“Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”

- Theodore Roosevelt

***

Bastok’s gaze on me was steady, and menacing as he slowly made to reach a small pouch adorning his belt. I had to hold in a hissing snicker for fear he might interpret it as a threat.

But god damn it, it was a fanny pack.

I was getting hysterical if that was all it took to distract me from my imminent enslavement and/or death.

When Bastok finished rummaging about in his pouch - a task that took entirely too long for such a small container - his hand came up holding a brilliant purple gem the size of his fist. It was crudely shaped to like very similar to a mammoth tusk, and had a glittering band of silver metal wrapping around its center. The band was positively covered in little impossible to decipher scratches and I tried to step away as it entered my sight.

Fear and anticipation filled me as I tried to find a way out of this situation. Even if they weren’t going to kill me, I doubted whatever they were going to do to me was going to be pleasant.

I had, of course, forgotten about the Saber Tooth Tiger that was literally on fire less than a foot away from me, and was reminded only when an errant swipe of passing heat from its claws at my back prevented my flight again.

“Do you remember the ritual?” Bastok said, raising a single condescending eyebrow.

“Of course I remember the ritual you infuriating-” Nadeen seethed, apparently now tired of Bastok’s casual assumption of her incompetence.

I was beginning to get the feeling that Bastok didn’t really want to be here, and it showed. He was clearly something akin to a babysitter, and, assuming the gem was a pokeball or something similar, I wondered why he didn’t just capture me himself and give me to her later.

I shuddered as I considered what being inside a pokeball must be like. Was it like a resort I came out of just to fight? Or would my existence be the null blackness of a waking coma? Would I be pliant and helpful, just so I didn’t have to go back in the crystal? Suddenly the context of all those children’s cartoons took on a dark tone in my memories as I contemplated be imprisoned for all eternity.

“Then. Do. It.” Bastok ground out from behind gritted teeth, cutting off what was obviously going to be the start of an oft repeated argument.

“I…” Nadeen looked back and forth between the crystal and me like she was unsure of herself for a moment, and I could actually see the moment her rage at feeling inadequate drove her to action. Her face tightened into a firm grimace and heated eyes turned on me like with all the force and drive of an executioner to his calling. This girl had a chip on her shoulder the size of my head, and seeing as how I was likely about to become her primary weapon in any fight she got into, that didn’t bode well. With a quick jerking movement she snatched the gem from Bastok’s hand, scowling at him the entire time.

I took a stuttering step forward, hands still raised in the air in a clear show of surrender. Bastok seemed to find this highly amusing, chortling at my obvious willingness to do anything if meant not fucking dying. He was an ass. And I promised myself that I’d find a way to get back at him for this someday, if I could.

“By Oath and Blood,” intoned Nadeen, stepping towards me with the gem, itself now beginning to emit a faint glow that was visible even in the waning daylight.

‘Fuuuuuck’ I thought, now less than a few feet away from the young girl.

“Your Fate Undone,” she continued, making a grasping motion towards me with her free hand. Immediately, I felt a pull on my very being. A tug at my very core that left me feeling as though my soul was leaving my body. Glancing at my up raised hands I was terrified to see the outline of my body beginning to grow hazy, as though I was turning into a faint black mist being drawn towards the purple crystal.

‘Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck’

“My Soul Is Open,” she whispered, her tone growing quiet, as solemnity seemed to outpace her anger, and her face became fell into the stoic image of someone officiating a funeral. Out of the corner of my eye I saw movement, but I was so busy trying not to be dragged into the crystal that I hardly had time to register it before giving up on my submissive posture.

Remembering the prodigious strength of my jaws, I whirled around, opening my mouth and slamming my jaws into the ground, my teeth finding purchase on years of stone and roots strewn just beneath the surface of the earth. But the sensation didn’t lessen. In fact, I felt it grow stronger. The pull didn’t feel like a physical sensation. It felt like the sinking gut feeling of anxiety on the rise. It felt like the first, horrible drop on a roller coaster. It felt really god damn terrible. And I intrinsically knew that if I succumbed to the pull, I would lose something I could never get back.

Desperate now, slobber dripping down my face in lieu of the tears I could shed, keened pitifully, begging the young girl in every way except with words to please, stop hurting me.

