Chapter 19: Ch 15 – Walking Montage

Dawn? Are you hurt?

 

Please answer me!

 

My telepathic cries go as unanswered as usual. I never knew that silence could be so scary.

 

Ok ok ok ok ok... Calm down. Calm. Down.

 

Panic never gets anything solved. I just need to think logically here.

 

Why would a goblin take an infant over someone like me? Especially me.

 

It just wouldn’t make sense.

 

I highly doubt she’s injured either. She’s quiet for sure, but she isn’t a telepathic mute. She would surely have told me if she was in pain.

 

Damnit.

 

I curse my own carelessness with her, but what was I supposed to do? Do it right in front of her? Kids shouldn’t be exposed to that kind of thing! Innocence goes hand in hand with cuteness!

 

Hm.

 

I hold my chin in a classic thinkers pose.

 

I’m already linked with her menataly, could I try to use that’ll guide me to her?

 

I close my eyes and cover my ears, trying to shut as much of the physical world out of my mind as I can. I must focus solely on myself, and hope that the physical world and it’s pleasures don't distract me.

 

I feel… the slight points of my ears against my palms. The leaf-litter under my feet. The evening sun dappled on my exposed skin through the foliage. My hair falling down my shoulders. The softened leather held against my body.

 

The way my nails sit in my fingers and toes. The pulling on my scalp from a few strands of hair caught under my jacket. The way my horns jut out through my skin. The remainder of that goblin’s ejaculate coating-

 

No. 

 

Stay focused.

 

This isn’t the time.

 

My horns go past my skin. Past my skull. Into my head. My mind is there. I can follow both down my spine to my chest, where they meets my heart.

 

My heart is…

 

Round.

 

Succubi’s body has risen to 4 - Insights gained into your body will give you a better understanding of how your abilities work, as well as their limitations.

 

Ah. My vision will go no further.

 

I can’t look any deeper inside with the distractions around me pulling my focus. 

This will have to do. 

 

A message forms in my mind and I bring my Maternal link up to send it, but I wait just a moment before I do. Whenever I finish looking at my records I feel them settling into my subconscious, and I wonder if I can do something similar here and follow this message as it travels to Dawn.

 

Fully focused on the message I hold in my head and nothing else, I send it.

 

Where are you?

 

*SNAP*

 

And pain.

 

I was expecting to be able to follow it as it left my own mind, but it was far too fast for that. The speed at which it left my mind severed my focus almost immediately, leaving a dull headache on the right side. It fades within moments.

 

No, not a headache, a mindache?

 

I turn to face the direction I felt the pain in, and repeat the process to focus myself.

 

Horns. Head. Spine. Heart. Make the message and hold on to it.

 

Dawn?

 

*SNAP*

 

The pain is from losing my grip on the message, and now it comes from directly in front.

 

It must be Dawn.

 

I follow the direction I felt the pain from, and luckily, it leads me back in the direction I came from and out of the woods.

 

I don’t need to walk for very long before the forest ends and the meadow begins. The low evening sun’s rays burning directly in my eyes from just over the cliff.

 

I cover the space in the sky where the sun sits with one hand, and give myself a few moments for my eyes to adjust.

 

Sitting in the tall grass a few dozen meters out of the woods is Dawn, tightly gripping a few plucked red flowers.

 

Relief washes over me, only to be replaced by panic again a few moments later when Dawn brings her handful of wildflowers up to her mouth and takes a bite.

 

Hey! No! Don’t eat those!

 

I dash across the meadow to try and pull the rest of the flowers from Dawn’s grasp. Who knows what they could be? Are they poisonous? I don’t know! I didn’t listen to Rhoda when she talked about herbs!

 

Dawn looks up from her floral meal to see me barreling towards her, and she drops the flowers. She then turns around as well as she can with her short arms and begins crawling away from me.

 

Oh-HO, so you’re mobile now, are you? Well, you’ve still got a long way to go before you can escape me!

