“You saw what he did. He attacked me –”
“And you provoked him with insults,” Slim rasped.
“And that justifies his attack?”
“Would you sit by idly if one were to insult Erzili before you?”
“Of course not!” she protested hotly.
“Then anticipate the same reaction should you so choose to carelessly insult others.”
Onna seemed ready to protest more. Yet, a single glance at the tall, terrifying figure that was Slim, and she averted her gaze, quieting down, and settling for leaving me with a positively frigid stare.
I ignored her stare, focusing on my savior, on the newcomer. There was something… off about Slim. His smile was eerily unnatural. His rasping voice was like a dying man speaking through an oxygen mask. His off-kilter walk and body proportions were jarring to see. His movements were unnaturally smooth despite their lack of speed, and it made him unpredictable. Every single bone in my skeletal body screamed runrunrunrunrun while I was in his presence. Yet, despite that, he seemed, paradoxically, to be the least threatening person present.
The Wendigo Lord stretched out a long, horrifyingly thin arm and landed it on Arol’s head. Slowly, he patted the poltergeist’s head. “It’s good to see you back safely Arol. I hope Wunder did not do anything untoward.”
Wunder groaned underneath his breath. “It was one time. Just one time –”
Arol seemed conflicted on how to act. The mask of properness and seriousness she had placed in front of Erzili was cracking, her usual expression trying to break free from within.
“Darlings,” Erzili spoke.
At once, everywhere went silent. No one moved. No one spoke. Arol and Wunder and Onna seemed to almost be holding their breaths. Slim was still present, and he appeared to be the most relaxed amongst the nightmares of Fort Zyvar. It made me wonder. It made me question. How powerful was Erzili, to command this roster of dangerous individuals?
“The sun will soon come up darlings,” Erzili said. “Now, Erzili knows we all have our differences, but it would make Erzili very happy for you all to get along.”
Erzili turned to me at that. “Now, Janus darling, Erzili has a rule. Janus-darling doesn’t know the rule, so Erzili will be clear…”
The silence stretched. Erzili’s smile was etched onto her face. Then, I felt it. My ankles, shaking. My knees, trembling. Then – all at once –
[Warning!]
You have attained the Negative Effect: [Liquefaction]
Everyone was suddenly larger. Everything was suddenly bigger. I had no arms. I had no legs. I had no mouth. No bones. Nothing solid. There was nothing solid. Why is nothing solid –
[Skill {Insanity Resistance} has gained a Level.]
Calm down, calm down – you can still escape this – you have another timeline where you can feel your body –
And I could. I could still feel myself, in another timeline, sitting underneath a tree and idly training up my [Lesser Acid Secretion] skill. I was still safe. I still had a solid form. In that timeline, my body wasn’t dripping unto the earth. Parts of me weren’t bubbling and spreading away, out of my control. I still had my legs, my arms, my hands – I could still talk, I was not –
A liquid blob.
That was it. That was Erzili’s power? To turn people into sentient pools of muck that could neither speak nor hear, see nor touch? To entrap the consciousness and thought of a living being into a puddle of liquid that they could not control, a puddle of liquid that struggled and screamed to stay together –
[Skill {Insanity Resistance} has gained a Level.]
CALM. CALM. You can endure this, you can handle this –
“Do not ever attack Erzili’s darlings.”
[Skill {Insanity Resistance} has gained a Level.]
[Skill {Insanity Resistance} has gained a Level.]
[Skill {Insanity Resistance} has gained a Level.]
I screamed.
Chapter 8: Gatekeeper
[You are now in the True Path]
[The title [Retaliator] has come into effect.]
The sensations reset. The world clicked back into place. I was standing, I was standing. I could feel my body again. Whole. Proportionate. Head, shoulders, arm, legs, hands, feet and tail – I was complete. Complete.
Complete. My body was complete.
I was not a blob.
I was complete. Complete.
I drank in my surroundings. The forest was devoid of noise. The rabbit I had left to roast over the open flames had long been chewed and spat unto the empty earth. My golem remained on standby mode, unbothered by anything and anyone. The clearing was still as I remembered it, untouched by battle, unscarred by the heavy swings of Arol’s macuahuitl, and as far as the world knew, I had never met the individuals known as Arol and Wunder. I had never followed them, eccentricities and all. Never watched as they massacred a small army of kobolds. Never found myself frustrated trying to understand them. Never accompanied them to Fort Zyvar, and never met Erzili.
Wunder and I were supposed to spar in a week and see the victor. Arol was supposed to give me that necklace of kobold dicks, which I could not tell if she was serious about. Now, those events, those stillborn promises, they existed only in my mind. Moments only I would remember.
I rested my back against the tree, my gaze turning upwards to the sky. The sun was slowly peeking out over the horizon, and the darkness of the sky was morphing into a warmer shade of blue.
“Fuck.”
I spoke to my golem. It was not a sentient creature. It was a thing programmed idly with a preset set of instructions and commands that activated under certain conditions. A machine, it was.
“All because she called me a worm…” I chuckled. “All because of that. I attacked her… and now… now here I am.”
I loathed that word. I loathed the creature. Oblivion had said that he did not make me into a worm, but my state of mind when I died did. What a load of bull.
As if I would accept that. As
