Interlude-The Wrathful Braggadocio

Who does this kid think he is? I’ve waged war against Titans! I’ve challenged beings whose mere presence would melt your bones and tear out your souls! Gods tremble at the mention of my name! Even this mere scrap of me is enough to deal with this entire hemisphere let alone some shnook from a nameless backwater!

Yeah!

And no matter what you say I am absolutely not letting this get to me. This is a completely proportionate reaction. Reaction? No, I don't react. I act. This bastard will rue the day he threw me away.

The stream swept me away. It’s difficult for me to influence anything not touching me directly, so I manipulated the water currents to get my bearings.

My goal was to spear a turtle or lizard creature, leave the river, hijack another creature, then go and eat the kid alive.

I was so angry I went through seven turtles before managing not to cause spontaneous combustion upon contact.

The eighth died shortly after dragging me ashore. What? It's not easy being me. In hindsight I suppose I could have manipulated the water to launch myself out of the stream into a much larger creature and thus eliminated the need for turtle-y detonation but, look, it's been a rough couple of centuries and a positively brutal past couple of minutes.

Me, the Lord of Deception, All-Father of the Unkind or whatever you’re calling me these days, was thrown away like some worthless piece of GARBAGE!!! I could do with some sympathy here.

It was a full day before anything approached me. Evidently I hadn’t cooled off in the slightest as I belatedly realized I’d been giving off Wrath - a form of aura generated when living creatures twist their souls to become demonic. For humans the process is ‘irreversible’ and a 'rejection of the Gods light’ and so on but for me it was just a bad day.

Oh, and for the record, Soul-contortion is not irreversible, humans simply lack the spiritual tools to undo it, and their ‘Gods’ are too lazy to put in the effort. Also fits into their whole theme of being goodly holier-than-thou self-righteous pompous- - - whew. Almost lost my zen for a second.

The Wrath was potent enough to begin twisting a nearby fox before it could escape. If I’d been concentrating the process would have been near instantaneous, but as it was the poor thing suffered an entire day as it slowly transformed. By the time I retracted the Wrath the reborn fox had already stopped its convulsing.

These things have many names and variations. This one was a Moonshadow fox. It’s a cross between a Fox Spirit - a fox that can possess people and creatures for a while and becomes more powerful as it ages, and a Many-Tailed Fox. Many-Tailed Foxes are spiritual gluttons that devour all kinds of lowly to mid-tiered spirits and grow more tails the more powerful they are. The powers they can exert depend heavily on what they eat.

Of course, the medium that this particular fox used to become Moonshadow was Wrath - as opposed to say ‘bathing in a river of spiritual essence for 50 years’ or ‘eating mysterious spiritual herbs that magically transform it into a cute but fierce companion for the rest of the journey’. . .

The upshot here is that to me, this was an adorable little scamp. To anyone else? Well, it's a fox that will body-snatch other creatures - or people- and steal their essence to grow.

The Wrath of a full-blooded demon or equivalent being would have transformed the fox into a vampire or some other demonic form of itself.

But this one caught a full days’ worth of My Wrath. To brag, the Demon King and his Arch-Demons are sort of like lesser vassals of mine. There’s a qualitative difference here. I own their entire realm. In other words, they just aren’t on my level.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

If I let the fox go it would grow and topple this Kingdom inside of. . . five years? Conservatively. That’d throw a monkey wrench in my cosmic schemes. The ‘gods’ would surely realize something was up, send in the goon-squad to kill my lovable pet and then another bunch of cronies to track me down and banish this scrap of me to the Void.

Like it or not you’re staying with me cute-stuff.

Now where was I? Yes. Bait. Time to lure my wayward puppet back so I can figure out my next move.

Not that I need him. No, this is strictly killing time while the rest of my machinations fall into place. I know exactly what I’m doing. Shut up.

Chapter 4-Shurn

It is the way of life altering experiences that they often leave lasting impacts. Shurn trudged his way home as he thought over recent events. Everything had started as a result of him being jealous of his brother, he knew. People hadn’t been kind to him, but the truth was he’d never given them a reason to be. They had treated him like a troublemaker because he had been.

It was the club that had taught him this. Memories of being Khaba the Fortune-teller showed him that people were malleable and mostly reacted to how others acted and how events played out. Rarely did people stop and make conscious decisions about how to act. It was only natural that they treated him as second-rate. He’d acted like the immature little child he was.

Ursum Greenthumb had cared deeply for his family. Hell, he’d cared about his community and treated customers like his own children. It took time and patience to establish himself as a valued member of the town and he took his responsibilities seriously.

And Traxit. . . the less said about him the better. He was an odd duck.

“An’ just why would we take you back you little thief?!” A large round woman bellowed at Shurn. He was at the edge of his village. This was Soela - the Leather-worker's wife.

Everyone knew Soela, her loud and forceful demeanor rather stood out. Her husband Bertrum was entirely forgettable. Soela knew her husbands’ skill and value to the village, and consequently everyone grumbled about the cost of shoes, jerkins and pouches. They were high-quality for so small a village, and expensive to boot.

Shurn had hoped he wouldn’t run into Soela on his way home.

Nothing for it.

He stood tall for a moment, then bowed at the waist.

“I-I’m sorry, Madam Soela. I’ve caused you t-trouble in the past. Please let me know what can be done to make amends. I d-don’t expect you to trust me after all I’ve done, but please know that I am looking to set things right.”

Shurn kept his head lowered. There wasn’t a sound from the boisterous woman.

He slowly raised his head to find her gaping at him. She spluttered for a moment, lost for words.

“W-well. . Good! At least you show the proper attitude for once!”

He turned to leave.

“Scamp!”

He paused.

The large woman sighed heavily.

“Ahh. . .If you’re truly looking to make amends, do not go home. Your family celebrated when you were cast out. Go to Yarrex at the water-wheel. Everyone needs their wood cut and their grain mashed. Yarrex needs someone to watch his mill while he sleeps. There have been. . . problems there. If you help him, people will know you’re serious about this.”

Shurn could hardly believe his ears. Loudmouth Soela had been one of the first to call for his expulsion mere days ago. He had always seen her as a braggart, a bully and gossip without conscience. This led credence to his musings that the problem had been him.

Soelas' two youngest children ran around the yard, the elder one keeping some small wooden toy from his little brother. A look of mischievous glee was on the older boys’ face as his little brother cried and tried to snatch the toy back.

Shurn understood. Soela knew how children were.

Picking his way through the village, the Shurn took extra care to stay out of sight. He had many little places to duck out of sight.

Padding softly up to Yarrexs’ cabin by the stream, he knocked. No answer. He knocked again. Nothing. Finally he hammered loudly on the thick wooden door.

“Aye ay what’reye doin knockin me door down eh?” Yarrex was a large man built like a bull. His arms were thickly muscled and his hands the size of Shurns whole head. Rumor was Yarrex was part hill giant.

His eyes narrowed upon seeing Shurn.

“An jus’ what d’you want eh? Come to steal s’more of my tools? Thought we’d thrown ye’ out good and proper we did!”

The big man was working himself into a fury. If nothing was done right now he’d be ousted again and have to start all over.

Shurn took a step back and bowed low at the waist. Progress took hard work after all. And patience.