CHAPTER 10: RUMBLED
The two nagas saw me, a thousand-pound mighty war dog, charging straight at their stupid ugly faces, and they panicked.
"<[Something] [Something]>!" said the one with the axes, slashing from left to right. A blue shimmer spread through the air in front of the two nagas. The other naga pointed at me and said "<[Something] [Something]>!"
A corkscrew of glowing white worms flew from his hand; instinctively, I lowered my head and squeezed my eyes shut. And then things happened very quickly.
I hit the barrier head-first and smashed through it, blue sparkles exploding away across the arena.
The worms sluiced over me, each of them latching on and tearing out a gobbet of flesh.
Status effect applied: Worm Infested x75. Recovery reduced by 75.
I hit the two nagas and sent them flying back out of the ring. They hit the wall with a wet cracking sound and slumped to the sand.
"WINNER!" boomed the voice of the judge.
"Fuck!" Eugene cursed, aborting his Fist of the Gods.
I stumbled to a halt and dropped, rolling back and forth to crush the worms that were clinging to me and continuing to chew their way across my body. The pain was indescribable; I'd lost over five hundred hit points in a pair of seconds, and it showed in the form of huge patches of missing fur, gouges in my flesh that ranged from human-fingernail- to human-thumb-sized. Fortunately, I had managed to shield my eyes but several of the worms had caught me in the face. My nose was bleeding freely and the only reason bone wasn't showing on my snoot was because the blood was covering it.
The crowd was completely silent for two long seconds, and then they burst out cheering and applauding as I howled in agony on the hot sands. Eugene slammed his sword back into the sheath in disgust and came to collect me.
o-o-o-o
We picked up our winnings: One hundred little star-shaped chips of a dim yellow stone, each about the size of Eugene's thumbnail and unlike anything I'd ever seen before. They were different from the ones that Simon had given to Marcus—smaller, lighter, and a different shape. As with those disks, something about these stars seemed...wrong and I was glad when Eugene put them in his belt pouch.
Eugene was thoughtful enough not to try to ride me on the way back to the caravansary. He did slip a leash around my neck, reassuring me that it was only so that no one on the street would be nervous. I was too tired, nauseous, and in too much pain to disagree. I whined a few times and had Murray ask if there was somewhere that we could get cleaned up, but Eugene shook his head. He was apologetic that he couldn't help me; he hadn't brought water to wash the sand off and he didn't have any Skills that would help.
"Don't worry, buddy," he told me, walking alongside with my leash held loose in one hand. "We'll get you back to the stables and have Daro clean you up. I'm sure Zoola has some more of that salve of hers. It did the job last time, right?"
I whimpered and limped along, holding my right front foot—the one that I had jabbed on Simon's quill—off the ground and making do on three legs. When I rolled to crush the worms, I had torn the half-healed wound on the foot open and now it was oozing a slow but steady flow of blood.
As hurt as I was, I was nowhere near as bad off as I'd been after the lizard; I'd gone into this fight almost at full health, meaning that even after the massive damage of the worm blast I still had four hundred and fifty-nine HP left. Regardless, I was a very unhappy dog; my beautiful coat looked like it had developed a horrifically bad case of mange and the missing fur left me shivering in the winter air. Perhaps worse, rolling on the sand had crushed all the worms but I had been covered in blood at the time, meaning that I had so much sand stuck to me that I looked like what would have happened if Cassie went bonkers with the dark yellow food coloring on one of Mom's sugar cookies. I was rubbing myself raw simply by walking. Waves of nausea kept me wondering if I was going to sick up and my head was throbbing as though my brain were pulsing against the inside of my skull.
"Excuse me, sir."
I had been walking with my head hanging down, too tired and sick to lift it up. I made myself do so now; the man who had accosted us wore a blue cloak and had silver piping down the legs of his pants and two silver hawk emblems on his collar. Two more men stood behind him, dressed the same except with only one hawk emblem. All three of them were humans, had an imp on their left shoulder, and carried tridents taller than they were. Their shirts were emblazoned with a word in (presumably) the local language that I could not read, but it could not have been more obviously 'Police'. The officer in front, presumably the leader, had spoken in a language I didn't understand and the imp on his shoulder had translated into Ozurdati.
"Yes, officer?" Eugene asked, smiling pleasantly. He spoke in Ozurdati and Yarlpode, the deep yellow imp on his shoulder, translated into the language of Hellsport. Yarlpode was a couple inches taller than Murray and lacked my imp's belly. He also had a very different accent than Murray, one that I couldn't place but involved a lot of rolled Rs and stretched-out vowels.
