Once his escort was killed, these Masara shattered the Vessel’s body into several pieces. The pieces were thrown to three Orphines, who were known to swallow pretty much anything. Masara regenerated over time, so as long as a single shard remained, something the size of a tiny little speck, it could come back to life after a few hundred years. The Orphines were meant to consume the full pieces to prevent that from happening.
As I had guessed, the Vessel’s powers fused with each Orphine, giving them their own unique sets of abilities. The first simply took the body, so it gained mere psychic capacity, but without intelligence. The second consumed the brain, I guess, so that granted the Orphine a limited level of intelligence, strong enough to emulate speech and create its own method of generating food forever. While it was smart, it wasn’t smart enough to think beyond eating, creating all plans for the purpose of simply having meals forever.
The third Orphine was injured by a Venator long ago, leading the Shadow Titan to swallow it up. In the process, it gained access to the Vessel’s ability to grow gems, as well as a greater capacity of awareness and cunning. While it was still animal in nature, this Titan was capable of not just birthing new monsters, but infusing them with gems and directing them to different areas of the world.
When I asked about the timeline of these events, I was met with a blank stare. The Vessel spoke about all of this as if it had just happened, but it had no way of knowing when these events actually took place. Timekeeping was a component of its memory shard, it would seem. It was altogether possible that he had been here for hundreds of years. I was just hoping he wouldn’t end up trapped here for a hundred more. Honestly, if we could get this wrapped up in a week, I’d be grateful.
Chapter 31
I don’t think Trig or I were really expecting any kind of major gratitude from the villagers. Our motivations were more or less pure, simply powered by our duty as Venators to all of mankind. And while we were often met with words of thanks and gifts from those we helped, there was always that suspicious undercurrent in any village we came across. A worried kind of energy that caused villagers to look at us with fear.
But things were quite different with the nameless village of the Shadewood. Once the people realized that they were finally freed, they regarded us as saviors. A few even made declarations that we were gods, something I shot down rather quickly (though Trig tried to get me to weigh the pros and cons first.) Offerings were made to us of every kind, food, jewelry, artifacts from their old civilization, even marriage proposals.
I managed to hold myself with some level of decorum, opting to eschew any offers of rewards and instead focusing on how to get these poor people out of the woods as safely as possible. In reality, the village was composed of levels. The ground level was a crude display, almost like a market, meant to replicate how a normal village should look. The best behaved and the most attractive people were placed on the top level, in order to set visitors at ease, or even to seduce them into joining the village.
The second level was a hellish network of caves deep underground, where humans were placed into different holding rooms based on their purpose. These ‘chattel’ as they were called, had been more or less entirely suppressed from the moment they were born, opposed by the Vessel’s powerful psychic abilities. The Orphine had taken the natural ability of the Vessel to organize its own people and learned to warp them, foisting them upon the minds of the entire colony, long, long ago. Free will was rare. Those who were of the strongest minds were often forced to become the Shamed, locked in metal armor and sent out to hunt or fight at the Eldest’s whim.
The question of leaving such a village wasn’t even up for debate. The thankful village would follow us anywhere. They had no leaders, no hierarchy or structure. Just the few customs their village had long ago, the few traditions they were able to keep alive through storytelling when the Orphine was uninterested in forcing them to work on its behalf. We had 90 souls, men, women and children who needed to be taken to safety. True safety too, for the mountains were no place to put these people. Our only course of action would be to take them back home. Otherwise, they would most certainly perish. Their malnutrition alone meant feeding them would be a deadly ordeal. The Breach would be the best place to take them, for the medical staff there would be able to help, just as they helped the Stonecutters.
While I tried to deal with the logistics of moving so many people at once, Trig fell headfirst into his new status as an idol to these people. Having been usually the object of scorn and derision by most adults, he found that every word he spoke was hung onto by the people whom he had liberated. He took a rather fast liking to being loved and before I knew it, was married to one of the girls who had offered their hands to him.
I had a laundry list of objections to this marriage, but by the time I found out, it was nearly three days after they had been wed. The marriage ritual wasn’t public as much as it was very private and Trig introduced her as his wife almost casually, like it wasn’t a tremendous breach of ethics. I suppose
