Chapter 365

365 265 – Pirate Assassins

As it happens, that is when I met the assassins.

Two of them tackled Madonna, smothering her with some manner of scented rag. Even as they dragged her out into the hallway, a third came into the room.

She bore a flanged mace with a dagger welded to the butt end. Her bosom was the size one normally sees in houses with colored lanterns on them, and she moved like a dancer. Her skin tone and bloodlines were those of the Neonen.

She worked quickly, stuffing an entire pillow into my mouth. It was straw, I swallowed it.

“Jorge” she hissed. “It doesn’t take two grown men to subdue one child.”

“Gyah! She bites!” screamed one of the men.

By then, she had folded a blanked, and was trying to muffle me with that.

“You need to know why this is happening, bastard.” she whispered in Neonese. “Your sex cult ruined my sister, and their wives.”

My sex cult? I’m pretty certain I’d know if I founded one of those. Maybe in a dozen years or so, when the hormones kicked in.

.....

“She always spoke about what happened in your little riverside glade.”

Oh! The group that kept messing up Sobek’s shrine! If I could only get my mouth free, I could tell them.

“Do you know the things she does, trying to recreate that feeling? Do you care?”

Well yes, I cared, but me talking wasn’t something they cared about. Me in pain, bleeding? They cared about that.

“He’s supposed to be dead, but he fights like a horse.” she shouted.

“Heh, that makes this one a breeding mare.”

She tried to get the point of the dagger near my eye.

“Stop struggling. This can all be over soon.”

I blinked. Stopped struggling, and started fighting.

Wounded or not, I was freaking strong. Certainly stronger than some sneak, who felt the need to come at me when I was ... how wounded was I?

[16/80 health remain.]

Crap! I could lose this and die. I could die, and nobody was near enough to help me.

I incurred [Bleeding: 3] by twisting my savaged torso under her knee. But that got me access to her other knee.

If you can’t stand, you can’t fight.

I pulled Heart’s Protector from my inventory, rolled over her as she rose.

My flesh cracked as I moved.

Damn it! I’d kill myself at this rate.

“Slumber!” I cast at her, but a green gem in her necklace flared to life. Peridot.

The room was wide enough for more movement, movement I just couldn’t afford. The red was edging in the sides of my vision, followed quickly by the black.

My blood saved me. I don’t mean it grabbed her and twisted her ankle. She slipped in it, spinning to show me her right side.

I wasn’t set properly, I went sprawling as well. But the tip of my blade glanced off the back of her hip. Heh, if nothing else, she’d have a nice scar to sit on.

She tried a smash and slash combo that left me disarmed, and she struggled to get on top of me. She was sprayed with my blood, which made it difficult to grab her. But not impossible.

Her arm folded sideways at the elbow with an audible crack and a scream, but at that point, I wasn’t seeing colors any more.

I reminded my System when my health went into negatives.

Now, you’ve probably seen what a stupid gamble that was. I could keep fighting, but at -40 health, there was no stalwart anything. I’d just die.

But my fingers were near, and then in, her eye sockets. The weight of her was forcibly removed from me, and with a bite and a swallow, I could breathe again.

“One being of his size cannot hold this much blood.” a man said.

“Shut up.” Kismet said, “and help me force this healing potion down his throat.”

#

We were on land by the time I woke up. It must have been a new day, since I could activate Stalwart Health.

I could see nothing, and if the box I were locked up in were any indication, I wasn’t an honored guest.

Well, nothing else to do. I began taking inventory of my missing and damaged bits. As one could imagine, that list was too long to view all at once.

The sheer number of infections was more than my remaining toes, but a quick one-two punch of Lifeshaper and some biomass to drive my immune system into emergency mode, and they’d be taken care of by the end of the day.

I couldn’t do anything about the [Anemia], and the worst of the burned areas had already been sliced away by someone with surgical training and more speed than Agility.

Trying to find a comfortable position, I apparently bumped the edges of my container too hard or too many times. The lid flew open, hinges creaking in protest.

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“See?” the woman said. “I told you, enough time down here, and you get a live one.”

The smell of fungus was unmistakable. “Are we in a goblin spore pit?” I asked.

“Not sure where this stuff comes from.” the man said. “Clearly some faewild or other, the rate it grows. We feed it, we harvest it, we make sure it doesn’t grow large enough to start eating people on its own.”

“Gods.” I said, pulling myself to a sitting position. “That sounds incredibly boring.”

“I... I’m sorry.” said the woman. “I can’t look at you like that.”

“I’d not want to live like that, either.” the man said. “If you want, I can lop that head off in one, at most two chops.”

I sighed. “While the option remains, I shall live and heal.”

“Suit yourself.” he caught me as I slipped. “Whoa. Easy. You almost passed out.”

“I think...” and then I did pass out, for most of a day. They’d left the lid open, and a free snack in the form of a spider the size of my palm got in.

Alone in the dark, the pressing need for nutrients outweighed the need to remain still and let the pain settle.

I was amazed at the iron content of the fungal slices, although I shouldn’t have been, considering what spore pits are fed.

With only a third of my skin left, it was easier just to absorb the remaining blubber layer, and start over as though I’d just shed. There were other sacrifices to be made, but none of great importance. I sprawled out on some boxes rather than the cold floor; this was going to be close enough as it was.

Well, not uncertain or anything. But I hadn’t been this bad off in....

Oh, I guess it had only been a few months.

At dawn, there were guards to escort me to a padded room upstairs, pillows covered with meats and cheeses and fruits. Vegetables were brought to me by the platter, and I began a two day regimen of stuffing myself until my stomachs were full, and then allocating biomass, and losing consciousness for a few hours.

Negative six health became negative five, and then negative four. When the guards escorted the old man into my chamber, I was covered in itchy growths that would eventually join and become my new skin.

“Master.” he said, “or should I call you Excellency?”

“Why would I need a title?” I asked, sluggishly pulling myself... not upright, but better able to crane my head to look at him.

“You are hem-netjer.” he said. “Ambassador for the lord Sobek. I am sorry, I’m being rude. I am Niles, to be Oracle for Sobek in these lands. He said there were things you would be able to train me to do?”

Sure enough, there was a new quest, [Train This Old Fool], sitting right where requests from He Who Watches for Injustice normally resided.

Niles was an eager student. We would take walks by the river, and I would build up his knowledge. He was a natural at Tapping, and once I was able to walk that far, he barely needed any of my help to reserve a waterfall for the faithful.

His other magics came slower. Oh, he could use the Celestial Heavens or Life when I mixed them for him, but his own attempts were usually, perhaps four in five, botched. His natural element was Air rather than Water, and someone had trained him enough to gain a level of Air Adept. He seemed amazed that he could generate spells of his own rather than merely recycle those of others.

It was a good few days, and then Madonna learned I was still alive, insisting that I be carried everywhere, and pampered and preened.

And fed enough that I raised my Omnivore method to level five. The cost of the additional stomach slot (500 biomass) paled in comparison, and...

[You have 101/1920 biomass stored.]

If I could ever FILL that meter, I could survive for the better part of two weeks!

I suppose I should put in an appendix containing the things that a champion-level Omnivore could, in theory, evolve.

For as weak as I was, I was doing quite well. I could still count my health on my remaining fingers when the dragon sent guards for me, but I was walking on fully skinned feet, and if the scales were tiny, they were still coming in.

I must have struck a sight, walking upright with patches of raw flesh still showing.

Gamilla had a table buried under ledgers and scrolls, at the dragon’s left hand.