Jay wanted to maintain his cool and make calm, rational decisions in the face of impending doom. On the other hand, doom was a bipedal dragon-lizard monster. His instinct to run won out.
He could hear Lyle yelling at him as his feet pounded into the ground, taking him away from the monster. He couldn’t process Lyle’s words as everything in him told him to run. His brain screamed to run faster.
Jay knew that death was chasing after him. Faced with the loss of his Monster Hunter character, he no longer wanted to rely on the goodwill of Tumult. Corp. They were too inconsistent to be considered an ally, and his mission wasn’t complete.
His brain urged him to run back to camp since it held some safety. It scrambled for the familiarity of a home away from home, but now that he was running, some of his rationality was starting to return. Jay knew that Sarah was sleeping back at camp.
He ran through the grass, feeling the creature’s hot breath right on his heels. Thorny vines whipped against him, but he ignored them. His feet hauled him toward the rocky beaches. He passed by dozens of strange, bent tropical trees until Lyle’s calls faded to nothing.
When Jay finally reached the rocky beach, he grabbed some pebbles from the floor. Without stopping his run, he tossed them into the water, knowing the reptilian beast would be coming from the tree line any moment. The stones struck the water, but no Scyllo came to his rescue.
He had hoped to pit the two tyrants against each other, but his plan was unrealized. Spinning around, he drew his sword. The creature’s breath was still on his neck, and he believed within his heart of hearts that he would be face-to-face with the dragon.
There was no dragon behind him.
Confused, he searched the tree line. Birds were chirping nearby. A small lizard spooked him, but it was nothing like the evil creature he had just seen. It was a tiny rock lizard, marked as a level three creature.
As he stared at it, the lizard fired a small pebble of rock up at him. The projectile launched from its mouth, but he stepped to the side. When the attack missed, the rock lizard scurried away.
Purple Haze whistled through the air as Jay performed several test swings. Any moment, he knew the creature would appear. He could sense it in his bones. Instead, Lyle emerged from the forest. The young man was alone and carried no weapons.
“Calm down, Jay,” he said, strolling forward. “It’s not like that. Nobody is going to hurt you.”
Jay’s eyes darted like a cornered animal, waiting for the inevitable. There was nothing to the left. There was nothing to the right. In front of him, there was only Lyle.
The man he had just saved continued his slow approach, but Jay backed himself up. He kept moving backward until he felt water brushing up against his socks.
“It’s just The Fear,” Lyle articulated, continuing his slow approach. He treated Jay like a scared animal. Jay was too wrapped in his own head to notice.
Slowly, his wits started to return toward him. The realization dawned on him that the creature was on his neck the whole time and didn’t once attack him. That didn’t make any sense. He never checked to see if he was being followed because he could feel the breath. Even though he thought the creature was faster than himself, it never caught him. He got away, which didn’t make any sense, either.
His subsequent realization was that Lyle talked about fear as a proper noun. That was a strange thing for a person to do. Then, another figure stepped from the trees and stood beside Lyle. The newcomer put his hand on Lyle to get him to halt his slow approach.
From the nameplate, Jay saw the newcomer’s name was Igno. His lean muscle was on display since he only wore shorts that came down to his knees. The newcomer was level 40, which was much stronger than Lyle. It was the help Lyle had been waiting for, but the figure, like Lyle, carried no evident weapons.
Still feeling breathless, Jay managed to force out his question. “What’s… the… fear?”
“It’s not easy to explain,” Igno said. He still didn’t approach, seeming to know that Jay was still feeling on edge. “You have felt it, so you know the truth more than most. There is a primal feeling when you gaze upon a true predator like a lion or a wolf. In this jungle, there are numerous worse things.”
The description was apt. What Jay experienced had felt a lot like standing in the face of a predator. It felt like standing in front of a tiger at the zoo, knowing that the glass was the only thing offering any protection.
His breath was starting to catch up with him. Still, he didn’t understand how Lyle and Igno remained so calm. “What’s happening? What was that? A Dragon? How are you so calm? Why aren’t you experiencing The Fear? Why did it only affect me?”
The cascade of questions spilled from Jay without any semblance of order. He was still out of sorts, firing inquiries haphazardly.
Lyle still looked a bit apprehensive, but Igno was downright calm. He presented a man for whom sensing such monsters was an everyday occurrence. The more Jay thought about it, the more he realized Lyle’s nervousness wasn’t toward the beast. His anxiety was directed at Jay.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“Breathe, Elf,” Igno muttered serenely as if he were trying to soothe a child. “There will be plenty of time to talk. As the youngling has stated, you are in no danger. I appreciate all you have done to protect Lyle. We will open our hearts to you because we are gracious people. I can see that you are alone, and that cannot be easy for a stranger in strange lands.”
As the other man spoke, Jay tried to take his advice. His breath fell into the rhythm of the man’s sentences. Igno truly didn’t seem to mean any harm. Lyle looked to Igno with a deep respect that couldn’t be faked. Neither carried any weapons. Slowly, the primal sense that he was small and insignificant ebbed away.
