Chapter 18 - Story Time

Name: Taen Movorio

Level 40

Class: Necromancer

Name: Chris Ederson

Level 37

Class: Celestial Paladin

Name: Michael Noren

Level 42

Class: Juggernaut

Name: Erin Yol

Level 2

Class: None

Somberly the four companions trudged onwards until the sun had set, and the darkened sky was littered with myriads of brilliant stars. They set up camp behind a series of large boulders, sheltering them from the chilling mountain winds. Lighting a fire, they began to gut and prepare a deer they’d shot for cooking. Collectively gathering what food they had left, they conservatively handed out rations of bread and fruit too.

“How much further until the next village?” asked Chris, turning to the blonde village girl he’d come to know as Erin.

Erin took a bite out of an apple, after chewing for a few moments she swallowed and blinked. “We will be there within a day. We would have gotten to the next village earlier, but it was also destroyed by the slavers according to some of the people I met while in the pens. We are going onwards to the next one instead.”

Cutting strips of meat from the deer and setting them to the side, Michael thought out loud: “You know, even though I hate that psychopathic wench of a numen for causing us so much pain over the past two years... I must admit that I would be doing this regardless of whether or not she told me to do it.”

Taking the strips of meat and placing them on a flat heated rock centered in the fire for cooking, Michael shook his head in half-amusement and half-disgust. “I mean helping the villagers out, I could care less about her trials. The only reason I am going to continue those tasks of hers is because I don’t want my genitals to explode, and knowing her to never make a threat she couldn’t carry out I’m very much obliged to listen to her.”

Taen snickered and pushed the meat closer to the edge of the flame with one of his swords. “Indeed.”

“What is she like?” Erin cautiously asked, “Maltetious? I had grown up hearing she was truly mad… crazed. The stories say that hundreds of years ago she was powerful with a vast empire of followers, but was deceived by Agnude and lost her mind when her people were destroyed… They now call her the mad numen.”

Michael laughed and snarfed down a piece of overly cooked meat with grinding teeth. “More like a psychopathic sadist, but mad could also describe that wench. She is one insane bitch. We were stuck in her realm for those two years undergoing torture and various tests as if we were animals to be experimented on.”

Erin glanced at Chris, who was sitting next to her examining a beetle he’d picked up. “Is that true?”

Clearing his throat, Chris nodded while politely smiling back at the smaller girl. “Yeah, it’s true. Earlier I only gave you a brief description of what our situation was, I left that part out. We would undergo tests… for example: there was one time that Taen was dropped into an ocean.”

That’s when Chris became hesitant as he recalled the story in vivid detail. “...Taen is terrified of deep dark water. He is even more terrified of sharks. So Maltetious summoned these big-ass sharks to come chase him down, and in order to pass the test he had to make it to shore without being eaten.”

Erin was outwardly shocked, hand cupping her mouth and eyes widening; and she suddenly felt very concerned for Taen. “You must have been terrified, Taen! I’m glad you made it out ok…”

Taen’s eyes narrowed shifted over to her, and he let out a loud humph. “I didn’t make it. I died thirteen times before I finally passed that test. Being eaten alive is a terrible experience. Not to mention level loss… the amount of progress I’d made was just decimated. And every time I went through it - I nearly had a heart attack that almost killed me even before I was eaten.”

Taen gritted his teeth and exhaled slowly, palming the stick he’d been cooking his own strips of meet on. “The feeling you have when your limbs are sliced off and watching pieces of your body being torn away and eaten in front of you… is something else. The worst part is when your head is swallowed whole and you have to experience what it is like to be digested.” He shuddered and laid back against a small boulder behind him. “I still have nightmares about that one. She had said it was for my own good, to quote her directly she’d said: ‘This is for your own good! Learn to overcome your worst fears and you’ll be able to face any challenge without wavering!’ I was not a happy camper.”

“That wasn’t the first or last time you were eaten alive either!” snickered Michael.

Erin was horrified, but her body language suggested she was intrigued. “You died?! She brought you back from the dead then? How horrible! She seems vile. And two years… how old are you three? I’m curious.”

Chris blankly stared out into the starry sky overhead, thinking back on the shared experiences in Maltetious’ realm. “Taen and I are in our twenties, and Michael here just turned 30. He’s old as mummified dog shit. Though… changing topics… after getting to know Maltetious somewhat I think she might be a little insane and psychopathic but isn’t too bad. In a way, I even kind of respect her.”

Choking on a piece of venison and pulling his cloak around him more tightly, Michael’s face lit up in astonishment. “RESPECT HER? I hope she dies a terrible painful death, and I hope I’m the one to do it. What about you, Taen? What do you think of her?”

