Born a Monster

Chapter 4

Bleeding Mermaids

Among the Spellsong archetype is a class called Siren. You can see where I’m heading with this, I’m sure.

Siren has a spell called Hamelin, named by the summoned heroes of that age because it resembles magic they were already familiar with.

It’s a pretty simple mind control, such as things like over-riding the free will of another sentient can be described as simple or easy. All it does is compel a listener to follow the singer.

In this case, right over the side of the ship.

.....

Now, those of us who were lucky enough to be across the hallway from certain Mwarri with the ability to smack eyeballs...

“Awaagh! What was THAT for?”

“Rhishi, wake up!”

“Ow... hey, why are we in the hallway?”

“Because you’re enchanted by the music.”

“The music... it IS kind of beautiful...”

“Awaagh! What was THAT for?”

“Ugh. Boys.”

“What the seven hells? Why are you going straight for the eyes?”

“Don’t listen.”

“DON’T listen to you? I don’t...”

“NO, DON’T LISTEN TO THE MUSIC.”

“The music... it is kind of ... Awaagh!”

“No! Shield your mind against the music!”

Oh... divine mentalism... yes, I was supposed to do something with that... I just had to do something first, a short walk..

“Gulhuk!”

Someone had just punched me in the stomach. “Kismet? What’s going on?”

“SHIELD YOUR MIND?”

“What has THAT got to do with you stomach punching me?”

“Because punching you in your stupid head just isn’t working!”

“Working to do WHAT? What do you possibly want from me?”

“Stop listening to the music!”

“What music?”

Her ears lifted, then slapped back down on her head. I don’t understand why, the music ... was kind of beautiful...

One of the passing crew shoved me into the wall. “Out of the way.” He said.

Other crew members were by the stairs, cutting each approaching member of the crew across the palm.

They would then grab that hand, and thrust it into a bucket of salt water.

Because pain was an easy way to break the mind control. The mind control! I had to protect myself and make sure Kismet wasn’t controlled, or she’d walk into the sea.

Because the music... it was so...

Someone hurled me to the floor and began trampling me. Kismet helped pull me to the side.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“Shield your mind, or I put this hand inside your mouth and start scratching.” She sounded like she might enjoy it, so I wove together the mix of faith and mana that would make Protection.

It blew apart on the breeze of the song.

The song... it was... so beautiful.

What magic was I weaving? Oh, I remembered, it must have been the Celestial Heavens mana. Yes, and to pay Manajuwejet, I just had to...

“Slumber.”

“What the seven hells was I DOING?” I looked down at the mana, a type of mana I just couldn’t store in my aura.

In the distance, someone was calling me stupid, with a backdrop of some pretty repetitive music.

#

“I summon Manajuwejet, the Spirit Guide!”

He was literally the only one I knew who wanted this stuff, I must have made it for him.

Of course, he didn’t come, I’d botched the summoning incantation.

“Manajuwejet, spirit guide and scorpion! Hear my call! I have prepared the orb of Celestial Heavens...”

There was a slurping sound. I turned to see a desert at night-time, a small brown scorpion drooling into the sand.

I offered him the orb, which he took in his tiny claws from four feet away because dream logic.

With appreciative sounds, he ate the energy field, which was larger than he was. Because spirit logic.

Generally speaking, never consume an energy field larger than your throat.

“Ahh... seventy-nine down, forty-one to go.” He said.

“What happens when you get a hundred twenty of them?” I asked.

“Something magical. Literally. But enough about me, kid. Are you ready for VENGEANCE?”

“Maybe. I have some questions about Servant of the Divine quests.”

“Yeah, kid. Forgiveness is divine, and if you get the right god, vengeance can be, too.”

“A tiny village in the Southern Islands. Koputiki. It’s about to get over-run by spiders, if it hasn’t already been.”

“Ah... kid, those are some pretty tiny gods. They aren’t gonna give you more than Quest Points.”