 

I scoop the small creature up and it squirms in my grip, powerless to free itself.

 

“How did those taste, dear? Surely they couldn’t have been all that nice, or the goblins would have eaten them all at this point.” I ask her.

 

Her writhing slowly subsides as she realizes that there isn’t anything she can do to escape from me. I glare at her expectantly.

 

A few quiet moments pass before I finally get a response.

 

Bad…

 

“Mhm, I bet they were. And why were you out here eating them exactly?” I ask further with another expectant look.

 

She remains silent.

 

I glare even harder, trying to emulate the look she often gives to me.

 

Colour...

 

“The colour red?” 

 

I get no reply, but my mind goes back to last night's massacre. Please don’t tell me I need to start feeding her raw meat now. I’m hardly equipped to go on that sort of hunt.

 

“Where did you see this colour before anyway?” I pose cautiously.

 

Goblin give eat

 

Goblin give eat?

 

I remember that the goblins always seemed to cook their food, so none of the meat was red when they ate it.

 

And I don’t remember any goblins giving Dawn any food anyway.

 

Did Rhoda give something to her while I was away? She was the only one I ever left her alone with.

 

So, red foods then. And something Rhoda would have.

 

Oh! 

 

I carry Dawnback over to the forest’s edge, and right to a bramble clinging on the side of a tree. I point to a red berry growing from the bramble.

 

“Was it what you wanted?” 

 

Rather than answering me, she just points straight at the largest berry visible. I pick it and bring it to her mouth…

 

*Chomp*

 

OW!

 

Geez, work on your aim, why don’t you?

 

I eye the bite mark on my finger.

 

Huh.

 

There’s a bite mark on my finger.

 

Well then...

 

I place the berry in my palm and let Dawn grab it for herself, and she quickly scarfs it down as I watch.

 

Hmm. Yup.

 

I saw a flash of white there. Judging by that and the marks on my finger, she’s got some teeth now. One on top and one on the bottom.

 

Luckily, they seem to just be regular teeth.

 

I pluck a few more berries and bring them within grabbing distance of Dawn.

 

Bitterberries I remember them being called. Even though I hear they don’t taste particularly nice, they’re pretty much the only sweet thing in this part of the woods. 

 

Apart from honey I guess, but regular goblins can be killed quite easily by a swarm of bees, so it’s largely ignored.

 

I pop one into my own mouth out of curiosity, only to spit it out a moment later.

 

Blegh. Not nice at all.

 

Dawn seems to like them, though.

 

Her chin and hands are soaked in red juices to the point where it seems like she’s just eaten someone.

 

Ha ha… 

 

Knowing her, it’ll probably happen eventually.

 

The serenity of the evening is suddenly broken when a deer leaps from the path I had just exited the woods from. It glances at me briefly before bounding in the opposite direction along the forest's edge.

 

“WHAT YOU DOING? YOU LET DEER ESCAPE!” A distant voice squawks a few moments later.

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Oh shit. Right.

 

That goblin was deer trapping, and now he’s unconscious. Whoever that voice belonged too is sure to raise the alarm as soon as he finds him.

 

“Sorry Dawn, but that’s the end of the bitterberries for now, we’ve got to run away now.” I whisper, dashing away from the forest and back up to the cliff’s edge.

 

Soon, I’m greeted by the low light of the setting sun across the vast grassland above the valley. A gentle breeze wafts across the wild fields, blowing puffs of dust into the illumination of molten light. I look behind me to see if I can glimpse the figure that had made the voice I fled from, but see no one.

 

The shadow of the valley’s edge I stand upon slowly sweeps out over the forest and river of the goblin’s home, and I resume my trek to follow the river towards humanity.

 

____________________________________

Womb status: v Pregnant <1 day until birth

Dreamleech Imps, Twins

 

Kalmana’s log, Entree 1: v

Day 2 after leaving Rhoda’s camp, Noon.