Taen smiled and slowly began to rub his neck, looking thoughtfully towards the night sky along with Chris. “Honestly, I’m not sure. I have yet to make a decision, but am leaning towards feeling pity for her.” Coughing briskly, he added, “I think she is… misunderstood.”

Mouth hanging open in disbelief, Michael sprang up and pointed at his friends accusingly. “That witch stole us from our homes, our friends and family. She TORTURED US for years! And you say she is MISUNDERSTOOD?” Shaking his head and putting his hand to his forehead, he shuddered. “I don’t understand your thinking. I truly don’t.”

“I know.” Pausing a moment, Taen held both hands out apologetically and leaned back against the boulder to his back. “There was a time where you two exchanged words, you called her some pretty mean names.”

Michael sat down and scoffed, platemail rattling as he did. “That’s a daily occurrence.”

“It was pretty rough that particular day, you really tore her a new one. Anyways, I happened to be wandering around exploring her realm... as it was my day off. I came across Maltetious sitting up against a tree with her head in her arms, and she was crying.” Taen noticed the flames were starting to die out. Not wanting that to happen, he got up - picked up some sticks nearby - and carried the wood over to rejuvenate the fire.

They dropped into it with a crackle of flames, and the luminescent orange light grew to his satisfaction. “Before that moment I didn’t even believe she had real emotions. All she’d done was just smile and laugh at our misfortunes. Maybe she would scold us in a disappointed manner too if we continued to fail whatever test it was she had given us over and over again. That was the extent of it, but when I saw her sitting there crying I began to think that maybe things weren’t completely as they had seemed to be. It’s lame, I know, but I’d like to think that maybe she’s a better person than what you give her credit for. After all, we were never actually killed and then left that way.”

Michael scoffed in disgust again. Then he did it four more times to emphasize the point while sticking out his tongue as if he’d tasted something wretched. “Taen, you look for the good in everybody. Even when it isn’t there.” He ran his hand through his dark hair and gave his friends an annoyed glare. “If all it takes is for this psychopath to cry in order for you to forgive her, then you need to give yourself a medical examination to make sure you’re ok in the head.”

The wind had died down, and it was even somewhat peaceful as the fire roared to life while another log was added to the pile by Michael. Stars and moons overhead were shining softly downwards onto the mountain landscape.

Erin glanced around at each of their faces quizzically under the leaves of the forest, lingering longest on Chris. “Would you mind telling me some more about your time there? What other tests did you take? I hope you don’t mind, I’m just curious. It isn’t often that you meet Earthborn, and even less often that you meet someone who has met a numen.”

Chris laughed, gave her a teasing eye roll, and laid back to look up at the stars while crossing his legs. “You’re coming out of your shell, short stuff.”

“My name is ERIN, not short stuff!” Erin scowled and she punched Chris in the shoulder. “And I’m not even that short! You’re just tall.”

“Mmmkay short stuff.” Chris said laughing as Erin angrily punched him again. “Well let’s see…”

“Tell me one about you!”

“Alrighty then.” replied Chris, pausing to think. “There was this one test, about eight months in. A lot of the time we did tests in pairs while the other guy had a day off to do whatever he wanted with. So I was paired with Michael that day.” He turned to look at Michael who was finishing up what remained of the cooked venison. “He and I were given an obstacle course, and we had to make it through the obstacle course and back before the test was over.”

Michael suddenly lurched backwards, got up, and laughed. Then he shook his head and started over towards the deer to cut off more meat for cooking as Chris ignored him to continue his story.

“Michael is sort of competitive, so he had the brilliant idea to trip me for a head-start at the very beginning. Hey, you look pretty when you smile ya know!”

Erin blushed, pulled a hand back through her blonde hair and tried to hide the grin that’d come to her face moments before. “Thanks…”

“Anyways he tripped me while I was mid-sprint, so I went head over heels and sprawled out face first in the dirt. As Michael starts laughing while looking back at me over his shoulder - a group of three terriths, which are these minions that look like a cross between demon-spawned dogs from hell and giant insects, bolt out from behind a bush and tackle him. They’d caught him by surprise and began to rip him apart. By the time he is resurrected, I am already on my way back from the other side.”

Erin held her hand up to stop him, brows furrowed in confusion. “Wait, you didn’t help him out?”

“I KNOW RIGHT?! That’s what I’ve been saying for the past year!” cried Michael with a stomp of his foot. “He just left me there!”

Chris just loudly laughed and flipped Michael off from where he lay. “I’m not done yet. Continuing my story now. I was on my way back from a hellish run through the course. There were terriths, giant lizards, and swarms of flesh-eating insects that I had dealt with. Not to mention I’d scaled a cliff face, swam a river full of fish with very sharp teeth, ran through a burning forest, and crossed a ravine on a very long and unstable rope.”

