Born a Monster

“Rhishi, no! That’s EVIL.” Kismet said.

Madonna had different objections. “That is lax and lazy. Did you get Sloth points for it?”

“Arrogant.” Tarantula said, “What makes you think you’ll live to see spring, let alone when that child grows into an adult?”

“The choices,” I said, “are his to make. If the curse is approved, only then will fate begin weaving our destinies so that they meet.”

Madonna snorted. “Women bring men into the world; when they have to, they take them out as well. Isn’t that a saying worldwide?”

I shrugged. “I notice it more among the poor than the rich. And what manner of mother doesn’t love her children?”

“Some women choose duty and honor over love.” Tarantula said.

“No, we’re getting away from the point, here.” Kismet said. “Rhishi, you can’t kill that kid. You don’t even know him.”

.....

“He will be an adult before that comes to pass.” I said.

“Depending upon culture, that could be as young as twelve!” she responded.

“How old was he? Six? Seven?”

Tarantula said, “Closer to five. How do they GET that much sin crammed in at such a young age?”

“So, no sooner than five years. It’s long enough for him to change. We’ll be well away from here at that time. And, the curse hasn’t been approved, yet.”

“You keep saying that, but I’m not certain what you mean.” Tarantula said.

Madonna rolled her eyes. “I’m going to the sweets and cookie stall.”

“Ooh, do they have candied oranges? Would you get me one?” Kismet asked.

“You’ve heard this lecture before. Come, keep me company in a long, sweaty line.”

Kismet made a plaintive noise, but then apologized and joined Madonna in the line. I couldn’t blame her. The oranges were peeled, a piece of twine run through their core, and then they were soaked in sugar-water until the crystals covered the surface.

Expensive, yes, and probably gone, but... I didn’t blame her.

Tarantula fidgeted. “Is it that boring?”

“Not very, nor is it long. The theory runs like this. The gods and goddesses are not omnipotent, and in theory have celestial duties that keep them from observing the world as closely as most mortals believe.”

“Yet clerics receive faith, and blessings clearly exist.”

“Correct. But have you ever noticed that it isn’t the godhead, but rather a spirit that answers? I think the answer is that the deities have servants, and those servants actually monitor prayers, and then forward them up some manner of hierarchy.”

“Like how the village heads report to town heads, who report to province chiefs, and eventually it gets to the king that crops from Fartsburg are going to be blighted this year?”

“Very similar, yes. And I think a similar distortion of the message happens.”

“Distortion of the message?”

“You’ve played Generations as a child, have you not?”

“If so, not by that name.”

“Children sit in a circle, talking. One whispers a message to the one next to them. After a time, that child passes it to the next.”

“Until all of the children have spoken, and the message returns to the child who started it. They then say the message they sent, and the message received. It is a cruel game, as I remember it.”

“It is one that scholars teach their students, to emphasize the need for the unchanging written word.”

She snorted, “Unchanging until the next scholar improves the word choices.”

“Oh, do you have scholarly training?”

“Worse, I have church training. How long has Madonna been possessed of a demon?”

“The daemon are split into two groups.”

“Fine, how long has she been a devil-woman?”

“Longer than I’ve known her. I think Kismet is a good influence upon her.”

“You think? Kismet?” She began to laugh, nearly passing out from the effort.

And yes, laugh if you want. She was casually violent, and self-centered, and vain; but I still regard her as a good person, if not the best of friends for one’s eyeballs.

“In any event,” I said, “I think only the greatest of deities have actual access to those guarding the Loom of Fate.” I raised a hand. “Or whatever mechanism or mechanisms operate at that level.”

“Fate is a concept made by lazy people, who want to avoid taking responsibility for the consequences of their actions, inaction, or decisions. I believe we make our own fate.”

I looked to where Kismet and Madonna were happily chatting. “We make our own fate, yet curses and blessings exist. Omens are read for newborns, and every night where the stars dance, astrologers strain to read the future of the world.”

“And your stars? What do the stars portend on the day of your birth?”

“Which one?” I asked. “The one I know to be true, or the one recorded in my System?”

Her nose wrinkled. “Those CAN’T BE different dates.”

I spread my hands helplessly. “And yet it is so. I am Rhishisikk, Speaker of Truth, or Truthspeaker, and I literally cannot lie to you.”

“Whatever. I’m still going to find a way to kill you.”

#

And over the next weeks, she tried.

A ship’s anchor, in a bag with nails pushed through the burlap, dropped into the cooking area through a winch-and-pulley system. Should have seen that, the ropes, in retrospect, were easily visible.

Venomous insects let loose in my room. Very tasty.

Contact poison on the inside of my boots. Nice, but I smelled it. My boots needed to be washed, anyway.

A bucket of lamp oil, suspended above a door frame, and hurling a lit torch at me. That was an interesting run to the well.

Two of the attempts involved the Sea Sprite’s Outrage. The most foolish involved her pushing me over the dock railing into the ocean below. I was at more risk from the falling damage than anything present in the ocean.

The other was actually clever. She locked me in a room with several nests of plague-ridden rats, hungry enough to try to take a bite of me. Again, it was a decent attempt, but I’d already beaten Blood Fever once. And the rats had developed their own counter-measures, which I’d unlock in the spring, when nutrition was easier to come by.

And so it went, each attempt creative, each one damaging enough to take up half my week or so recovering, but none of them quite deadly enough to get the job done.

Oh, but look how I’ve gotten ahead of myself! Kismet and Madonna had a scheme in play from the tournament; using my magical repair skills to upend the market. This failed for several reasons. Principally, I refused to get enough uses per day to satisfy their clientele; it required a source of Nature mana, which was readily available on the island; and magic is FICKLE. It took only one exploded bowl to convince me that next time I might not blink in time, and need to regrow my eyes.

Due to an incident involving a mattress burned with hellfire, I received notice that neither I nor “any of my team-mates” were invited to the winter ball at the governor’s mansion. I penned a polite note that the monkey in question was no longer travelling with us, along with a carved wooden chess set (the simple quality of which may have been among the reasons we still received no invite).

And THEN I had to carve an entirely new chess set as a gift for the Daurian admiral.

Honestly, gathering and making gifts (with stories) was a pain. I almost swore never to visit the nation of Dauria, except for the purpose of wiping their culture of greed off the face of the planet. But I think, perhaps, I shall visit their grand empire before making such a judgement.

Anyway, I was down a chess set, and more importantly, the wood needed to make it.

The shrine, with a set of polished border-stones, finally took the temporary ward. While the prayer-stones still required wards against moss and moisture, the effort of maintaining a single sacred space was much more economical than shielding each of them.

And then, toward the end of February, some drunken sots used the sacred clearing for a drunken orgy. Or maybe it was a party that later became an orgy.

It didn’t matter.

As I think I’ve said, faith is generated by various actions such as prayer, sacrifice (such as limiting one’s behavior patterns), and suffering. Massive and prolonged sinning, the opposite of suffering and sacrifice, disrupts those flows.

More so than the presence of Taint, which yes one of them had been. More than disease, which there probably was, and even more than the physical mess. It was a disaster. I had to take down my ward, which was the easy part, cleanse the area (requiring multiple anti-taint wards, even after the physical matter had been removed), re-sanctify it...

And, of course, this is when Tarantula attacked me from cover with a crossbow.

Well, NO. Me spreading my blood mixed with salt everywhere was fine. Ruining a day’s worth of ritual by splattering my blood around for me?

“Move Water! Aqua Blast!”

Well, the magic did what it wanted, and soaked us both.

The cursing from the jungle was a male voice, and someone entirely new emerged from it to kill me.