Krrsh crouched at the entrance to the tunnel – not in it, no, but close. Very close. Close enough to reach out with a claw and tap on the stone floor. If he wanted to.

Any time he wanted to. With a claw. Or with his tool. Yes.

But it would be better to do with his claw. More dangerous. But better. He thought so.

He could tap, and the Bone Taker would hear. He thought so. He was almost sure. Maybe the Bone Taker would see.

Of course it would be safer, much safer to run away from the place with no bones, to search for another place with food, far away from the Watcher and from the Ironclaws. Much safer… except it would not be safer. Not really.

Here was food. Out in the desert, with no pack, Krrsh knew there was only death, sooner or later, for an Outcast. Death by starvation, drawn out by eating lesser carrion, or death by Men, or another pack, or a hundred different perils of the desert.

Here, in front of him, there was only one danger - the Bone Taker, the Watcher. And there was much food.

This much Krrsh had concluded, after long thought. And he thought that the Bone Taker could have attacked him at any time while he was in the tunnel, and did not.

Did not did not mean cannot. Krrsh knew that. But.

The Bone Taker had left a tool for him.

Maybe it wanted to… to… Krrsh didn’t know what the Bone Taker wanted. Not after thinking for so long, and so hard that his head felt swollen and sore. But that might have been all the beating he had done to it.

He only knew that would not find out what the Bone Taker wanted by hiding in the sands. So here he was, crouched at the tunnel entrance, trying and failing to reach out a claw.

Impatient with himself. Krrsh gave a low growl. Reach. Tap. See what then.

Krrsh reached and tapped and quickly drew back. Every sense heightened, he waited.

Nothing happened.

After a time, Krrsh tapped again, two quick taps this time before he pulled his hand back and waited.

He almost didn’t notice Bone Taker’s response. It was completely silent. But Krrsh’s eyes were keen, yes. And so he noticed first one and then two lines that appeared on the tunnel floor in front of him. Like Bone Taker had scored the stone with his claws, but… not. The lines appeared, but no claw made them, and no stone dust and no scratching sound was made. It was more like the lines had sunk into the stone, somehow. Like stepping into loose, soft sand.

Krrsh’s hackles rose. “Cannot,” he whispered to himself, but he forced himself not to flee, or move at all for a time. Nothing further happened. Nothing rushed out of the tunnel to eat him, to take his bones.

With a trembling claw, Krrsh reached out once more and tapped three times before snatching his hand back.

The two lines disappeared. The stone of the tunnel rose up from the bottoms of the two depressions made, and they were gone. And then three lines appeared, one by one.

Krrsh trembled.

Then the lines disappeared again, and in their place a pawprint appeared. A ghoul’s right print, toes pointed down the tunnel towards the place with no bones. Then another formed beyond it, of a left paw. Then a third, the right again. Each led further in.

Krrsh was clever. He understood what was meant. It was an invitation, though Krrsh did not have that word. The footprints said follow. They said come in.

“Cannot,” Krrsh growled softly, terrified. But he found himself rising from his crouch nonetheless. Then he hunkered down once more. Then he rose again and began pacing the sands.

Krrsh was brave. Or stupid. Krrsh would find out which. Hunger could control him, when it grew strong enough. But fear?

No. Not forever. Not even for very long. In this case, about an hour.

It was that, more than anything else, which separated the outcast from virtually every other ghoul, and most humans. Though he had no way of knowing it.

~ ~ ~

Anomus was faced with a problem, and a choice. The ghoul had met him halfway, more than halfway actually. In real terms, it had opened a dialog with him by the simple expedient of tapping on the tunnel’s floor. But Anomus had no way to communicate with the creature without invading its mind.

They did not share a language – if the ghoul possessed a language, which Anomus suspected it did. And Anomus had no way to speak at all, except directly mind-to-mind. He could do so without attempting to claim the ghoul, that much he was certain of. But their lack of a shared tongue made that a moot point, unless he were willing to invest weeks, even months trying to bridge the divide. That sort of time was not a luxury he had.

