Silva stopped in mid-swing, statue still. The sword was absurdly well balanced for a weapon of its size. A flicker of red mana rollicked in its cabochon.

"I was worried about that."

She had taken the news of an upgraded Dokutsu without visible emotion. "That's why we didn't get any experience for killing it. But we didn't have much of a shot before, now at least I've got a boomstick equal to the task."

"Shall I inform the others?"

She nodded, and I murmured the situation to Sashimibandit and Damwise. One of them took it stoically and excused himself from his conversation with the elders. The other was Sashimibandit.

"SHIIIIIIIIT!"

The Therian colony quieted at his outburst. Not much cut through the sea of chitters and whispers that was their realm but screaming an expletive at the top of one's lungs certainly qualified. Sashimibandit ran down to Silva, who was shaking her head like a parent who wasn't disappointed because they had learned better than to expect more from their child long ago.

"What're we going to do?"

Ignoring her party member for the moment, Silva raised her new toy above her head and addressed the colony in a ringing voice. "I have just learned that Dokutsu's child is alive and on its way here. Who among you will accompany me to stop this threat?"

>>

(Inspiration Successful)

>>

Numerous ratfolk of various professions, all of them mortal, volunteered. They had sharpened sticks and crude knives and eagerness to arm them. In a fight with Dokutsu, they would serve as appetizers. Silva noted this as well, her brow drawing into a frown.

"Stay behind us," she said. "Use slings and arrows if you have any."

"She is in the tunnels now," I told her.

"She?"

"Dokutsu."

"Huh, the whole worm thing screamed dude to me."

"Most worms are genderfluid. The appropriate pronoun refers to the role of the worm in its life cycle."

"That's ... progressive."

Dokutsu ate everything in the vault, starting with her own corpse. She collected roaches with her fronds, the tendrils floating about her like the branches of a weeping willow when she didn't weave them back into the semblance of hair. Some roaches were as large as her head, and she enjoyed the way their legs scratched at her lips when she bit into them like juicy gourds. Crunch crunch. Most of her other body was liquid, and she didn't eat it so much as wade through the membranes and absorb what they contained. Thousands of pores across her skin opened to create a sort of vacuum, and no matter how much she drank or ate there was no apparent change to her form. Her tendrils searched the air and the ground for more food, as sensitive as insect antennae, and they found traces of the individuals who had crowded around the storage tanks and the entrance not long ago. Once the scent was caught, she could track it unerringly.

A discussion with the locals, and with me, resulted in the setting of an ambush. There was a chamber in the warrens that acted as an intersection and a meeting room. The rats crowded a mezzanine with their ranged armaments to drop and throw and spin, while others scouted down the paths and waited to report if they spotted Dokutsu. Every tunnel between the vault and the monastery touched this intersection or the neighboring passages somewhere, and so many living bodies in the area would certainly draw the beast's attention.

Sashimibandit took a spot on the mezzanine, opting to use his bow rather than try to engage a celestial creature in melee. Damwise was on the ground with Silva, acting as support and ready to flank when he could, knowing his own sword would be useless.

Nezumi artisans had placed traps at all the entrances, as well as at other intersections, to harry her as best they could. Wires and darts might be no more than inconveniences to Dokutsu, but no potential advantage could be discounted.

She didn't come to them.

00000000

Lawlimi and the cutthroats made their journey to the pit without incident, though at no great speed. They carried a key to the padlocks, and when the prisoners saw a grate being opened, they renewed their cries.

"He came back!"

"Help us! Help us!"

"He's a prisoner too!"

"Shippo!" The lead cutthroat demanded, "where is Shippo?"

"I'm here!" The small, white-furred Therian tried to push through the press, but the others blocked him.

"Let him through." The cutthroats had their knives out, and as they lowered a rope, they made it clear that anyone else who tried to come up would not be treated kindly. One tried anyway, a female with a crazed look and bruises on her leporine face.

They grabbed one long ear and lopped it cleanly off. She didn't seem to care. "Let me out," she pleaded, climbing to the wire of the cage. "I'll do anything. Let me out!"

Lawlimi flinched when the knife went into her eye. The crowd caught her and pulled her away, momentarily distracted from the rope and the open grate. They were making shrill, desperate noises, not outraged by the casual murder of one of their own. The prisoners were hungry.

In the confusion, Shippo scampered up the line and out the grate before they slammed it shut. Even the cutthroats seemed disturbed by the reaction they had triggered in the pit.

They grabbed Shippo by the scruff of his neck and tossed him at Lawlimi, who helped him up. His eyes were huge, and his whiskers quivered with his nose.

