50. Strength (Patreon)

Aloe wielded the knife in her hand with uncertainty. Her inner vitality flow had changed, but she wasn’t sure if to make this.

“I need more tea before doing this.” Drugs, as it would seem, were the solution to all of Aloe’s problems.

After downing two cups of ter’nar tea, Aloe had shifted into a better state of mind. With better meaning that she had no presence of mind whatsoever. The lightheadedness provided by the magical tree’s leaves made Aloe handle the knife better than before. Better may not exactly be the right word, but there was more confidence behind the edge.

“Okay, I may be high, but stabbing myself is just too much... Let’s start with prickles and escalate from that.”

With the tip of the knife, Aloe scratched the tip of her own finger. The hesitation meant that she did no damage whatsoever. She took a deep breath and started stabbing it, firstly not applying a lot of force, so little so that not even with a ‘toughness’ infused body she would have gotten hurt. But slowly, she increased the pressure on the knife.

More and more, Aloe pressed the metallic point against her finger. Aloe wasn’t that strong, to begin with, and the ‘toughness’ seemed to be working. That, or she was even weaker than she thought.

“...This isn’t working,” Aloe added after running out of breath. The lack of wounds would have proved that her internal infusion had- “Oh, internal infusion, I like that term.” ...that her internal infusion had worked, but she considered a failure on her side, of her lacking strength, rather than proving that the ‘toughness’ typing had worked.

The alternative was to inflict more damage on herself, and it wasn’t an alternative, but a mandatory step to check if her internal infusion had worked. And she would do that... not before having another cup of tea.

“I’m too lucid for this shit.”

Aloe had been lying to herself because that ended up being more than one cup. How many they had been, she had lost count of it. But she was unable to form coherent thoughts longer than a second of concentration, and she wanted that.

Without any remorse, foresight, or doubt, Aloe cut her palm.

She knew that people did that stuff to close blood pacts, or something along those lines, so it couldn’t hurt a lot. And it didn’t.

Because she didn’t cut anything.

“Leeeeeeh gooooooo!” Her speech had degenerated to subhuman levels.

***

The sun shone bright, the skies were clear, the grass fresh, and she was free.

There was nothing better than freedom.

Freedom to do nothing at all.

Because that was what true freedom was all about. The choice to do anything at all and choosing to do nothing but lay on a bed of grass.

She was enjoying a great day, not too hot nor too cold, or at least that was what she had been doing until a monster interrupted her sleep with its grunts.

“I’M FUCKING INVINCIBLE!” The hooman cried with all her might as she wielded a shiny stick in her hand and repeatedly struck herself. “YOU ARE THE NEXT ONE!” She pointed the pointy stick at the sun in defiance.

The hooman walked around on two legs and in an unstable manner, it was hard to tell if that was inherited from their lack of support or if it was an external factor. More than once the hooman almost tripped down, and she actually fell into the pointy shiny stick once. But when she stood up, she was unhurt.

“Look Fikali, I’m tough as fuck!” Fikali reacted upon hearing her name.

“Wro.” Yes, you are. She added with dismissal and sarcasm, hoping that the hooman would go away with her antics.

“I think I can make myself stronger now!” The hooman shouted and suddenly lay on the grass.

For an instant, Fikali thought she had collapsed, but upon closer inspection, the hooman was breathing and mumbling some things, too low and unintelligible for Fikali to understand.

Enjoying once again the silence, Fikali lay on the cold grass, the shade of the palm trees protecting her back. She was used to the heat, and it didn’t bother her much; the hoomans called her desert dweller and they weren’t wrong, she dwelled on the desert, but she preferred lower temperatures, nonetheless.

After all, when she was diving on the sands, she only felt the heat of the sand underground, not the destructive rays of the sun.

“Hm.” Fikali grunted absentmindedly as she delighted herself in the grass of the oasis, blades pouring into her mouth.

