- Picking Your Battles
Char had been walking for maybe half an hour when she heard the footsteps behind her. She glanced at Lulu, but though her ears were up and alert, she wasn’t agitated. That whittled down her possible stalkers to two people, and she was pretty sure it wasn’t Leigh. “Declan. What are you doing?” She said it without turning around, and couldn’t resist a tiny smirk as she imagined his reaction.
“How?” he asked as he stepped out from behind a tree, and Char turned to face him. “I was quiet. How did you know it was me?”
“A lady never reveals her secrets. Now I’ve got a question. Why?” She raised an eyebrow.
“Um…” He shrugged. “They don’t need me, and I want to learn from you. I want to get stronger.” He almost said more, but stopped himself.
“What else?” Char asked, not giving him an inch.
Declan shifted on his feet and looked away for a beat, before finding his resolve and meeting Char’s eyes. “I don’t trust Voss.” Once the words were out, the rest of it came in a flood. “You didn’t see it, but he’s got a mean streak. He’s careful with it, though. The others… I don’t know if they just don’t see the things he does, or if they ignore it because there’s not much choice, and pissing him off just makes him worse. Anais, Mira, and Cory they’re useful enough that he doesn’t mess with them. Most of the others are too afraid to speak up. The only people who did speak up… He sent them into that farmhouse to scout it. They didn’t come back out. He’ll do that to me, sooner or later, if I stay.” Some of the tension went out of the young man after those last words, as though saying them had taken a heavy weight off his shoulders. He looked at Char with hopeful eyes, willing her to understand.
And she did. ‘Damnit. I do not need this.’ She sighed internally, but externally, she said, “OK. But, you do what I say, when I say it. No questions. If I have time to explain things, I will, but in a fight, there isn’t always time. I tell you to stay put, you stay put; I tell you to run, you run, got it?”
He nodded, a look of relief crossing his features. He hurried to catch up and walk beside her. Lulu trotted over to sniff him, and he petted her head before she ran off to find something else to investigate. “Thanks. I promise you won’t regret letting me come.”
“We’ll see.” Char walked in silence for a moment, making up her mind on what to say. “A few ground rules, just to make sure things are clear between us: One, I don’t play head games. If I say something, I mean it. Two, lie to me, even once, and you’re gone. And three, and I don’t mean to make things awkward, I just want to head off problems before they happen; you are way too young for me, so don’t even go there.” She glanced over to see his face, “We good?”
He blushed slightly, the tips of his ears turning bright red, but he nodded, “Yeah, we’re good.”
“Good.” Char felt the old knots of anxiety creeping in. She had questions she wanted to ask, but she knew some of them might be painful topics for the kid. She didn’t like being asked about Ty; those memories were still sharp around the edges. She didn’t want to do that to Declan. It could wait. If he wanted to tell her, he could, but she wouldn’t press. She looked for a less painful subject. “So… what level are you?”
“I hit twelve during the fight with those mosquito things. Turns out, their wings are really fragile. If you can hit one with a rock, it’ll chip, and then they can’t fly right. Not a very sustainable trait from an evolutionary standpoint. I wonder if they were made by magic, or if they actually evolved to be like that? I’ve read that silicon-based life forms are theoretically possible, but if they were silicon-based, they’d have different food needs and wouldn’t be drinking the blood of carbon-based life forms. But then, once you add magic to the equation, who knows what might be possible, you know?”
“Their description said they have a queen, like bees or ants,” Char added, amused by Declan’s babbling. This might not be a bad partnership if she could just let him do most of the talking. It was better than stewing in her own thoughts and memories. Almost as good as having an audiobook to listen to.
“A queen? Huh, mosquitoes aren’t eusocial. That’s weird. Wait. What description?” He cut off his musings and stared at her.
“I have a skill called Assess Foe. It lets me see the name and level of whatever creature I use it on. Just recently, it started giving me more information sometimes.” She paused to consider for a moment before adding, “You might be able to learn it. I got it after I guessed the level of a creature I was about to fight.”
“Oh! That’s awesome. So… once you did something correctly on your own, the system gave you a skill for it that gives you free information? Wild.”
“That first announcement did call it a ‘training interface.’ It wouldn’t be much of a trainer if it wasn’t teaching us stuff,” Char said. “I just worry about what they want to train us for. There are no free lunches. They aren’t doing this out of the kindness of their hearts. And, damnit, I sounded like Voss just then. He said almost the exact same thing to me this morning.” She broke off and clenched her jaw, reconsidering her opinions and her run-in with Voss that morning.
