Chapter Ten

Release the Beast

Before he knew what was happening Toot found himself seated before the mayor. His honor had met him at the door and shuffled him inside like a whirlwind shuffled papers in an office. The smiling man, who had almond-shaped eyes and a neatly trimmed head of salt and pepper hair that was parted on the right, plopped into his chair behind his desk. The mayor had an average build, he wasn’t heavy, he wasn’t muscular, and he wasn’t thin. What he did have was a mouth of bright white teeth and a smile as big as a fish story. The size of the smile would grow larger the more the story was told, but it was a large smile nonetheless.

“I am Mayor Keong. My clerk, Mister Chozen, tells me that you have made some rather distressing claims regarding the empty lots over on Oleander.” He rolled a cigarette and placed it in his mouth slowly. He rolled it along his bottom lip until it came to rest in the corner of his mouth. “I must warn you, Mister…I’m sorry, Chozen did not tell me your name. You had him quite distressed.” He then waited patiently for Toot to fill in the information.

Toot made him wait.

He stared at the mayor with neither menace nor malice, but with an empty blank stare that said that he could wait until eternity had to reset itself. Ten minutes passed before the mayor couldn’t stand the silence. He inhaled through his nostrils with a whistling sound and lit his cigarette. A trail of thin smoke trailed to the ceiling of the room.

Toot’s eyes refused to follow the wispy fumes but remained locked on the mayor’s face.

“Now see, here, whoever you are, you cannot just come into the town hall and make baseless claims about murdered bodies lying about inside of the crevice.” A trickle of sweat rolled down the mayor’s forehead.

“My claims aren’t baseless, and you know it. I counted six in all, one looked to have been dead for over a year. The others, a little less. My best guess is that the majority range in a time frame of about four to eight months considering their various stages of decomposition. The last one having been killed within twenty-four to thirty-six hours.” Toot reached across the desk and grabbed the mayor’s cigarette. He snuffed it out in the middle of the desktop, leaving a small black burn on the otherwise unblemished surface.

The mayor ignored the action and acted as if Toot hadn’t moved a muscle. He straightened his hair with his hand and sat a little further back in his chair.

“No need to be so aggressive,” Keong said hoarsely. If he was trying to hide his fear he was doing a poor job of it. Toot could only imagine what he looked like to the mayor. A frail old man, slim as a whip and wrinkled as a raisin’s anus, casually reaching across the mayor’s symbol of authority and grinding out his hand-rolled cigarette without a word.

“I’ll be as nice as I can. I don’t care about the bodies. By the abyss, I’ll even destroy them for you. I’ll buy the lots and you can find a new murder hole to stash your bodies. I’ll even be generous and give you double what you want for the lots.” Toot gave him a wink and tugged on the end of his mustache. He liked the mustache. He was glad he’d opted for one when he designed his body.

“Now see here. I don’t like your implications. You can’t just go around accusing the mayor of having a hand in the murder of not one, but several, unknown individuals.” The mayor raised his chin haughtily and swallowed. “We have ways of dealing with uppity old men in this town!”

The mayor gave a quick nod and dropped beneath his desk. A second later there came a great thump, as something crashed into the top of his desk and then a low gurgling sound. A sound that was made when someone was slowly strangled to death. The noise stopped, there was some shuffling, and someone sat down in the chair across from the big desk. He smiled and spoke as he climbed out from beneath his hiding spot.

“Rufus, please be so kind as to take this geriatric joke and put him into the crevice that he loved so much, it’s only fitting that it be his final resting place.”

He emerged and turned around to find the old man back in the seat and Rufus’s body neatly reposed on his desktop. The old man was stroking his chin, a chin that now bore a full and fluffy white beard, and motioned for the mayor to sit down. The old man wasn’t even red-faced or breathing hard. He was as calm and composed as a lion among a field of sheep. Mayor Keong followed the elder’s command and sat down without a word.

“Let’s start over,” Toot said genially, “I’m no longer going to pay double for those lots. The starting price is now halved. Furthermore, you will pay for my building permit, my merchant’s license, and any guild fees that might be associated with that.” He cleared his throat. “I’ll reiterate, I don’t care how you do business here. I am a humble merchant who wants to make an honest living quietly in your lovely little town. Do you understand?”

The mayor nodded slowly, his eyes glued to the body on his desk.

“Good. I’m glad we could come to this agreement.” He laid four gold coins on top of the corpse. “Those are for the lots,” Toot said. “Dump this body in there tonight as well. If I’m going to be cleaning up your messes I might as well go all the way.”

Then a thought struck him, normally he’d have taken it up with Dev first, but he didn’t think the core would have a problem with it.

“Let me make myself clear, mister mayor. I don’t like you. Not a whit, a whistle, or a whittle, but I’ll make you a deal.” He sighed, resigned that his actions were for the greater good of his core. He didn’t like it, but it was prudent. You can bring me any bodies you need disposed of and they’ll never be seen again. Not a trace of them will remain. I would have done it for free for you, in a gesture of goodwill, but you didn’t want to listen to me at all, so now you’ll pay two pieces of gold per body. I think that’s a fair price to never have to worry about them being seen again.” Another thought crossed his mind and it galled him to even consider it, but again it was for Dev.

“I’ll even go so far as to say that if you can bring me the body in less than an hour from its time of death I won’t charge you at all.” If they could do that, then Dev would get all the memories, knowledge, and skills the body contained. After an hour there would be little but flashes and traces of knowledge that he’d be able to work with. He hated aligning with criminals, but then what difference did it make to him in the long run if he dealt with sinners or saints?

“Agreed.” The mayor started to extend his hand but stopped as he saw the ire in Toot’s eyes. “I hate to ask, but I have to have a name for your paperwork, titles, deeds, etcetera. I can’t gloss over that.”