"Your animal is bleeding sufficiently to present a health hazard," the policeman noted, gesturing at the trail of bloody paw prints behind me. He was speaking in Ozurdati now, the words slightly accented but perfectly comprehensible.
"We were in the tournament," Eugene explained. "He got caught by a pretty nasty attack and I'm taking him home to get patched up."
The policeman eyed me carefully for a moment, then looked back at Eugene. "I see. May I review your ID tag, please?"
Wordlessly, Eugene handed over the metal strip that he had been wearing around his neck.
The officer studied it carefully, his gaze flicking back and forth between the tag and Eugene's face. Finally he nodded and handed it back.
"There's a healer one street over," he said, pointing. "You should take your dog there, get him fixed up so he's not bleeding all over the street."
Eugene spread his hands. "I would if I could, but I didn't bring any money to the arena."
The officer stared at him for several seconds. "Excuse me?"
"I didn't bring any money. I didn't want the bad guys looting me if I got knocked out."
"It didn't dawn on you that one of you might be injured and need healing?"
Eugene shook his head ruefully. "In retrospect it wasn't the best move, but I figured we were too strong to worry about it. I was half right—we took down the bad guys in a few seconds. Unfortunately one of them got a shot in on my boy here. What the attack was, it was way more than you should see in a qualifier fight. Probably an Advanced or even Rare skill. Didn't expect anything like that."
I whined piteously. Both Marcus and Eugene had told me not to speak when there were cops around, so Murray was currently hiding under my chest with orders not to translate unless I explicitly said so. Still, Eugene was smart enough to get the gist: 'I am in a lot of pain and would like to get moving.'
"Don't worry, boy. We'll be home soon," Eugene said, patting me on the shoulder. Without meaning to he got me on one of the worm bites; I yelped and jerked away, stumbling a little on three legs.
The junior officers were looking at Eugene in a very unfriendly way. Their leader was completely stone-faced.
"Your animal is a health hazard," he said, clearly coming to a decision. "Consider yourself detained." He looked at the imp hovering over his shoulder. "Retamal, message to Life Mage Aerith: Tournament fighter with horse-sized pet dog at corner of Fifth Street and Jewel Avenue. Dog is bleeding sufficient to constitute a health hazard. Please attend."
"As you command," the imp on his shoulder said. He vanished with a
"Please step to the side of the road, sir," the leader of the police squad said to Eugene, his voice cold and official. "Bob, go in there"—he pointed to a shop on the side of the street, one with a sign out front that said 'The Whistling Pig'—"and tell them to keep bringing buckets of warm water until I say stop. Guard business."
'Guards', not 'police'? Interesting.
"You got it, Top," said Bob, the shorter of the two junior guards. He hurried into the Pig.
The two remaining guards led Eugene and me over to the sidewalk, stopping in front of the Pig but away from its door.
"Is this necessary?" Eugene asked. "We're about a mile from home and I promise we'll get him cleaned up as soon as we get there. There's a hot dinner waiting for both of us, and I'm sure that'll go a long way towards making him feel better."
Actually, now that he mentioned it, I wouldn't mind a little bit of that mash I'd had last night. My tummy rumbled at the thought.
"Please sit down against the wall," the captain told Eugene, his voice official and no-nonsense. "Your dog needs to be cleaned up and given sufficient healing that he's not a health hazard. We'll take care of it and you can pay the magistrate."
"What?!"
"Shut your stupid mouth, asshole," the younger guardsman told him, clearly out of patience. "What kind of fuckwit takes a bleeding animal down the street?"
Eugene's face twisted in anger and he leaped to his feet. "Listen—"
The guardsman lunged forward, kneeing Eugene in the crotch before he was fully on his feet. Eugene doubled over and Fred grabbed him by the bicep and the back of the neck, spun in a half-circle, and forced Eugene to the ground on his face. He put a knee on the back of Eugene's neck and cranked my friend's right arm up behind his back. Eugene was cursing and struggling under him.
I growled, deep and low in my throat, and stepped forward, lips pulled back off my teeth.
The captain interposed himself before things could get further out of hand. He had a baton in his right hand, held loosely and beside his leg in a non-threatening way, but I was pretty sure he wasn't interested in playing Fetch. "Fred, stand down," he said over his shoulder, not taking his eyes off me. "Cuff him, put him against the wall, leave him be."
