Chapter Forty: Bounds of the Vow (Patreon)

I warned you, Binder, she snarls in my head, her telepathic voice matching the audible sounds she’s still making.

“What?” I choke out, completely confused. Warned me about what? What have I done wrong?

I warned you not to try to bind my cub! My scrambled mind tries to make sense of her words. She’s calling me Binder...that’s something related to my Tamer Class. Does she think I’m trying to Dominate Lathani? No…it suddenly makes more sense. Kalanthia thinks I’m trying to Tame her. And from a certain point of view, I suppose I can see why – coming when called is something humans teach their dogs to do as one of the first things. But that wasn’t my intention.

“I swear Kalanthia,” I wheeze out, trying to ignore the horrible smell of all the dead things she’s been eating – if I don’t want to join them, I need to be able to explain myself fast! “I’m not trying to Tame Lathani.”

Then why were you trying to command her obedience?

“It’s not like that!” I protest, calming slightly. I might still have a large predator pressing down on my chest but at least she’s letting me talk. Knowing that I haven’t actually done what she’s accusing me of gives me hope that I can get through to her. “Look...Can you move away a bit please? It’s a bit hard to talk with you impeding my breathing.”

She eyes me for a moment. “If you don’t like my answer, is it going to make any difference whether you’re a foot away from me or right on top of me? I’ve got no chance against you, and we both know that.” A pregnant pause elongates awkwardly, but finally she shifts back so she’s not actually pressing down on my chest any more. I cough, sitting upright and rubbing the sore spot.

Talk, she commands me. Now I’ve got my breath back, I’m happy to oblige.

“I was cooking meat, she indicated she wanted some and then liked it when she tried it. I’d had some problems earlier in the day when she wanted to explore more than just the top of the hill, and seemed reluctant to heed me when I told her it was unsafe. I figured that if she had a bit more motivation to follow my instructions, it would help. That’s what I was doing with the meat. I swear it was only with the intentions of helping her keep safe, not to Tame her or anything.” I’m a bit breathless again by the end, my fear driving me to speak as quickly as I could.

Kalanthia looks at me silently for a long moment. Slowly, the continuous snarl dies down and her lip lowers to cover her teeth again.

You mean to tell me that this was all for her safety; that you have no designs in chaining my cub to you? I shook my head.

“No intentions of using either Dominate or Tame on her, I promise. I just didn’t want her to get ambushed by something in the forest because I hadn’t been able to stop her from running off. Last time wasn’t such an issue, but this time she has only just been listening to me – I didn’t want to risk that next time she decides not to listen at all.”

She makes a thoughtful noise and finally relaxes, allowing me to do the same, my heart finally starting to slow down now it’s clear she’s not going to kill me. Actually, weren’t those Vows we took right at the beginning supposed to stop this sort of thing? Unless knocking me flat on my back doesn’t count as an attack, or her believing that she was defending her cub was enough justification to respond within the bounds of the Vow. I don’t know, but for sure this experience has rattled me a bit.

I apologise, Markus Wolfe. I...was hasty in my judgment of the situation. I had not realised that you were having difficulty preventing Lathani from putting herself at risk.

“I understand, I guess,” I say. “Though I thought the Vows were supposed to be something we could rely on in these kinds of situations?” I ask, deciding to voice my thoughts in case Kalanthia can shed some light. She tosses her head in her shrug.

Vows can be unpredictable when it comes to definitions of harm, and the conditioning that Binders undertake prior to actually casting their chains wouldn’t necessarily be detected. And by the time that the chain is cast, it is too late – should you chain Lathani, even killing you wouldn’t remove the scars on her soul.

“Scars?” I ask, troubled by the implications.

All bindings leave their mark; the chains of a Binder must be released consensually or they leave a great wound on the soul.

“And if they’re removed consensually?”

Then the bindings do not rip away and take some soul with them. But that doesn’t mean that they do not leave their mark: all connections once severed lead to some sense of loss.Huh, interesting. And I can kind of see it – relationships, whether they end well or badly, always lead to the sense of a vacuum once the person is no longer there. I quickly direct my thoughts away from that black hole – I’ve lost too many people one way or another to be comfortable pondering such topics.

“So…” I start again hesitantly. “Can I continue giving Lathani meat bits as a reward?” As if speaking her name conjures her, the cub comes and rubs her head against her mother briefly before bouncing back over to me and pawing at me again, giving me pleading eyes. I raise my eyebrows at Kalanthia, gesturing towards the demanding little nunda as if to say ‘case in point’.

Kalanthia makes an amused huffing sound. A cute chirping noise emerges from her, the sound completely incongruous with such a large, deadly predator. Lathani immediately bounds back over to her mother and they rub against each other again. Kalanthia starts washing her rigorously and Lathani just braces herself against the force of the licks. I watch, allowing the cuteness of the scene to help wash out the fright-induced chemicals rushing around around my system.

