samari’s full-teethed opinion, skinning most animals was a waste. One just had to get over the soft and gentle aroma of burnt hair and it all worked out splendidly.
Kalon had sat a few paces away. He was hungry, but he couldn’t eat a puppy! They looked like Jagger, and Jagger was his brother from another cabbage. And, what’s worse, once the hair of your nostrils was burnt by the stench of scorched keratin, the food began to smell really, really good.
“Kalon, a few more turns and this little one will be well-done,” Samari announced, humming a happy tune as she spun their meal once and again to spread the heat evenly.
“Samari, I get that puppies were cheap and that we had limited coins, I am not that stupid—”
“Yes, yes you are,” Jagger and Samari interrupted in unison.
“I may be that stupid. But even I know that eating puppies is wrong.”
“Kalon, I lived alone in a ghost town for almost a year. I ate remains of people after making sure they were properly cooked. I ate squirrels. I ate, even, berries that were sour and acidic. I prefer cultivator meat, if only slightly, above those berries. Many of you are… too fibrous, your muscles are not juicy at all. No offense meant but…” Samari saw the stare in Kalon’s face and Joined her hands. “I am being weird again, am I not?”
Kalon nodded in silence, his distressed expression still present in his face.
“Well, sorry. Truth is… I feel at ease with you three. I was alone for so long,” she whined, taking the skewered puppy out of the fire and placing it over a cloth piece she had bought so they wouldn’t need to eat in the dirty floor nor inside that inn. “I met you less than a week ago but I feel at ease with you three. You have treated me relatively well, despite how annoying and/or lethal I can get at times. And yes, you are pretty annoying yourselves too, but… it’s clear you are good people.”
Jagger decided not to laugh at this. She was opening her heart to them and not in the way that implied jets of blood shooting from her chest.
“Yes, Jagger, I called you people.”
Jagger took exception at this remark. “Well, fuck you too.”
This elicited a smile from Samari, but it soon got lsot as she began thinking of her mother. She missed some things about her, despite hating her guts for what she had done to her. Or how she had done her.
Kalon forwarded a finger, having finally assembled a semi-coherent thought.
“So, Sam, what exactly happened to your town?”
She leaned forward, keeping her tone low. “Well, the Sub-Aryan traps burned down most buildings and killed almost everyone in Diamonter Town. They spared me and a few other children. It didn’t took long for the others to go away or die, so I found myself surviving alone, in sole company of my wolf friend, Ruth. I carved myself a mask out of wood and began making intricate traps that would entertain the gods when triggered, a sort of performer of death. I was scared, I needed all the help I could find, and if cultivators make one big deal with the heavens we Arcagnostics, even if reluctantly, make hundreds of smaller ones. The next cultivators that came seeking blood for sure wouldn’t spare me: I needed to end them while remaining hidden. And it often worked, except for the fact I didn’t plan for a talking dog tracking me down.” Samari ripped an ear from the roasted puppy and started nibbling on it. She chewed it fast, swallowing after not even three seconds. “I may have gone overboard with the pepper.”
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Kalon ignored the commentary about spices and tried to think of a new question. His brain was, metaphorically, asking him to pay ten gems or wait four hours for energy to refill. “So, hum… you want revenge? To get strong enough to kill those bad cultivators?”
Samari began laughing such that she was glad she hadn’t taken another bite of the puppy. “No, Kalon, no. That’s too lowly and unproductive. To seek revenge would be unbecoming of me. There’s nothing of value to gain, and it would take me years to achieve.”
Kalon’s back stiffened up. “But they must pay! If you don’t seek justice, nobody will! Don’t be stupid, Samari.”
“You wrongly assume somebody ought to.”
Jagger jumped on Samari’s lap and gleaned at her. “Are you really nine years old? You don’t talk like one.”
“Yes, I was born nine years ago, I am just well-read! Ask again and you become my next barbeque!” She crossed her arms and pouted. “Idiots.”
Samari wrapped up the already cooked puppy and handed it to Kalon. There were few better ways to force a change of subject. “I want to see if consuming faux-Rottweiler-puppies benefits your cultivation. I have no use for this knowledge right now, but it could aid me , for example, to elucidate how the box that spawned them works at an spiritual level.”
“Are you basically using him as an authenticity test, then?” Jagger asked, seemingly not very interested in whether the answer was a yes or a no.
Samari smiled and joined her hands. “Exactly. If he is going to benefit from having an Arcagnostic for a friend, I am going to squeeze every drop of utility I can out of him to further my own knowledge of the world.”
Jagger tilted his head. “Then why don’t you just pick a road and start cultivating? You could test those things on yourself.”
She leaned over and picked Jagger up despite the puppy’s murderer’s stare, and, standing, raised him above her head “You have a point. I’ll follow the road of the Rottweiler!” She proclaimed. One second spanned. Then two, then three. And nothing happened. No divine light descended to bless her, no choic of angels sung the finding of a new cultivator. “See? It doesn’t work.”
“Well, no, you cannot use another cultivator’s chosen weapon,” Kalon said in an unusual smug tone. He knew about the subject at hand, and that was a position where he didn’t find himself often. “You could try with Brunhilda, though.”
Brunhilda glanced at them, snarled, and then reality warped around her, frightened, so she wasn’t snarling anymore. “Burr,” the bitch lamented, downtrodden. She was a victim of her own powers.
