Totem 14: A Blunt Discussion (Patreon)

Annika stared at me as I explained monster cores. At least, I assumed she was staring; her head was turned in my direction.

When I finished, she remained silent for a moment before saying quietly, "I don't need your pity, Seth."

"It's not pity," I replied.

There was an awkward silence.

"Okay, maybe there's a little pity," I admitted. "But Annika, do you really want to live like this forever?"

My words might not have been the most tactful, but I didn't want her to push a chance of a lifetime away.

Her veiled form started to shake. She was crying softly.

"Annika..." I said awkwardly, unsure if I should put my hand on her shoulder or something. I was so out of practice with basic human interaction, having been surrounded only by the workers on my dad's farm.

Annika shook her head, gaining control of herself.

I stayed silent, allowing her to process her emotions.

Finally, she inhaled, shakily. Her words came out bitter and sarcastic. "If these monster cores fix me, undo the damage... What happens next? Will you marry me?"

Once again, I was less than tactful. "Hell no, Annika. Look, I know you think we'd be a good match, but I never wanted to marry you or anyone in the village. It's nothing against you. I just knew my life would lead me elsewhere." I gestured around the campfire. "And look, it has."

She was silent again, watching me as I continued, "And yes, I feel guilty because you got into this mess by trying to impress me with your cooking. When the attack happened--"

"But it wasn't your—"

"Don’t tell me it wasn’t my fault," I interrupted. "I couldn't save you, Annika, but I can do this." I took out one of the pure cores and held it up between us. "This will give you a head start for the rest of your life."

"But I don't have a Totem yet. How can I do magic?"

"Taking these will give you a boost and a head start compared to those who've just accessed their totems," I told her. "You know how strong my mom and dad are. They're respected throughout the village because of it. Well, when I was a kid, they also took just one of these."

Although I couldn't see her face, I could feel her gaze fixed on the pill.

"Will it fix…" She gestured towards her face.

"No," I said, seriously.

She thought for a moment. "Will I have to join the Sisters?"

"That's up to you," I said. "It's alwaysbeen up to you."

She nodded. "Then… Give it to me." She held out a scarred, battered hand, and I dropped the monster core into it. "What do I do?"

"Okay… As a heads up, this is going to burn…"

But I figured it wouldn't be as bad as what she had already gone through. I led her through what I had done mostly on instinct as a child: how to access the power within her core, and how to direct that massive energy into a ring.

Annika was a good student, and though she was silent and shook a few times—either from pain or exertion, I couldn't tell—she didn't scream. She was persistent. It wasn't a fast process, and I ended up nodding off deep into the night. When I woke up a couple of hours later, it wasn't dawn yet, but she was still sitting up next to the cooling remains of the fire.

"How are you doing?" I asked.

She let out a long, tired breath. "Nearly done."

"You did great," I said, then thought I had started this process, so I might as well finish it. "I have a couple more of of the cores. You can have them, too, if you want."

"Don't you want one?”

“Nah. From what Ash told me, I'll have opportunities to gather some later."

In truth, I only planned on giving Annika some of the pure cores. Giving her some of the Deformed ones seemed like a bad idea.

I wasn't a body purist or anything, but I didn't want to subject my body to that for a power boost. It seemed sketchy.

****

On the second night, after Russell and Ash went to bed, I handed Annika the second of my three pure cores.

While she worked on transferring and cultivating that energy, I sat and concentrated on trying to communicate with my Totem.

My efforts went absolutely nowhere, but Annika reported that the light around the rim of the core she could now see was brighter than ever.

And, of course, we traveled.

The ostriches pulling the cart made good time, and the forest around us thinned so that there were more gaps between trees, along with some pretty meadows for us to stop and eat our rations.

We even passed a few other settlements, which were a great source of curiosity, especially for Annika and Russell, who had never seen another town in their lives. I had, of course, on Earth.

Did that count? You know what? I was going to say it counted.

Anyway, most of the settlements didn't look all that different from the one we had grown up in. The same earthen huts for the majority of the families, and stick-built homes with thatched roofs for who were doing a little better for themselves.