Fred shifted, moving his knee from Eugene's neck to pin his forearm in place while he cranked the other hand up to meet it. He pulled a thick gold wire out of a pocket and slapped it against Eugene's crossed wrists; the wire flowed outwards, spreading around Eugene's fingers and wrists before hardening into a solid mass that kept him immobile.
"What the fuck?!" Eugene was shouting as Fred pulled him upright and sat him down by the wall. "I didn't fucking do anything! What the fuck are you doing, you fucking piece of shit!"
"Fred!" the captain snapped, freezing Fred in place an instant before I lunged forward and bit his arm off.
Fred stopped, his arm pulled back and fist clenched, and glanced over at me. I offered a low, ripping growl as a hint for what was about to happen; he took the hint and relaxed.
"Easy, big guy," the captain said calmly, staring straight into my eyes in a way that he probably thought would establish dominance. "He's not hurt. He threatened a Guardsman, he's going in the tank until he posts bail but no one's going to hurt him."
"You lying sack of shit! I did no such thing!"
The captain turned his head towards Eugene without looking away from me. "You're gonna want to keep your mouth shut, friend. You're already looking at a fine for creating a public health hazard and another for abusive behavior directed at a Guardsman. If you force us to get physical again then I'll add 'inciting an altercation outside of a sanctioned duel' to the list. You don't want that."
Eugene glared for a moment, then smiled and nodded, shrugging as best he could given that his manacled hands were stretching his shoulders back. "Hey, no problem. I'm glad to have my buddy patched up and I'm sure we can straighten the rest of it out. Don't you worry, boy," he said to me. "I won't let these guys do anything to you."
I thought about that for a moment, looking from Eugene to the guards, then I backed up a step and closed my mouth.
Fred straightened up and stepped away from Eugene, keeping him in his peripheral vision until he was out of kicking range. Then he stepped closer to me. "Hey, big guy," he said, his voice calm and low. "We're cool, right?"
I studied him for a moment, then wagged my tail slightly. I wasn't going to give him the slurp of forgiveness—he had still threatened my friend—but I was willing to let things cool down a bit.
Fred smiled in relief. "Good. Okay, we're gonna get you washed off and healed up. You're cool with that, right? Not gonna bite us if we give you a bath, right?"
I shook my head to reassure him that, no matter how much I disliked baths, I was a good dog and did not bite people. At least, not unless they threatened my people again, in which case we were going to have issues.
Both guards frowned at my reaction. The captain, who still hadn't identified himself, looked at Eugene. "Is this dog your familiar?"
"Huh?" Eugene said. "I mean..." He glanced at me. "No, just a dog. I met him a week or so ago."
"Hey pupper," said Fred the junior guardsman. "You understand me?"
Oops.
Marcus had explained it to me on the road; a major part of Hellsport's culture centered around duels, often to the death. So long as I was perceived to be a pet I would be considered the property of whichever human I was with and I would be generally left alone. Were I known to be a person in my own right then I would be challenged by people who wanted to test themselves against strong opponents, and by Skill hunters looking to gain whatever Skill it was that had made me big and smart. Not wanting to fight humans, it had been something of a no-brainer to pretend I was a normal (albeit large) dog. Unfortunately, that meant having to live the part.
I cocked my head at Fred and let my tongue loll out in a vapid smile. He frowned a little, so I cocked my head the other way and panted adorably. I didn't have the energy for anything more sophisticated but—and I mean this in the nicest possible way—humans are kinda dumb, at least when it comes to reading doggy body language. My fakery would never have stood up against another dog—even Bo, who was fast but dumb as a box of rocks, would have known that I was only pretending not to understand.
Fred and the captain totally fell for it. They relaxed, shook their heads, and glanced sheepishly at each other for entertaining such a silly thought as the idea that a big ol' dog could actually understand complex speech.
"First trip, Top," Bob said, backing through the door with a bucket in each hand and a rolled-up bunch of cloth under each arm. The buckets sloshed a little as he walked over to me, but there was steam coming off of them. "I got some stuff to wipe him off with too. The owner's going to bring some blankets that we can put on him so he doesn't freeze until Aerith shows up."
Oh, that sounded like a good idea. I was missing most of my fur and it meant that the cold was biting at me in a way I wasn't used to.
"Bob, hold him," the captain said to his junior officer. He looked at Eugene and pointed to a spot a few feet away. "Stand there, please." He waited for Eugene to move to the specified position, then he took one of the buckets from Bob and moved down to stand by my tail. Fred joined him with the other bucket.
Bob the junior officer came to stand in front of me. He started to hold out a hand for me to sniff, then paused and retracted it. "What's his name?" he asked Eugene.