"You're his problem now," the lead cutthroat said.

"What do they mean?"

Lawlimi pursed his lips, searching for what to say. "I tried to get them to let everyone go, but they wouldn't, so I asked for you."

"Why would they do that?"

"I had a boon. You've got to stick with me now, I hope you're okay with that."

Shippo cried, wept, loudly. Hot tears rolled from the corners of his oversized eyes. "Why did ... Why did you? You picked me?"

Lawlimi, openly uncomfortable with the scene, patted the pint-sized Therian on his shoulder. "You helped us before, and it's so awful down there. I couldn't leave you if I had a choice, not a kid. This place is terrible, and I would do more if I could, but this is what I can do."

Shippo grabbed him around the waist and continued to cry. The cutthroats laughed among themselves, and sidled off into the darkness, near enough to watch but be away from the stench of the pit.

"I'll never forget this," Shippo said, pressing his face into leather armor.

>>

(Lawlimi has gained a companion)

[Quest Update — Pied Piper]

You weren't able to change the system, and the pit is still a place of suffering for scores of nezumi, but you changed one life forever. Shippo is your companion, friend, and ally. He will aid you in any way he can. In return, it is expected that you take care of him, and not squander his loyalty. Companions can be lost if they are treated badly, and they don't come with you when you die or respawn automatically when they die. With great power comes great responsibility.

(Lawlimi gains 50 experience)

[Quest Update — Pied Piper]

The prisoner pit is no place to live. Find a way to reconcile the elders with better treatment of the condemned, and freedom for those that can still function in society.

Reward — 500 XP

Shippo — Kitsune Mortal Level 9

East — Air — Blue (530/530)

>>

"Wowsers," Lawlimi said, "you're higher level than I am."

Shippo wiped his nose as he stepped away, then pointed. "Hand? How did that happen?"

"Oh, I put together an energy cannon without sealing any of the joints properly. It worked AND exploded."

"You're an artificer!" The kid lit up.

"Alchemist, actually. Someone was giving me instructions on how to put it together, a rush job. Why, what are you into?"

"Artificing, definitely. Alchemy's okay, I guess. It got me in trouble. I took some parts. The monastery doesn't have anything. Not advanced enough. So, I took some parts. The firing range. It gave me so many questions. Why and how and when. The elders have secrets. About the machines. They put me in the pit."

Lawlimi was searching through his menus, looking for a companion subheading. He could see his new friend's full character sheet if he wanted.

"You have Craft Artifice NINE?"

Shippo nodded, becoming bashful.

"Then you can make me a hand!"

Shippo shook his head. "I'm sorry. No blueprints."

Lawlimi smiled wider than I'd ever seen. "Don't worry about that." He squeezed Shippo's shoulder. "Hey, cutthroats, I need you to get us to the Mechanoborg Factory."

The response came from a hood in the shadows. "That is not what the Elders commanded."

"If you want to go back with me and Shippo just so I can bother Ink Eyes again and he can send you all out again ..."

There was a brief, chittering, conference underneath the continual squeals and moans from the pit. Two of the cutthroats were in agreement, and they browbeat the third.

"We will take you, but then our contract is done."

"Deal."

>>

(Negotiation Successful)

>>

They went back into the tunnels, and the prisoners continued to call out their grievances and squabble over scraps of rabbit girl after they were gone. None of them could have heard the footsteps coming from the southern warren, even if they were listening. Nor could they smell the invader, she was mostly pure water, and her wafting poisons carried numbing proteins that deadened one's sensorium. But their own odors, that rich mélange of animal perfumes, piss and shit and blood and sweat all ripe with pheromones and other chemical signifiers, all layered over one another inside a cage. To a predator with a strong sensorium, all those signals were as good as a flag flying in an open field, and so much more intricate, a flag embroidered with personal details: ages, species, and genders along with things like fertility cycles and the presence of disease. The right kind of nose could read a lot from very far away.

Or in this case, the right kind of frond.

When she stood over the cage, Dokutsu listened to their cries for aid and blinked. They didn't understand what she was, tall and eerily beautiful, an alien come to bring them all home. Even when she tore a rent in the diamond link barrier with her bare hands, they didn't immediately panic. After all, they wanted someone to rip open the cage for them.

Then she began picking them out, like a mature praying mantis with the good fortune to discover an open fishbowl full of guppies. Her fronds were as thick as pine needles, tougher than copper, they snatched her first victim and pulled him up with ease.

