Chapter 2: Chapter 1. Enter, the Mother of all mortals

Chapter 1: Enter, the Mother of all mortals

The beast roared with the ferocity of a mighty dragon. It was a pig, though.

Rhea—as her mother had decided to name her—leaped back when their potential dinner tried to ram into her. It was fast, but painfully basic. Linear, but full of power. Almost her polar opposite. She swiped at the thing as it passed by her side, but it was protected by its tough hide.

The thing's strong defences made it so that even their trusty Pointy Rock could do nothing but cut off a bit of fur. Over the course of the "hunt"—which was code for long hours of them running around—they hadn't been able to injure the boar even once.

The fight was lopsided enough that her stupid human body's stupid instincts were screaming at her to run away, but she knew how idiotic these useless flesh bags could be, and so willed her stiff limbs to move.

Either way, even if she now inhabited this poor excuse of a body, that a lowly pig like this one could trigger her fight or flight response—and that her body's internal balance tilted even slightly towards flight—annoyed her so much that she took this hunt personally.

Also, contrary to how it must look on the outside, everything was still within her expectations.

The boar—with the amusingly sharp spines covering its head—turned awkwardly to face her. Seeing how huge it was, even that simple action took forever; if she and her mother were a bit more powerful or had better tools, this pig would already be dead. Instead, they were forced to plan around it.

It finally finished turning around, and Rhea carefully circled to its left, never staying directly in its line of sight. At that time, it predictably launched a cloud of scalding steam from its nose, blackening a boulder on the way. Again, it was basic but powerful; a bit to the side, Rhea could feel the heat wafting off of that stuff even though she had cleanly dodged it.

Moving Heat to her eyes, she couldn't see anything special about that move, meaning it was a biological attack, no mysterious or unknown energy sewn in at all. It explained how weak that move was. Relatively speaking. Otherwise, if it was enhanced, that rock would probably have been shattered—well, hurray for small mercies.

It screamed when it missed again for the hundredth time. What a simple beast, doing the same thing over and over again, hoping for a different result. And her instincts dared to class it above them in the food chain? This stupid body wanted her to run away from this pig?

"Rhea, focus!" 

She gripped her Pointy Rock harder. In normal circumstances, Rhea wouldn't have been bored enough to fight something this stubborn head on, but this kind of boar was rare in the Deadlands, and she wanted to skewer it, grill it, and eat it.

Of course, they weren't here stupidly facing it either, just hoping for a lucky shot or something. They had a plan. And that plan needed her to lure it towards the black tar behind her.

The boar huffed, scratching and kicking at the ground, preparing to launch the only other trick up its nose again. Meanwhile, Rhea heard the pitter patter of Aria quickly making her way around the thing's body.

"Jump!" shouted a voice behind her, and she didn't hesitate to obey. She wringed the last of her body's Heat into her muscles and flung herself into the air, easily crossing over the tar.

Up in the air, she took a moment to blindly throw their Pointy Rock to the boar's head before landing safely on the other side of the tar pond. Not a second later, she heard a whoosh of air as two thick strands of hair shot past her, quickly binding the boar's front legs together.

The boar screeched, its powerful charge turned against it, but it was too late. Even as it immediately got out of the hair's binding, it had too much momentum. It stumbled head first into the black water, then two more strands of hair came along to cuff its back legs. Binding its fate.

"I'm up," Rhea announced, and ran to the other side. She picked up the discarded Pointy Rock, noting the smear of black blood on it. "Seems I finally got you, huh?"

She clambered and hobbled up onto the boar until she had the head in front of her, then began hammering away. Their dinner buckled and screeched, the whistle-like sound of its steam attack filled the air, boiling the tar, but she held onto its fur, unrelenting.

She only stopped her attacks when the thing's desperate struggles stilled. She stayed focused for a few moments more before letting out a sigh. Rhea sat down on the dead boar's back, she tried not to clench her muscles as her body did its best to remind her of her limits.

That "battle" had taken at least two hours, and unfortunately for her, at nine years old, her muscles weren't developed enough yet to handle continuous enhancement, so she had to run around and evade an angry boar all on her own for almost the whole time.

"That was reckless," Aria noted, starting to massage her poor, aching legs. She didn't even notice the woman approaching with how sore her whole being was right then.

Rhea groaned some incoherent noises, too spent to move her tongue. A few seconds of massaging later, she could already feel the blood returning to her limbs. Human bodies sucked. "He was stronger than we thought." Aria added.

"Yeah, it didn't tire even after so many steam attacks," Rhea replied to the implied question. Her voice was rasping. Another quirk of these flesh bags. Seriously, how incredibly annoying. "I think it was on the verge of changing into a Beast."

Aria was silent, only handing over a leather sac, then continued her massage. Rhea opened her eyes, drank a bit, and sat up. When did she lie down? "Rest," Aria finally said. She pushed Rhea back down as her hair fetched something encased in a wooden box. "It's good that we managed to spot and beat him sooner. If we had been even one or two weeks late, he would've become too strong for the both of us."

Aria opened the box, a strong smell wafted out. Rhea's face scrunched. "I swear it gets worse every time. These 'medicines' of yours." When Aria stoically offered her a round pill the size of her pinky's fingernail, Rhea couldn't help but cringe a bit at the mere thought of putting it in her mouth. "Please, can't you find a way to not make it smell like ancient worm poop?"

"And giving you more reasons to rip your muscles apart?" Aria said, white eyes uncompromising. "Besides, the Mother of all Mortals can't possibly be a picky-eater brat, right?"

