Before
Bastet’s an absolute trooper, gaining a second wind and pulling back into her orbit the couple of woodlice which had diverted to me. While she once more plays distraction, her own agility far superior to my own, I grab a spear from my Inventory and another good sized stick from where it was lying. With judicious blows, I manage to corner one of the creatures. Using the branch and the roots of a nearby tree to form a triangular ‘cage’, I stop the creature from just rolling away. Stuck, it reacts by uncurling, its head and legs partially emerging from underneath the shell.
As soon as I have a target, I attack it with my spear, my improved accuracy enabling me to strike it directly through its suddenly vulnerable head. It lets out a high-pitched shriek, its legs desperately scrabbling at the earth. It tries to curl up again, but its head being pinned to the ground means it doesn’t succeed. I twist the spear, conscious of my partner’s tiring state. In addition, the shriek has grabbed the attention of the other woodlice and she’s having to work much harder to play interference.
The creature makes a final effort to escape, but it’s for naught; a moment later, it goes limp. Success! I don’t waste any time, pulling my spear out and grabbing the branch again. I manage to corral another of the woodlice, Bastet allowing it past her guard intentionally. A similar scenario plays out – two down. I grimace as I remove my spear, though. The sinew binding holding the flint tip to my spear didn’t like the twisting motion, especially not when damp; it’s come off and got stuck inside the over-sized insect’s head.
I don’t have enough time to do more than frown and drop the stick of wood which used to be one of my two spears: my success on their group-mates has earned me the attention of the rest of them. Once more having to dodge out of the way of large, rolling objects, I barely have a moment to retrieve my knife from my belt. The woodlice are intelligent enough to adapt, though, and the same technique doesn’t work again. Unfortunately – for them – they aren’t intelligent enough to pick a winning strategy to combat mine. Instead of continuing to roll and leaving themselves vulnerable to my corralling, they preempt my actions by uncurling and going on the attack.
With three converging on me at once, I’m bound to take some injuries, and I do. One latches onto my leg at an unfortunate moment and I’m left off balance, ripe for the next to knock into me and send me thumping gracelessly onto my butt. The third quickly takes advantage in striking at my back. Their mandibles are strong and sharp, the one on my calf digging in deeply, while the one attacking my chitin covered back actually manages to cut through the armour and nick the skin beneath.
I can definitely see how these creatures would normally take creatures down – knock its legs out from under it and then bite into it while it’s down. Fortunately for me, I’m not down and out, and I’ve got a fang of my own. I stab at the one that currently has its mandibles digging deeply enough into my calf to hit bone. Once I’ve sunk my own knife in deeply, I twist and wiggle my blade until it goes limp, all the while trying to fend off the one that’s not managed to land a hit yet. Not easy with my range of motion so constrained.
Although my next target would normally be the one biting through my armour, its steady gnawing cutting more and more into my flesh, I’m not alone here. Bastet deals with that even as the one previously trying to bite through my calf twitches in its final death throes. Lacking my knife, she goes for a simpler solution: chewing off its head. Trusting in my partner, I attack the final one, using my full Strength to hold it still for a moment while I jab my knife through it. I look around quickly in all directions but everything is suddenly calm.
The fight over, I gingerly pull the two sets of mandibles out of my body, quickly casting and channelling Lay-on-hands to stem the blood-flow from the holes they made in me. Bastet has slumped to the ground in exhaustion, her eyes closed and her breath coming heavily through her mouth. I send her a wave of concern, but she just replies with a feeling of tired reassurance.
“Are you hurt?” I ask next, but she replies in the negative. Apparently it’s just low stamina that’s her issue right now.
I’m tired too, but better off than she is since I didn’t have to keep leaping about to keep the attention of a number of rolling balls on me instead of on my partner. Deciding to gather the cubs together to make sure they’re safe, I go to the spots where we stashed them. Ninja almost gives me a heart attack – again – because she’s not where Bastet left her. Instead, she’s gone to join her sister: I look up to find the two of them perched like little birds in the crook of a branch, their claws fully sheathed into the wood.
It takes a little bit of coaxing to get them down, and when they eventually jump onto my shoulders, I wince at their claws digging in. Still, that they’re fine is the main thing. Going searching for Trouble next, I find him not far from the boulder on which I left him. He’s courting danger, though, poking at the river with his scaly paw, looking inches away from jumping in again.
“If you go in there, you’ll drown,” I warn him. “And that’s only if you don’t get eaten by something that likes little cubs for lunch.” Despite my sage advice, he still looks aggrieved when I pick him up and take him away.
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Bastet has recovered a bit by the time I get back with the cubs and she insists on inspecting and licking all of them, despite their squirming. Pack socialising done, we then investigate the corpses.
Being insectile, there isn’t anything in the bodies I want to eat, though I might be able to use the shells as containers for something – I’m not sure how water-tight they are, but I could do with some storage containers. Bastet managed to find something, though. After doing a bit of digging in the bodies, she pulled out an odd crystal from each of them. It’s small – only about the size of a marble, and a murky brown. When she nudges one to me, though, I notice that it gives off some strange sense of energy – or Energy. I don’t know what to do with it, so hand it back to her.