He was a grizzled old rat, and he suffered a brief seizure when her toxins entered his bloodstream, then he went stiff. She took neat little bites and then hugged him tightly against her chest as if he were a beloved stuffed animal. The pores opened on her skin and drained him of fluids until he was a husk over bone and desiccated organs. That made him much smaller, more manageable, so she squatted and introduced him to her lower mouth, which stretched to reveal a forest of shorter, sharper fronds, and they accepted the husk like an alligator throwing back a fish.

As before, what she ate and drank didn't change her appearance. Her stomach was an extradimensional space, a bag of holding, or wormhole (pun intended) that was unknowably large. The pit dwellers watched Dokutsu eat an entire person with her lower mouth, and they were understandably upset. They rioted uselessly and pressed themselves against the walls of their prison as she picked them out one by one and made them disappear. Some tried to fight or resisted the paralysis, and that made her enjoy it more. After fifty-two victims she seemed to be sated, her movements languid, a contented smile on her objectively lovely lips. Instead of eating the rest, she paralyzed them and wrapped them in mucous to store them for later digestion.

I apprised Silva of the situation. Because of the dozens of nezumi lining the mezzanine, their ambush point was the next nearest concentration of prey animals for Dokutsu. The position was directly between her and the rat gymnasium, and she was coming. They had prepared as much as they could, adding barricades and arming themselves with chemical grenades produced by the Elders. Damwise was singing, not using his bardic abilities, just singing to keep everyone's hearts up. The ratfolk didn't know any of the songs, but they appreciated them anyway. They were afraid of the coming unknown, which would have been worse if known.

Dokutsu walked through a series of traps, walked through them like they weren't there. Darts vanished into her body, and trip lines trailed after her, ripped from their anchors and wrapped around her ankles like fashion accessories. The scouts got away before she was within striking distance, tipped off by triggered alarms, and they crawled over the barricade to warn everyone. She was coming from the north passage.

Silva told Damwise to stay well back, and to use anything he had to increase her attack; defense wasn't her style.

>>

Hymn to Heroes — Haste (Rank 1)

You and your party members gain a 10% bonus to movement and attack speed as long as you can be heard.

>>

The barricade started to move, wood and metal screaming as it was pushed slowly out of the tunnel mouth. Grenades were lit, a little early, and slings sent them at and over the barricade, exploding seconds later and filling the intersection with yellow smoke. There were over thirty detonations, shattering the barricade and consuming the creature behind it.

The bombs hurt Dokutsu. Despite being weak compared to her overall power level, she was so strongly water aligned that the improvised explosives, which the nezumi had developed over years of fighting the original Dokutsu and its spawn, dried and salted her.

Her skin wrinkled and tore, and the acrid smoke stole her breath. Liquid seeped out of her body like fluid from a blister.

>>

(Astringent Grenade is Super effective — 901 Dehydration Damage)

(Astringent grenade is ...)

(...)

>>

There were thirty of them.

Dokutsu stumbled out of the blast zone and into the intersection, her hair limp and confused, her scarred arms crossed defensively over her chest. The nezumi cheered and squealed, ready to declare victory, and Silva took her shot. Her new sword flared with energy from its cabochon mixed with the orange glow of her fire affinity as she dashed forward and impaled Dokutsu at an angle through her torso.

>>

(Furious Charge! Sudden Strike! Reckless Blow! — Powersword deals 11,232 Piercing/Heat Damage to Dokutsu)

>>

Steam and fine particles of fluid erupted from the wound as Silva ripped her sword free. Dokutsu was shocked, confused, and made a sharp noise like a child that had been slapped. She tripped and fell to the floor as Silva rose over her wreathed in yellow smoke. Not letting up, she slashed through Dokutsu's forearm as the alien woman reached out in supplication.

>>

(Dismembering Blow! Power Sword deals 4560 Slashing/Heat Damage)

(Dokutsu (48,782/99,999))

>>

Separated from her body, the hand deflated like a punctured water bladder, and Dokutsu's expression of hurt transformed to one of anger. A semi-solid spear erupted from her severed forearm, thick as a tree, and slammed into Silva before she could complete a backswing.

>>

(Outgrowth deals 3562 Bludgeoning/Water damage to Silva)

(Knockback Successful)

Silva smashed into the far wall, cracking plaster.

(Silva takes 230 Impact Damage)

(Silva (53,516/57,308)

>>

As Dokutsu got to her feet, she was barraged with sticks and stones that she shrugged off. Her outgrowth reformed into the delicate silver hand of a girl, and the puncture through her middle sealed. The fronds of her hair were active again, and they began pricking the nezumi on the mezzanine just above her, injecting them with deadly poisons.

Silva got up, her hair a static halo and her eyes wild. The damage had activated her rage.