Some of the carts we passed on the road were more heavy-duty and had actual oxen pulling them instead of a couple of flighty, dumb ostriches. I considered that a win.

Ash always received hard looks. He was a full-grown adult without any divine marks, although he did have his puma totem necklace. People gave him the old fisheye—literally, in a couple of cases—but no one straight-up called him out on it within my hearing.

I suspected that Ash went full puma at night because sometimes when I returned to my bedroll after the fire, he wasn't there. I wondered if he was out hunting or something. Or maybe communing with his Totem? I wished I could figure out a way to get mine to talk to me.

Anyway, things were fairly uneventful, right up until they weren't.

"You say you're heading southwest," said a man with, I think, a Golden Retriever Totem. Definitely a dog, and that mane of luxurious red-gold hair, plus the tail, really screamed Golden Retriever. The guy was friendly too. He was the only one in the little village we bypassed that would talk to us.

"You'll want to take the road out past the donkey pasture and follow it around that mountain." He pointed with one hand that was tipped with a very dog-like claw.

"Isn't that the long way around?" Ash asked.

The man nodded, looking grave. "Other roads are blocked."

There was a beat of silence as Ash and the Golden Retriever man stared at one another.

I decided to step in. "Why? Is there a bridge out or something?"

The man looked at me, and his eyes softened a little. I don't think he liked Ash very much because he was a full-grown adult without any visible divine marks. However, I was just a kid, so I got a pass.

"That way’s not meant for good, uncorrupted folk," Golden Retriever man said. "They say that the whole Snakeneck Valley out there between those two mountains corrupted themselves and became deformed. A whole stretch of villages, three in a row, fell one after the other. And, being deformed, the only ones that survived were the kids old enough to run fast. My wife and I took in a couple ourselves."

"Oh, they're like you then, Seth," Russell said. “Deformed orphans.”

I smacked him on the back of the head.

Golden Retriever man looked even more sympathetic. "Hard times."

"Yeah," I said, disliking my cover story. It gave me sympathy points that I didn’t earn.

Ash nodded and, without thanking the man—he could be kind of a jerk—turned and walked back to the cart.

I stayed to thank the man because I had manners, plus people like him remembered faces, and if I ever had to travel back this way, I didn't want to get overcharged for basic goods.

Then I joined Ash, who was back at the cart, checking the straps and tightening things down. Then he started unhooking the ostriches from their tethers.

"We're not pushing on?" I asked. It was barely noon. A little early to stop for the day.

"You and I are. The two kids get to stay."

"You're abandoning us?" Annika asked. She had been sitting in the cart, either sleeping or napping upright, or just spacing out, I couldn't tell. But at his words, she jerked up straight. "I thought we were all going to the city?"

"For a night only, maybe two," Ash said. “We’ll be back.”

"Why?" I asked.

Russell spoke up in a nasal whine. "No, you’re probably just abandoning us to die even though my Mom paid you paid you for the journey."

"We didn't get paid, dumbass," I said, turning to him. "There was a whole argument about it, remember?"

"You said you’d come with us, and now you’re going back on your deal," he whined.

I turned away from the annoying kid. It was either that or smack him upside the head again.

"You and I," Ash said, "are traveling to the corrupted lands. It will be good experience for you."

"Really?" My first thought was horror because the Deformed had been a source of fear and anger for my whole second life here. But after that passed, I felt excitement.

Hell yeah, I wanted to get stronger and fight off the deformed. Learn some cool goose magic, too! This was going to be great.

Ash was much more experienced than I was, and he'd have my back.

"I will come too," Annika said, standing.

And, just like that, my enthusiasm fell like a stone. "No, you aren't, you're hurt."

In answer, she jumped off the side of the cart to land firmly on the ground. "I'm fine."

Of course, I couldn't tell if she was in pain or not, considering she was still dressed up like a fancy Halloween ghost.

"You can't do that," Russell said, and for once, I agreed with the twerp. Then, of course he had to ruin it by adding. "You can’t go along with two grown men. You need a chaperone. If you're going, then I will too."

Dammit.

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