“Alright there, Trinity?” I call as we pass the slower Bound. She trumpets loudly, expressing her satisfaction. Trinity, the triceratops-like cyran, has taken on a role of taxi, lumbering back and forth between my den and the village. Her passengers pay for their journey with tasty plants or even fragments of Energy Hearts and in return get a journey where they don’t have to use their own feet.
Using conveyance other than their own bodies is a new thing to the samurans, but they seem to be taking to it readily enough. I sometimes even see some of her riders meditating while she trots with an earth-shaking gait.
Though how they can meditate when being jostled about like they are, I don’t know. Clearly they’re better at meditation than I am. Though, to be fair, if I went into Medium Meditation or deeper, I probably wouldn’t notice the jostling either.
At first, that sort of activity was a bit dangerous as they risked falling off Trinity’s back when not paying attention. It wasn’t long, though, before the Pathwalkers realised that they could make things more comfortable for themselves. Between Joy, Grower, and Sticks, they managed to make a sort of palanquin which carries them far more easily and safely.
I did check with Trinity to make sure that it was comfortable for her, but she was actually happy about it – the palanquin distributed the weight of her riders in a better fashion meaning that it makes her job easier. She does need help every evening to take it off and then in the morning to put it back on again, but she has a good strategy for that. All she needs to do is go up to the closest group of samurans – Evolved or not – and nudge them insistently to get any help she requires. By this point, the villagers are all well-trained.
As we run, I see how much has changed in the last three months. The wasteland is no longer grey but green once more. The areas where the samurans have worked on their farming are obviously the most developed, but even the areas they haven’t touched have recovered significantly. No trees, but the area is covered with green creepers and pioneer plants. Nothing I recognise from Earth, of course, but the mixture of thin and round leafed plants is not all that dissimilar from what happens to an unattended garden there too. We have tried to dissuade plants which are too thorny from the path between the village and my den, though.
In fact, I think to myself with a bit of concern, we probably need to find a way to hide the path. It’s getting a bit obvious. Trinity is probably largely the reason for that – a massive herbivore running back and forth several times a day is bound to make an obvious trail – straight to my den. Maybe I can convince Trinity to vary her route a little? Or suggest that Flower makes an effort to grow things while she’s going to and from the den?
As well as the fields, we pass the areas with livestock. It’s hard to think of them that way, but I’ve forced myself to do so, otherwise I’m going to end up entangled by moral concerns again. The fact is that unless I’m willing to be vegan, I have to accept that every creature I eat has the potential to become a sapient being. Heck, perhaps plants are able to gain sapience here too, which would basically mean I’d have to starve or only eat berries or leaves, and that wouldn’t do me any good mentally or physically.
And ultimately, if we’re offering a safe and cosy life for the herd, is it so bad if we take a few of their members to eat? The beasts in question don’t seem to think so.
In the end, we used Trinity and the two stios Cery and Neian as ambassadors. They helped us find a group of their own kind, and then got the herd to stick around long enough for me to be able to form a temporary Tame Bond with the leader. Eventually, anyway.
Through those Bonds, I promised that the herd would be protected and given everything they needed as long as they stayed within a designated area and allowed the samurans to take a number of their offspring. To my surprise, they didn’t have much issue with that. I would have thought that offering up some of their children for sacrifice in exchange for an easy life would have been a harder decision than it actually was, but perhaps I’m humanising them too much.
From what I understand, for them, being relieved of the fear that they would be the next prey was a key factor. They were resigned to lose some of their offspring, especially if they hadn’t put too much time into the young – which they don’t because the samurans take the designated eggs soon after they’re laid to a different area to be cared for. As soon as they’re hatched, the farmers start feeding them Tarra’s growth potions so they are ready for eating in a fraction of the time.
I guess that the herd beasts being oviparous makes a big difference – no real maternal bonding. Not prior to hatching, anyway. The mothers could be a bit protective of their nests, but as long as the farmers don’t take all the eggs, they’re happy enough with not having to worry about hunters waiting to pounce on them when they come to an area to eat or drink – being able to hatch the rest of their eggs in peace.
I dropped the Tame Bond soon after in favour of enabling an Alliance Bond between the leaders and a few key samurans. I figured that it would be good to have more than one samuran as part of the Bond, just in case of a problem.
The killer chickens were harder, largely because we didn’t have an ambassador and they wanted to kill and eat us on sight. In the end, though, I managed to capture four of the group of twenty alive and we avoided smashing too many eggs. Using Dominate to Bind the male – obvious because of his much brighter colours and increased aggression – allowed me to get my foot in the door and offer him the same deal.
Stolen novel; please report.
It took him a bit longer to accept, but he did in the end. Eventually, we transitioned to an Alliance Bond there too. As long as the keepers feed them first with the leftovers from the previous night’s dinner, they won’t attack when the samurans enter to collect the eggs.
So, now we’ve got eggs added to the menu. Not too many for now because the keepers are keen on letting the chickens increase their numbers a bit first, but by the time we come back from the festival, we should all be able to have at least one egg per day. They’re big eggs too – perhaps more like a goose’s or turkey’s in size.