She nudges one crystal towards each of the cubs and then takes the final two herself. The cubs don’t seem to know what to do with them either, so she demonstrates – licking up the two in front of her and crunching them happily. How she happily crunches a hard crystal, I don’t know, but she does.
An interesting sensation comes down the Bond – a sudden wave of energy, almost like she’s drunk a Red Bull or something. Her lingering fatigue from the fight disappears and she suddenly feels ready for anything. She also feels...healthier? Like we might feel if we eat a nice salad after we’ve only been eating pizza for ages. It’s not easy to describe – all I know is that she feels qualitatively better after eating the crystals than before.
With her encouragement, the cubs copy her, crunching down on their own crystals. Apparently they like the feeling or taste or whatever, as they start asking her for more. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like there are any more to be found, so, in true hoarder style, I just dump the rest of the corpses in my Inventory and we get going, the four raptorcats fully refreshed.
As we walk, I allow my curiosity to take over.
“What were those crystals?” I ask her. She doesn’t answer for a moment, but it’s not because she’s ignoring me. I get the idea that it’s more that she’s not sure how to answer and is trying to work out a way of explaining.
After a pause, she sends me a series of images. They show raptorcats killing different creatures, most of which I’ve never seen before. Several of the creatures seem capable of using the elements to fight with, and others have attacks that I would consider supernatural. After the raptorcats kill the creatures, they dig into the bodies and find a crystal, giving it to a single raptorcat in the pack. The crystals are a variety of sizes and colours, the bigger and more vibrant colours seeming to come from the most dangerous opponents.
Over time, the raptorcat gets measurably bigger and stronger. Then comes a day when the raptorcat writhes in pain and actually grows visibly, its wings growing and developing too. When it finishes its transformation, it’s almost twice as big as when it started, and its wings look fully developed. It opens its eyes, jumps into the air and starts to fly. That’s where the images stop.
“So you eat the crystals and they make you stronger?” I summarise. A wave of assent comes at me from Bastet’s side of the Bond. A thought occurs. “Can I eat them?” This time, her reply is that of uncertainty. She sends another flurry of images wrapped up in feelings. Parsing through them, I understand that when she sees a crystal, her whole body tells her it’s something good to eat. She expresses uncertainty that if my body doesn’t do the same, then maybe it’s not good to eat. It’s a good point. Maybe when we get back to Kalanthia after rescuing Lathani, I can ask her.
Still, maybe I shouldn’t take the crystals away from the raptorcats even if they would be good for me: the stronger they get, the better off we all are. It’s good to know that they do have a way of levelling up – I was wondering about that. It raises another question though – I get to choose where I assign my stats on level-up; do they have similar options, or is it chosen for them? I think I’d better have a good conversation with Kalanthia about it when we go back – she should know how beasts develop.
Of course, that depends on us actually rescuing Lathani and getting back to her, but since if we fail in those two aims it’ll be because we died trying, I might as well talk about ‘when’ rather than ‘if’.
We keep walking, following the river. Fortunately for our travel time, we don’t face any other foes until I started seeing the landmarks Kalanthia indicated are the start of lizard-folk territory. Reluctantly, given that we have no other option, I send Bastet out to scout, needing to get an idea of the lie of the land.
*****
I’m waiting. It’s been a few hours since Bastet went to scout out the lizard-folk’s base, leaving the cubs with me and I’m worried. I can’t help it. We haven’t been this far apart for quite a while now, and she’s become indispensable to me in such a short time. Not only useful for combat, but...a friend. A companion. Although I’m still nominally ‘in charge’ and she follows my lead, it feels a lot more like it’s because she acknowledges that I’m the leader of the pack rather than because she’s Bound to follow my orders. But because I am the leader, I feel the responsibility of making the decisions, even when we both agree with the choice.
It was a mutual decision that she was the best option of scout since I didn’t succeed in Dominating the bird creature – her stealth and my stealth are really incomparable, even with my Skills helping me. But in a way, the fact that I didn’t Dominate the bird last night heaps even more weight on my shoulders – if I’d just pushed past my principles and forced it anyway, Bastet wouldn’t now be in danger. If she dies like Spike did, once more the price paid for a poorly-made decision…
No, I can’t think like that. And besides, temporarily ignoring principles for expediency is the start to a very slippery slope. If I start just forcing random creatures to join me, will it end with me just using them as suicide troops? Treating them like not-very-valuable tools to an end? No, I did the right thing. The right thing for me at least. I just have to hope that it doesn’t cost Bastet.
I’m confident that I would know through the Bond if she were truly in a dire situation, but knowing that in my head and believing in my heart are two very different things. I’ll be grateful when she gets back, if only to know for sure that she’s OK.
I hear a sound of something moving towards us and tense, my weapons at the ready.