Chapter 119: The curse of the Cloaca

Marta was a little bit less coherent after she downed the eighth bottle of Ale. She tried to pace herself a little bit, but ultimately, she ended up drinking four liters of Ale, or a bit over a gallon, in under an hour.

Jimmy was surprised that she was still on her feet. Well, she ended up on her butt a lot, because she insisted on singing and dancing, but she could still move around.

He tried to recall where he heard the name Rotum from, but he couldn’t.

With a fine, scottish lassie dancing around, it was fairly hard for him to stay focused. His human side shone for once.

He was a crow, yes, but he had an indefinite attraction towards the same woman he tried to pry information out of. It felt weird.

Bottom-line, he felt cursed twice.

Life as a crow wasn’t glamorous, and as far as his human side was concerned, he felt devastated that as a crow, he didn’t have a penis. It’s not that he would try to mate with this woman even if he had one, he just hated that in a way, he was reminded of the fact that he lacked the hardware.

A cloaca was unisex. He was just about as a man as Zoey or Julia were.

’Maybe I should risk it and try to evolve back into a human?’ He thought.

Jimmy was indefinitely tempted to follow that path. He knew it was a hard one, as it would directly go against the structures of his current Evolution Tree, but he felt that it was worth thinking it over.

For now, he focused on keeping Marta happy. Unsurprisingly, she asked for more Ale.

"Hop tae it an’ fetch me mair Ale." She said, and then mumbled, "Awright, I’ve got tae take a pish noo. Gies some privacy."

Jimmy was compliant. He learned a lot today.

Having the ability to learn human languages ten times faster than the average crow, or specifically, his average self, was a curse as much as it was a blessing.

For one thing, as he flew back towards the village to grab some more Ale, he could hear Marta destroying the universal bucket in her Jail-house. She drank a gallon of ale, and it had to come out some time, he knew that, but he didn’t like that he was informed of the fact prior to hearing it unravel.

Learning human languages came with every corner of its bad sides, along with its informal benefits.

Jimmy found comfort in the fact that his team didn’t understand the exchange between him and Marta. It was a little less embarrassing.

[IQ: 167 points >>> 168 points]

[Fluid Intelligence: Level 8 >>> Level 9]

’That’s rich,’ He thought, ’What profound knowledge could possibly hide behind my understanding of a woman taking a piss?’

The system did not answer, and it was perhaps best that she didn’t.

Jimmy and the team snatched four more bottles of Ale. The villagers were none the wiser, they were all busy with their daily routines.

They found Marta on her feet, waiting by the wooden window for her drinks. Eight apparently weren’t enough to bring her down. She could use four more.

This time, however, she paced herself. She didn’t rush through the bottles. She seemed brighter, paranoid.

There were no droopy, disoriented features on her face anymore, as if she had peed the drunkenness away.

Jimmy wanted to ask her if she was okay, but he knew that he would be begging for a mouthful there. Despite her stupidly alert state, he still believed that she would drink herself into revealing the village’s secrets.

For that matter, after the team handed the beers, he stood by the window, and listened.

Marta sat on the ground, and for the next hour, as she nurtured the four ’fresh’ bottles, she mostly cursed herself, and criticized every decision she had made in her life.

Apparently, she was bitten by fish more times than she could count. That wasn’t surprising.

Second, up until a couple of years ago, she was known to have one drink too many. Up until this point, she had been sober for two years.

Jimmy had accidentally tempted her to break her sobriety. He didn’t know that, and he felt like shit about it, though, that was not enough to make him give up on his plan. The damage was already done.

Eventually, Marta finally said something interesting.

"How dare they call a sober lassie drunk?" She said, "This is the tenth bloody time this month they’ve chucked guid men an’ women in here fur nae reason. Whit in the name o’ the wee man is the Chief up tae?"

Jimmy picked up on that. He figured out that the Chief of the village was hiding something, and right at that moment, he felt that he hit the information jackpot. He wanted to abandon the Jail-house right away, figure out who the Chief was, and follow him, but before he could go, he heard Marta waffle through another complaint, as she nursed her tenth bottle of Ale.

She said, "Ach, every time they hauled lads up frae the village, the fish they landed were belters an aw. Huge monsters! The Chief cannae be sellin’ the big yins, so who in the name o’ the wee man is he feedin’ the fish tae, eh?"

There were a couple of words there that he didn’t recognize, but he got the jist. This was the glass ceiling of the information he could get out of her, he knew that, because even Marta was confused.

All he knew was that the village Chief was hiding something. Innocent men wouldn’t put half of the village in jail whenever those villagers caught big fish. It didn’t make sense.

Several possibilities ran across Jimmy’s mind. He did not discourage the idea that the village Chief practiced necromancy. It was possible, but he had no leads to follow just yet.

’What the fuck could he be doing with fish, here, of all places, where no one has to be greedy about fish?’ He thought, ’Nah, I’m following that fucker. He can’t be expecting us.’

Shortly after, the murder of crows flew away from the Jail-house, leaving Marta to entertain herself.

Jimmy did not like the means he decided to take just for the sake of information, but he felt better about the fact that the village, or at least the Chief, was actually hiding something.

Now, it was only a matter of figuring out who the Chief was. Which shouldn’t be too hard to figure out. He was not yet fluent in the language these villagers spoke, but he sure as hell knew what the name Chief meant.