Toot understood and started to say his name but then balked at how silly it might sound which made him say, “Toot-thhhhhhhh,” as he attempted to recover and make himself seem a little hardcore.

“Tooth,” he repeated and stepped out into the hallway. “You may call me Tooth.”

“Like a bicuspid?” The mayor’s voice followed him into the hall. Toot had hoped that he would make a fang connection, but it didn’t matter in the long term. “I’ll be back in an hour to get my paperwork,” he called back.

Toot passed a ghost-faced and gaping Chozen and flashed him a grin.

“Be seeing you later,” he whispered conspiratorially to the clerk and walked back out into the midday sun. He pulled his chin whiskers thoughtfully and then headed towards the merchant district.

<>

Dev was getting bored with burrowing along the cave floor. Somehow, he’d managed to double his initial speed, but even his new rapidity felt like he was slogging along at a snail’s pace. He had far better things to do, such as examining all the information from all the things he’d absorbed. Also, he needed to pay attention to his gold piece. It was calling to him even now.

He began thinking of different things he could do and wanted to try. He wanted to see if he could merge the human mesh with that of the snake or spider. Making a hybrid would be smart. It would provide him with protection that Toot couldn’t provide on his own. It would also let him see how to mix and match. It might be easier to trade the snake’s venom with that of the spider and just see how things worked out first.

The idea was fairly simple and he was sure that he could do that while he was absorbing the cavern and replacing it with himself. He didn’t put himself in the autoguide mode but kept enough attention on what he was doing to open his mesh screen

He hit the snake tab and opened it. Information popped up as it had before.

Name: Pit viper of the rocks

Common name: Hissing Death

Basic Information: The hissing death is a common pit viper that can be found in rocky areas. They are known for the sound they make before they strike. They feed on small rodents, birds, and other reptiles.

Pit Vipers have a heat sense that allows them to judge their prey’s size and distance. They also produce a venom that acts as a hemotoxin, depending on the amount of venom injected during a bite it can be fatal to most humanoids. Pit vipers are not immune to their own venom.

The mesh of the snake showed that the snake had a deep fossa, or pit, between the eyes and the nose that it used to detect heat. He also noted that it had a hinged jaw that allowed it to open its mouth wider than normal so that it could swallow its prey whole. There were other details, but that was the more important stuff, aside from the venom glands, so far as he could tell.

The venom was listed as a hemotoxin, which meant that it damaged tissues and destroyed blood vessels. Depending on the depth of the bite and the amount of venom injected a healthy adult could survive or take hours to die. It varied.

Dev was certain that he could increase the potency so that it would act far faster and would be far deadlier. What was the point of having snakes whose bites produced a mild reaction?

The spider was a bit of a letdown. It had silk glands, a mild venom that would paralyze its prey, and little else of interest. So little that he barely perused its information. He did leave the pattern for the silk glands up as he dismissed the spider’s mesh. He dragged the gland over and placed it onto the snake’s screen.

He removed the heat-sensing organ in the fossa and swapped it for the silk gland. He then tweaked the mesh so that two small hornlike growths sprouted between the eyes and the nose of the snake. The silk had a strong tensile strength in comparison to its size in a spider, but in the snake, it would be about as strong as some thread. He increased the silk’s power so that it would take the power of a bull to snap it. When he was finished modifying it he hit the complete button: Yes/No in the affirmative.

He watched as the snake’s framework wriggled and writhed before finally settling back into a static position. He somehow knew that the movement had indicated a test by whatever system he was using to see if the combination of the snake and the silk glands was viable. It had passed.

Do you wish to name your new species? Yes/No

He hit Yes and another prompt appeared.

What would you like to call this new species?

He thought the words Silk Snake, and a new folder appeared under his Snake Tab. There were now two folders, one read as Pit Viper of the Rocks, and the other read Silk Snake.

Would you like to create a silk snake now? Yes/No

He hit no. As much as Dev would have liked to have made a new life form and see how it reacted he was still trying to get to the cavern’s opening. He was shocked to see that he had not only managed to keep a steady path, but he had also managed to build a new lifeform. He had kept his attention on two things at once!

There was a calling that he had been ignoring for too long, it was the cha-ching of the gold coin rattling around in the back of his mind. He would not be able to ignore it forever, but maybe he no longer had to. He allowed a small part of his focus to slip from his expansion to the coin and relief washed over him.

Dev could let a piece of his mind do one thing while another part did another. He no longer felt guilty for wishing he could look at the gold, to study it, to get to know its every blemish. It was gold, it wasn’t perfect, but gold didn’t have to be perfect. The coin’s surface had multiple scratches and tiny dings but it was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

Another part of Dev watched himself in fascination. This part was free of the longing and desire the gold brought out in him, and it was a sensation that he had never known, being free of the calling. It was strange looking at himself, it was similar to staring into a mirror but without the reflection mimicking your every motion.

Congratulations! You have learned to compartmentalize your mind. At the moment you may focus on two things at once. As you practice this ability you will be able to split your attention in multiple directions without penalty. No, you’re not schizophrenic, you’re splitzophrenic. Enjoy breaking your mental self into smaller chunks without all the interfering voices and personalities that often accompany such a mental division.

Dev felt like he had before he’d seen the gold. No, he felt even better. Before, he could feel the call of the shiny stuff he simply hadn’t known what he’d been missing. It must have been a carry-over from his former life. Had he truly been such a miser that he would let something so petty as that control him? He imagined himself hoarding every cent he’d earned, afraid to spend any of it and he was genuinely glad to be free of it at last.

He looked at his other self and shook his head. He thought he heard his other half whisper the words, “My precious,” but he couldn’t tell. It didn’t matter. He was free to focus on the important things. He couldn’t wait to see Toot and tell him what he’d accomplished.