"Athos," my friend said, sounding irritated.
Bob nodded and reached out to me again. "Hey, Athos. How you doing?"
I leaned forward and snuffled his hand, then gave it a friendly slurp. Bob chuckled and eased closer to me. "We're going to wash you down, okay? Stay cool. It's just water."
I gave him my 'just a dumb, friendly dog' smile and stood still as Fred and the captain poured their buckets over me. They did it slowly, a steady flow instead of a splash. The warm water felt good for a moment and then left me chilly.
"Hey, I got your next—whoa!"
The owner of the Whistling Pig had just come outside with two more buckets of water in hand and a trio of wool blankets draped over his shoulders. He was human-ish; lose the fluffy tail, the small horns, and the digitigrade legs and he wouldn't have looked out of place on Main Street back home.
"You guys weren't kidding about him being big," he said. "Yikes. Anyway, give me the empties and I'll get some more." He took the now-empty buckets and ducked back inside.
Over the next few minutes, Fred and the captain carefully washed me off and wiped me down. Bob stayed at my head and kept up a soothing flow of talk intended to keep me calm and distracted. His squadmates were doing their best not to hurt me, but as they wiped and washed the blood and sand off of me they couldn't help but occasionally poke at the rents in my skin left by the flesh-eating worms. Every time, it made me yelp and jump, but I did my best to be still and cooperative.
I didn't have anything to distract myself from the bath. On the forepaw, getting the blood and sand off was really nice, as was the feeling of human fingers combing through my fur and across my skin. It was like being scritched except there was water involved. On the other forepaw, I was cold and my remaining fur was all matted down and stringy. On top of that, although they were trying to be gentle the humans kept bumping against my worm bites and sending little spikes of pain through me. I wished I had a noisybox to watch, or could talk with Eugene, or tell Fred that he had missed a sandy bit on my right hip, or even browse the Skillweb.
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Hm. Actually, could I browse the Skillweb? I would look suspicious if I started poking at the air, but Mr FloatyBox had shown he could respond to my thoughts perfectly well.
Excuse me? Mr FloatyBox? I tried to shout the words inside my head, but there was no response. Hrmph.
{Skillweb, please,} I huffed. The humans were too dopey to speak Dog, so it should be safe enough.
The web appeared in front of me along with a faint ta-da! trumpet blast that I hadn't heard before.
I stared intently at the Uncommon node that I had discovered but not unlocked yesterday.
I kept staring at it.
I kept staring at it until my eyes dried out and I had to blink twice in quick succession.
Unlock Uncommon node for 1,296 Attunement? (Yes) / (No)
Yes! I was victorious! I looked at 'Yes' and blinked twice.
Perk: Sensory Enhancement Rank: Uncommon Duration: Permanent
Recipient is modified (gross structure, neurology, etc) to enhance sensory perception. Number and/or density of sense receptors and supporting structures are doubled, including: rods and cones, classes of opsins, olfactory receptors, hair cells and otoliths, papillae and taste buds, mechanoreceptors, thermoreceptors, and proprioreceptors. (Nociceptors are not affected.) Each new opsin class will have peak absorption adjacent to one or more existing ranges. Linguistic centers will receive appropriate naming-convention uploads to facilitate interpersonal communication regarding new sensory data.
Warning: There will be a 10 second period of unconsciousness after purchase due to necessary mentation substrate modifications/updates that are required in order to ensure compatibility with existing architecture and easy user adaptation to new sensory experience.
I did not know what most of those words meant, but better senses sounded pretty cool. Granted, mine were already way better than those of puny humans, but why not make the gap even bigger? As nifty as humans were, it was always fun teasing them about how badly they compared to dogs. Mom and Dad used to use a chest harness when we went walking, which I thought was very decent of them since it let me really lean in; taking Dad for a brisk morning drag had always been a high point of my day, up until he cheated by getting that stupid snoot harness that meant whenever I tried to pull I just turned my head so that I ended up going in a circle like a doofus. Humans were cheating cheaters.
Eugene was looking restless and annoyed but was still obeying the captain's orders and not trying to leave or struggling against his manacles. The guards had finished washing my tummy (fortunately, they didn't actually bend down to do the job, so Murray remained unseen) and were working their way along my back and sides, digging blood and sand out of my fur; they were being as careful as they could not to hurt me and failing only occasionally. It seemed safe enough to be unconscious for ten seconds, and this was actually a good chance to take care of a potential issue.
{Murray,} I huffed to the imp currently hiding under my chest, {I'm going to distract them. As soon as I do, you fly out and hide somewhere nearby. Ready?}
A thump on my chest said he was.