“My Will Be-!” Nadeen’s cant, the final line of her spell faltered as she gasped, and that horrible soul draining pull lessened greatly. In wonder at the fact my desperate pleas had gotten through I relaxed. I mean, of course they had gotten through. I was a rationale, thinking being. I could communicate, I was sentient. That much was obvious. Slowly unclenching my jaw muscles so I could rise I shuddered.

Thank god the poor girl had realized in time.

Turning around and hopeful of my new ability to coexist my hopes were high. If they knew I was sentient and not, you know, a vicious man eating monster, maybe they would take me into town. I could live somewhere with a roof instead of this hellish murder forest. Assuming they came from a town anyway. Not that I cared. They had to have somewhere to sleep at night that was safe from the monsters.

My hopes were dashed when my slow turn finished. What I saw was not the benevolent gaze of a young girl who had realized her folly. No, what I saw was Nadeen gazing in absolute terror at Bastok just next to her. Bastok too, seemed shocked at what had happened. His face was pale, and his mouth moved to form words he no longer had enough breath to speak. From the center of his chest, was a single spider shiv. I stared at it in horror, realizing it was my shiv, dropped at some point during my days long hunger fugue. My vision tracked down the blade, past Bastok to the gremlin behind him. Wads of leaf were still stuck to its body where I had done my best to bandage it. Its eyes were pinpricks in its now malicious looking face, and it was holding the handle of my shiv like it had no idea what it was doing, one hand on the safe handle, but the other cut open and oozing onto a sharp part of the blade near the bottom.

“B..Bastok?” whispered Nadeen, clearly afraid for his life despite her previous ire at her treatment at his hands. His head panned towards her as if in slow motion, and I felt a lurch behind me as the flaming saber tooth tiger that had been blocking my escape let loose a victorious growl. It stood stock still, its eyes shockingly intelligent as they flicked between me, my brother, and Bastok, hope filling the dilated blacked orbs of the massive predator.

Holy shit it was sentient. It was sentient, and it obviously hoped Bastok would die so it could roam free again. Fear gripped my heart as I pondered what this creature could do stalking forest. Stalking me.

Too late, I lurched forward, trying to stop Thing Two from finishing its grizzly task. But it was a waste of effort. Faster than I could cross the distance between us, It’s jaw unhinged and widened in one smooth motion, its teeth still liberally spersed with shreds of undigested meat. Then they clamped down, tearing enough of Bastok’s torso from his body to guarantee his death. I turned away, unwilling to watch what I knew would come next. We were Things, we ate. Quickly.

The sounds of meat tearing sickened me as it rang out behind me, and my eyes fell on Nadeen, whos panicked gaze had turned to me in desperation. Her hand, still holding the crystal, raised towards me again, and I could see the thoughts flash across her face. She was alone in this god forsaken place now. Bastok was dead, and I doubted his tiger was going to stick around to protect her - I doubted it was going to let anyone in the clearing live at all.

And she knew it.

‘Don’t you dare!’ I hissed at her, lunging forward in an awkward dive the put me barely in range of her outstretched hand.

“My Will Be Done!” she bellowed, and I felt myself lift off my feet.

My entire existence felt compressed down into a single point, my focus entirely dragged towards the crystal as inexorably as a moth to flame. It was beautiful in its own way. Sitting there, gripped as tightly as Nadeen’s young hands could manage. Her fingers so supple and soft… the knuckles white with tension. I had never seen anything so fascinating in my life.

And as I gazed at it, my rational human mind enamored by the magic of the crystal, the instincts of a Thing kicked in, and I felt the dull crack of bone snapped as my mouth opened and shut on the most exquisite taste I had ever experienced. It was like I had been eating rare steak with no spices on it. No accompanying flavors or textures. Hell I didn’t even have any fries on the side. And this… this opened my eyes. It was like going from McDonalds to two thousand dollar dry aged steak. It was almost orgasmic.

And then my consciousness snapped back to reality as the god awful wailing of a young girl split the clearing. Like waking from a dream I took in my surroundings once more.

Nadeen’s was on the ground screaming as I finally swallowed the delicious morsel. The arm which had been holding the crystal was entirely missing, and her arm from just past the elbow was missing, replaced with the rapid flow of her flavor as it escaped her body.

