42) A Shrubbery

You know the feeling when the dentist drills into a tooth. That painfully wrong feeling that makes it past the novocaine?

Imagine that, in every single bone in your body all at once… and it keeps going for what feels like a good, or rather bad, ten minutes.

Now imagine going through that with one full grown coyote and two large pups all poking you with their noses, whimpering, yipping, and jumping on and off your bed while you're lying there trying to hold yourself still because you're hoping it might reduce that feeling.

I hissed out a “…fucccck offfffff…” To the three beasts which at least made them go still for a moment before they started in again.

Yeah. Forget any plans to “Game” this Condition system. I’ll either endure or find another way to fix up anything else that comes my way.

After a bit, I manage to feebly paw at the beast enough to calm them down, and after a while, I’m able to get up long enough to let them out as I stand guard with the putter as they make their efforts to help the flower grow in the garden.

Chubby stares me in the eyes as he squats, and seems disturbed when I stare back. Yeah, welcome to sentience. Now you know how weird it is when you do that.

After I let them in I get out two pieces of thick cut balony rolled up with yellow mustard squirted on them. It's enough to give my stomach something to chew on overnight and I don't feel up to anything more complex. A few pills and a low dose shot finish off my night.

The next morning the sun was barely up, and a message was already hoveing in the air over my head.

[ Awakening of the land at 87 percent ]

That's a bit of a jump, but then I guess this is the first morning in a while I haven't had too much on my mind to want to hear about it. Brackets seems to know when it's important to alert me about stuff and when it can hold back on things for a while.

Like right now I got a bunch of aches and pains from sleeping in one position all night and being all old and stuff, so I’m not going anywhere right this minute.

I take advantage of my bed not having enough room for how big the coyotes have gotten, which forced them to sleep in the living room, by channeling life into myself uninterrupted. The system waits until I'm all done and claws start to hit the floorboards in the other room as they come to get me to open the back door before it hits me with…

[ Awakening of the land at 88 percent ]

“So it’s going to be a few days yet.”

I watch the coyotes check out the yard, following them around the house and watching their backs as they do their morning absolutions while sipping on a small bottle of orange drink mix I snagged from the army guys' barbeque.

Despite being in my magic storage all this time it was still cold and damp from when I had taken from a tub filled with ice.

Stolen story; please report.

Around the front, I lay my hand on the barkless patch on Acey's tree, but no green hand rose to greet me. I am however able to channel enough Life into it that I’m feeling a little woozy on the way back into the kitchen.

“Hold on a little guys, I got to get something in me before I feed you.” Six double lidded crackers with peanut butter and the rest of the juice later and I was feeling up to feeding them. With double rations for Chubby who was still looking a little thin, even if he was now taller at the shoulders.

"Eat up boy. The bigger you get the better you are at stopping a hit for me." He ignored me as he gobbled down the off brand puppy chow.

With the beasts fed, I fry up some bacon, eggs, and toast. Along with some spinach leaves diced up and tossed onto the eggs. Even if channeling Life does burn up blood sugar, some fiber helps me in the bathroom.

With everyone fed, and watered, I stand up. “Time to put this new power to work.”

Natural materials huh? So not a tree since those can be awakened on it’ own, or any other living thing.

Not anything made either.

I headed around to the pile of several years worth of dried up fallen tree branches. "Well, it's either this or the dirt." Which isn't true. I could get the rake and spend all morning pulling the piles of dried up leaves out of every nook and cranny in the yard… and out of the gutters. But the pile of dried up sticks is already there, all in one spot.

"I just hope turning this into a Guardian does something to make it less flammable, or anyone with a can of kerosine and a lighter is going to make pretty quick work of it." Either that or they would end up having an angry wooden guardian on their ass who was also on fire.

I guess that's the difference between tactics and strategy.

"So how do I do this?" I kicked at the pile of branches, which rattled as the kick dislodged something in the pile and caused it to resettle.

The coyotes jumped and Wylina and the male pup skittered off, while Blue set herself between the pile and me while growling… with her tail firmly tucked between her legs.

“Good pup, but you might want to get clear.”

Shugging, I lifted my hand toward the pile. "Turn into a Guardian."

[Sufficient inert organic matter detected to form Gaurdian. Do you wish to create Guardian at this time? ]

[ Yes / No ]

“Yeah. Do that.”

The draw of warmth flowing out of my raised hand started off slow, slow enough that I could start pulling in more warmth from around me, but then it just kept going.

At first, nothing happened other them my starting to feel like I might want a sandwich, and then the pile shifted again on its own.

Chubby started barking, Blue shifted around to hide behind my legs, and Wylina sniffed at the pile until a sort of leg of twisted tree branches thrust out of the pile and drove itself into the ground beside her.

Then she was running off into the cloud of dust and debris closing in on me and the pile of sticks as all those dried up leaves, dead weeds, and the tiny fallen twigs that had been too small for me to bother to pick up and haul back here came skipping and sliding along the ground and into the pile which had began rocking back and forth as more legs began emerging and twitching as they struck the ground around it.

And the warmth was still flowing out of me, almost insistently as the feeling of warmth around me suddenly increased. Like someone was holding me up.

[ Awakening of the land at 87 percent ]

“Ha! Got my back already huh?”

The dust made up of the final bits and pieces of dead plant life from all around my property was now swirling around in a whirlwind above the pile as it rose free from the ground on a dozen or so “legs” and it seemed to shake itself as the last loose bits of it settled into place.

It looked… like a densely packed clump of dried up sticks of various sizes standing on a series of sticks wedged together without any means of connecting them but somehow persistently placed to hold the thing up without falling apart. But it began doing so even as it began moving at me to press up against my still raised hand, each falling piece tumbling over to a leg and rejoining the walking heap.

No head. No eyes, ears, or mouth. If anything it was sort of spider shaped but without the head or the back end parts. Just a center mass with a constantly changing number of legs holding it up.

All about the size of two big trash cans sitting on a couple of bikes.

“Keep the rabbits out of my garden.”

Well, what else am I supposed to tell it to do? 'Defend my land thy good and faithful servant.' It's not like I'm a big target, and I don't even know if there are any Evil Monkies around anymore.

I think the army guys locked down the exit and the ones that got out before that weren't exactly shy about going after people. If there were any of them left that survived the fall of the dungeon, they would have gone after someone yesterday and would have gotten hunted down already.

Protecting my land right now just involved keeping various pests out of the vegetables.

I glanced over at the three coyotes who were beginning to cautiously approach the Gaurdian to sniff at it.”

“You three just got demoted to back up garden protectors.”

I gave Chubby a suspicious look. "And don't pee on it."