Chapter 4: Chapter Four: Entertaining Agony.

Marl awoke in agony, his throat pouch wriggling with worms and his hunchback even more grotesque with glimmering, protruding leaden blades piercing through his skin. While clearly more powerful it became clearer to him these curses would be no pleasant growing sensation and marvelous power, but ever increasing agony he’d have to struggle against to retain his mind.

He vomited out the worms against the walls of the marl pit so they could set to work, and quickly discovered the unpleasant sensation of a new one wriggling to life in his throat pouch. He began swimming into the brackish waters of the pit to retrieve his former belongings, chief among them his father’s silver scalpel and his glass bead microscope. Once he’d recovered just about everything he’d managed to find the scalpel and microscope, taking both in his hands fire began to erupt despite being underwater and he quickly emerged from the pit with the two objects clattering to the marlstone ledge of the pit. Marl looked to his hands and saw that he hadn’t dropped them, they'd eaten through his hands leaving only holes behind!

“Remedial! Remedial, remedial, remedial! Don’t you know you are cursed? Nothing cursed can touch silver! Don’t tell me you are fool enough to walk on holy ground either! Either, either, either! On holy ground forget about brain and heart, none of your curses will do anything and you can die like anyone else! Sooooo stuuuuuupid! Stupid, stupid, stupid!” Taunted the manic Fey.

“Interesting, perhaps I can learn something about myself by observing the reaction.” Was all that Marl muttered while completely ignoring the insults as he bandaged his hands with a torn sleeve from one of his muck covered shirts, both to protect him as he picked up both the silver microscope and scalpel before depositing them into a now moss covered antique cabinet that had once belonged to his mother. Just before he could throw them in some of his black blood made contact with the silver causing another spectacular eruption of fire. He retrieved the other muck coated sleeve of the same dress shirt for bandages and noted the wounds seemed to be recovering visibly when in contact with the bandages, after some experimentation he discovered it was the muck of the Marl pit and submerging himself within it, it healed him near instantly.

With the worms digging and his items recovered from the pit Marl set to gathering “meat.” Being a wet environment in late September he quickly gathered an earwigs and crickets, he heard a paper crinkling sound emanate from his hand each time he did so, looking into the scroll in the hand mirror he saw three purple-blue wisps of fire circling it. Removing and opening the scroll caused the wisps to follow it and then attach to knew items on it.

Name: Gnarled Marl

Meat: 4

       Template gained: Cricket, Earwig (illuminated)

Curses: 1

       Curses gained: Leaden I, Vermin I (illuminated)

Blessings: 1

Human reputation: Apathetic, mixed, known to less than a handful

Fey reputation: Entertained, antagonistic (momentarily pacified) (illuminated)

Marl contemplated his next course of action and decided he wanted to get at least a thousand “meat” and try his luck with the Fey Doctor, he ate crows, squirrels, foxes and a porcupine after flipping it over with a stick, noting that the larger the creature the greater the awarded “meat.” It took him roughly a week to earn 1000 meat, by which time his Marl pit had expanded into a small marl lake and cavern lair. At last he was ready and placed the web on an alcove dug for this purpose. As he placed himself on the web he felt the already pitch black room darken so incredibly that even his eyes could no longer make anything else until one by by one tiny stars in the distance began to arise from the dark. It seemed they got ever closer until he realized they were not stars, but gem stone faces reflecting light from a source not present. As it got closer it seemed to be, as best as Marl could understand, an assortment of lanceoloid crystal clear gems arranged in the shape of a spider with vaguely human legs. Once it got closer it’s spider like legs disappeared before emerging out of the corners of Marl's vision, stretching hundreds of miles away from him before turning their razor sharp looking tips pointing toward him. No matter which way he looked the legs remained firmly rooted in place. Finally turning his head to face his called upon captor after hours of screaming and fighting it said only one word. “Hum.” It took Marl a few minutes to process before he began to hum the tune of 'lord randall.' The lanceoloid legged spider Fey began to speak in tune to the melody.

“~Apologies I can only speak once the being I address makes a sound, humming is best so that we may converse.~

~I can modify your body using templates, for the sake of convenience I will list in your vision the choicest selections I can see of the templates you’ve brought me, but feel free to ask me to use them for foolish and discordant choices, how funny it would be for you to ruin yourself in ignorance.~” It broke into peals laughter that sounded like it’s voice, oil skins rubbing against glass. Strangely no other Fey could be heard, Marl stopped humming and found the creature instantly silenced as golden words appeared in his vision.

“Cricket: Modify legs to greatly increase jumping power, synergy with leaden cursed spines and frog base form. 50 meat.