I checked to make sure that all three officers were looking at me, their interest caught by my noises. They were, so I grinned and shook.
I do an excellent shake, if I do say so myself. The new floofy fur was a bonus; it held a lot more water than my old coat had, so I could really deluge the area. All three guards flinched back, covering their eyes and yelping in surprise, as I hit them with a surprise shower filled with sand and a little bit of blood. It pulled unpleasantly at my wounds and I'm pretty sure some of them started bleeding more freely as a result, but it did the job: It rendered all three of the guardsmen blind for the few seconds necessary for Murray to zip out from under me, over to the wall where Eugene sat, and then head straight up until he could hide in a second-floor window box full of some sort of cold-resistant ivy.
Feeling very pleased with myself, I lay down on the cold slates of the sidewalk and stretched out. Fred, Bob, and the captain all grumbled and scolded me, but they went back to cleaning me off and all was right with the world.
I looked at the Sensory Enhancement node and blinked twice, then blinked acceptance on the 'buy it' message. The world went dark around me and my awareness went away.
I came back to a world transformed. Without opening my eyes I could feel the exact shape of each slate and the precise position of the cracks between them. The blankets draped over me were made of thick fibers that had frayed in several spots, but I was still wet and it was still cold out. The air felt colder and the stench of the city slapped me in the nose, hard. All of that, however, paled in comparison to what I was seeing.
Colors!
There was more than blue and yellow and white and grey and black in the world! And blue and yellow had waaaay more shades than I had thought!
The guards' uniforms were cobalt blue. The imps were not deep yellow as I had thought, they were firebrick red. That beggar over there, staying carefully away from me and the guards, was wearing a fern green silk shirt. Green! This was what humans meant when they talked about green! The leaves of the plant in that second-floor window box were pear green with ultraindigo tips. I had no idea how I knew these names or the fact that 'ultraindigo' was a deeper blue than humans could see, but I knew them. And I could see all those colors! Neat!
I had to get back to the caravansary where there were people I could talk to. They needed to know about this, and I needed to laugh in their stupid faces that I could see more colors than they could and so they should stop feeling so superior with their talking about 'green' and 'red' because now who could see better, hm? Me, that's who!
Unfortunately, there was an obstacle between me and departure: The guards. They were finished washing me down and had put bits of gauze across the wounds that were bleeding the worst, enough that they had mostly scabbed over. Now they were simply standing around chatting about the latest tournament scores and Bob's new fiancée, who was apparently 'totally shooking', whatever that meant. I was anxious to get moving, so I was grateful when Life Mage Aerith arrived.
Aerith was a tall, lean man with a severe face, cheekbones sharp enough to shave with, and a long berry blue robe. He showed up riding on a flying carpet covered in an eye-searing paisley made up of candy and sangria reds, apricot and tiger oranges, and shades of yellow that varied from blond to canary. It was awful, and I wondered if maybe he was as colorblind as I had been.
The carpet floated to the ground a few yards away and Aerith stepped off, striding over to us while completely ignoring the (presumably) valuable magic item he had literally left lying around.
"Hey, Aerith," the captain called in Ozurdati. "Good to see you."
"Mornin' Tom. I'm guessing this is my patient here?" He looked me over, hands on his hips. "You are a big fella, huh? Pretty banged up too. I don't usually do vet work, but I suppose it's all the same." He looked at the captain. "City pickin' up the tab on this one?"
The captain, whose name was apparently Tom, nodded. "Yup. We'll bill that guy." He hooked a finger at Eugene.
"Got it. Hey, mister! Who's your insurance?"
Eugene looked confused. "What?"
"Insurance, idiot. Do you have it? Your dog's bloody huge, massively banged up, and it's gonna take a lot of juice to heal him. Are you paying out of pocket?"
"I don't know what that means."
Aerith grunted and shook his head in disgust. "Honestly. Foreigners. Irresponsible little children. Well, if the city's paying up front then it's not my problem." He raised his hands dramatically, then paused and lowered them. "He's friendly, right?" he asked the captain.
The captain nodded. "Seems to be. Didn't like it too much when we had to jack up his owner for attacking an officer, but he backed off as soon as he saw we weren't hurting him."
I grumbled about that a little. I still was not pleased with the way they had manhandled Eugene, but I could tell that fighting them was going to make things worse for everyone. Plus, I had no way to get that manacle off of my friend.
