Born a Monster

“You hate all mortal creatures.”

“Not kittens.” she said, bitterly. “Kismet is right about those vermin. Their cuteness is a power unto itself. Maybe puppies, I’m not certain about them.”

“Hell hounds are well known.” I said. “Nobody speaks much about hell cats.”

“The population of hell cats never properly recovered after the last tangle with the Fae Courts.” she said. “Or else something else. They exist, and none of that belittles you, so we must have gotten off topic somehow. I blame you.”

I shrugged, “So does Gamilla, and for so much.”

“Shall I give you a lecture on every way you’ve ever failed me?”

“Go ahead.” I said.

“What?”

.....

“It’s better than letting it fester in secret.” I said.

“Oh. Well, now I don’t want to give it to you all at once. I want to save at least some parts of this until they hurt. Besides, how do you know she isn’t lying to you?”

“It’s one of the Truthspeaker abilities I picked up, which gives me a bonus to all my Sense Motive skill checks.”

“Sense Motive is just a Charisma skill. You’re far better at Valor skills, like Melee Attack/Flexible Melee Weapons/Flog. Come on, you’re in the mood to work on Wrath and Lust at the same time.”

“I still don’t understand how that’s worth Lust points.” I said.

“Because I enjoy it, you idiot. Besides, you haven’t smacked me once since Dauria.”

“I don’t... It isn’t right to beat you at a time when I’m actually angry at someone else.”

I meant me, but let her think I meant Gamilla.

She sniffed. “I suppose I could get my beatings somewhere else... Maybe the variety would do me good.”

“Ugh.” I said, “WHY is this so important to you?”

“Because Pain Tolerance is like a Fitness skill; it fades if you don’t maintain it.”

“Wait, is it?” I asked. It didn’t seem to be, at least for me. Her system must have differed.

Or my System just didn’t track such things; I’d run into that before as well.

There came a gentle tapping at our door. “Rhishi, is everything okay?”

“Go AWAY, Kismet!” Madonna hollered. “I’ve almost convinced him to beat me again!”

We’d forgotten to lock the door, and Kismet came right in. “Rhishi! You ought to NEVER beat your wife. No matter how much she deserves it.”

“I offer counterpoint.” Madonna said. “Any wife who uses the words, husband please beat me should be beaten.”

“No.” Kismet said. “My friends have enough enemies. My friends shouldn’t be hurting my friends.”

“The outrage you feel would be enough reason.” Madonna said. “But add to it the way your whiskers twitch...”

“MY WHISKERS DO NOT TWITCH! Rhishi, tell her.”

“When you quiver with anger, your whiskers vibrate.” I told her. “They only twitch when you do that thing with your nose.”

“WHAT!?”

I sighed. “I literally CANNOT lie to you.”

“Are we still friends?” she asked.

What? How did she get from the one topic to the other?

“We are still friends.” I said.

“Best friends, right?”

“I still think my best friends would hit me in the head less.”

Kismet shrieked in fury, flinging a disk from the valet nearest the door. It struck my eyelid with a resounding thwack noise, counterpoint to the slamming door.

“And. Ow.” I said.

“Pain,” Madonna said, “is sometimes a great motivator. Oh, by the eternal flames, did you lose ANOTHER flog?”

“Yes.” I admitted.

“Men!” she huffed, pulling a new flog from her inventory. “Shall I lock the door, husband?”

And what happened after that, and for how long, is none of your business.

That first night, Gamilla, Kismet, and Madonna got to eat with Captain Drumbard and mates Spiro and Pickernell at his table. I got to eat with Miranda the Lionheart, Frank Laurant, Devin Buchierre, and Flatface, and other sailors whose names I cannot properly recall at the current time.

I actually learned a lot about piracy in general and the piratical mind-set that night, having inadvertently started a discussion about what exactly being a pirate MEANT.

“I give up.” Frank said. “Where in your inventory do you KEEP your gold?”