It’s true that this sudden attack has made me question whether I want to stay here, efforts made to make this place into a home aside. Ultimately, though, what other choice do I really have? If I leave here, I’m back to the plan of creating a shelter somewhere which is preferably not in some super-predator’s territory, and I’m not really any better off than when I arrived. No, I just need to remember that Kalanthia is, at heart, a protective mother, and so if I ever seem like I might be a threat to her cub, she will end me, Vow or no Vow. I promise myself to be more careful, and consider a bit more how my actions might look to her mother before doing anything with the baby nunda.

Released from my babysitting duties, I decide to head out, feeling like I need a bit of distance. Before going, I remove the meat that’s pretty much cooked off the fire, popping it in my Inventory, and then just make sure there’s nothing around the area which is likely to catch light. I cover the lower part of the fireplace with the stone just in case, but figure that the worst that’s likely to happen now is that the fire may go out.

That sorted, I make sure that my knife and mace are easily available in case of attack, and then walk down the slope and into the forest. I’ve got enough flint gathered for now, and the place where I found it is marked on the Map for later.

No, right now I need to find some sort of handle for my axe-to-be. If I spot some wood that might be useful for a bow and arrows, I’ll mark it on my Map and come back later for it. Equally, if I spot any resinous trees, I’ll mark those on my Map, or really any other useful resources.

It takes me a surprisingly long time to find something suitable. Most of the wood I find is either half rotten, too short, or too thin to be useful. Of course, I could cut something that would be more suited, but that would require me to actually have an axe first. It’s starting to feel like a bit of a catch-22 situation – needing an axe to make an axe – when I find something that I think might just work.

Lying on the ground is a branch that’s fallen off the tree above me. The difference between this and previous trees is its size – this is a bit of a local giant, and its branch is just as much bigger in comparison to other fallen branches I’ve seen so far. More useful for me is the fact that the branch is broken, something heavy having stepped on it and snapped it through. Making a mental note to avoid those tracks if I ever see them while hunting – something big enough to snap a solid branch bigger than my upper arm in diameter without even trying is not something I want to take on – I inspect the chunk of wood resulting from the break.

The leftover chunk is still double my height, but I think I’ll be able to cut it down to size, though I hope it won’t dull my knife. On the upside, the grain changes at its base, where it had originally been connected to the tree. It’s my hope that if I can create the hole for my axe blade just below the knot, this will stop the branch from splitting under pressure when I swing the axe.

Trying to slip the branch into my Inventory, I’m actually surprised when it fits. Convenient… Even better, I notice that a tree not far away from the giant seems to have resin dripping out of it. It doesn’t look like an evergreen, but the fluid beading around an injury to its trunk is sticky and viscous – looks like resin to me.

Eyeing the mark and the tracks leading to the branch, I figure that this damage was caused by the same thing that snapped the branch. Definitely don’t want to face that thing, whatever it is! I open my Map and make a mark for later, closing it with a grin on my face.

Feeling satisfied with my finds I decide to head back home on a meandering path – without any immediate objectives, I figure I can just explore a bit. Of course, that’s when I get attacked. Again.

Something drops on me from above and I don’t react quickly enough to avoid it. Feeling it on my head, large and spiky, I immediately shake my head frantically, the sensation bringing back a sense-memory of having a tarantula on me – I’d been terrified for years after a friend’s birthday party at the zoo where they’d given us a tarantula to hold. I hadn’t wanted to do it, but the other boys in the party had mocked me for being a ‘wimp’ and so I’d reluctantly agreed.

More fool me: it would have been better to just be made fun of for a bit rather than being unable to be within a foot of even a small spider for years. And even now, I don’t want to touch the things, though I can deal with sitting near one. As long as I keep my eyes on it and it doesn’t make any threatening moves in my direction.

The thing falls backwards off my head and I quickly try to put some space between it and me. My breath coming quickly already from panic, I throw myself into a twist and back away, almost tripping stupidly over my own feet. It’s only then that I get a good look at what the thing actually is.

It turns out that ‘spider’ wasn’t such a bad guess. At least, not if I could consider this thing a spider in the same way as a mole rat is a cute little harmless mouse.

In fact, it’s more like some horror-movie-worthy amalgamation of a spider, monkey, and snake. Essentially, it looks mostly chitinous and has six legs, each of which ends with a clawed pincer and is attached into a bulbous spider-like body. Behind the legs is a long prehensile tail that is currently curled up over its head but, unlike a tail of a scorpion, looks like it could actually twist in all directions, perhaps even curling around a tree branch. I’m pretty sure it’s got a poison stinger, from the look of the spike attached to the end of the tail

On the front part of this monstrosity is a short, but still slightly flexible neck attached to a mouth like a snake’s – complete with two long, backwards facing fangs. In short, a memory worthy of therapy. Unfortunately, since none is available, I’ll just have to settle for killing it with prejudice and hoping that I won’t have more nightmares.