“Naw, don’t go giving him any credit,” Declan said, guessing the direction of her thoughts, “You did nothing but help. These Aldevari came in, turned our whole world upside-down, and acted like they were doing us a favor. My dad…” His voice choked off in a way that Char knew all too well. She gave him time to gather himself. “He taught me that nuance matters. I wasn’t there when Voss talked to you this morning, but I’d be willing to bet he was making insinuations, trying to make you look bad, or lessen whatever it was you were trying to do, wasn’t he?”
Char snorted, “Yeah, you’ve got him pegged, alright.”
“Thing is, both of you were wrong in one thing: There are no absolutes. Sometimes, there are free lunches. They’re just very rare. You’re one of the rare ones.” Declan shrugged as if it was obvious.
“How’d you get so smart?”
“I’m not the smart one. My dad was.” Declan looked down at his feet, and Char glanced away to give him a minute.
“Yeah,” she said, softly, “Mine, too.”
Silently, they started walking, each one leaving the other to their thoughts for a time. Eventually, Char asked Declan how he knew so much about insects, and told her about his dream from before the Aldevari came and derailed it all. He was in his first year of college, and he wanted to go into biology, or maybe zoology, or veterinary medicine. He hadn’t decided on a major, but he knew he wanted to study life, in all its complex variety.
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It was a bittersweet conversation. All his plans had been violently ripped away, but he was still excited about the subject, and magic introduced a whole new level of complexity that he was eager to explore. Char enjoyed listening to him talk about it. She didn’t have a great interest in the subject, but his enthusiasm was contagious.
Lulu’s growl brought the conversation to a halt. Char immediately pulled her sword from her Quick Access and looked for the threat. There was nothing. Nothing she could see, but Lulu was staring at the ground, her gaze following a line that was moving closer to the two humans of the group.
Char pulled out the crowbar and tossed it to Declan. “I don’t know what it is. Watch your feet, be ready for anything.”
Lulu crouched, ready to leap at the danger as soon as it revealed itself. Alert for it now, Char could feel a slight vibration in the ground. It grew stronger. The earth started to bulge upward in an oversized mole-trail. From the size of the mound, the creature making it was nearly as large as Lulu. Char started forming the pattern for Arc in her mind.
The ground between Char and Declan seemed to boil, and they both backed away from the spot as a shower of soil erupted in a spray. What emerged was a horror of teeth and bony plates. It looked like someone had crossed a groundhog with a Death Metal album cover.
Its rodent-like front teeth had become sharpened daggers, and its jaws had expanded to something more closely resembling a nightmare wolf. It had grown a skullcap-like dome of bone over its head, and a collar of bone plates that tapered to spikes along its back. Protrusions of bone erupted from its flesh to lie along its limbs, like rudimentary armor, and another bony plate protected its rump, like that of a wombat. Its long claws looked like they would be as effective for rending flesh as they were for digging.
Char Assessed it:
Burrowjaw
Level 17
This omnivorous burrower attacks
from beneath its prey and pulls it
down to consume at its leisure.
“Don’t let it grab you!” Char called to Declan, who was already rushing forward to smash the monster with his crowbar. The young man was wild with fear, flailing, rather than fighting. He was going to get himself killed.
She finished the spell pattern and sent her Arc flying onto the creature’s rear, jolting a high-pitched squeal of pain from it, and distracting it long enough for Declan to get a blow in.
“Good, now back away, Declan! In and out. Don’t let it focus on you.” For a moment, she thought he wasn’t going to listen, but Lulu rushed past him to worry at the Burrowjaw’s leg, and Declan snapped out of his fear-induced tunnel vision as her presence reminded him that he wasn’t facing the monster alone. He stepped back, crowbar held ready. Char was glad to see that he’d fallen into the stance she’d taught him.
“Like a wolf pack. Harry it, keep it on defense,” she said as she darted in for a blow. Her sword drew first blood as she found a gap between the bones.
Declan nodded his understanding, not taking his eyes from the terrifying groundhog. As Lulu backed away from clawing at its hamstrings, Declan darted in for another crushing blow to its shoulder, cracking the bone there. Char watched to make sure he jumped back again. She was glad to see he’d gotten a handle on his fear; he was keeping his head. He wasn’t flailing anymore, but was watching for openings.
