Project: TheirWorld - Chapter 025 - Part 1

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Momma

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TheirWorld

Relief washing over her, Guin knelt next to the little fox, petting him as he mourned.

The fox spirit looked over at her, “Have you really come to help?” Guin glared, but allowed herself to relax a bit as she saw a bit of softness in the fox’s expression. After Guin nodded, however, the fox sat in the air and returned to her unhappy, haughty look. “Fine,” she said. “Help if you can.”

“How?” Guin asked, not blaming the fox spirit at all for the exasperated look that appeared. Clearing her throat, Guin asked, “Who killed you? Was it the same hunters that killed all of the other animals out in the forest? Is that why you are so angry and the Che?”

“Of course not,” scoffed the fox. “I wouldn’t be so angry even if they had killed my kit. No, silly girl, death is not a cause for anger. Death is merely a natural process; the flow of energy and life. It is how those who hunted me and the other have treated death in their ignorance. Never, in the hirst of this forest as I know it, has the Great Law been so profaned!”

“The Law?” Guin asked, furrowing her brow.

“The Great Law! The Great Law! The Law that has existed since the gods first created the creatures of the land!” The fox spat. “How times have changed - to think that you know not of the Great Laws! Very well then - allow me to educate you! Ignorant creature. This forest is a holy forest - holy to both veil and che-kind, but it belongs to the spirits! To the veil! To the land! In the past, even your kind and other like you knew and acknowledged the Law. It is something that even the most basic o beasts understands - and ye you, you with all your books and clever little tools - you know nothing! You are not even children in this world - you are devils!”

“Forgive me,” Guin said, impressed with her own nerve. “I have not been taught about such a thing. Please, teach me. Tell me; what is the law that has been violated?”

“The Law that Death is sacred,” the fox spirit’s voice was lined with venom.

Liorax then appeared in a flash of green light and landed on Guin’s shoulder. His appearance, of course, meant that the buff that had been keeping her senses at bay dissipated, leaving her coughing and gagging on the deathly sweet air in the cave. Her eyes stung with tears are she watched the fox spirit’s eye narrow as they laid eyes upon the floating cat.

“Harbinger,” the fox spirit acknowledged, curtly.

“Indeed,” answered Liorex with a grim voice. “I see that it is as I thought. Feel honored, Candidate. This is no mere Land Fox.”

“‘Candidate’?” the fox spirit repeated, setting her eyes once more upon Guin.

“What do you mean?” Guin asked.

“In life, she was not so common a creature as Land Fox you might find anywhere. Those things are no stronger than the beedants and the moarbits you have so recently mastered,” Liorax explained. “Rather, this Lady before you is a Che-Bound Spirit Fox.

“In the White Fox Forest, the Spirit Foxes are, for all intents and purposes, the nobility. They enforce the laws and guard the land from those who would seek to pollute it. Descendants of the Amikavi, they are exceptionally powerful. The Che-Bound Spirit Foxes are a rarity indeed; they re the ones that have been place in the Che to mediate between the realms,” Liorax told her, nodding over at Tik-Tak who was still “yii”-ing at his mother’s spectral form. “This fox child too, then. He is, like his mother, a Che-Bound Spirit Fox - and if it is as he says, that his father - assuming that to mean his blood father - is following the Frost Wyrm, it would not be unremarkable if that father of his was in fact one of the great tailed children of Amikavi herself. In fact, the most remarkable things about it indeed are that he seems himself to be naught but a Land Fox with little to no power, and that he was born at all.” The spirit fox remained quiet as they looked to her confused, crying cub. “...I say that,” Liorax added with distaste. “But he really is a pitiful thing…”

“Hush!” the spirit fox snapped at him. “You may be a Harbinger, but I shall not allow such words!” Liorex snorted at her, but otherwise ignored the provocation.

Guin, however, looked more closely at her little fox friend. Little to no power? She thought to herself. Though she had never concidered Tik-Tak a ‘mere Land Fox’ - partly because she hadn’t known the difference, but more because it simply didn’t feel true. For starters, wasn’t simply having the power of speech an unusual trait? And what about that time she had gone to look for him in the woods? She had felt as if the world were being crushed. That had also been Tik-Tak’s doing, had it not?

Of course, the one who had been there with her during that time wasn’t Liorax, but the Webspinner. Would the Webspinner know the truth behind Tik-Tak’s power and lineage? The question seemed quite stupid. Knowing things, she reminded herself, was the Webspinner’s job.

“The Law that has been violated,” Liorax was saying, seeming to be deep in thought. “It is indeed not something to do with the traps and death itself. I sense that while your spirit is the cause of the greater corruption - scaled, I imagine, to you powers - it is not your malevolent spirit alone that resides within this cave. Guin,” Liorax told her. “Take your torch deeper.”

Nodding, Guin did as she was told. The fox spirit followed them, but it didn’t take them long to find what Liorax had been referring to. As she drew a hand up to her mouth and nose, she couldn’t tell if the tears in her eyes were from the smell, or the horror, as she looked upon pile of dozens o corpses, all stripped of their skin and left to rot. Liorax nudged Guin’s face, and turned back into a buff.

“Oh my god…,” Guin managed to murmur before turning away - but she nearly fell into the pile herself as she found herself face to face with bright green fox spirit’s face in hers, eyes blazing.

“Turning away?” the fox spirit asked. “Do you not have the stomach to handle what your kind has done to our forest? To my kind? My people? Cower away, would you, from this grotesque monstrosity that defiles even the laws of simple beasts?”

Guin glared, stubbornly trying to keep her own pride in the face of the adversity she faced, but she had no answers. This was a video game. The same was set up to be this way, she reminded herself. No animals were killed in the making of this game.

Guin slammed her eyes shut, gathering up the strength to regain her composure. “What can I do?” she asked, opening them with determination.

“You?” the fox spirit sneered. “You can do nothing. You can only cower away back to your village with your tail set firmly between your legs!”

“I won’t!” Guin shouted. Her frustration growing, she demanded to know, “Why won’t you help me? Hate me and my kind all you want, I don't care. Do it for the forest, the animals, whatever! Even if it’s only for Tik-Tak’s sake, help e to help you! I am asking for nothing in return- not even forgiveness!”

Tik-Tak then appeared behind his mother’s spirit, looking pitiful with his tail between his legs and his head lowered. “Momma…”

The fox spirit sighed at her cub. “...Very well. If you want to help, even a little, perhaps there is something you can do - for his sake.” Success! - was what Guin wanted to feel, but her emotions and mind feld so toyed with p to this point that she couldn’t exactly see it that way. The fox spirit looked back and began floating back in the direction of her corpse and spoke...