“I am dressed in linen cloth, and not even sturdy well woven linen at that.” I replied. “I travel in the company of pirates without the advantage of being among their crew. What makes you think I have a single copper on me, let alone gold?”

“But... but... no, all adventurers are rich.” Frank stammered. “Everyone knows that.”

“Does everyone know you’re smart?” Devin asked.

I sighed as that became another shouting match. Not that I desired it to stop; I wanted to join in to the degree that it was better that I left while I was behind.

My feet carried me toward the bow of the boat, where an elderly man carried out the duties of Sea Witch. “Ah,” he said, “the child of one of the Sea Titans. I had hoped that we would get the chance to speak.”

“I’m not certain I’m in a mood where it is safe to speak to me.”

“Heh, I am. Shall I tell you how I know?”

“Please do.”

“The short version is that I’m not the one you’re upset with, and you know it.”

“And the long version?”

“You wouldn’t be nearly half so much fun to hear tales about if you were the type to kill someone just for speaking the truth with you.”

“No, I’m usually on the other end of that.”

“Maybe you should learn to tell other truths?”

“All right. I’m angry, but the root of it isn’t Gamilla.”

“Do you even know your root?”

“My root is curiousity, but if you mean the root of my anger...”

I thought about it, made certain.

“When I was born, one of the things I did was observe my older brothers and sisters. When I left the place of my birth, it was fear. A desire to live, not a desire to see new things. Just this week, or last week depending how one reckons time, I killed a man who was better at my warrior class than I am. If he could die, and so quickly...”

“I still have reason to fear.” I said.

“Oh.” he blinked his eyelids, closing in from each side. “I guess I really don’t want to eat you and take your place, then. Sorry to bother you.”

He flowed over the railing, spawning multiple tails and tentacles, and more eyes than any creature existing only in one dimension could ever truly need. I would learn later that there was no night shift Sea Witch on duty for the Dainty Dolphin.

[You have been released from mental compulsion.]

Dang it, System! I wished it were sentient, so I could yell at it.

[To begin trapping spirits and forcing them to interface between you and your System...]

[System Configuration Settings changed. Settings will take effect on next Recompile or Reset.]

Wait. I knew those terms.

In retrospect, I wish I’d stood there, on that bow, and taken the time to deduce what Recompile and Reset were.

Instead, I found myself walking upright, exposing my teeth to the salt air (I really needed to brush better), and feeling like a blood blister had burst and released whatever bile my biology had been building up in my blood.

Finding myself again possessed of a hunger, I made my way back to the mess deck, and to the adjacent kitchen.

“Are there any leftovers?” I asked.

“Not for long.” the plump woman I found there said. “But you don’t want these scraps. They come at a cost.”

“What cost?”

“You have to help me clean all these dishes until they are, each of them, spotless.”

[You have 442/960 biomass.]

“Done.” I said.

.....

“Not so hasty, take a look at this pot.”

I looked at it. Integrated skills used to clean dishes into my Reticule, and looked again.

“Done.” I said.

“No take backs.” she said, handing me a pastry.

I earned Gluttony experience (just the one), and Service, and learned that there was a limit to how much my System would let me advance a skill just through repeated use.

“Well.” she said when we were done. “Get out of here before I ask the captain to make you my kitchen slave.”

I said polite good-byes, and made my way to my quarters.

Madonna grunted, and shoved me out of the bed. “Imbicile.” she muttered, half asleep. “You smell. Go bathe first.”

And that’s why I wasn’t in my quarters when the assassins first came for me.

Yes, those of you from technical realms already know this, and what the difference between the two is, and the secrets of my universe are probably unraveling before your eyes. No, we’re real, not just some digital figments inside a computer. Yeah, that look, right there. That was how I felt at the time.

I already knew you could take more time to lower the difficulty check of a task, and the reverse to save time. So, even though I used this second effect, I can’t say I learned it.