She rushed in for another attack, but the Burrowjaw had decided enough was enough. Deciding that the potential meal wasn’t worth the fight, it dove back into the hole it had erupted from. Lulu shoved her head into the hole, barking after it. She started digging, her forepaws sending a rooster-tail of dirt flying out behind her.
“Lulu, let it go,” Char called, but the focused pitty kept digging. She had to wrap an arm around the dog and haul her out of the hole. “Enough, Lu! Enough. Let it go.” Lulu stayed focused on the hole for several seconds, growling and pulling, but she eventually calmed. Even after she stopped pulling, her gaze stayed set on the opening, and she whined. She didn’t like being deprived of her prey. Char checked her over and poured vitality into her to heal a graze she hadn’t seen land. The brief burn of pain across her left shoulder was a price she didn’t mind paying.
Char stayed next to the dog, ready to grab her if she tried to go back into the hole. She glanced over to her companion, “Declan, you alright?” He was breathing hard, and she could see a tremor starting in his hands. “Walk a little. Moving will help with the adrenaline crash.” She scratched Lulu’s ruff, helping to calm the dog, and she talked to Declan to help calm the boy, “You didn’t do badly. The fear never goes away, but you’ll get better at controlling it.”
She kept her sword out and watched for any sign that the Burrowjaw might return, but there was nothing but silence, aside from Lulu’s hard breathing and Declan’s pacing. Eventually, the birds started to sing again, and the adrenaline wore off.
Char realized that she wasn’t being hit by exhaustion the way she used to be. In the past, if she did something stupid with her daredevil cousin, or if she had a close call with her truck in traffic, the rush of adrenaline was always followed by a bone-wearying crash. She could see the signs of it in Declan, but she felt fine. It had to be her higher stats. Or, maybe, she was just getting used to it.
“Come on, let’s put a few miles between us and the angry gopher, and we’ll stop for lunch.”
Declan nodded and followed, but he was uncharacteristically subdued. Char gave him space to process whatever was bothering him. They walked in silence until the sun had passed its zenith and Char spotted a place where they could take a break to eat with a boulder to their backs.
As she was pulling out Lulu’s food and water bowls, she asked him, “Are you regretting coming with me?”
Declan shook his head, caught off guard by the question, “What? No. That’s not what… I mean, I knew it would be dangerous, but I still think it was the right call.”
She studied his face for a moment. He looked away. The briefest flicker of shame told her what the problem was. “Let me guess. You started to enjoy the fight?”
The tips of his ears turned red, and he flinched. “It’s not… That’s not how good people are supposed to be. I mean, I know that violence is necessary, sometimes, but that’s not a good thing. It’s not right to like it.” His hands were balled into fists, and his shoulders shook with tension.
Char considered the best way to approach the topic as she opened a can of dog food. Lulu sat next to her, staring. Her tail thumped the ground, and the rhythmic thump, thump, thump gave Char her angle. “You ever see the Dune movie? The old one, I mean.”
Declan nodded. “Yeah, a buddy of mine was a fan. He had us all over to watch both the old one and the new one, back to back.” His forehead crinkled as he tried to figure out what Dune had to do with anything.
“Okay, well, I haven’t seen the newer one, so I wasn’t sure if it had the Gom Jabbar scene or not.” She shook her head and waved away the tangent, “Do you remember what the Gom Jabbar test was all about? The bit where Paul had his hand in a pain box, with a poison needle at his throat?”
“Yeah.” Declan’s eyes darted from side to side, and Char could see him making the connection.
“We’ve got teeth, Declan. Forward-facing eyes. Built to chase shit down and kill it. Instincts don’t make moral distinctions. They’re biological programming meant to keep you alive.” Char paused to gather her thoughts and find the right words while she pulled out some food for their lunch. She handed him a bag of beef jerky and a Cliff bar and took one for herself. “It’s not wrong to like the fight. Just make sure it’s the right fight.”
Declan nodded. “It’s like fear, right? You can’t stop the fear, but you can control how you react to it. Like Paul leaving his hand in the box. So, it’s alright to have fun fighting, as long as I don’t let it turn me into a murder hobo.”
“Bingo.” Char opened her Cliff bar and relished the first bite. She wasn’t sure she was cut out to be a mentor. There was no ‘Apocalypse 101’ course to prepare for this shit. But this topic, she was pretty certain about. It was a question she’d been wrestling with herself only a few days ago, and she was pretty confident in the answer she’d landed on. “Gonna be a lot of fighting in our future. May as well enjoy it.”
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