Arc F1.10 | Chapter 14: Evolution Is Weird

The man slammed himself to the ground, and yep, you know what!? Fuck this shit.

Fucking fuckity fucks were those things creepy, and he definitely should have just left the Baalphorian girl to die. Would he have wondered about her for the rest of his life? Probably. Did he know he would have felt horrible when, inevitably, he realized that whoever was tugging upon his soul was distraught the girl had died? Yes, but there was no way to prove that someone was actually at the end of that tug nor that they were connected to this girl and—

“Fuck!” the man spit out as a stinger shot towards him, and really, why was he even trying to keep his tongue from forming words in the native language when the only person around was the girl, and really, if she couldn’t be convinced to keep everything about him a secret she was going to turn out to be very ungrateful for a person who he was literally risking his life to save! Was his dumbass nephew responsible for her being in the position? Possibly, but that wasn’t his fault!

Regardless of these thoughts on how, technically, he probably could get away with speaking his native language, the man’s tongue still refused to do so. It was a habit, ingrained in him long ago by his older brother.

“It is inevitable that rumours will drag themselves back to you and our nation, but the more those rumours can be brushed aside the better. Once anyone within the aristocracy realizes what you are doing—”

“I know, I know,” a younger version of himself cut in, his eyes rolling with all the energy of a belligerent teenager despite how he’d been in his thirties at the time, his older brother finally agreeing to let him sneak out of the capital, as long as he kept his origins tucked in tight.

A few years later, his brother had asked if he’d ever had sex. The answer, rather embarrassingly, had been a no—the man had always struggled to find other people sexually attractive, although he’d since experimented with a few men and women.

“Why?” this younger version of himself had asked, pouting up at the taller man, then glaring because his older brother had that look about him—that look that meant he was about to tease him over something or other. It was the version of his brother that the man liked best—a version that was softer and less stressed by the reality of their life.

Shrugging, his brother had turned and wandered down the long hallway of their home, kolrathi and servants moving aside for him as he replied, “I was just curious if your attitude comes to bed with you or not, and how your partners manage you being a brat. I’ll ask again in a few years—see if you’ve finally grown up enough to know the answer.”

The man had thrown an attack at his older brother—not a serious one, but one that had left singe marks all across the walls and more than a few of their servants nervous around him for months.

True to his word, his brother had asked again, a few years later. The man still hadn't known.

A few years more, and again, he asked. The man still hadn’t known.

Eventually, he’d had sex; still, the man didn’t have an answer.

Sex was something… never quite satisfying, something he couldn’t quite define lacking from his interactions. Later, he’d learned what a brat was—what sorts of people could manage them in bed.

“You’ll find someone who will love you and who can give you what you want,” his brother had said a few years back, and the man had wanted to believe him. From everything that he saw, his brother’s partner was a bit like him—a little pushy and needy and demanding. The man had made fun of his older brother for it a bit, when he first realized that while he was more chaotic than the older man’s partner by leaps and bounds, his brother was definitely dating a chiller version of him.

His brother had simply smiled and pulled him close, pressed a kiss to his forehead. “You are a lot, my sweet baby brother, but I love you so very much. Why would I not want to fill my heart and bed with someone at least a little like you?”

Sometimes, the man thought his brother insane—the man was aware that he was a lot. Maybe that was why he needed to save this Baalphorian girl, despite how much he thought trying to rescue her a stupid fucking idea: if there was someone at the end of that tether that was tugging on his soul, maybe they would be the sort of person able to love him without a single flicker of… anything.

The man had heard himself described dozens of ways, almost all of them holding some negative connotation within them.

Exhausting.

Overwhelming.

Too much.

Fidgety.

Annoying.

Rage-inducing.

Inept.

Prideful.

Intolerable.

Aggravating.

Entitled.

Pompous.

Dozens more words filled his mind in dozens of different languages. Sometimes people didn’t realize he spoke whatever language they spoke in, their words harsher than he was used to because they were effectively speaking about him behind his back when he was right there, and the man was good at making sure it wouldn’t hurt—good at putting up defences so the blows against his person slide off him because he was happy with who he was.

Still, he was lonely, sometimes. So, yeah, if there was a potential friend lingering at the end of that tether, the man would make sure to do everything he could to keep it a solid thing. Hence, the girl couldn’t die—or, at the very least, he was going to do his best to save her. There would be no questions of whether he could have tried harder, thank you.

Another stinger shot his way and the man rolled, unwilling to use his gifted willbrand unless necessary—the thing could only have a few good strikes in it before he shattered, after all! He’d used it once, all to be sure that it wouldn’t shatter the moment he used it and leave him open to an attack he hadn’t been prepared to stop some other way. The willbrand, while ancient and vibrating with a power he wasn’t quite sure he liked, hadn’t shattered, but it had definitely let out a strange whine.

“That didn’t sound good,” the girl had said in Lüshanian over the chaos of the songbird trills of the definitely not songbirds who were quite invested in killing him—or taking him hostage like the girl. Honestly, the man thought them trying to kill him, which seemed strange as they’d trussed the Baalphorian girl up in a mesh of fine threads that he knew from stories were nearly impossible to break without a willbrand. Allegedly, even normal willbrands could get through those threads, as could some fire-based core abilities. Everything else? Quite useless, according to the stories.

Understandably, when the man suggested to the girl that she try to burn her way out with a fire-based skill, the Baalphorian girl had been less than enthused.

“I’d rather not burn to death,” she had noted dryly—dry enough that the man had the sense that, if things truly turned for the worst, the girl would try any number of attacks on the creatures and their web to get free. As they were currently focused on him, she was inclined to wait—which, really, considering he was at risk of dying and had come to save her after she’d attacked him, seemed rather rude!

