With the ghoul lying on the tunnel floor, sliding towards death, Anomus found himself faced with a choice – attempt to heal the creature without claiming it, or claim it without its permission. The choice was no real choice at all, he felt; he wasn’t even sure he could affect physical change in the creature without claiming it. And even if he was able to, he doubted he could do so with the speed and precision necessary to make a difference. And so he reached in, having previously inserted his consciousness into the ghoul, and pressed his will upon it.

Only to find that he could not, in fact, do so. It was as if he were trying to grasp air. He could ‘see’ the ghoul in its entirety, down to the level of its life code, but he could not claim it.

He had no time to wonder why. Not if the ghoul was to live. He could only accept the fact, and move on to another life-saving attempt.

He could not command the ravaged flesh to heal. But he had some small, if costly, ability to move matter, and the finest grasp of the affected organs. He could also recreate any matter he had claimed – he had claimed no ghoul flesh, but he had claimed human flesh, and they were not dissimilar. Anomus could alter the human flesh he created to match the particulars of the dying creature’s body, but it would not be quick. He could see exactly what was wrong, and what must be done to stave off death. He simply did not know if he could do what was necessary in time.

All he could do was try.

The most important measure he had to take was to staunch the bleeding. He dove his consciousness into the ghoul’s body and began to knit back together the largest severed vein, creating modified human tissue to do so. It worked, or was starting to work, and so he began the process in a dozen other places that he judged most needed to be healed, were the ghoul to have any chance.

In less than a minute, he knew he could not do enough, not in time. He needed something to keep all the various organs from leaking away while he repaired them, infinitesimal bandages of a sort. And he had nothing.

No. He had one thing. The spirit tendrils.

He had modified them once to expand and contract, to act as muscles and ligaments for his failed skeleton. He believed it was possible to modify them again, to act as a sort of barrier. They could bind up all the wounds, great and small, and give his modified human flesh time to grow and heal. As soon as the thought occurred to him, he set to work.

~ ~ ~

Krrsh woke. He was lying on his back in the tunnel. At first he could not remember how he had gotten there, and then suddenly Ngrum’s silently snarling face rose up in his memory, and he remembered all.

Gently, he reached down to his belly, feeling for loops of his guts. All he felt was fur and scar. He breathed a sigh of relief and tried to rise. He found he was too dizzy, too weak to do so easily.

“Rest,” said Builder. “You will not die, but you are not completely healed.”

“Builder save Krrsh,” he breathed.

“Barely. It was a very close thing.”

“Is good. Builder good.”

“My flies showed me what happened,” Builder said, ignoring what passed for effusive praise, for a ghoul. “Another of your kind tried to kill you.”

“Ngrum. He hate Krrsh, yes.”

“Why?”

“Ngrum make Krrsh Outcast. But Krrsh trick Ngrum, make Ngrum look stupid.”

“He made you an outcast? He was your ruler?”

“Ngrum pack leader. Now Ngrum dead.” Krrsh shrugged, then sat up and leaned against the tunnel wall.

“So now you are the pack leader?”

Krrsh thought about that. No one saw Krrsh kill Ngrum. Not good. But Krrsh could take his head and show Ironclaws. Yes. That would be good. Still, another could challenge Krrsh. And Krrsh could not fight right now. Not strong.

“Maybe,” was all he said.

“How many are in your pack?” asked Builder.

“Too many,” Krrsh grunted. “Four hands of claws. More pups coming. And then Men will come, or food will go. And then Ironclaws will run, or die. Or run and die.”

“Can you explain that?”

Krrsh rolled his eyes, and spoke as to a pup. “Not safe, so many ghouls in one pack. No shelter. Must move to feed. Men see. Men kill. Pack should split, can find food better. Can hide better.” Builder really was not clever.

Builder was silent for a moment. Then, “Have you thought about my offer?”

“Lift curse? No more Law? Yes, Krrsh think much, before Ngrum attack. Can do or not?”

“I believe I can make it so you are able to eat anything and keep your intelligence, not just humans, and not just carrion. I can lift your ‘curse’. But the law about not hunting, not eating what you kill – there is nothing written in your body preventing you from doing those things, Krrsh. You must choose either to continue to obey it, or to break it. That must be your decision.”