This was the best grass she ever tasted. She preferred big plants, and fresh ones at that, but back in her wooden house, most often than not she would have dried grass to eat. It was good and edible, but she preferred the fresh stuff. The oasis had very big plants, but the leaves were too high for her claws to reach. She tried to eat the brown stuff off the very big plants but tasted horrible.

The aftertaste lingered far too long for her liking.

The hooman was growing new plants, but she forbade Fikali from eating those. In the beginning, she was outraged. So many plants and she couldn’t eat them. But after a while, Fikali decided to concede to the hooman’s demands – clearly not because she wouldn’t stop throwing water at her if she tried so – because the grass was just that good. Fresh grass was enough to content Fikali, but it was even better than the fresh grass she had tasted.

Fresher, more tasteful, more lifeful.

The good stuff.

But there was better stuff: the pistachios.

The hooman was truly a fool if she thought she could grow those. Fikali remembered the grown pistachios from her youth when she still traveled with a pack. Memories from that time were cloudy, especially after decades, but it was impossible to forget the pistachios. Dwellers loved pistachios.

It was common for dwellers to burrow underground only for them to spring out of the sands and bite a few pistachios out of the canopy. The alternative was to claw the brown part of the pistachio plant until some fell, but that tended to break the plant, and no dweller wanted that. No pistachio plant meant no more unlimited pistachios.

Unlike those pesky hoomans, dwellers were great and ingenious foragers.

The hooman was a fool to think she could grow pistachios. Pistachio plants were very big, and she was very small, so logic dictated that she couldn’t grow them. Simple as that.

There were big hoomans, and this hooman wasn’t one of them.

“Uooooh!” Fikali’s peace was interrupted once more by the howling of the hooman.

The small human stood up, her voice far greater than her size, and she walked up to Fikali. There was something different on her steps. Before they were unstable but rooted. Now, whilst still unstable, they had an unexplainable strength behind them.

“Come ’ere Fikali, I need to try something!” The darkness in the hooman’s eyes told Fikali that she shouldn’t come towards her. In fact, quite the opposite.

“Hroooo!” I don’t think so!

Fikali bellyflopped her way out of the oasis, cursing the rooted and tough ground that impeded her from swimming away.

“Come ’ere!” She shouted vigorously, dropping the shiny stick along the way. The hooman’s steps seemed even more unstable than before as if she didn’t have control of her own limbs. “Come ’ere, Fikali!”

Even then, with the hooman’s pitiful movement, Fikali was unable to outrun her on dirt. Bellyflops weren’t the faster nor most comfortable medium of transport.

“Hehe, gotcha!” The hooman ominously laughed, the corners of her mouth shifting to impossible degrees. “Stay still, I need to try something~”

Fikali struggled her way out, but the hooman’s grip was too strong, far more than someone of her build should be capable of.

“Now, now. Stop~” She sang melodiously with cloudy eyes. “Yar gonna like it, Fikali~”

“Wrooooo!” No, I won’t!

The hooman ignored her pleas as she grabbed Fikali’s hindlegs. Unlike her forelegs, these didn’t possess claws, making it impossible for her to counterattack, she was only able to paddle around. And that was not enough to break the hooman's grip.

“Alright, one, two...” The hooman tightened her grip around Fikali’s belly, her short arms not even managing to cover half of the circumference of her body. The hooman didn’t care. “And three!”

She shouted with all her might as she tried to lift Fikali!

“Huooo!” Stop it you fool! “Huooo!” You are not going to succeed!

Even after her warnings, the hooman continued to try to lift her. And much to Fikali’s surprise, she had managed some progress as she lifted her backside a few centimeters from the ground.

“Wrooooooo!” Stooooop!

Fikali pleaded as she felt immeasurably uncomfortable as half of her body was not in contact with the ground, besides the hooman’s grip being outright painful.

“Aarrrgh!” The hooman either did not understand her or couldn’t hear her through her own grunts of exertion. Either way...

The hooman did, in fact, not stop.