Chapter Twelve

Prey? Akela asked.

He had never been uncertain about anything until now. Then he saw the creature that appeared before us and he didn’t know what it was, didn’t know what to do with it. I was barely aware he was asking me a question — if I had a heart, it would have been beating in my throat with excitement and anticipation at the sight of a creature with two legs and two arms, covered in clothes instead of fur. And if I had eyes I couldn’t have torn them away from her.

‘No, not prey,’ I told Akela, recovering from my momentary stun.

Fine.

The young woman was running, her path bringing her straight to us. She noticed Akela and she slid to a halt a couple of meters from us. She jerked back, looking left and right, then at us again again. She was scared — I hadn’t seen a human face for two years, but I knew mortal terror when I saw it. And I didn’t think we were the reason for her tear-drenched mask of hopelessness. She couldn’t see me — of this I was sure — and even though I could imagine how coming face to face with a smallish wolf would be a frightening experience, it wasn’t the case here. She was running from something, something that was worse than a wolf.

‘Sit down, Akela! Sit down!’ I whispered.

Akela sat. I wanted to show this woman we weren’t a threat to her, and this was the first and only idea that popped into my mind in a sudden situation such as this.

The woman stared at Akela, holding her breath, her eyes wide with her surprise. Then she shot a worried look behind her in the direction she came from.

She was bruised; her face, her neck, her shoulders had the tell-tale signs of beatings. She looked haggard, malnourished. The blue rag she wore might have been a dress at some point before someone had tried to tear it off her, leaving it in shreds, soaked and dripping with water. It was difficult to judge her age being the wretched state she was, but I didn’t think she was older than late teens, twenty at most. I almost forgot to ponder the question of where the hell she had come from so suddenly and without warning.

As Akela sat down, staring at her with his red puppy-eyes, the woman quickly realized that the big bad wolf wasn’t about to attack and eat her. She didn’t waste any time: she slowly, carefully went around a tree to avoid having to walk directly past us, and then she ran off.

‘That was … weird,’ I said, just to myself.

Strange prey.

‘Not prey! She’s human.’ I snapped at Akela, which I regretted immediately.

I knew his mental vocabulary wasn’t extensive and I knew what he meant. He didn’t deserve me being snappy with him. But I didn’t get to apologize, because the next human came along.

***

I heard the man yelling long before I saw him, and by long I meant about fifteen seconds. I didn’t understand the language, but I’d have been more than surprised If it wasn’t swearing and cursing.

He appeared between the trees, running the same path the young woman had been, chasing her with all he got. For a moment I didn’t know what to think. It wasn’t that I’d known what to expect, it was more like I didn’t expect a man looking like a crossover between a pirate of the Caribbean and a medieval mercenary. Because that was the first impression I had of the man as he rushed forward, screaming, mouth almost foaming with rage.

The man wore rough looking clothes: brown trousers, a shirt that might have been white in a distant past, and a cuirass over it. All sorts of necklaces and ornaments hung about his neck. A dagger-looking thing hung on his belt, and in his hand he held a short spear. He sported a bushy beard and shaggy hair. He looked menacing. And he was chasing a young woman. This was suspicious.

Akela growled at the man as he approached. The pirate stopped almost in the same spot the woman had stopped not twenty seconds ago. He looked at us and he immediately leveled his spear, pointing it at us. I made ready to activate Mana-Armor. Akela of course was just looking — he didn’t know what a spear was or what it could do.

This … this didn’t look good.

I was astonished that my first and unbidden, almost instinctual thought was that I didn’t want to get involved with this. Not at all. Setting aside the sudden mystery of how the hell people just appeared on my Misery Island, this looked bad.

I didn’t know who the woman was or why she was being chased. For all I knew she could have been a criminal, and the man a sort of enforcer of laws. On the other hand she might have been fleeing from a murdering rapist. I didn’t know, I couldn’t know, and I wanted to have nothing to do with. But that was a human instinct.

My Tentacle Horror instinct only saw the teal colored soul of the man and it wanted to have a taste. It looked yummy, it looked nutritious, it looked more substantial and filling than any animal soul I’d seen and eaten. The temptation built up in me in a second.