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Earwig: Pincered tail can be used as additional limb or crushing force. 350 meat.

Porcupine: Collar of quills girds arms, legs and neck, synergy with leaden cursed spines causes them to be fatal. 100 meat.

Squirrel: Modify feet into functional limbs. 100 meat.

Crow: Feathered wings. 15000 meat. Alternate: Digestion modification to gain "meat" from eating the long dead, synergy with past actions. 50 meat.

Fox: Enhanced ears will drastically improve hearing. 350 meat.

Familiar modification: External and internal teeth will allow them to cause superficial damage and tunnel fast. 400 meat. I offer this because I like familiars.”

Marl went with what he perceived to be the two easiest options, cricket legs and digestion of the dead, immediately four of the the eight legs began ripping his legs apart, the light refracted from no source of the facets of it’s gem like legs began to pool like liquid on the tips of it’s legs before spraying out as a golden glowing liquid, the legs quickly healing in a more bizarre shape, only to be ripped apart again, each time becoming more bizarre the process repeating until at last it was done. The other four legs of the gem spider Fey had done the same thing to his stomach, cutting him wide open on the belly, goring his intestines out, using the strange substance to grow it back each time until it looks like a pile of writing green snakes and worms. It simply pulled his belly back together like a shower curtain and sprayed it's viscous golden liquid on the wound, the process left both his legs and stomach grotesquely scared in patterns seeming much like the gnarls of a tree.

Marl himself continued to scream for hours before The spidery lanceoloid Fey spoke, it matched it’s voice to the screaming.

“~The more meat something costs the more painful.~”

Marl was instantly silenced into a cold sweat catatonia of extreme shaking that lasted for many more hours before he gathered himself and spoke with a face returned to calm. “let’s continue, thank you for waiting, I’ve kept my daughter waiting long enough. There is no one to aid her but me. Please give me the earwig tail, porcupine quills and squirrel feet. That will be all for today once you are finished.”

Two legs smash through the skin above his anus to rip out his tailbone before squirting more of the golden refraction liquid into the tatters of his spine, it seems to generate an extra vertebrae each time before capping with a new tail bone that is promptly ripped of Marl as the process is repeated. It continues until his exposed spine is double the length of his legs and finally the tail bone is split in half by a deft swing of a lanceoloid spider leg that spews the golden liquid as it struck, the bone forming almost instantly into a pincer that when spread is double the width of Marl’s body. The legs begin to spray the entire bony structure with the golden glowing fluid and it almost instantly generates a glossy, gnarled carapace-like-flesh with leaden spines forming at the top. Once it seems healed completely it is slashed horizontally by a lanceoloid leg once more along the pincer bones which it clasped firm and ripped out agonizingly. The resultant cavity is filled with golden liquid and amazingly it has retained the leaden spines. Due to the screams the lanceoloid Fey can speak freely.

“~Insects have no internal bones, plus the other Fey dared me to something similar. It was very funny. I will tell them about~”

Peals of it’s awful laughter filled Marl’s ears again, but if confirmed to Marl that this was time when only one Fey was watching. While it had been operating on his tail it had also been using it’s remaining limbs to operate on his feet, ankles, forearms and neck. His feet were extremely painful, but he noticed due to them that these operations also seemed to alter him mind, giving him the coordination to use to use such complex limbs. His thumbs were chopped off and regenerated, leaving a pair of extra thumbs, a patch was cut off his heels down to the bone marrow and the thumbs grafted on, His feet were cut between each toe half way down his foot, then his whole foot snapped in half and healed creating a new joint at the break, then all the flesh was stripped from his feet and regrown fitting the new configuration. Marl seized so hard his eyes burst and his teeth shattered. His Fey surgeon laughed it’s awful laugh and spoke as it healed him.

“~HA! Thanks to you I’ve won a bet with the other Fey.~”

With the feet finished it repeated the process it had been using on Marl’s neck and forearm on his ankles, it jammed a single porcupine quill in backwards, spayed it and then ripped it out, sprayed it again and repeated the process until the ankles were covered in a ring of quills that quickly took on a dull, leaden metallic hue like those adorning his quill covered forearm and neck. When at rest they appeared as flat, dull grey metallic scales that could prickle up to look like the lining of a winter coat of smooth steel wool. No sooner than the last quill was in place did that Fey’s horrible voice intone against Marl’s screams with “~Done!~” Then Marl woke up a day later in his alcove which was covered in bloody marks from his screaming, trashing insanity induce flailing.

His limb worn to the bone from the intensity of the trashing, he crawled to the Marl pit noting his new tail was already proving very useful before falling in with a plunk sound to rest.

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