It didn’t take me long to discover that I was, in fact, not being eaten.

Imagine a small cement block with a thin copper wire coming out of it. One can bend and twist the wire in any form desired, and it will hold the chosen form perfectly without moving. Then imagine someone picking up the cement block; the entire copper wire formation will move through space as a single unit, while retaining its exact shape.

It turns out my body was the cement block, and my focus of attention suddenly zoomed at impossible speeds from close to the roof down deep into the ground in an instant – mother had turned me over and picked me up. There were plenty of downsides to using the soul-rope, but this was a strange one.

By the time I managed to wake up (about five minutes later) mother had noticed that I wasn’t responding and was just starting to work herself up into a truly hysterical panic. Thinking quickly, I did my best imitation of a cute baby stretch and pretended to sleepily open my eyes (I wanted her to think I was simply in a super deep sleep). Being incredibly weak to my amazing infant powers, mother bought my act (hook line and sinker) and let out a relieved sob while hugging me tightly. I would have to be more careful in the future, but I was so emotionally spent that I could barely bring myself to care.

--------------------

Nobody was exactly happy, and there was a lot of crying going on, but everyone worked together to distribute food and comfort to the heavily traumatized new arrivals. Apparently now that the old man was here everything was fine, and we were quickly let out of our safe rooms. The children were kept in the fort, however, while a group of guards and volunteers went outside to (I assume) deal with the corpses of the fallen.

Father came limping down the stairs, and being pretty hard to miss we found him quickly. Mother kept her composure, only speeding up slightly as she swept towards him. And, of course, the first thing she did was to yell at him. Something along the lines of being a stupid block of iron, and to never leave her like that without permission again… but at least she didn’t hit him this time. Father just smiled and scooped us both up in a huge hug, saying nothing at all as mother relaxed against his body and buried her face in his chest.

--------------------

In the days following the attack I witnessed the resiliency of my new home, as the villagers rapidly cleared the streets and started fixing what was broken. I listened in to whatever I could, but mom didn’t seem inclined to explain the attack to her baby. Maybe she thought I had been through enough. What I did learn, however, is that attacks like this happen as often as every few years! This was the worst one the current generation had suffered, and apparently the death toll was more than ten times greater than any attack in a very long time.

The strangest thing to me is how everyone just… went about their lives afterwards. At first I found it hard to wrap my head around the fact that everyone wasn’t freaking out. They treated it more like a natural disaster, maybe an earthquake. Then again, it’s not like I was privy to any of the actual discussions, these are just things I picked up when floating around as a soul-rope-thing (I really needed a term for it, but I was drawing a blank).

I also gathered that the old man I saw was definitely Merrik, or maybe The Merrik. I still didn’t know if it was a name or a title… maybe a job description? I didn’t know what he was doing or where he came from, but I heard plenty of conversation about him right after he left. Everyone was going on about how great it was that Merrik came to save them, but it would have been great if he was faster. Others said that he sometimes takes a week to respond to an attack. One thing was certain: Everyone old enough to talk knew him and had seen him before.

I was starting to put together a picture – there were periodic attacks, and they are always by different types of beast (sometimes even multiple types mixed together). The beasts came from ‘the Mountains’, wherever those were. They usually had a few hours warning before the beasts arrived, which was more than enough time to get nearly everyone safely was locked up in the fortress. Then if the beasts were weak the guard would try to clear them out, but if it seemed like too much they just… waited for Merrik to arrive. He always came, but it usually took him anywhere from a few hours to a week.

And that’s about the full extent of what I overheard. I really wanted to know more, and I was especially curious about those painted warriors I had seen. They were using some kind of super powers, maybe magic? I didn’t know if Merrik was the same as them but stronger, or something entirely different. Maybe he had flashy powers but didn’t need to use them?

I really wanted to talk to Mark about all this, see what he knew. That was the main reason I spent so much time online in soul form, but it was boring so I went around listening in on other people whenever mother was busy with something else. This also had a huge impact on my language learning curve, being the first time I could freely hear adults in conversation like this (Dad was pretty silent, and mom preferred the ‘yelling my head off’ communication method). I had to limit myself to short trips though, and I went back to check on my body frequently. Nobody needed to see my mother getting all hysterical again… This town had suffered enough already.