Born a Monster

210 Servant of the Axe – Return to Makura Bahapter Type: Minor Plot, Character Development was pleasant to re-acquaint myself with the captaine and crew of the Sharkbite, which was easier because Elkenmoor was no longer part of the crew. Honestly, I should feel like I owe him an apology; had he done anything other than conceal his shapeshifter nature to draw my mistrust?

Jeanne, in particular, was interested in the anti-taint ward and my theories about how to rid oneself of taint.

"You’d never gather so much faith in one place.” She said.

"I’m not certain. A level one storage holds three points. That’s forty level one storages.”

"There are problems enough melding three points of mana. Is faith easier to meld?”

"Harder.” I admitted. “But that means that experienced divine spellworkers have to be better at the type of skills involved, right?”

"You’re still talking about a complex ritual, and not many hours between dawn and dusk. And how would they store that much mana? Any one person containing that much energy... how would they survive?”

"I don’t have all the answers yet.” I said, adding that to the list of tasks I needed to solve for the ritual to work.

.....

Honestly, if all of my meters were full, I’d have forty-one mana; the idea that one person couldn’t hold all that hadn’t occurred to me.

But it made sense. Even with the aid of their System, there was only so much living aura to contain one’s mana and faith. Maybe the fact they both used the same storage space was the reason mystics tended to specialize in either arcane or divine?

Jeanne tapped me lightly on the end of my nose. “Are you still there?”

"Sorry, I tend to get distracted when I’m thinking.”

"I asked, how did you discover this, anyway?”

It took a while, and we needed to divert currents and part the waters repeatedly.

"You’ve damaged your meridians.” She said. “You’ve tried to brute force your way through a day of channeling, haven’t you?”

"Do you know of ways to repair the meridians?”

"Exercises that help them heal naturally. Don’t worry, I’ve seen worse.”

They were easy to learn, and I incorporated them into my arcane regimen.

On the topics of regimen, I wasn’t doing as much as normal. Being away for a month most severely impacted my physical regimen, and least impacted my divine, but all were impacted.

Just another reason to avoid getting severely injured again.

At least from talking with the crew, martial arts were uncommon; the coordination and teamwork needed were things that took time and effort to develop, and all participants needed to have at least a second level party system.

Everything else had levels, I shouldn’t have been surprised that the party functionality my siblings and I had discovered was just the entry point for something much more complex.

Honestly, how had I been in so many parties and never noticed?

There were other revelations, talking with the crew, but none that belong here.

And there were more interactions, in part because of my new Charisma trait, [Amiable]. It turns out that I hadn’t been just bad at communication before; many of my interactions had been insensitive or rude.

Without the empathy expected of people, I hadn’t even caught or understood many of the subtle social cues people had been giving off. The idea that most of my problems with humanity might have been because of my own actions?

WHY HADN’T ANYONE SAID ANYTHING?

Or worse, had they and I just hadn’t understood?

But, in any case, I noticed a massive jump in my ability to communicate with just one point of Charisma. What sort of things was someone like Kismet, at double my current Charisma, capable of?

That said, don’t just go around talking to everyone. My arms hurt, my meridians ached, but at bedtime it was my throat and jaw that hurt the worst. Or, you know, at least build up those muscles slowly.

And talking made the time seem to go faster. We sighted a green and gold sail, but they were so much smaller than the Sharkbite they didn’t choose to display the black. There was a degree of safety that came with size, and size of crew.

Still, Captaine Levemont had us anchor in the deep water, well away from where the Makura could easily swim up to us, and lowered the longboats.

I had a chance to look at the much-diminished human village on the coast. Were there even enough of them to repopulate?

I would send at regular intervals. When we got to water shallow enough to see them, they were already watching us.

Eventually, one responded.

"Stop rowing. Stop rowing!” I said.

"We’ll drift.” One of the crew said.

"They’re VERY upset. Throw one of the sheep overboard.”

<a>

<a>

<a> said one of them.

<a> “Get back to the ship. If I’m not back in two hours, weigh anchor and head back.”

<a> “Wait, you’re not going to... oh good gods, you are.”

<a> I slipped into the water, abandoning the boat.

<a> I sent, swimming lower. Not so low as to offend them, but enough that they could reach me with a little bit of swimming.

<a> a female sent to me.

<a> I couldn’t contain my INTEREST.

<a> The Makura had begun fashioning jewelry, making banners and cloaks of seaweed. They were primitive, but honestly, how good were my first sewing experiments?

<a> And, when I mutated my eyes to see the ultraviolet, the true beauty of the works became apparent.

<a> It was a beadwork large enough for me to wear as a cloak, if I wanted one made out of beads the size of my outermost thumb joint. They were irregular, and ugly, and the work wasn’t anything special.

<a> I said. Makura cultural artifacts? It was... Well, it was a niche market. Gamilla would have known better than I did. But something like this was unique.

<a> she asked.

<a> After several trips back to the surface (and coaxing Gamilla into the longboat, what had she and the Makura ever done to each other?), it turned out that she got seven sheep. We might have a problem justifying that price to the Spiros, but... But I get ahead of myself.

<a> We made several other trades, and took lists of the tools the Makura wanted. I was leery of the requests for weapons, but the request for human colonists to repopulate the village were hopeful, as was their curiosity of how many humans were required to grow their own flock of sheep, and how long it took for a herd to grow.

<a> “It’s very disturbing.” Gamilla said.

<a> “Why?” I asked. “They’re beginning to think of their future.” I said.

<a> “They’re beginning to think like people.” She said.

<a> “They’ve always been able to think like people.”

<a>

She shook her head. “What happens when they realize they’ve got a military that dwarfs that of the surface races?”

"I think there are different tribes of Makura. I don’t see a Makura Empire as something this generation needs to worry about.”

"And future generations? What if this is where something truly bad starts?”

"I don’t know. Maybe they’ll summon the Axe Hero to defend them?”

She rubbed her eyes. “Ambassador, you are an idiot. I know you mean well, but for someone to go through what you have and still see the best in things that aren’t... that don’t... Never mind. I’ll turn into an old woman if I keep up like that.”

"Given the alternative, I would think living to be an old woman was among your life goals.”

"No, I want to live to be a young woman in a wrinkled body with my white hairs falling out.”

"Ha!” I couldn’t help myself. I laughed.

"This is serious!” she said, stifling her own laughter.

When we were done laughing, we took everything out of the chests and began taking inventory. About eighty percent of our volume was still raw goods, but the bead blanket wasn’t by far our most valuable Makuran artifact.

<a>