“No, picking a road requires intent to follow it. And Samari has none.”
“Correct. Do you want to be put back on the floor, little scrumptious puppy?”
Jagger shook his head and began panting. He was in the perfect position to urinate his captor’s face. He could, he had the power right now. And she had the power to cook him alive. Decisions, decisions…
Kalon unpacked the cooked puppy wrapped in the mantelpiece and held it in front of his face with both hands. He couldn’t eat that. It looked so peaceful, so defenseless and with a so perfectly browned underbelly. The hair had come off during cooking, the puppy’s skin shrinking and tearing to reveal the tender flavors waiting underneath the surface. It looked so peaceful, and Kalon was hungry, and the puppy was already cooked and…
Luckily for us, Kalon’s stomach took over the thinking department and tried firing the brain, just to find out it wasn’t even employed.
The boy sunk his teeth into the tender flesh of the Magically Conceived Organism (MCO), sending the god of GMO’s reeling backwards from the shock. He hadn’t noticed Samari doing it, as looking at what Samari was up to was considered recreation, instead of work. It was similar, for them, to watching a comedian.
Like a Siamese kitten being crushed under a road roller in a way non-referential to Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, the meat purred pathetically as it got chewed by Kalon. As teeth squeezed the fatty juices out and the boy moaned in delight. Bite by bite Kalon peeled the well-done muscle off from the carcass, and Samari’s fingertips contacted, briefly and one by one, with their non-superimposable mirror images.
Kalon’s spirit welled inside its channels. Enticed by the fresh Rottweiler essence getting introduced into the boy’s system, it pumped with renewed vigor. Who cared if they were imitation puppies? They could be assimilated: to crawl or to run were both valid approaches to advancing down a Road. Prancing isn’t, though: we know how that ends for deer.
Kalon dropped what remained of the half-eaten puppy as he noticed the veins of his arm beating. It burned from the inside, emerging through the skin as festering geysers of energy. It felt as if there was a little Rottweiler inside every pore, scratching and nibbling on the edges for it to open and be let out.
Kalon’s world went round and round, the image of Samari roasting another puppy on the spit and Jagger being given a tongue bath by Brunhilda mixing with the piled up boxes by the further exit from the alley, with the streak of starry sky over them, with the dusty concrete ground. It turned so fast and with such force that, were it a song, Fito Paez and Warner Music would sue for copyright infringement.
And as it all mixed, a silhouette formed on the darkest spots. A couple yellow eyes lit amidst the abstract and deformed landscape, blinding Kalon to everything else.
“Breaking through, my boy?
Kalon didn’t answer, he was too engrossed in his confusion, in the sensations pounding out the floodgates of his body and soul.
Samari watched him with the level of concern one generally reserves for the food at the back of the fridge, that which isn’t expired yet, but soon will be, and yet you don’t want to eat today.
“Are those fleas crawling out of his skin?”
Jagger approached Kalon and licked his skin, lapping up several little black, moving dots. “No, puppies.”
“Figures.”
The twerp began to spasm while, inside his mind, images of ferocious dogs chewed on the delicate threads of his spirit. It hurt! It hurt so good!
In this state, Kalon bit his tongue, and it bled. He tasted the iron and smiled with sharp teeth as some of his molars and premolars changed shape into dentine scissors, his canines became more becoming of their name, hence becoming becoming of becoming becoming.
He gagged and hissed like a cat trying to vomit a fur ball, eyes blind and looking in two different directions.
“Welcome, Kalon, to the next stage of your road: Rottweiler Trainer Extraordinaire. Now you are allowed to summon me to take over and fight for you, increasing your power onepointtwentyfivefold.
“Guh?”
The avatar sighed. “It’s like you have two and a half more fingers to punch things with. In each hand.”
“Awesome!”
“My personality will override yours while I take over.” The floating, blurry Rottweiler head informed.
Kalon realized something, which was unusual for him. “What’s your name, Avatar? You ought to have one.”
Silence settled between them for a couple heartbeats.
“I have none,” the words rushed out of the avatar´s mouth.
“Aijabnon is a cute name. Can I call you Abnon?”
The Rottweiler head ellipsed out loud. There were tangible spaces of frustration between each dot.
“Is that a no?”
“You are special Kalon. Now, let me take over. It won’t hurt you.”
Kalon accepted woithout protesting, the transformation rippling over his body, making him taller, more muscular, and giving him a snout. In other words, he became a fucking furry.
The dog-man straightened his back, standing two and half meters (for the North American fauna, this is about 0.02688172043 statues of liberty, pedestal included) tall, casting a shadow under Samari that was as dark as his fur.
He cracked his knuckles. “So you tried to kill Kalon the other day, lassie. I don’t take kindly to people who mess with my idiot. Choose a bone from your body, and I shall leave it intact.”
Samari regarded the avatar with a disinterested gesture. “I am cooking.”
“Hey, don’t ignore me. Jagger, tell her to not ignore me!”
Jagger was far too busy grooming Brunhilda’s leg to care.
“Brunhilda, Tell Jagger to not ignore—“ he was interrupted by Samari jumping to reach his face with a hand, and grabbing onto it, her spirit grasping his inside the nostrils. “You are far too annoying.”
And that’s how Kalon and his avatar learned about Samari’s dogpicking skill: the horrifying yet casual way.
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[1] Polytheistic.