I’m tempted to dance while I wait, -- they’re zombies, there’s screaming, no one’s dying, so musical? -- but opt to put them out of their misery. Another slurp of the big bowl of miasma with meaty bits, and I swear they collapse with relieved sighs. Probably just their souls leaving their bodies. Or aborted screams. Dunno. I shrug as I wait for the bodies to disappear, reiterate my bank if soulless rule, which causes some to disappear, -- I can’t automate this or is it counting if they were alive when the rule was set? -- before preparing to rinse and repeat until I’m the only one I can find in my lake.
“Guess that’s it?” I shrug then remember that I made a room of soul shakes. “I’m just making more work for myself, aren’t I?” I grumble out loud while trudging to check on the teas and jellies. “Stew would be nice… Ooh!” I perk up as I remember I have eel. “I can --.”
I suck my teeth as I’m interrupted by a quick poke from Spring Cow, and another by Silent Howl in case I didn’t get the first one. I sarcastically thank Silent Howl, before shambling out of my void, and transferring to the priest.
“What --? Why are we at a town?”
My belligerence is nutshot by a kneeling uppercut from my surprise, that, -- with my luck and what’s happened so far, -- this fucknugget is taking us to a town. A populated town. With children.
-The fuck is wrong with you?- I send while hissing at him, teeth clenched.
I go to my logs as he explains that this is to get me acclimated to interacting with people who don’t know me, and to refresh his supplies. He honestly thinks that because he thinks these people don’t know me, -- that they’re ignorant as fuck considering how everyone’s heard of me for some fucking reason, -- that they’ll be safe if anyone tracking me decides to show up and try to steal me.
“Have you heard of Rainbow During the Full Eclipse?” the priest -- the piece of shit that he’s now turning out to be, what the fuck is my luck? -- asks a child, stopping them as they run by. He inadvertently gathers a crowd of innocent blabber mouths while smiling sweetly.
“That’s a sign that the gods are angry, and bad things are going to happen,” one of the kids, -- not the one he grabbed. That kid looks like Spring Cow’s being a priest, and the poor kid’s now a man, -- chimes in.
The priest glares at me like I’m the problem. If anyone comes around talking about some subject best left alone, the kids are gonna remember getting manhandled by a different stranger, and asked about the same subject. The priest rolls his eyes and lets the kid go after giving them bribe money – just buy candy, it’ll feel better in the morning. And another glare from the dude who endangered the kids in the first place, really? -- before making disappointed faces at me.
-*My name is Kisandera, asshole. Running River renamed me so that the crap that did happen wouldn’t happen,*- I remind him, and he freezes.
Did he really forget? I throw my hands up and start walking out of town. Don’t know where I’m going, but I’m not dropping my anchor here. Although apparently my scales are super fucking traceable. I look around and Silent Howl PMs me to let me know I don’t shed as much because I’m learning how to fight. Good to know.
-*Sent to investigate Kisandera the “Wandering” Cataclysm after numerous void incidents and disappearances, gets involved in thwarting a few theft attempts, and still thinks everything’s gonna be fine~.*-
I know I’m inner monologuing at Spring Cow, and gesturing out loud, but I’m kinda pissed. If he can endanger a village, -- starting with its children! -- then I’m allowed to flip him off while calling him an idiot.
-Fuck you, you’re an idiot,- I whip around to do just that, flipping him off – with both hands! -- and walking backwards. -*Two groups of protectors were involved in the last attempt, gods only know what the person who told them to weaken me at the coal distributor’s was trying to do, and you think no one’s going to follow your path, -- I’m going to assume you’re so upstanding they know the route you’ll take to get to your well-known destination, -- and you thought this was a good idea.
-You wanna know how I got my reputation as a Catastrophe? ‘Cause I keep surviving people like you and the patrolmen,- I spit at him, bank it as the ground starts writhing, then turn back around to continue storming down the road. “Ass. Hole.”
I wander around gathering bits and pieces as I move down the road. Our path’s already compromised, and I can probably find a way to fuck something else up, so why not? I’m careful not to try eating rocks or wood, just nibbling on the occasional small leaf instead of fistfuls of random stuff. If anything tastes good I make a show of spitting it out, banking what I was chewing on, and “angrily” punching the offending plant to gather seeds, branches, leaves, fruit, whatever. At one point I violently uproot a plant and hurl it into the forest, banking it as it settles with the hopes that no one sees it disappear.
I look up to see some random dude staring at me like I’m insane, and, if he stays perfectly still, I’ll never notice him. I clear my throat, honestly embarrassed that I didn’t notice him sooner, but I cross my fingers while dusting myself off in the hopes that he’s alarmed by my behavior, not the disappearing bush.
“Um…” Do I ask about the bush or just what he saw? I scratch the back of my head, clear my throat, and keep walking while avoiding looking at him.