In any case, he could predict how the ghoul would react to having another presence in his mind, suddenly speaking what amounted to gibberish. Its reaction might be amusing, but it would hardly be helpful.

It frustrated him that he could not transmit even simple concepts to the ghoul directly without using words. He could do so to the flies and the other unintelligent creatures because he had claimed them. The limited communication he had with them amounted to commands. They were extensions of his will and body. You did not hold a conversation with your hand; you simply made it move.

Reluctantly, Anomus came to the conclusion that if he wanted to communicate with the ghoul on anything more than a very superficial level, he would have to enter its mind, and study its physiognomy. There was no way around it. But he did not want to trap or force the creature. It was not an enemy, and he wanted no slaves; none that possessed free will at least.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

He saw only one path forward, given his self-imposed restrictions. If he could get the ghoul to sleep in the Tomb, he could enter and study the creature’s mind while it slept, thus not alarming it. But how to get the ghoul to stay in the Tomb?

Most every creature desired safety and a certain amount of comfort when it went to its rest, that comfort being dictated by its nature. The ghouls were clearly nocturnal, and the Tomb provided welcome protection from the day. But that was obviously not enough for the ghoul. Anomus suspected that the undertomb, and even the tunnel, were simply too exposed, to open for the ghoul’s liking. What might wander upon it while it slept?

Anomus did not know enough of its nature to know what sort of sleeping arrangements it might prefer. But he was well used to considering the functions of the buildings he created, and altering the forms to suit. He had of course never had a ghoul as a patron, but if it were him in the ghoul’s position, he would want a small, defensible space to sleep in, one with a single entrance so as to limit possible avenues of attack.

He would also want a door with a lock, but he very much doubted the ghoul would think of such things. It had apparently only just learned to use a simple tool; doors were likely too advanced for it. Perhaps a stone that the creature could roll to block the entrance if it desired. And it would be sensible to give the space the appearance of a natural cavern rather than the flat, angular surfaces that were the hallmark of human building.

Such a construction would not be taxing for Anomus, though it would take a little time. He was becoming ever-more proficient in shaping stone, but he still could not hollow out spaces in the blink of an eye. The sooner he started, the sooner it would be complete. And then, hopefully, the ghoul would claim the space created for it.

So resolved, Anomus quickly began creating a small cave that connected to the tunnel near its tomb-side opening, not far from the pitchfork.

~ ~ ~

The ghoul entered the tomb once more perhaps an hour later, still hesitant but no longer trembling with fear. Anomus was finished with the small cave by the time the ghoul reached it.

He saw the ghoul’s ears begin to go flat, and feared it would flee once more. But instead the ghoul cautiously entered the new space, scenting the air and inspecting every nook and cranny.

Anomus left the ghoul alone for the remainder of the night, watching with great curiosity but not trying to communicate any further. He spent the rest of the night sending more bones to their rest and storing mana, but one question was uppermost in his mind. Would the ghoul sleep in the purpose-built cave, or would it leave the Tomb for the desert when dawn approached?

The ghoul did not try to contact him, either. It experimented with the pitchfork, then abandoned it in favor of stepping into the undertomb for the first time, and grabbing meat directly with its claws. But it did not eat much, and soon it was back at the pitchfork. Playing with it, testing its sharpness, testing its reach. And finally, it simply sat down in the tunnel and rested its long muzzle on one fist, and looked off into the middle distance, looking for all the world like any other intelligent creature deep in thought.

As dawn approached, the ghoul roused himself and padded up the tunnel. Anomus feared it was leaving, but instead it began pushing and sweeping sand down the tunnel and into the cave he had created for the creature’s use. When the bare stone was buried to a depth satisfactory to the ghoul, it curled up there and immediately fell asleep.