Krrsh thought about that. It was the Law all ghouls followed, and always had. But if Builder could change ghouls, make the curse go away, would they still be ghoul? And if they were no longer ghoul, did they have to follow ghoul Law? It was something he would think about. But there was something else he wanted to know first.

“You save Krrsh, Builder. You say can change Krrsh, take curse away. What Builder want?”

“As I said before, I have an enemy I wish to kill. You and yours could help me to do that. In return, I could help you with many things, not just lifting your curse.”

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

“How help?”

“Now, your kind roam the desert, searching for carrion. It is dangerous.”

“Yes.”

“You could build a home here, safe underground. Or rather, I could build one for you.”

“But where get food? Builder has much food, yes, but will not last.”

“I can make more for you. Better, I can show you how to raise your own.”

“Like Men?”

“Yes. Perhaps not exactly like. Men do not raise crops or livestock underground. But very like humans, yes.”

“You do that, so it means… you want to be pack leader.”

“No. I do not wish to tell the ghouls what to do. Your lives are your own. I only want you to help me kill my enemy. That is the bargain I wish to strike.” Builder was silent for a moment. “Humans have many kinds of leaders, not just a pack leader. Each leader leads for different reasons. I suppose you might say I wish to be the war leader of your pack.”

Krrsh scratched at his ear. “What is war?”

Builder sighed. “War will take some time to explain, I think.”

Krrsh shrugged. “Krrsh not go anywhere.”

“Krrsh, humans don’t just kill ghouls. They kill each other, and quite often. When they do it in large numbers, it is called war. And I am at war with the leader of humans. The emperor.”

“Emperor is pack leader for Men?”

“I suppose you could say that, yes.”

“So Builder wants to be pack leader for Men?”

“No.”

“Then kill for what?”

“All the food here, and the food across the river – they were… my pack, Krrsh. The emperor killed my pack. And now I will kill him. I believe you and your kind can help.”

Krrsh considered this. Builder was strange. Builder was not Man, but said his pack had been Men. And he wanted to kill pack leader of Men. But he did not want to be pack leader of Men. Or ghouls.

Builder was very strange, yes. But Builder was not bad. Builder helped. Builder could lift curse. Builder could teach ghouls how to be more like Men. Krrsh felt a certain unease at that. And a strange thrill.

“Builder.”

“Yes, Krrsh?”

“Do it.”

After a moment, Builder said “It is done.”

~ ~ ~

Anomus had labored over the severely injured ghoul for hours, but once the spirit tendrils had stabilized the creature, he had known it would not be in vain. The ghoul would survive. When that concern had been dispelled, Anomus had turned to wondering exactly what had happened, and more importantly to him, whether it was safe to reopen the tunnel entrance. He did not like being cut off from the source of much of his mana. So he turned to his spies for an answer, to see what they had seen.

The answer, as it usually was, was not much that was of interest to anyone not a fly.

All of the flies that had returned, save one, were of the group that had exited via the Well’s cap. They confirmed for him that there was a pack of ghouls feeding from the mass burial pit across the river. One had witnessed a solitary ghoul crossing the river, but he did not think it was Krrsh.

The single fly that had returned after exiting the Tomb via the tunnel gave him a good idea what had happened. It had spied a ghoul, definitely not Krrsh, making a burrow in the sand near the tunnel’s entrance. Then, quite some time later, it had witnessed Krrsh and the other ghoul fighting. Then it had stumbled onto the entrance to the Tomb at the top of the Well, and so reported to him.

“You were ambushed by your own kind, my friend,” Anomus said to the sleeping ghoul. “I wonder what that was about.” In any case, Anomus saw no reason to keep the tunnel closed any longer. He needed the mana that flowed through it, and saw no great threat to him or the ghoul in reopening it. If Krrsh’s attacker entered, Anomus was confident he could deal with it.

Once he had dissolved the barrier at the tunnel’s mouth, his other flies began to return, and eventually he was able to piece together the entire fight. It had been quick, and stunningly brutal.

Ghouls were vicious fighters, that much became clear to him. Their natural armament needed no augmentation in close combat. But their flesh was just as vulnerable as a human’s. If he were able to utilize them as soldiers, he would need to furnish them with armor. And he believed that saving Krrsh from death would go some way towards convincing the ghoul to make common cause with him.