The man stared at Akela, frowning, tense and ready to make a move. Akela was sitting peacefully, tilting his head, keeping his red eyes on the man. Mana was already roiling in its pool, sensing the order forming in my mind.

But … I didn’t know what to do. What was the right thing to do here? Stay out of it? Help the girl? Clearly violence had happened already, and was about to happen again if the man caught her.

I was dismayed. I was dismayed that my first encounter with humans in this world was nothing but a reminder of what human nature was like. And I was appalled by myself, because I was hesitant. Because I considered to just step back and to let this play out without even making the attempt to find out why.

I activated Mana-Armor. Akela stood up, sensing the Mana flowing out of me, enveloping him. The man flinched, then crouched a little, getting into some sort of fighting stance, gripping his spear a little harder with both hands.

Prey?

‘Not yet,’ I said to Akela.

The wolf was excited. Sort of. Maybe a bit worried, too. To him, it was new prey he’d not tasted yet, but he didn’t know how dangerous this new prey could be. Well, he was a wolf, so to him it was a matter or weighing the risk-reward ratio. But to me it was something vastly different. I had to made up my mind.

‘You know what?’ I said to the wolf. ‘I’m not going to stay out of this.’

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Voice?

I didn’t expect Akela to understand this.

‘Step forward please!’ I said to him.

Akela obeyed with glee, in fact, he took two steps forward, growling louder than before, just to remind the new prey in town that we were on top of things here.

Mana started ticking down — at a cost of five MP per minute to cover Akela fully, I could keep Mana-Armor up for as long as twelve to thirteen minutes. I thought it should be enough time to convince the man that it wasn’t a good idea to proceed with his chase. Hopefully he’d give up and go back to… uh… wherever. After that it wouldn’t be hard for Akela to find the woman, and I believed I could work out how to communicate with her.

I had no doubt in my mind now: I didn’t want to be someone who’d just let this sort of thing happen without at least knowing who these people were, how and why they were here, and why they were doing the things they were doing. This was our island. My Misery Island. Akela and I stood at the top here, and I’d be damned if I shirked away from this out of fear, or other old, human habits.

The idea of setting rules in an island kingdom of animals made no sense. But when humans came into the picture, rules were the one thing you just had to have. Because humans. And the first rule I made right there on the spot was that there would be no killing or beating the woman without a very, very good reason.

So the plan was to get the man to back off, and then to learn the details and make decisions based on it.

That was the plan. For about ten seconds, until the second man showed up.

***

The pirate glanced at the swordsman, saying a few words I didn’t understand. I simply gawked at the newcomer, unable to process what I was seeing, and for a moment, forgetting the situation at hand. His appearance wasn’t an issue. He looked more presentable than the pirate: he wore brown trousers, a dirty white shirt and a brown, leather vest over it. He had a serious looking belt with a a trio of small blades attached to it, and held a sword in one hand. But all that was secondary.

The newcomer, the swordsman, was gawking at Akela. And from above him, almost as if sitting on his shoulders, a faceless, translucent apparition stared at me. Not at Akela. At me.

It had the same blue color my own ghostly body had. I was taken aback by the sight of this spiritual creature — because that’s what it was, I was sure of it.

It looked nothing like me. It was a genie halfway out of its bottle. Its upper body was somewhat similar to that of a man, gaunt and thin, tapering down below the waist, narrowing to a string, lodged into the man’s soul. I could almost see and feel the Essence that connected the creature to the man in a similar if not the same fashion I clung to Akela. The spirit creature had a pair of elongated, scythe-like arms with no hands or fingers, and on top of a long neck, a faceless head sat. It had no eyes, no nose, no features at all, but I could feel its gaze on me. It was a horrifying ghost of a ghoul, and I was glad Akela couldn’t see it. I was also sure the swordsman couldn’t see it either.

‘Tentacle Horror!’ I heard a voice similar to mine, like a distant echo.

The swordsman flinched, said something in his unknown language, turning his head frantically to look for the source of the voice. I knew who spoke. And it seemed the spirit knew what I was.

‘Jevan, forget the girl! Kill the wolf!’ the spirit said to its host.

The man flinched again. The spear-wielding pirate was looking at him, confused. I gathered the name of the swordsman was Jevan, and he seemed rather shocked by hearing the spirit speak.