Anomus smiled inwardly. No patron was ever completely satisfied with what was built, however much they might praise the builder. Ghouls, apparently, were no exception.

Anomus himself resisted the day-drowse that affected him. He had work to do, after all. He waited an hour, and then two, and when he judged the ghoul was deep in its slumber, Anomus crept like a thief, or a spy, into its mind and body.

~ ~ ~

Anomus had toured the dead, decaying structure of the human mind. He had learned much from surveying such ruins, but much more had been sadly beyond his reach, lost to mortality and the natural processes of decomposition. The living minds of insects and geckos had given him partial clues, but still much eluded him in regards to the formation, the composition, the architecture of intellect – how thoughts formed, how more complicated bodies was regulated and controlled.

He knew it was the mind, the physical brain that did these things. The priests believed the brain was an unnecessary organ, and would remove it from a corpse at death if it were to be interred, but they were completely wrong in that. The mind, the physical brain controlled virtually all. The mind was the self, for all intents and purposes. It was awareness, it was memory, it was personality.

Except there was also the spirit, the shade, the soul. Anomus knew better than most that it was also real, also critical. But he still could not work out how the soul related to the mind. Well. First things first, he admonished himself, and turned his thoughts and attention to the ghoul.

He had never had cause to be subtle when inserting his will into anything. Stone was unfeeling, and insects were uncomprehending. But he took care with the ghoul. He did not want to wake it from its sleep – indeed, he could only imagine what terror the creature might experience were it to wake as another consciousness entered it.

He stole into the creature’s mind with his uncanny, god-granted ability, and was careful only to observe, and to disturb nothing, either physical or mental.

The ghoul’s physical brain was just as complex as a human brain, he discovered, though slightly smaller. He surveyed it at ever finer levels, sensed the many millions of connections that together made up a vast web of intellect. He had seen them in dead human brains and the much simpler brains of insects and geckos, but here they were vast, alive, and functioning. And, in certain areas, strangely… constricted. Unnaturally so, it seemed to Anomus. The constrictions, for lack of a better word, did not seem organic for all that they were part of the brain’s function, whatever they were. Intrigued, Anomus studied them closely, and after a time understood that they were some sort of gate. They were a barrier, currently open, between much of the ghoul’s higher brain functions, its ability to reason and so forth, and its lower, more primitive, more instinctual brain functions.

Now what would be the point of that? he wondered, and searched for the gates’ controlling mechanism.

It took more than an hour for him to find a partial answer, so complex was the ghoul’s body in comparison to all he had studied before. But eventually he understood that starvation would choke off the creature’s ability to think on anything greater than an animal level. Metaphorically, Anomus shook his head. He just could not see how that would benefit the survival of the species. Everything he had learned of life told him that, great or small, the processes of an organism were always bent towards the survival of the individual or the species. Anomus simply could not see how losing intelligence when faced with a lack of food would increase the odds of either. Intelligence was too great a tool to sacrifice.

He wanted to pursue the mystery further, but time was against him. He had entered the ghoul in order to facilitate communication, and had allowed himself to become sidetracked. The day was flying away, and soon the ghoul would naturally awaken, if Anomus did not suppress the instinct. He preferred not to do so.

Reluctantly he turned his attention and intellect to puzzling out its speech center, and then to sifting through the ghoul’s mind in order to piece together its language. It was the work of the rest of the day to piece together a rudimentary lexicon by comparing words to associated memories, but by the time the sun rose, Anomus was confident that he and the ghoul could communicate in at least a piecemeal fashion. Once the dialog was reopened, he felt confident that they would be able to make rapid progress.

He sensed the ghoul stirring towards wakefulness and withdrew his consciousness from the creature. A little patience was called for, he thought. And a little courtesy; remaining in the ghoul’s mind as it woke would be akin to a stranger standing in your bedroom, staring at you as your eyes opened. Not the best way to make friends, Anomus felt.