Honestly, the farming aspect has gone surprisingly smoothly. Not to say there haven’t been hitches, there have, but most of them have been reasonably easily solved. Maybe it’s partly that I haven’t had to be too involved recently – after needing a fair bit of input at the beginning, the farmers started getting the idea and began solving their own issues without calling on me. Delegation is definitely key.
In fact, I think that Flower, Sticks, and Tarra have rather enjoyed the project, and they have each quietly confessed that they have grown magically from the experience. That growth is actually visible in the cases of Flower and Sticks. Their mana pools have each increased, no doubt from use – and they have all made more progress towards Tier three. Perhaps I’ll manage to see a Tier three samuran before I leave this world. That would be fun.
We soon leave the farming areas behind and River and I spend the time chatting mentally and catching up – we’ve both been so busy recently that I haven’t had the time to talk much to her.
…And that’s when we realised that we’d forgotten the key ingredient, River moans as the entrance to my den comes into sight, its overhanging roof and intentional mound of earth blocking view of the entrance stopping it from being obvious until one is close.
That’s a pain, I commiserate. Did you have to start the experiment all over?
Yes, but it wasn’t all bad. We discovered that by missing out the Heart’s Blood, we’d actually made something different. It didn’t help with Energy, but it did help with growth. Not very effectively, but it offers another avenue of experimentation.
Good to hear, I comment, a smile breaking out as I see what has now become ‘home’.
Pride perks up from where he’s sitting near the entrance, clearly on guard duty. While I’ve enabled an Alliance Bond specifically between the two of them, if they don’t choose to come with me to Nicholas’ world, I don’t know if it will stick around. At that point, if there’s a way of creating a rune bond between a beast and samuran, Pride and Catch will definitely be the first pair to sign up for it. That Pride is here indicates Catch is meditating inside. Since Evolving, neither Catch nor Pride have slowed down at all.
Pride is larger than he was, now easily towering over me by at least a head. His dorsal ridge has grown into a small sail, and like Sailor used to, he communicates through colours flashing up into it. He’s capable of mental speech, but tends to disdain it, preferring body language. He fits in with the samurans in that sense and he and Catch seem to manage to communicate almost without a Bond.
Most importantly, he now has a special ability which enhances his speed as well as another rather odd ability.
*****Previously*****
I watch the spar, barely able to follow the movement as Pride uses the first ability he gained from his recent Evolution. Suddenly stopping still, he opens his mouth wide and a long black thing shoots out. The Warrior, trying to take advantage of the fact that the scalla has stopped moving, finds that he has a problem: the black thing – Pride’s tongue, it appears – wraps around him and pins his club to his chest. He fights against the muscle, but his struggles are in vain. The scalla tugs him off his feet and closes his mouth around the Warrior’s head. He doesn’t bite down, but the implication is obvious.
Winner, Pride, announces the referee, his usual bored tones sounding surprised. Pride releases the Warrior in his mouth and struts out of the sparring ring with his namesake emotion fairly obvious.
“Did you know he could do that?” I ask Catch. Sure, the ability was called Extendable Tongue, but this wasn’t what I was expecting. The samuran is heading over to congratulate the winner, but he pauses to throw a cheeky blink at me, cheerful glee carrying over the Bond between us.
I shake my head, amused beside myself.
“Trolls.”
*****Now*****
“Is Kalanthia inside?” I ask the scalla. He flashes his spine with a quick hint of blue. A ‘yes’ in his language. If it had been no, it would have been red, and uncertainty would have been yellow. Personally, I don’t see why it’s not purple, but I don’t communicate in colour so who am I to ask? “And Bastet’s there too?” Another flash of blue. “OK, thanks. Let’s go in then,” I say to my little group. River’s already ahead of me, clearly keen to get started with her meditation.
The raptorcats and I enter the open door, Trouble slinking at the rear, clearly rather unwilling to face his mother-figure. After walking through the numerous twists and turns of the entrance passageway, we get to the den itself. Inside, I see a couple of Pathwalkers – Sticks, Joy, and Windy are all here. There are also a number of Warriors present – among them is Catch, though he sits a little apart from the rest.
When he Evolved, he became a Warrior, one of the rarer ones with a lithe scout build. Unsurprisingly, he gained a stealth ability. More surprisingly, he also gained something a bit like my Inspect – if he stares intently at something for a while, he can gain some information about it. The longer he stares, the more information he can glean. It seems to work best against beasts, but he can get some information about plants too. Nothing about rocks or non-living objects, though.
It seems a little odd to me that a being who was born with a significant eye defect would end up with an ability which uses his eyes. Then again, I suppose that eyes are a major part of his life, and his eyesight is now one of his most powerful senses, one of the best in the village since I haven’t chosen to replace anyone else’s eyesight. .
Kalanthia is an obvious figure, leaning comfortably against the wall of the cave. Even if the entrance isn’t really big enough for her to get through, she’s perfectly capable of opening a temporary route for herself. Lathani is lying near her, though unusually isn’t actually cuddling up. Next to Lathani is Bastet. Perfect – everyone we need in one place.