I get a PM that I nailed it right after I have the thought. I snort, amused, and Silent Howl informs me that Spring Cow is still in the village. When I ask him how he can tell I feel like an idiot when I realize they can probably PM one another. His response that he’s using my map, which only one of us can use at a time, is mind blowing. Then infuriating. He points out that I rarely think of it, but he uses it to track my progress and strange events. I make faces, stick out my tongue, then flip off the air with the knowledge that he can infer that all of it is meant for him.
I get another message from him, brace myself for more bullshit, and he tells me to go to the mountains on my right. I put both middle fingers in the air and spin. I stop, check to see if I can still see the dude who caught me beating the shit out of a plant, -- yep, he’s still watching, -- use his relative position as a “don’t go that way”, and proceed to continue to fuck off. Another message, this time I’m supposed to go back and a little more to the right than before, followed by a message telling me that there’s a grove of death moths I might be interested in.
I flip off the air, keeping my head lowered, as I head towards the mountains.
PMs from Spring Cow telling me not to go to the mountains, with reasons that I skim over, -- none of them look valid or interesting considering he just killed a village, -- so I redirect my finger in the general direction of the village. More PMs telling me he’s almost finished shopping and the finger gets raised higher, my arm extending a little more towards the village, and by the time I send that if he gets to me before I reach the mountains I’ll stop, my arm is fully horizontal, fully extended, and my elbow kinda hurts.
I continue spamming him with messages beginning with, he’s not allowed to leave the cart, followed by he’s not allowed to leave the mule. He’s not allowed to pull the cart, the mule has to pull the cart, he’s not allowed to help the mule pull the cart. He’s not allowed to leave the mule because if it dies again I’m not reviving it. He’s not allowed to do anything other than leisurely ride after me on the road, because surely things aren’t so serious that he has to hurry. Imagine all the good information he’ll gather on how many corrupt officials are trying to turn me into a treasure farm!
Better yet, how far does he have to push before someone tries to hurt him so they can hurt me? We’ll surely find out when they find him without me. They’ll probably assume I’m in some kind of storage trinket, enjoy the cavity search! Maybe the villagers he fucked over can give them pointers?
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Silent Howl sends me a message, not telling me to stop, but telling me that the strange man is following me to make sure I don’t go to the village, so I should move with some urgency. I groan in disgust as I realize I’m literally just leisurely walking through some woods at nearly the same pace as the cart. Fucker reprogrammed me!
“Fack!” I shout, bracing myself then lifting off.
[Wind Walk Successful]
[Successful Use 3/100]
[Qi -10]
[Karma +100]
[Current Condensed Qi: 1,831,227/23,825,716]
[Current Qi: 1,879,521/95,7945,100]
[Current Karma: 95,302,867/107,275,977]
[Max Will: 9,579,451]
[Mortal Wallet: 12E,692K,180P,687R,179Da,155De,105k]
[Spirit Wallet: 0Dr,0Ph,0Th,1325Di,126Co,10680St]
“Oh, shit, really?” I look down in surprise.
I knew flying still cost something! But it doesn’t pop up when I start the skill, not every time. It’s happened while I was in the middle of using it last time, didn’t it? Silent Howl sends a poke that it’s distance or time spent flying, and we’ve already had this conversation.
“No way,” I scoff mockingly, well aware that I still can’t be bothered by shit that wants to play coy. “I’d never forget such important information.”
He tells me I’m talking out loud and I lightly touch down wondering when that started up again.
“No, I’m talking to you!” I point out. “Technically.”
He tells me to stop and I waggle my hips attempting to get my walking stick to copter through my robes. Doesn’t work and I realize how close I came to rug burn.
“Ack!”
I pull open my robes to make sure it doesn’t look like a stripper face-planted, -- I’ve never gone, but I’ve heard stories and called people out on coming to work with patches of glitter in weird places, -- then freeze as I wonder how awful it’d be for whoever got shed scales in them.
“How am I making this worse?” I shout as I let my robes close.
I have to think about it when Silent Howl sends me a message that simply reads “talent”. When I do figure out it’s a response to my kinda maybe not entirely rhetorical question, I tell him to go fuck himself, and continue air bounding towards the mountains.
[Wind Walk Successful]
[Successful Use 2933/100]
[Qi -10]
[Karma +100]
[Current Condensed Qi: 1,831,227/23,898,966]
[Current Qi: 1,850,221/957,945,100]
[Current Karma: 95,595,867/107,275,977]
[Max Will: 9,579,451]
[Mortal Wallet: 12E,692K,180P,687R,179Da,155De,105k]
[Spirit Wallet: 0Dr,0Ph,0Th,1325Di,126Co,10680St]
“Hmm?” I drift to the ground as a poke from Silent Howl reminds me to eat. “Gods Bless me with a better attention span…”
I’d been just going along, slowly tuning out the notifications and messages from Spring Cow. Weird how Silent Howl can get my attention. My stomach pinches and I realize that maybe I’m just hungry and decided to stop floating aimlessly to begin looking for food. Now I’ve got something else to meditate on. Was I even grabbing shit any more? I drop my anchor next to a tree while wondering if I was even heading in the right direction.