Aerith rolled his eyes. "Ugh. Violent too, huh? I swear, why do we let these people in? They bring nothing but trouble and disease. Plus, they get to a place with a decent legal system but they don't understand the difference between dueling and brawling. Every time one of the big caravans shows up I get run off my feet. I've got all I can do patching up legal duelists, I don't need to deal with bloody-knuckled and head-cracked weeds too." He glanced at me and shook his head. "And apparently this one is too stupid to care for his dog. Honestly, I don't know why I'm surprised but I am."
I chuffed in annoyance. I could take care of myself, thank you very much. And Eugene was my friend, so stop talking badly about him!
The captain shrugged. "It's pretty much just the new arrivals. If the Council would properly fund the Immigration Agency so they could do more than cut badges—"
"You're not about to go back to that 'offer classes to every foreigner' tripe, are you? It would slow entry down to the point where we might as well just close the borders. Plus, it would cost too much to hire the necessary staff."
"It would become part of the entry fee, that's all."
"Which would drive up the cost and prevent the weeds from coming here in the first place! Don't get me wrong, I think that's a great plan, but you Neos are supposed to be all about the trade."
"We need the trade, Aerith. Raw materials if nothing else."
"Oh, please! We can get everything we need from the Infernals. Or make it ourselves. Sure, some of the weeds' goods are cheaper, but they're also shoddy. They break down in no time."
"Come on, Aerith. It's been proven time and time again that immigrants are good for the economy."
"If by 'good for the economy' you mean 'drive down wages and drive up crime rates', then sure. They always want to set up on their own and it puts strain on the guilds until they can either be integrated or dealt with. Plus, they start fights."
"The City Academy released a study two years ago—"
"What, that one by Bargalargalargalson? It was trash! Half of his data was made up."
The captain gritted his teeth. "No. It wasn't. That's Islander propaganda and you know it. Two of his sources proved to be hoaxes but he retracted those references and the remaining data still supports his thesis. Have you actually read the paper?"
"I don't need to. Everyone knows it was garbage. If his source checking is so shoddy why would you expect anything else from the work itself?"
"That's not—" He stopped himself and took a breath. "Okay, I know you're winding me up, and this isn't the time for politics anyway. How about you do your finger wiggling so we can get that guy into lockup and drop the dog off at the stable?"
Stable? Hang on now. I had a caravansary to get back to...although, granted, I would be sleeping in the stable when I got there, but it would be my stable.
"Ah, the tears of Neos who know they've lost an argument," Aerith teased. "So tasty. But, yup. Let's get to it. This will feel a little weird for the dog, so hold him."
The captain nodded at Bob and Fred. "You heard the man."
The two junior officers looked very non-sanguine about the order, but they moved to stand on either side of my head. I lay still and closed my eyes to keep everyone comfortable. My newly-sensitive ears could hear the swish of Aerith's robes as he moved around to stand next to my left rear leg.
"Got his tail docked, too," he muttered. "Shame."
Darn right it was a shame!
"Okay, let's see what we've got here." I heard some road grit shift under him as he took a knee beside me and lay a hand gently on my back, taking care to touch a non-worm-bitten spot. My skin trembled at the pressure but I kept still. "
A warmth spread out from his hand, suffusing my entire body...and then vanished.
"What the hell?" Aerith muttered, pushing himself to his feet and stepping back. "You didn't say he was a summon."
"What are you talking about?" the captain demanded.
"First step when healing is to do a bodily and spiritual assessment, see what the damage looks like. He's pure spirit." He frowned. "Or...wait...was he? He has blood, and a heart to pump it. Do summoned spirits have organs? Maybe...no...but...what?!" He leaned down, putting his hand on my back a little less gently than before, invoked his skill, and that warmth spread through me again.
I rolled slightly so that I could twist my head around and see what he was doing. It alarmed Bob, but I made sure to move slowly enough that he didn't try to grab me or do anything else that would cause issues for both of us.
Me moving had shifted my side out from under Aerith's hand and he'd fallen forward, catching himself before he collapsed against me. He glared at me for a moment, then closed his eyes and resumed whatever he'd been doing.
After a moment he opened his eyes and shook his head. "I don't even know what to think. He's got to be some kind of summoned creature, or maybe a spirit animal, but he's like nothing I've ever seen before. There is a physical body there but it's matched so precisely to his spirit that I can't tell the difference."
"Isn't everyone's spirit matched to their body?" the captain asked, confused.