“Good, very good,” Igno said, smiling gently. He seemed to intuitively understand that Jay was starting to feel better. “Now, I will try to slowly answer your questions. Nod if you understand.”
Jay nodded.
“The Fear does not affect me, nor Lyle, because we have the power running through our veins. The Lizard Lords. The dinosaurs. The dragons. They go by many names, but one thing is certain: my people descend from them, whatever they were. That is why The Fear only affected you. Lyle and I are both Dissimu.”
Jay remembered that word, but the significance didn’t land at first. The other two waited for him to react, so he continued his deep breaths. After a moment, he recalled that the game system had labeled the alligators with the same prefix.
“Dissimu?” Jay asked, his voice wavering. That didn’t feel so safe. “You’re like those crocodiles?
Igno spit on the ground where he stood. “We are nothing like those traitors. They abandoned their mission for the worship of false gods. Their folly ruined the ecosystem of our beautiful island. We share a name. This much is chosen by history—but we are nothing like them.”
“Yeah, we don’t like them,” Lyle confirmed, though he seemed less outwardly offended by the comparison. “That’s why they attacked me. Our peoples have been at war for longer than I’ve been alive. Longer than you’ve been alive, too.”
“That explains that part, I suppose,” Jay agreed hesitantly. He understood that there was some schism in their history. His head screwed itself back on straight, sensing the opportunity to learn. “I’d love to learn more about this history, but I don’t want to pry.”
“We shall return there in time,” Igno promised. “We have a few more things to discuss and explain before we can truly discuss history.”
“I understand,” Jay agreed. Silently, he urged Igno to continue speaking. There was a quest lingering around somewhere. More than that, he suspected these two NPCs were somehow related to the Monster Hunter dungeon.
Igno sat down on the rocks where he was. He didn’t pressure Jay by coming any closer and indicated for Lyle to sit. Not knowing what else to do, Jay sat down on the edge of the waves, feeling the soothing water lap against his back.
Igno bowed his head gently. “That was not a dragon, at least, not in the authentic sense. What you saw was my Battle Form, which emanates The Fear. You likely felt as though I was about to tear into you, even though I never moved. I searched the area for the crocodiles, ensuring that none lay in wait to attack. After that, Lyle and I came to find you, but you were already gripped by it.”
The water stung a bit from the tiny scratches the thorny vines left behind, but it still had a soothing effect. It was helping Jay stay grounded. He was no longer experiencing The Fear, but he still felt some kind of headache or adrenaline rush pulsing in his brain.
“That was you,” Jay said. “That definitely explains why you weren’t afraid. I just don’t understand how that could possibly be you… I mean, you don’t look anything like that lizard. You look like a normal human. Lyle does, too.”
“I’m not old enough to enter Battle Form,” Lyle explained. “I’ve still got two more months until my nineteenth birthday. I’ll be able to join the fight soon, and you bet I’ll give those crocodiles what’s coming to them.”
“You will join the fight when the Elder declares you are ready,” Igno argued, staring the young man down. “Battle Form or not.”
He turned back to address Jay. “This is likely obvious to you by this point, but the Dissimu are shapeshifters. I am capable of shifting into three different forms, whereas Lyle is only capable of one. In typical circumstances, we only use two of the forms.”
“What are the forms?” Jay asked. He wanted to know more about the shapeshifters. If he could find a circumstance to Catalog them, like slaying one of the crocodiles in Battle Form, he might acquire a shapeshifting ability. Even more important than that was getting access to their village or whatever place they called home.
Lyle looked to Igno, who nodded for him to speak. “We can transform into alligators, similar to the crocodiles you fought several minutes ago. The second transformation is the form you saw Igno take. Our people don’t speak of the third form much. It’s perilous and almost always causes the death of the Dissimu.”
The idea of a death form both intrigued and terrified Jay. He wondered if he could acquire the ability for himself without suffering the typical side effects. On the other hand, it meant that he hadn’t even seen the worst that the Dissimu were capable of.
Jay found one thing particularly interesting about the divide between the Dissimu. “You said that you transform into an alligator, right? What’s the difference between the alligators and the crocodiles? Is this a good versus evil thing?”
Igno sneered, causing his lips to twist up in a vaguely reptilian way. “Things are rarely so simple as good and evil. This question relates back to the history we spoke of, but we will speak more on that once we reach the village.”
“We’re taking him to the village?” Lyle wondered aloud. His voice contained the same level of shock Jay felt when he stared down the Battle Form.
Igno nodded his confirmation.
Jay was excited to see the village. He had known something like that was lingering in the region. Besides finding a quest, his most significant point of interest was seeing if the village had access to diving equipment. It didn’t seem likely in the case that most villagers were shapeshifters who could turn into alligators. If regular humans settled among them, there was a good chance such equipment existed.
“Are we going back to your village tonight?” Jay asked.
“If you feel comfortable entering a village of people like me,” Igno asserted, “we would be glad for you to join us. My people are more active at night.”
Igno’s last words explained why the party hadn’t seen them during the daytime, even though a village of people was hiding somewhere in the forest. Wondering if they lived in treehouses, which would be strange for alligators, Jay said, “Let’s go.”
The pair of villagers led Jay back into the forest.