"… Tsk!"

As expected, it tasted exactly like what she imagined ancient worm poop to taste. She hurriedly swallowed it so she wouldn't have to taste it longer than she needed to. Rhea grumbled, her own white eyes rolling. What in Earth's name was wrong with these bodies? She couldn't even turn off her taste buds to block off the horrible after taste? Who designed this?

For all her complaining, though, these recovery pills were hatefully effective. Her torn muscles should be healed in a day or so.

"Rest," Aria said again. "I can still handle a few seconds of enhancement to get the boar out of the tar. You can help me with dragging this big boy home. Later." She closed her box of smelly pills, then handed them to Rhea, who got off the boar to stand to the side.

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She watched Aria as she extended her hair around the boar's back legs, then entwined her hands onto the strands. The hair strained at first, managing to move the beast a bit on their own, before Aria grunted and pulled with a mighty shout.

The combined strength of her hair and those few seconds of Heat enhancement made the boar soar out of the pond to land with a thud on the cracked ground. Then Aria curled her hair on itself to get rid of the black tar grime.

"Well, that's that," Aria said, a bit short of breath. She looked warmly at Rhea as she put her hands on her hips. "Shall we head home, then?"

__&__

Home was a gigantic tree in the far bowels of the Deadlands. Surrounded by gnarled and sickly lesser trees, it was conspicuously healthy and strong. Its trunk was so huge and so tall you could live comfortably inside, and its branches—covered with uncountable green leaves—were thick and stretched far enough to protect dozens of people from the sun and the rare acidic rain.

It was so full of life compared to the surrounding plant life that Rhea always suspected it was a vampire tree. Or something.

"Let's put it here for now," Rhea decided as she looked at the boar corpse. "You can't use the blood, anyway, right? It's already turned black."

They looked at the black blood flowing out of the boar. It was gooey and sizzled like acid. It really was about to turn into a Beast.

Aria nodded tiredly. She, too, didn't want to bother taking care of the boar right then. And Beast blood was useless for medicine as far as they knew; it was better to wait for the blood to flush itself out. They wordlessly left the corpse there and headed inside.

Strangely enough, the tree had a natural hollow space inside its trunk, as if it was designed to be a literal treehouse. The only thing missing was a swinging door, but that was a thing easily fixed. The floor inside was cushioned with something that looked like moss, soft and smelling weirdly flowery; the walls and ceiling had bulging veins running up them.

The strangest thing, though—apart from the veins' ominous glow—was their pulsing. At this point, it seemed obvious that this tree was different from any other. Rhea was even willing to bet that it was sapient, or at least as intelligent as the average Beast.

Of course, they'd already tried finding more out about it years ago. There had been no end to stupid theories back then.

They'd tried simply talking to the tree at first, then yelling at the tree, threatening the tree, meditating inside the tree, meditating outside the tree, praying to the tree, offering gifts to the tree, and more.

Nothing worked or had tangible enough results they could measure. So, after years of frustration, it was decided that it was a "weird but normal" tree, and that even if it was somehow conscious, it couldn't—or wouldn't—reveal itself. In case of the latter, so long as it harmed no one important, they would keep on believing it was a normal, weird tree.

Anyway, Aria called it Ms. Greenvine, and it was family.

"Sit on the bed," Aria ordered, pressing her pill box against a wall near said bed. They both didn't bat an eyelid when vines came out of the floor to hold the box in place. "It will be giant tar worms, tonight."

"Great, I love tar worms," Rhea said as she flopped on the bed.

"Hey," Aria's voice full of indignation came from the corner. That way sat their all-purpose cooking block; they used it as a chopping board, it could contain the fire for cooking, and it had a cool compartment to store stuff like the almost-monster meat abandoned outside.

Aria turned around with the I'm disappointed frown on, and Rhea groaned at the coming speech. "You know, at your age, I used to be overjoyed when I caught giant worms, and-pff. I'm kidding, too tired for a speech."

Rhea sighed, she would have fallen asleep instantly if it had gone on. Those recovery pills may be amazing things, but they couldn't miraculously heal wounds like magic. Even now, the feeling of her torn muscles knitting back together was itching at her.

A boar. Did she become too rusty or was she truly this weak?

A stupid boar—not even a Beast, but a simple animal—had managed to bring her to this state. How low the mighty had fallen; once an unimaginable being of untold power—well, she liked to think so—now a weak little girl scrapping by in the Deadlands. How had it come to this?

Rhea glanced at the woman busying herself in the corner, and knew the answer. That night, in the hurried scramble of taking over that dirty teenager's body, she somehow got infected by the girl's emotions. She couldn't help it.

It was so foreign, the strength of those feelings so marking, that the indifferent Entity she had once been had helplessly drowned.

By the time she became aware of herself and her character changes, her energy had already dissipated into the girl and she had passed the limit where she could safely hijack the body. Of course, the Entity had changed by then, and the very notion of harming the girl repulsed her. So, she settled herself for a normal birth.

It had been hard, since she had no soul, but she successfully implanted herself. The trick was predictably to produce a fake, temporary soul and latch it on the resident soul. As for her gender, since it was immaculate conception, and she could only use her mother's genetic material, the Entity was reborn as a "she".

And here they were, almost ten years later.

Rhea had bottled and shelved her goal of destroying the pillars that kept humanity alive, and decided to live her eighty years or so of remaining lifespan in this way, here, with her human mother in the Deadlands.

"Dinner's here!"

Yeah, forget destroying humanity, what could be better than this? Wasn't this was the life?

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