“You seem to be doing fine so far,” the girl had replied after he’d finished ranting about this for a bit—mostly, he was trying to distract the girl, aware that her current ease was likely the result of stress, and that at any moment, her mental state could collapse her into a useless husk of trauma. During this time, each of his attacks on the creatures had been a test of what would and wouldn’t work at that point.

Things he’d learned? Their wings were both their weak point and of no consequence to their overall health.

The creatures in question—known as suvrani chuvrati, but usually referred to b their more common name of raitish—were towering things. Their long bodies stretched over eight feet tall, and the cavern they inhabited reflected that size, being by far the largest cavern the man had ever come across within one of Lüshan’s cave system. Granted, on the rare occasions he slipped into one Lüshanian city or another, the man always made a point to avoid areas where their apex predators were known to roam. For all he knew, each of the cave system’s hearts and those creatures that called them home could be just as big.

The man hoped to all the aether that he would never find out.

The raitish were thin overall, and while the man himself was small, he could easily imagine someone taller than himself and with larger hands able to wrap those hands fully around the torsos of the creatures’ grey-blue bodies—not that they would want to, what with the rippling-sharp scales that covered the majority of their bodies. The only parts that weren’t covered in scales were their various offices and the areas directly surrounding them, which were covered in fine fur that the man knew would act as spines that would lodge into him if he got too close—it was a defence mechanism that had been part of their genetic line since before it split off with a few other, extant species.

Most of those species that still existed, separated from these things by millions of years, were more fully covered in the fur. Most were the sort of creatures that everyone avoided—even those with shorter fur could cause some serious damage if their fur lodged into humans who got too close—but a few of the smaller creatures had been domesticated in the KNR. Granted, as the humans who lived in the KNR were somewhat feral, the man wasn’t sure he believed these tales of domestication much.

Regardless, this all meant the man wasn’t inclined to get too close to the raitish. Unfortunately, the fuckers were created for both short- and long-distance combat: their strong bodies gave them the confidence to face opponents head-to-head while they had stingers all along their backs.

Interestingly, at some point, the raitish had evolved to primarily move about on their hide legs, walking like tall humans, rather than scurrying along on four legs as their more direct, extinct ancestors from above ground had. Where those ancestors had been able to fire the stingers off while still facing their quarry, as though firing from a gun, the raitish had to turn their backs to him in order to attack. This resulted in both terrible aim and some unfortunate consequences to their bodies.

From the stories, it seemed that while the ancestors of these things had generally died soon after losing the last of their stingers, that had been more of a consequence of no longer having their most powerful attack. As there had been five or six dozen stingers on their backs—in comparison, the raitish had two or so dozen—and the things had usually moved in hordes—much as the raitish were—this hadn’t generally meant a lot unless they were being actively attacked by a band of humans—the only things known to hunt them.

For the raitish, however, the man didn’t doubt that death was inevitable after even a single stinger attack from their backs: each attack ripped parts of their guts out of them. The things kept moving, but each step their took was slower, their chests shuddering with effort.

Animals were truly strange things—evolution as well. How had they managed to evolve to have an attack that would guarantee their death? At the same time, the creatures would have been better off letting him and the girl go, but a mixture of low intelligence and their instincts wouldn’t let them do so. Clearly, whatever evolutionary path they had gone down was worse overall for their species—at least against someone who was actually capable of fighting back. They again, considering their nearest relative was extinct… maybe it was the correct evolutionary path?

Also!? With how small the girl was, the man doubted she was worth all this effort!? It was strange, actually, that the raitish were so big. Big predators required big prey, but as far as he knew, there wasn’t really anything else so big living in Falmíer’s cave system, nor was there an abundance of humans vanishing from the cave system to become monster food. Maybe he was wrong—maybe some huge, docile creature lurked in this place and the girl was just a sweet dessert for them; maybe criminals were constantly vanishing, but as criminals, no one bothered to report them missing.

Something told the man that, in actuality, something else was going on—something else was feeding these things.

The man’s energy sliced through the fluttering wings of yet another raitish that had turned its back to him. Stingers flew free of it as it fell, and none of those things—not the missing wings, nor the fall, nor even the guts pulled free of them—would kill it quickly, but at least it wasn’t able to fly anymore.

There wasn’t enough room on the ground for all of the creatures to move about, but he wanted as much of the airspace free as possible, so he could get a clear shot at the girl.

“If you can get one of my hands free,” the girl had said, back when they had been bickering about her refusal to try burning herself free, “I can try to grab my willbrand and use it to cut myself free.”

As the girl was suspended quite high up, neither of them wanted to drop her entirely—and really, she might just end up wrapped up in more of the webbing if left to fall through the mess of haphazard thread—but focusing an attack to get just her arm free?

That the man was pretty sure he could manage, and when another dozen of the raitish fell, the man moved, bracing himself to push his energy through his normal willbrand, currently in the form of a double-edged sword—and hurl it towards the Baalphorian girl. Time seemed to stand still as it flew, the man waiting for something to go wrong—for another creature to pop up between them, for the strangeness of the cave system to collapse his energy, for his poor willbrand to shatter or be sent askew and kill the girl.

Then, it slid through one of the webs wrapped around the girl, and it would take a dozen small slits to free her arm, but when the man tugged and his willbrand shot back towards him, slicing through yet another part of her bindings before landing in his hand, the man couldn’t stop the smile that split over his face.

With any luck, this would actually work.

Now, they just had to hope the creatures continued to be just as brainless as they’d seemed so far.