I shift to the kitchen, unbanking a dragon-headed eel. I practice skinning the eel while eating berries and fungus bread with the fragments of skin I end up cutting and tearing off. The taste is nice, meaty with sweet, crunchy bits, but the fucking texture of soggy jerky is a no. A bowl of my fresh brewed tea, -- the good shit from Red Silk stored away for now, -- and I wonder what I should eat with the grilled meat.
“Salad,” I say. I’ve got nuts, berries, and greens. Why wouldn’t I? “No brainer.”
I’ll set up a soup later, but I’m not adding soup or stew time on top of skinning and cooking time. A message from Silent Howl telling me I better not cook it is dismissed. I might not be able to cook it out there, but my void seems to follow my rules. Something that listens to me? Imagine! I’m eating grilled meat, and a salad. I’ll figure out desserts later.
I’m tempted to tear into the raw, still not skinned, eel, just pick it up and tear chunks out of it, not even chewing, and I remember flying for fucking ever for no reason is hungry work. I split the eel, ripping out the guts, eating them while wondering why the fuck I’m eating them, especially after my “it’s getting cooked” holy roller bullshit, -- I do want to eat grilled eel, and I’m assuming enough people love it that it’s my problem now, -- and then splitting it before tossing it on a stove heating element directly. I’m not even trying to come up with a suitable pan.
I keep an eye on it while eating bread and berries, wondering if I should just go me and eat some of the bodies. At the thought of Qi rich corpses my mouth doesn’t water, but my stomach does scream “Gimme” pretty loudly. And aggressively.
I don’t know when my eyes lost focus, but they refocus on the bare lake bed. I’m squatting like a gremlin, slurping the miasma stone like a hydrogel. But~ it’s mist, innit? I shudder and pull away from the meat jelly dispenser, looking around to see if there are any priests or corpses looking at me judgementally, and remember that my shame can be read in my logs.
“Fuck! The eel!” I shout, leaping to my feet and flinging the miasma condensor
I’m mid-lunge, transfering and reaching for an empty burner, the sight so not want I want to see I barely register the burner is empty. There’s no burnt mess, no burning mess, no charcoal, no nothing. Just a pristine burner. I stand up straight and unbank some cooked eel, the split eel appearing in my hands.
“Oh~!” I wanted food to auto-bank before burning when I was making the cakes, but I kinda figured it just applied to cakes.
I go to tear a chunk off of the cooked eel, -- with my hands, I’ll chew on the bones later, -- but all I’ve got are greasy hands. I... ate it?
“Tch! Already?” I check my logs to see that I did dump some scraps -- no idea what’s considered scraps considering I ate raw intestines, -- into the fish farm. “Fine!”
I unbank and split 3 Dragon-headed eels, leaving the skins on this time. I split the innards, tossing some into the fish farm, and scattering the rest around my little not fishy smelling hut, wondering if it’ll help my plants and the aesthetics. I try to drown out my inner thoughts as I remind myself that I recoiled every time I saw the shack, thinking it’d smell like rotting fish, and here I am trying to make it smell like rotting fish. Droning loudly isn’t enough to drown out my brain, so I shift into the corpse pit to see if anything’s changed.
“That’s probably bad,” I say as I look around and the place is filled with a writhing grey mist. “Most definitely probably not a good...”
I try to bank the “still” corpses, as in not soul occupied and trying to re-emerge corpses, and there’s barely any change.
“Definitely a not good,” I say before laying on hands to clear the air
I’m shuffling through the pool of corpses, banking the drained bodies as I empty them, -- of souls. I’ll deal with the inventory stuff later. -- and groan, hanging my head as I remember eating souls makes them part of me, and my thoughts might be louder than usual because they’re not just my thoughts.
“Fack!”
I swear I have a cheer squad chanting some nonsense in the background as I grab and grope my way through --. Where’d all these bodies come from? I dumped the soldier, patrolmen, military-like personnel, in the lake. So who the fuck are all these people? I grimace as I realize these might be those people who were disappearing from Eager Heart, and that they might not all be dead. To be fair it looks like some of them are just sleeping, but it’d be really bad if some of them really were just sleeping.
I look down at a little chubby cheeked brat. Taking a seat I put my head in my hands, and sigh. It’d be really, really bad if some of them were just sleeping until they got compressed into a corpse pet and left in an enclosed box for days on end...
“I am not gonna check my logs right now. If they weren’t dead before, they sure as fuck are dead now...” I sigh, standing up and getting back to work.