Aerith shook his head. "No. Your spirit infuses your body but it's not a perfect match. It extends slightly out from your skin, it has flows and whorls, it's denser around the heart and brain and liver...my point is, it's easy to distinguish them. This guy, his spirit and his flesh are perfectly matched. Perfectly. His spirit doesn't move, it's not denser or lighter in any particular spot. It's a steady glow, exactly the same in every part of him. It's like a pool of water instead of a river. And the fact that it's a perfect match means that, from the perspective of his spirit, all of this"—he gestured to my various wounds—"isn't damage. It's the way he's supposed to be." He shook his head. "I don't know what this is, but it's not a dog."
"What could it be, then?"
Aerith frowned, thinking. "Honestly, no idea. Golems don't have a spirit of their own. Summoned creatures don't usually have organs. Maybe it's a Celestial of some kind, that chose to incarnate as a canine instead of a sophont? Or maybe a Foo Dog? I've heard of them but never seen one; I suppose maybe they could be like this."
The three guardsmen exchanged glances and then looked over at Eugene. My friend said nothing.
"Well, he's still bleeding all over my streets," the captain said at last. "Can you patch him up?"
"Sure. It's a little harder than normal because I have to convince the spirit to be something different before I force the body to match the spirit, but on the other hand it's easier because I don't need to untangle the flows or move spirit around." He studied me for a moment, wearing a bemused expression as he did. "It's just...weird. And there is a lot of spirit and body there, so healing him is going to be expensive. There's too much damage, so I'll have to go top shelf, plus I just came from the hospital wards so I'm running low on mana. There'll be a Spirit-burning surcharge."
"Do your thing and we'll take it out of that guy afterwards." He jerked a thumb towards Eugene. "If he's summoning Celestials in this city we're going to need to have some words."
"Right." Aerith looked at me. "Whatever you are, stay calm. I'm going to speed up your natural healing and it's going to feel like you just swallowed a few gallons of coffee all at once."
"Can he understand you?" Bob asked uncertainly.
"I would be shocked if he couldn't," Aerith replied. "On the bright side, he seems friendly enough."
Well, this certainly put the poo in the shoe. My disguise hadn't lasted very long.
"Here we go," Aerith muttered under his breath. He sat down cross-legged, presumably for stability, and bowed his head with eyes closed before putting his hand on my flank.
"<[Something] [Something] [Something]>," he said, dropping back into his native language after sticking with Ozurdati until now.
Energy surged through me, a tidal bore that made me yelp and stiffen. The guardsmen all jumped back, unsure of what I was about to do.
Skill 'Enhanced Rapid Recovery' has amplified and sped up your life processes! You recover the equivalent of 230 HP! Benefit is applied towards eliminating the 'Worm Infested' status effect. 2 worms have been destroyed. You are now at a -73 malus to Recovery. Status effect remains.
Aerith's eyes blinked open in surprise; he glanced at me, frowned, and closed them again. "
"
Skill 'Enhanced Rapid Recovery' has amplified and sped up your life processes! You recover the equivalent of 392 HP! Benefit is applied towards eliminating the 'Worm Infested' status effect. 3 worms have been destroyed. You are now at a -70 malus to Recovery. Status effect remains.
"Okay, what the thundering depths?!" Aerith said, straightening up.
"What's the problem?" the captain asked.
"I hit him with Enhanced Rapid Recovery. I got enough Attunement from that to level it up three times, but it didn't so much as close a boo-boo on this guy. I did it again; it maxed out the skill and got me a bunch of Attunement on top of that. Still not a scratch patched." He glared at me for a moment, then looked over at Eugene, his expression becoming even more thunderous. "You! Weed boy! What happened to him?"
Eugene shrugged. "Some skill I never heard of, Worm Vortex? A whole lot of little green worms"—
Hah! I knew that color!
"—that shredded him up. Afterwards he was hurt but didn't seem like he was in immediate danger. I was taking him home as fast as I could—I've got medical supplies there, so I could patch him up. Then these guys pulled us aside and here we are."
Aerith looked up at the sky, frowning as he almost visibly riffled through mental files. "Worm Vortex, huh? Never heard of it. Who used it?"
He shrugged, awkwardly because of his bindings. "No idea. A couple of snake guys. One had a pair of axes, the other had wands."
"Oh, man! You fought the Saa'nas brothers in a qualifier?!" Fred gushed. "Those guys are new to the circuit but they've already racked up a half-dozen wins in the minors. I heard Topper's Tuskers were scouting them for the league. There's been rumors that they were finally ready to make a move for the Battle Grande, but no one was sure." He grimaced. "Man, I wish I'd taken the odds on that one."