Taking a piece of bread, Chris nibbled a bit and swallowed it down with water. Then he gave Erin a wink. “So I was not in a good mood. I’m back at the rope and hanging onto it for dear life as I’m crossing this god-damned ravine again. Suddenly - I hear this idiot,” motioning towards Michael who sat there with a stupid smile on his chuckling face, “Call out to me from the side I was working my way over to. I look up and see him waving his sword around like a madman, and then he suddenly cuts the rope. CUTS THE ROPE, ERIN! It sent me screaming to my death and I ended up going splat against the opposite side of the ravine along a cliff face.”

Erin started laughing even despite her efforts not to. The look of glee etched onto Michael’s features alone was enough to cause her and Taen to both chuckle. “It seems to me like you deserved it after leaving him to be eaten.”

“THANK YOU!” screamed Michael getting up in a frenzy. “FINALLY SOMEONE UNDERSTANDS!”

“You wouldn’t be saying that if you knew him better Erin,” laughed Taen. “Michael totally deserved being left to be eaten after all the stuff he did over those two years.”

“Agreed...” Chris muttered adamantly. “So I go splat. Next thing I know I’m resurrected and have to start the course over again. But this time I don’t care about finishing the course, I just don’t want to see Michael finish the course. So when I get back and find Michael: he’s at the part where the river full of man-eating fish are swimming around trying to get him. He’s killing the fish as best he can, but they keep on coming like there’s no end.”

Michael interrupted with a scowl and animated flailing of his arms. “Next thing I know, I can’t cast any spells! Chris had blocked my ability to cast by suppressing me while my guard was down, and now I had a swarm of these four foot fish coming at me, and I was ripped apart in about a minute; eaten again.”

Laughing hard and pounding the ground Chris turned to Erin and seemed awfully unapologetic. “We’re all such good friends to one another!”

Taen finished up his meal and put the stone he was eating on to the side. “Long story short, they did this all day until they agreed to a truce.”

Erin, still laughing, stood up with a new understanding of how the relationship between these three men actually was. “Sounds like you tortured each other just as much as your numen did!” Then, smiling back at them over her shoulder, she started to walk away, “I’ll be back soon, I need to have some lady time in the woods.”

She disappeared into the brush, and as she did - Michael nudged Chris with his outstretched foot. “You should go take a peak while she’s peeing.”

Chris promptly took the blunt end of his spear-sword and slammed it into Michael’s foot, causing him to yelp in pain while Taen just facepalmed.

A while later Erin returned with something rolled up in part of her tunic. She sat down shyly with a big smile directed at Chris. “I have a present for you!”

“Oh really? What might that be?” Chris responded curiously, inching closer to the petite woman with squinted eyes.

Erin held out a hand to stop him and shook her head. “Nope. I want to hear one more story first. I’m enjoying this!”

The men exchanged amused glances.

“Hmmm…” Chris pondered for a moment, and sly smiling back he leaned in further towards her. “Have I told you the story of the time my friends and I saved a beautiful midget from some terrible men, and in return she called me a vampire and tried to stab me with a knife?”

She awkwardly blushed. “Doesn’t count.”

“Oh I know a good one!” said Michael raising his hand as if to be called on, “Ok so here it goes. Around six or seven months in, sometime before the last story, we had a team drill meaning that all three of us were in on that day’s event. Taen and I were practicing alteration that day, which is the magic that focuses on changing one element to another, shape shifting, manipulating gravity, and things like that.”

“You can do all of that?” asked Erin who seemed to be a little shocked.

“... Well, Taen and I can. We both have the Alteration magic attributes. But alteration is easily some of the hardest magic to master, and though we can both do it to an extent - we for the most part try to save it for emergencies. It usually requires huge amounts of energy and a lot of focus, it also takes a lot of time and you’re always left exhausted afterwards. If there is another way to do things, it’s usually smarter to do it the other way. AND - as you are about to find out from the story, things often mess up when meddling in alteration.”

Taen looked like a lightbulb lit up his brain and he exclaimed while punching his fist into his other hand. “Ahhh… I remember this one!”

“Don’t ruin it! I’m the one telling the story. Back to it, we were shapeshifting that day. Maltetious was overlooking everything in case something went wrong, which it did, but she often let us try to figure things out for ourselves before she intervened so that we could learn through experience.” Michael looked up at the stars and reached out as if to grab them, pausing to listen to the crackling of the fire. “So Taen had the idea that he wanted to turn into the easter bunny.”

Intrigued, Erin looked towards Taen through the flames. “What is the easter bunny, Taen?”