 

Apparently, I can change my records however I want to, but it doesn’t actually affect me in any physical way. I tried adding a skill that would let me run faster, but it didn’t work. It seems my records and the abilities they tell of aren’t actually connected, or at least, the changes I make aren’t carried over.

 

Anyway, it seems I can add or remove anything I want to my records without fear of changing my abilities, and that’s what this log is.

 

Even though I don’t seem to be very forgetful, taking note of important things here may still help to clear my mind. This first entree was just to pass the time though.

 

________________________________

 

There’s something on the horizon deep in the plains. I probably wouldn’t have noticed it if the land wasn’t so flat here and the air was any less clear.

 

It’s barely a dot against the vast openness of the land, but it’s still too big to be a bison. 

 

Another hour of walking only serves to peak my curiosity as the shape of the object becomes apparent. It’s silhouette is rectangular…

 

Yes, I can think of nothing else that it could be. 

It's a building of some sort.

 

Heh-heh-

 

Finally!

 

I need to go there. No questions asked about it. I must.

 

Ah?

 

But how exactly?

 

Ok, Ok, so maybe one question asked.

 

At first it seems like I could just walk straight over there, I do have direct line of sight to it after all, but it isn’t really that easy. The giant bison still dot the landscape, and I fear what they could do to me without the easy escape that ducking into this valley would provide. I definitely can’t outrun one of those things.

 

Secondly, it’s still really far away. If there aren’t any humans or humanoids with human spirit over there, the trip might well starve me before I could get back to any goblins.

 

And thirdly…

 

I place my hand on my womb-crest to feel it being pushed outwards by my growing young.

 

These might pose complications. I don’t even know what Imps are, save from the fact that these ones apparently leech dreams. 

 

Unless I can get a good answer out of Ur about them, they’re a total wildcard.

 

Imp

I send the thought through the pathway in my mind that leads to Ur.

 

Stunted

Grafting

 

Umm…

 

Ok Guess?

 

I confirm with Ur that both of those mean what I think they mean.

 

Hmm.

 

So they’re just small I guess? I don’t really know what it means for them to be ‘grafted’.

 

I guess I’ll just keep walking forwards for now. The building on the horizon is at a diagonal to the valley, so I’ll still be getting closer to it.

______________________________

Spirit - 15/26

 

Dawn has been feeding from me much less in the past few days, either because of the solid food she’s been eating or the level in Fertile body that made my milk more nourishing. My spirit is generally draining more slowly now since she isn’t taking as much.

 

I could probably make it to the building and back without starving at this rate if it weren’t for the Imps.

 

They’ve been growing incredibly quickly. It’s maybe eight hours since I first spotted the building and my belly is nearly the size it was with Rohda the younger at labor. Not that that was all that big.

 

Womb status: v Pregnant ~12 hours until birth

 

They seem to have a gestation time of about a day and a half, but that’s a rough guess since the measure of time that my skills give me is so imprecise.

 

And considering that there are two of them, birthing them on the journey could drain me dry if they turn out to be as thirsty as my other children have been.

 

A pity, since night seems to be the optimal time to avoid the bison.

 

Oh well, there’s always tomorrow night. They should be born by then.

 

Then I’ll hunt during the day, fill my spirit, and head off by dusk.

 

For now though, I’ve got some time to kill, all night in fact, I think I know just how I’m going to spend it.

FInding Dawn through her mental link to me has opened my eyes to how little I know about my own abilities. Shutting off my senses had given me knowledge of them.

 

With the sun already down, there isn’t much risk of being seen by a goblin, so this is actually the perfect time to do something that would leave me so defenceless. The only thing I really need to worry about is to make sure that Dawn doesn’t crawl away again.

 

I sit cross legged now with Dawn on my lap and my arms around her. I take a deep but needless breath to mark the beginning of the next delve into my mind.

 

Now, what should I try and make sense of?

 

My memories?

 

Sure, that seems like a good place to start.

 

Things like language, concepts, what things are, and how to do simple tasks all come to me easily. They’re all just Instinct, both natural and learned.