Her flavor!? I hedged, recognize it for what it really was. Nadeen was bleeding out. I had taken her entire arm, the bone, muscle, armor and crystal, entirely into my mouth. Severing them with a single sharp snap of my jaws shutting.

I wanted to wretch, to vomit out the terrible, horribly cannibalistic meal I had just taken. I wanted to scream, and rail against whatever higher power had put me in a body so reflexively cruel that I could start trying to eat another human being any time I got distracted.

But mostly, I wanted to cry. Because I was too busy basking in the amazing taste of human flesh seasoned with unfinished magic to do either of those things.

Am Not. A Monster. I cried to myself, advancing on the girl with the intent to do anything I could to staunch the bleeding. To stop the crying. To stop the delicious sent of of her life essence leaving her body from driving me into a feeding frenzy that I knew my damaged spirit could survive.

And she gasped and backed away, shaking and white from blood loss. Her pale skin, which I would have once called the mark of a safe upbringing, was now the sickly white of deaths out stretched hand. And I blanched.

I couldn’t be responsible for this girls death. I just couldn’t. She had tried to enslave me yes, but she was a child. She was just doing what she was told, damnit!

Panicking, I glanced around the clearing, seeing a burning hole in the brush where the tiger had once been. Bits of flame danced around the edge of the cauterized tunnel of greenery, and I stumbled towards them, confident that Nadeen couldn’t possibly run off and get herself killed by something else in the state she was in.

I could still hear the slick sensation of chewing behind me, and I tried desperately to pretend Thing Two didn’t exist. He had saved me, and I should be grateful for that, but I had a very hard time judging that against my still very soft, human sense of right and wrong. So while I knew we did have to eat, and that, - being gremlins - it was not technically cannibalism, I was still disgusted.

Scrambling about the brush, I grabbed a loose branch, and then another and another, sticking them plaintively in the remains of a guttering fire. When they merely smoked instead of sparking to flame themselves, I gurgled forlornly at them.

How the fuck do you make a torch. Wood burns right? WOOD BURNS DAMNIT.

Like a mental patient I began shaking the smoking wood and hissing at it, as though that might somehow help. Then I heard the tearing of frabric as Thing Two continued his meal and an idea struck me. Torches in movies werent just bundles of wood - they had a cloth wrap on top!

Cursing my inability to remember even a single thing about basic wilderness survival, I sprinted towards Bastok’s corpse. His arms and legs were missing, and I nearly slipped on the slick of his blood where it was spilling out of his still warm body. I felt a part of my soul die as I struggled to pull a strip of linen from what was left of his shirt, wrapping it around my bundle of sticks as I stumbled back to the flames.

This time, they lit, though with much more smoke than I remembered a torch making in a video game or movie.

Whirling, I turned to head back to Nadeen, who had long since fallen unconscious, either from shock or terror. I hoped it was terror. At least that wasn’t a sign of near death.

Raising the bleeding stump of her left arm, I careful laid her elbow across my knee, and pressed the fast burning torch to the wound.

Nadeen woke immediately, screaming into the forest like a banshee and struggling weakly against me, like a mewling kitten unable to stand in its first few hours of existence.

I ignored her weak slapping and continue to hold the torch against her wound, the blood slowly stopping its flow. The smell was amazing. Like barbeque steak.

‘More like long pig.’ I thought, a black humour taking me as the depth of how fucked I was filled my mind with hate for this terrible place.

Snapping my jaws in the air once to so Thing Two would stop staring longingly at Nadeen, I lifted the torch to check my progress. The stump was burnt to a crisp, but there was no blood anymore, and I held onto hope that the girl would live if I could get her safely to a town where someone with a medical degree, or more likely, fucking magic could help her.

Nadeen had long since blacked out again, and I was certain this time it was because of the pain. Disgusted, I hurled the torch into the remains of the Gyre Snake, its flesh beginning to rot un-appetizingly.

Then I sat down, and drooled. There was a burnt, human girl laying on the ground next to me, and I was hungry. More importantly, I realized, I hadn’t slept since being born. I hadn’t slept in days.

Weariness overtook me, and sending a faint trill to Thing Two, that I hoped it took for ‘don’t you fucking dare eat me in my sleep’, I closed my eyes, and darkness overtook me.