I spoke to Akela all the time; he’d been confused only for the first day or two. Was it possible that the swordsman had never heard the spirit? That the spirit never spoke to him? Maybe. I didn’t know. And why did I hear and understand the spirit, but not understand the men? Again, I didn’t know. What I knew was that the ghostly, horrid looking creature had just ordered the men to kill Akela, and I had no doubt it was to enable it to kill me. I couldn’t have that.

The swordsman recovered from his initial shock, said something to the pirate, then lifted his sword, assuming a fighting stance. The pirate stepped away from him, trying to circle around me as much as the trees let him, the tip of his spear aimed at us.

There was no more time to hesitate, but ... I hesitated. Again, I didn’t know what to do. My previous plan had just gone up in smoke, and my choices were to fight or run. I didn’t want to fight. But I didn’t want to run either. Maybe I could talk my way out of this.

‘Hey, you! On top of the swordsman!’ I yelled at the spirit.

‘Stop!’ the spirit said immediately, and the swordsman stopped.

The man yelled something to the pirate, and he stopped, too.

Voice? Too many prey. Akela complained.

The wolf was getting nervous. He’d been excited about one new and unknown prey, he was much less excited about two. I had to give it to him, his risk assessment was spot on — I was nervous, too. But it seemed there was a chance to talk my way out of a needless fight, and I took it. I called off Mana-Armor to save Mana, but I was ready to activate it again in a split second.

‘You … you speak,’ the spirit said, his hollow voice sounding somewhat confused, if I was any judge.

‘Well, yeah I speak. And I don’t appreciate you trying to kill me and my buddy. That’s just … rude.’ I said to the spirit.

I tried to keep my voice steady and confident, but I sounded like I always did. I had no idea what medium carried my voice to the other spirit. It wasn’t air for sure — the men couldn’t hear me at all, so I figured it must have been the Essence in the air.

‘You are … a Tentacle Horror. A young Tentacle Horror. And you … speak?’ the spirit inquired.

‘That I am, yes, and I speak. Look, I’m not looking for a fight or anything, so… let’s just… uh… get along?’ I said.

‘I’ve never heard of this. You must die.’

‘Hold on, hold on! I don’t know what you think you know, but I’m certain I don’t need to die, alright?’ I protested, and I was a mere millisecond away to re-activate Mana-Armor and to get Akela either to flee or to charge at someone.

The man, Jevan, must have heard the other spirit’s part of the conversation: he said something, and the spirit replied to him.

‘It’s a corrupted beast. A dangerous one.’ it said.

The swordsman protested, or I guessed it was a protest.

'You can get the girl later and do whatever you want with her,’ the spirit said to him. ‘The beast and its corrupting spirit must be killed.’

I activated Mana-Armor a just second before I sensed a flow of Mana rushing out of the spirit, making its way through Jevan’s soul, then exiting him and gathering on the blade in his hand. He swung his sword at me. He was a few meters away, but my Tentacle Horror instinct told me what was coming.

I urged Akela to run. He reacted a little too slow, and that sharp, flying blade made of Mana crashed into him. It was like my Mana-Blast, but condensed into a single, flying blade. Or arrow. Or bullet. I wasn’t entirely sure.

Akela tumbled on the ground, whining, as the invisible blade got him in his side. Mana-Armor protected him, but I imagined it was something like a bulletproof vest stopping a bullet: you still felt the impact and got bruised underneath.

The pirate rushed forward, and before Akela could scramble to his feet, the steel tip of his spear met with the Mana covering the wolf’s neck. Mana-Armor held, Akela whimpered. The swordsman was coming, too, and I knew that if we got bogged down here, taking hit after hit, my Mana would run out, and they’d skewer Akela.

The pirate pulled his spear back, ready to drive it into Akela again. I activated Mana-Glove on one of my tentacles and I swung it at his leg. At almost a meter in length, my tentie just about reached him, leaving a deep, bloody gouge on his lower leg, and if I felt it right, perhaps cut into his shin-bone, too. The man screamed, almost dropping, but he stuck the tip of his spear into the ground, leaning on it and balancing himself.

The swordsman was two steps away from us now, but Akela got to his feet, and I didn’t need to tell him to run for it. I sensed another Mana-Blade coming our way, but Akela ran like the wind, and we disappeared among the trees.