Born a Monster

414 314 – The Long Path, Part Four

Gondon actually seemed relieved when the first group of morlocks tried to swarm us. We had actually sighted a small rock worm, about half a torso wide and gods only know how long.

Many ignorant people use the term “simple earthworms”, but they are actually quite complex creatures, and incredibly durable for their size. Their larger cousins, based on a sampling of remains from some sort of worm-on-worm fratricide, turned up...

Well, you may not remember when I said last book that cricket legs don’t quite scale up. But they don’t, and neither do normal earthworms. But if I ever wanted to get along without eyes or a face to put them in, I had THOSE evolutions ready to crank into high gear.

Just... you know, I had better things to do than unlock rock worm transformation.

Morlocks are stronger than humans, and faster, and more coordinated. They have incredible dark vision, smell that rivaled mine, hearing that was better... and so sorry, they just weren’t as impressive as I remember. For beings capable of ripping the average person apart with their claws, they didn’t seem as able or as strong as I had become.

Which was a good thing, because none of them spoke the Lavin tongue.

“Stop talking at them and fight, unless you’re insulting their mothers!” Gondon shrieked. He’d been like that for the past day or so, as we crept through areas of the earth turned into a three dimensional maze.

“Go down the wrong one of these tunnels,” he had warned me, “and it’s nothing but a messy ending.”

We’d only gotten lost twice, or maybe once.

.....

At that moment, though, I was busy tripping up one of my foes. He stumbled backward, bumping into two of his comrades. One fell back to untangle himself; the other charged at me.

A mining pick isn’t a thrusting weapon, but you’d be amazed how quickly a thrust at someone’s face convinces them to stop charging at you. Or, as that one, it makes a satisfying smush sound and sprays you with blood.

Yes, morlocks have blood in their veins, not bile and not the black blood of the stone creatures deep under the earth.

To their credit, they tried to swarm us. But these were the weaker members of their... herd? I want to say tribe, but I understand morlock enclaves aren’t quite that orderly. In any case, the remaining four we were facing were weaker members, forced to scavenge an area bordering on the rock worm territories. There wasn’t a lot of food here, unless one wanted to eat morlock.

Don’t eat morlock, not if you have better options. They taste terrible. Not as bad as goblins, but still bad. They aren’t very nutritious, and there isn’t a lot of meat on them. As mentioned, they have some good sensory evolutions, but that’s about where interesting things about morlocks ended.

I sighed, spinning left while stepping right to put my backpack against the wall. They raked at my armor with their claws, and I almost felt badly about how terribly much I outclassed them. Almost.

Morlocks CAN use weapons, but usually don’t. So far as I know they didn’t have any kind of smithing skills, and we were too far down for branches or even roots.

Each of my blows that connected drew blood, usually a lot of it. Still, Gondon finished on his first, and two of mine were still in shape to flee when he joined me.

“Three to one.” he said, planting his pike in the head of the one nearest me. “That’s quite a shame, larva.”

“What are we on the watch for? Do morlocks have champions? Shamans?”

“Not such that I understand either of those terms, no.” he replied. “As a squishy, I guess you gotta watch for their lice. They sometimes carry diseases.”

He pulled out a map for a quick glance. “I doubt they’ve grown that much in just a few months; something deeper out there is pushing them into migrating this way.”

“Something for us, or for a later expedition?”

“Based on what you’ve learned so far?” he asked.

“We leave it for another expedition, with the supplies and numbers to conduct a proper investigation.”

“Right you are. Besides, there’ll be enough fighting once we get close to the spiders.”

I nodded. “Morlocks are resistant to poisons and diseases, so the spiders are an easier food source for them than a lot of other things down here.”

“Good, you remembered your basic ecology lore. Now either say something useful or let’s get back underway.”

“Well, I do have a useless question.”

“Granite below, and granite above, and granite to either side.” he cursed. “Ask while we walk.”

“What have I done that has offended you?” I asked.

“What? Two weeks out, just ahead of our most dangerous days of this run, and THAT’S your imbecilic question?”

“Yes, elder, it is. I’ve tried to limit the number of stupid questions, like ‘are we lost’, or ‘how do you represent three dimensional passages on a flat sheet of paper’, but you still seem upset every time I try to talk.”

He slapped one side of his chin, and then the other. “Why do you need to talk so damn much, anyway? That second question actually isn’t so dumb, and I’ll answer it later.”

“I’m trying to learn everything that I can.”

“I’m showing you exactly what you need to know.” he replied.

“Showing is not teaching.”

It’s more than most of us got when we were being trained, you ungrateful...”

“Untrained...” I said, thinking that was where he was going.

I was SO wrong. “Damn you, squishy. How did you get that dumb idea into your head? Of COURSE you’re untrained. And you’re supposed to ask questions... AFTER we return from the tunnel run. What’s your hurry to ask the questions, you scared I’m going to up and die on you?”

“Now that you mention it,” I said, “yes. There is a real chance that we’re going to run into a troll or a corrupted Horror, or something else that two people just can’t be ready for. And as the elder, you’ll tell me to run while you get it to either chase you or fight you...”

“Heh. No, larva. If I tell you to run, it will be when I also run. Either you’ll keep up, or you’ll get lost and I’ll leave you behind. In the dark. With no map, and no hope of getting home.”

I bit down on the words that I had survived worse. Without a map? I knew to go generally upslope, and I’d get to the surface eventually... if I could survive that long. Plus everything I met along the way.

Mind you, it sounded like multiple experience points each day. But, cowardly or not, I liked being certain of surviving the day.

For this reason I bit back my snarky response.

“Are you done?” he asked. “At least for now?”

“I have to be.” I said. “Unless I mistake those noises, there are more morlocks coming, and soon.”

“I hear nothing.” he said, but picked up our pace.

Strong wave, stronger wave, slightly weaker but still stronger than the first wave; that was our next two days. Both of us were soaked in blood and other morlock fluids. My left eye was [Festering] from some manner of curse, and I was about to just rip it out of my head to stop the itching and just grow a new one.

“Ah, shit.” Gondon said, spotting our first spider.

“Hm? Isn’t that a good sign?” I asked.

“Wait for it.” he said.

I waited for it; the hissing inhale that zombies make when first scenting the living.

“Oh, ceiling made of sand.” I cursed.

“I’ve been meaning to talk to you about your cooking.” he said, as spiders began stumbling toward us. It was mallet work, and it seemed to last for hours.

During those hours, we advanced maybe twenty to forty yards. Almost nothing.

“Questions?” he asked.

I reached behind myself, stupidly trying to massage a pulled back muscle through the plate curiass. I replied with a wordless moan of pure frustration.

“Well, get used to it, larva. That’s going to be most of the next day and a half.”

And it was. We crushed spiders, and more spiders, and then the goblin zombies when they ran out of spiders to attack us with. And then, the ogres were spotted.

“This is it, larva! Run, and keep up.”

When we stopped running, I could smell the water, hear the waterfall.

“This is where I’d tell you you’d done well, if you had. You have first watch.”

He pulled out his hourglass, slammed it on the floor, and was promptly asleep.

Two days later, in point of fact. It has to do with different ultraviolet shades of ink, and the thickness of the lines. When I asked why they don’t use onion paper, or paper cut so thin that you can see through two or sometimes up to four layers, he seemed intrigued by the concept, before asking me if I was certain I wouldn’t rather be an artificer.

Obviously not the recommended medical procedure, for multiple reasons. In the end, I was able to drown the curse when we got to an underground spring, and thus spare the eye. In retrospect, I’m still not sure that I wouldn’t have been better off just getting it done, but insert hindsight joke here.