He still wondered why he had not been able to enforce his will upon the unconscious creature. He had done so without issue to the various other living things that were now under his control. The only real, material difference that he could think of was the fact that the ghoul possessed sentience. Was there some stricture that forbade him from making slaves of sentient creatures? It was the only possibility that occurred to him.

Not for the first time, he’d wished that the Faceless One had explained more – or anything, really. But once He had imparted the method of creating mana stones, He had disappeared without a word, not giving Anomus the chance to query Him.

Well. The situation was as it was. Anomus had turned his attention to transporting the last of the bones to the catacombs, which he accomplished a little while before dawn. Then, like the recuperating ghoul, he too had gone down into his slumber.

The ghoul had slept through the day and into the next night, awaking a few hours after the setting of the sun. And then they had begun their conversation.

~ ~ ~

Krrsh blinked. “Done?”

“Yes.”

“Krrsh feel nothing.”

“There was nothing to feel. Inside your head, past the bone of the skull, are many things, many wonders, but no way to feel pain or touch or hot or cold.”

Krrsh shrugged. He felt many things when he thought too much, none of them very fun. “If Builder say. Curse really gone?”

“Yes. No matter how hungry you get, you will not become less intelligent. And you do not have to eat the carrion of men, if you choose not to. The… curse made you need human flesh to be able to think well, it was your body’s inability to create certain substances. You had to get them from human flesh.”

Krrsh had no idea what Builder was talking about. Krrsh didn’t really care. No more curse, that was what Krrsh cared about. And he had not died.

“But still should feel different,” Krrsh muttered, poking at his head with a claw.

Builder sighed. “Rest, Krrsh. Eat. Heal. And then go and gather your people. When you bring them here, I will lift the curse from them as well.”

“What Builder do now?” Krrsh asked.

“I must prepare a living space for your pack.”

Krrsh grunted. Then went to eat. Then, when his belly was full, he curled up in his burrow. He was tired, yes. He closed his eyes. But he could not sleep. Too much had happened, and too many thoughts tumbled and rolled and wrestled in his head, whatever Builder said about brains. Ngrum, the pack, Builder, the curse…

The curse.

No more curse.

The curse made ghoul… ghoul. Yes? Yes. Krrsh turned the idea around and around, and thought that it was true. So Krrsh was ghoul no more.

But what was he now, then?

Something else. That was all he knew. Something like the ghouls before the bad leader did what she did, maybe.

Something more like Men.

And what did he know about Men? Not very much. They tasted good. They made burrows above ground. They walked in the day, and at night they made fire to see, because their eyes were weak in the dark. They put their food in the fire, too. And ate things… not meat. Also meat, but also not meat.

They made tools and used tools. They did not have claws, or only pitiful claws, so they made claws, for holding and… throwing, flying, to cut, to pierce.

They made second skins, much harder than their real skin, or ghoul skin, to protect themselves.

They put their dead in stone boxes, or burned them. Or sometimes just put them in the ground.

They killed ghouls.

“Builder,” Krrsh murmured.

“Yes, Krrsh?”

“Why Men kill ghoul?”

“Because you eat their dead.”

“But dead is dead. Why they care?”

“They care for many reasons. Some believe the body is important in the afterlife. Some simply do not wish to see their loved ones become food, even if they are dead. Most believe the dead should be shown respect. Eating them is very disrespectful.”

“But dead is dead. Food is food.”

“Perhaps. But humans will never accept the eating of their dead. They will always seek to kill anything that tries to do so.”

Krrsh thought about that. “The curse very bad, then. Very heavy.”

“Yes. It was. To survive, you had to do things that made you a hated enemy of humans.”

“If ghoul no more eat Man flesh, Men stop killing ghoul?”

Builder was silent for a time. When he answered, his voice sounded uncertain.

“Perhaps. Some day. But not soon. Not for a very long time if ever, I think. To men, you might always be monsters.”

“Krrsh not know ‘monsters.’”

“It means bad – not only for what you do, but for what you are. Just for being alive.”

Krrsh growled softly. “That part of curse Builder cannot take away.” It was not a question.

“No. I’m sorry.”