“Manajuwejet, I’m going to be all over those islands. I’m going to be doing all sorts of things to help out people there.”

“Hold on. This doesn’t sound anything like vengeance.”

“I want someone to be on the lookout for quests I can do. Especially if it’s something I’m going to be doing anyway.”

“Oh, you don’t want me. You want Pongo. This way.”

Pongo was a bear, white and black without a single hair of gray. He was nibbling on a plant that looked like a spear shaft. Every movement caused ripples in his flesh, hidden under his puffy fur.

I explained what I wanted. “Why would any deity or spirit reward you for doing what you want to?”

“Well, one of the first things I’m going to do is battle the spiders that are threatening Koputiki.”

“Oh! You are positively INSANE. But... not tainted... hmmm... Champion. Okay, I’ll see what I can do.”

“Wait, I’m not actually...”

“Rhishi, Rhishi, wake UP!”

“Kismet? Have you been punching me in the head?”

“That’s not important now!” She put a cutlass into my hand. “There’s fighting on the deck! We have to help them.”

I could hear the sounds of combat, and beneath that ... music?

It sounded like it might be good, if there weren’t people fighting and screaming and dying all over it.

We made it past the two women who were cutting palms.

“Hey, you children aren’t supposed to be...”

But we were past them, and up the stairs. We emerged onto a deck spattered with blood and ammonium ichor.

The battle was lit by the full blue moon, high overhead.

.....

#

I’d like to say that I fought with valor and purpose, but really I was slipping around on the deck and making a mess of the whole thing.

Just under a dozen mermaids were fighting with nets of seaweed hemp and clubs of coral. They would ensnare or subdue a hand, and toss them overboard.

When they finally departed the deck, they left one of their wounded behind. She didn’t live long.

I suppose it was fair; they’d killed five or six of us, counting those they’d taken.

My stomach grumbled, so Kismet stuck an elbow in it.

“We are NOT eating the mermaid.”

I wasn’t sure I wanted to eat the mermaid. She was covered in fish scales from head to tail, and the face that was almost but not quite human seemed just – wrong.

Not wrong like goblins or uruk or even kismet, but wrong the way that a satyr’s face is wrong. Her mouth was too wide, the eyes set too far apart, and the nostrils looked like a single slit.

Once the crew was certain she was dead, they hurled her body back over the rail, returning it to the sea.

“All right! Nothing we haven’t been through before! Grab a swab, and let’s get those vile fluids off the deck.” Called Bosun Smythe.

I’d thought there was a night bosun, but he was shouting commands near the forecastle.

Kismet and I helped swab the deck with salt water, while others went to work with rags and putty scrapers. Entire buckets of seawater were flung about, seemingly at random, but always where the blood or ichor was thickest.

It was hours of work, sticky and unpleasant. Every so often, one of the hands would call Seawitch Jeanne over to look at something, and she would pronounce it untainted.

“Don’t burn your clothes just yet.” Bosun Smythe advised us when we were done. “We’ve got two more nights to go.”

“How do you remain sane?” Kismet asked.

“Some don’t. But the others of us... once the sea gets into your blood, there’s no other place that quite seems like home.”

I don’t know – it sounded like taint to me.

It is hard to remember when I was that na?ve, but I truly was.

I’ll cover the difference between affinities and Taint later.

Kismet came to my room. “All the baths are taken.”

“Huh?” I’d been in the process of getting to sleep.

“I’m sleeping here tonight.”

“I’m only two, I guess that’s okay.”

She kicked me in the kneecap. “We’re friends. I’m scared, and it’s okay.”

“Okay.”

She climbed into the hammock, and fell asleep on my chest.

Don’t ask me how I got to sleep; it felt like I was being crushed under the Bear, that giant block of sandstone that she enjoyed pushing around the deck so much.

In the dawn hours, instead of pushing the stones around, we instead had brushes and scrubbing powder.

Turns out, bloodstains aren’t impossible to get out of wood.

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