Taen found her innocence cute. “The easter bunny is a symbol we used back where we’re from to symbolize a holiday celebrating the resurrection of a man who is very important to many of the people living on Earth. The easter bunny is this giant rabbit that lays eggs and hops around giving candy to children.” .

“Interesting description,” commented Michael. “But yes it’s a giant rabbit that lays eggs.”

“Rabbits don’t usually lay eggs where you come from… right?” asked a confused Erin.

“Actually all rabbits lay eggs where we come from,” said Michael straight faced as Chris and Taen snickered in amusement. “If they don’t lay eggs it’s a bad omen and we smash the rabbit with a mallet to drive the bad luck away.”

Erin looked puzzled, and even genuinely concerned. “Oh… ok then.”

“He’s lying, rabbits don’t lay eggs on Earth,” Chris said lazily.

Starting to snicker himself, Michael shook his head and continued. “So Taen decides to try to shift into the easter bunny. There are a couple rules with shapeshifting but there are a few big ones that absolutely must be followed. The first of these rules is that you cannot shape shift into something that is larger than your true form, if the target shape has more mass then you cannot do it and will end up shifting into something that is only a part of what you intend to do - this could be very bad and in some circumstances can even kill you. The second rule,” Michael said holding up two fingers, “is that you cannot shape shift too fast, if you do then your organs fail and you die. The third big rule is that you must choose a form that is stable. What this third rule means is you cannot morph into something that defies the basic rules of nature, if you shape shift into something without a heart, for example, you will die. If you leave out any vital organs, you die. This also means that your original brain must stay intact, even if it’s only intact in condensed form - which I’m about to talk about next. The fourth big rule is that whenever you shift and downsize into something smaller, you still keep the mass that you originally had.” Picking up a beetle, Michael showed it to Erin. “For instance: if I was to morph into a beetle, I would weigh exactly the same as I do now as a human. You’re also able to realign the molecules somewhat so that you can keep some of your strength too. The mass is still there, it’s just very condensed.”

“I would still like to know how that works, it defies the basic laws of repulsion in physics and chemistry.” Taen stated in wonderment.

“Whatever Taen, but yet again: as I was saying-” Michael said, throwing the beetle off into the darkness, “The last but not least fifth big rule is that you can’t stay in the shape shifted form for too long, even if you try. In other words, the fifth big rule is that maintaining form requires mana. So let’s say you shape shift your face to look like someone else. Well now you can look like that person for a time, but not indefinitely. Eventually your natural and true form will come back because you will run out of magic and have to wait for your energy to recharge, just as if you were using a muscle. You can flex your arm, but not indefinitely.”

“I can flex indefinitely!” Taen cut in, grinning and flexing both arms.

Michael ignored him. “So Taen began to morph. As he started to shape shift his legs started to mold first. Generally, though it can work either way, it’s easier to morph all at once. So as his legs morph he begins to grow a tail too, but suddenly the morph stops and Taen just stands there on his large rabbit legs. He gets this constipated look on his face all of a sudden and it looks like he’s struggling really hard. All of a sudden an egg drops to the ground out of his ass and he gets this huge smile on his face as if he’s accomplished his lifelong dream!” Michael guffaws and slaps his thighs to look over at Taen who indeed had a large smile spread across his face. “But next his head starts turning into a chicken’s head, and he ended up morphing into a half chicken half rabbit that laid eggs!”

“It was quite the accomplishment,” Taen said looking back to Erin with a wink. “I had to incorporate bird anatomy alongside rabbit anatomy, it’s not easy to do ya know! And now I can say I’ve laid an egg. Don’t think you’ve met anyone who’s laid an egg before have ya?!”

“I’m embarrassed that I actually do…” Chris muttered. “So Erin, now that we’ve told you another story are you going to tell me what that present is?”

With a slightly baffled yet amused look, Erin shuffled her fingers together and replied. “No I can’t say I have met anyone before you who has laid an egg… and yes I did say that I would, didn’t I Chris?” Unwrapping the folds in her tunic, she laid down a handful of small bright orange mushrooms. “I was told you liked these types of things.”

Chris got up and picked one up, not knowing what they were. “Do they taste good?”

Looking at the ground in embarrassment, she suddenly realized she’d failed. “No… but they give you weird feelings and you see things differently.” She looked up shyly, “Was I wrong to assume you’d like these?”

The eyes on Chris’ face widened and he began to smile. He scooted over to where she sat and pulled her close to give her a hug, whispering in her ear with a jolly tone: “You’re the best!”

Erin’s fallen features lit up with happiness at the compliment and her posture straightened with more confidence.

“Oh god,” Taen said as Chris ate one of the mushrooms and began to put the rest into a pouch. “This is going to be a long night.”