"He's a games junky," the captain explained to Aerith, sounding somewhere between 'exasperated' and 'resigned'. "Don't ask him about it or he'll start quoting fight stats from forty years ago."
"Hey, there were some amazing fighters back then, like—"
"You say you gained Attunement from the healing, right?" Bob asked.
"Yeah," Aerith said. "And that's another point about what he is...for me to earn that much Attunement he would need to have a Recovery stat in the forties or fifties—more proof that he's a Celestial, or at least a Foo Dog."
"What's a Foo Dog?" Bob asked.
"Well, when a girl dog and a boy Celestial love each other very much, sometimes they give each other a special hug," Aerith explained, struggling to keep a straight face. "Afterwards, mommy-dog's tummy gets reeeeally big and then a little later she goes on a diet and the stork brings a brand new puppy to join the family."
Bob mimed thwapping the mage. "Very funny. Anyway, if you earned Attunement for the healing then it had to have worked, even if it didn't close any of the visible damage. Probably working on some status effect. Try it again."
Aerith shook his head. "I scanned him. If he had internal bleeding or anything like that then there would be disruption in his spirit that would stand out, and there isn't." He glanced to the side where a knot of passer-by had started to congregate. They were staying back a short distance, but watching our little scene with interest. He leaned in and lowered his voice before continuing. "Besides, I can't afford the juice to try again. I've already burned a point of Spirit; it's an expensive skill."
{
Aerith jumped when I booped his ankle with my nose.
"WHAT THE FUCK?!" he yelled, much to my completely undisguised tongue-lolling amusement.
The guardsmen suddenly all had batons in their hands and were looking around, trying to figure out what had caused the uproar.
"What's wrong?" the captain demanded.
"The friggin'...whatever it is just put my point of Spirit back!"
The guards looked at each other and slowly put their batons back in their holsters. The crowd muttered excitedly to itself.
"Okay, you are not a dog," the captain said firmly, giving me the kind of look that Mom used to when I finally stopped pretending to be deaf and came in from the yard.
"Hey," Eugene said. "Any chance we can do this somewhere else? The ground is cold."
"Shut up," the captain said, not looking away from me. "Okay, dog. You obviously understand us, but I don't see an ID tag. Speak up or we'll have to arrest you for vagrancy."
I heaved a sigh. {Murray,} I woofed. {C'mon down.}
My grouchy imp came wafting down from the ivy box. "Hey, Boss. Ya got rumbled a'ready, huh?"
{Oh, hush.} I looked up at the captain. "Hello, sir," I said by way of Murray. "My name is Athos. It's lovely to meet you. Thank you for the bath." I held up a paw to shake—my left, because the right was still painful and bleeding, but I figured something was better than nothing.
The captain maintained his calm but did not shake my paw. Bob was visibly shocked and Fred was shaking his head.
"What are you?" Aerith demanded.
"Just a dog," I said, letting my paw drop back to the ground. "Simon said I was Patched. I arrived in your world a week or so ago, on the road between here and Ozurdati. I have—"
"Excuse me!" said a middle-aged man, forcing his way through the crowd and up to us. He was forgettable—medium height, sienna hair, dressed in a charcoal grey vest and pewter pants with so much extra material that at first I mistook them for a skirt. Or maybe a tent. He had ink stains on his fingers (soot black, and I was so proud that I could identify all these shades!) and a gold earring in his left ear.
The captain quickly moved to intercept him, while Bob and Fred put their hands on their batons and kept an eye on the rest of the crowd.
"Stay back, sir," said the captain. "This is a Guard matter."
"I'm Citizen Harold Timanus, licensed advocate," the man said firmly. "It appears that this...dog, or whatever it is, is an uncredentialed immigrant. Is that correct?"
A muscle twitched in the captain's jaw. "He is uncredentialed, yes."
"In that case, he needs to understand his options. You'll pardon me if I don't think that the Guards are the best people to explain them to him. As an advocate it is my duty to intervene. As a Citizen, I order you to stand aside unless you have legal cause to obstruct my path."
"Sir, you do not have standing to—"
Timanus leaned to the side so that he could see past the captain to get a good look at me. He gestured to me with one hand and said, "
Half a dozen needles of sparking cerulean fire shot out of his hand and pounded into my neck and side. I screeched in pain and rolled to my feet, lunging forward, taking care to go around the captain instead of through him.
Timanus's eyes went wide when he saw that I wasn't dead. He jumped to the side, putting the captain between himself and me, and yelled "Protect me! Protect me!"
All three guardsmen looked startled. All three of them cursed, then stepped in my way with their batons drawn.