 

Except I don’t remember learning them.

 

More specific things like names, and places are certainly present. I can definitely remember that I had parents, but I don’t know who they were or what they looked like. Were they tall? Short? What colour was their eyes? 

 

I certainly was a child at some point as well. I can remember being short at some point and looking up at every grown person around me.

 

These memories are like a library. A really bad one. One where all the books are torn apart and water-damaged. Letters are smudged, pages are missing, and the whole place smells like dust and mold.

 

And yet, I still get the feeling that every book within it was written by me. 

 

A patch of floor covered in torn and trampled pages is suddenly illuminated before me by a pink glow. 

 

My eyes flick around, confused at what they’re seeing. They’re still closed.

 

Paper and ink soaked in muddy water are made visible in a familiar shade of light. I bend over to read the smudged words on a half destroyed page.

 

I reach upwards between the branches to pluck another pear, twisting it to break its stem without damaging the tree.

 

As the words enter my mind, so does a memory in which I’m doing exactly what they describe: collecting an orchard’s harvest. My orchard. I keep reading, and the memory keeps marching forwards. 

I move from tree to tree with a wooden step ladder, filling baskets with fruit as I go. I hear a deep rumble and turn my head to see a dark cloud rolling through the sky.

 

I decide to end today's harvest here, and quickly begin carrying the baskets over to my horse’s wagon. I feed her an apple to thank her for her hard work, and then lead her over to the barn with my cider making equipment.

 

We enter through the barn doors just as I start to feel the first few drops of rain hit my forehead. 

 

I haul a basket off of the wagon and carry it over the fruit press, which I empty it into. 

 

Hmm. I'm starting to get a bit hungry myself now. 

 

The page ends there, and so does the memory, but I’m left wanting more. What did those apples taste like? I try to gently lift the corner of the paper from the wet ground to turn it over, but it only tears it off.

 

The light where the torn corner is seems to be a little brighter now that there is one less layer of paper covering it. I wonder what It is exactly?

 

I sharpen my tail’s tip and run it’s knifelike blade under the bottom of the page, separating the entire edge of the page from the ground it was stuck on all at once. I support the lifted part of the paper with my fingertips, and slide my tail a bit deeper under the page.

 

Slowly I inch my way up the page as I pry it off of the filth that so many others are stuck in, and eventually, it is free. I gingerly lift it into the air and peer underneath, not wanting to try and flip it over in its current state.

 

Tragically, even in the dim pink light, I can tell that the other side of the page hasn’t survived.

Still, I would like to save the front of it at least.

 

I gently step on top of many other pages as I walk away from the glow, hoping to find a dry surface somewhere to place the rescued page. 

 

In the complete blackness, I stumble into a bookshelf, entirely devoid of contents, and place my page upon it after wiping away a layer of dust.

 

Turning around, I try to retrace my steps exactly to not trample any more pages than I need to as I make my way back towards the pink light.

 

In the place of the page I had freed lies another, the pink glow behind it slightly stronger than its surrounding area. This page however, is too damaged to read. I can make out a word every now and then, but the memories they bring don’t make any sense.

I lift this page up with much less care, tearing it a few times in the process. The strange memories that it brought fade from my mind, and attempting to read the page fragments doesn’t bring them back. 

 

Oh well, I doubt I’ll miss those anyway.

 

I destroy page after page of nonsensical memories as the pink light grows ever brighter. Rather than digging a hole into the floor, my actions seem to bring it closer to me, and it's clear enough now to tell that the glow forms a pattern. With each page removed, the glow grows more concentrated on the patch of floor I’m working on and fades from the floor around me.

 

The final page is removed, and an entire book lays on the floor below me.

 

It’s in perfect condition, completely dry and clean, and has a familiar glowing pattern on it’s cover.

 

It’s identical to my crest.

 

I look down at my belly to compare the two, only to find it bare of markings.

 

Oh… I see…

 

I lift the book into the air.

 

This IS my crest.

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