Chapter 262: Godrin’s Cliff Redux

The last couple of days had been spent in peace. Scouts and patrols still went above ground, but even with Ann and her full group were up above ground, nothing showed. It was honestly creepier than their normal encounters. Patrols were just… nature walks. Rosalyn was having a blast pointing out all of the little critters that normally hid when bigger creatures were around.

Ann hadn’t known that even down to the smaller insects had become affected by the Warping. The little ants marching along with extra tiny hairs to let them work through the snow and keep it off their bodies. Ann had honestly never wondered if ants needed warmth, but it might help insulate their tiny little selves, too. Rosalyn telling her that fire ants were actually fire now was… horrifying. Apparently, they helped a lot in overcrowded jungle areas, but also created barren spots with nothing but ash and their hills. Not just them, though. Millipedes lived up to their names and had an incredible number of variations across climates and regions. Dung Beetles had been transformed into Elemental Beetles. They still pushed around balls of stuff, but that stuff happened to be arcane magic, fire, ice, lightning, acid, and yes, poop. Infuriatingly, mosquitoes still existed and were still a pest. To make matters worse, they had a chance of carrying vampirism or lycanthropy in their bites, so preventative potions were common in most places.

That brought Ann to another line of questioning on those, but she figured she’d bring it up at a different time. Now, they were headed out to Godrin’s Cliff again, so it was the perfect time.

“So if I’m a wolf woman, how does a werewolf differ?” Ann asked as casually as she could, watching Alruna push the sledge. “Or a vampire, I guess.”

“Oh, that’s a complicated question because of the Warped and Vulhardrin, yeah. Big thing with them is that the cause is blood-borne bacterial transmission. There’s some argument over whether the transformations are actually Warped, though. The results might not be, but the infection itself could very well have started as a Warped bacteria causing the mutations. Werewolves lose all control during their transformations and become very similar to Warped, but they can revert to a sane human. Vampires are the weird ones.” Rosalyn sighed, grumbling to herself under her breath and tapping her horn. “So if the infection is treated early enough, it can be prevented. Feral vampires can be all sorts of trouble. Stealthy creatures that hunt and drink blood in the night, creating a wasting disease in their victims. There’s a small percentage, though, that resist the evil thirst and need to spread their infection. I’m not sure on the exact numbers, but they’re out there. Usually, if their community is supportive, they can survive on donations and avoid infecting others, but as they get older, their situation becomes more… unstable.”

“Wait, so vampires age?”

Rosalyn gave Ann a weird look. “Yeah?”

“Unless they’re an Alfhindur, an’ then they get the whole long life thing. Same wit’ Bultrong.”

“Thank the Gods that the Grrn are immune,” Bren chuckled.

“Could you imagine? Immortal rocks that want to drink blood forever, but probably can’t even digest it, so the hunger never ends? That’d be awful,” Eyes shuddered as she kept pace with the Sledge. She’d taken to just running with them, being far too large for the vehicle even without considering space for other people.

“Awful,” Rosalyn agreed.

“Weird. Myths of vampires in my time had a whole bunch of things for them. Usually, they were immortal undead, drank blood, and didn’t do well in the sun. From there it differed wildly. Holy symbols and holy water usually worked, so did crosses, garlic for… I can’t remember why, couldn’t cross running water, couldn’t enter a house without being invited in first.”

“That last one is just common decency,” Bren scoffed. “Seems like one of those stories to teach proper manners.”

Ann shrugged. “I didn’t make the rules. There was this whole thing about them being an allegory for… lust? I think it was lust. Honestly, most monsters were attributed to some level of horny. God, now I’m remembering the guy who invented a cereal to make people masturbate less.”

“How do these topics always turn in this direction with you? It is baffling,” Bren groaned.

“Hey, I chose the other Paragon option. The world’s horny. I’m just running with it,” Ann laughed.

“Other more correct. Lust. Horny hag.”

Kat bapped Lucia’s shoulder. “Oi! Don’t insult a lady’s age.”

Lucia glared at her, then sighed and let it go.

“So vampires get old, and then they just go blood crazy?” Ann asked, returning to the conversation’s origins.

“Right. Like they start forgetting who they were, and their control just disappears. It’s good practice to, well, end one once they start showing signs,” Rosalyn said. She was trying to put a positive spin on it, but the topic was morose. “Best to make them comfortable, send them off in peace.”

Ann was going to just let that one stand as it was. Nothing much more that she could add. “So, wait, do the undead… you said ghosts exist, right? Why aren’t vampires undead like them?”

Everyone looked at her.

“Why would they be?” Kat asked.

“I…” Ann paused, dropping her raised finger. “Huh. Guess that’s a fair point. Our myths had them die, then come back as monsters. It’s why holy water worked. Sorry, it’s just been a thing for a lot of… uh, literature for so long that taking that away seems wrong. I’m wrong, now, but still.”

Rosalyn laughed, leaning against the outer wall of the sledge. “Next you’re going to say ghouls are undead.”

Ann just stared at her.

“Wait, really?”

More staring. Sure, there were living types of ghouls, but the majority were undead.

Bren let out a long breath. “Well, they are not undead here. They are not even Warped. They are an offshoot of Bultrong that spent so long underground, cut off from anything else, that they went feral. They took Voltid’s teaching on efficiency to an extreme, and their caverns are so precisely created that your very presence would be an affront to their whole culture. Not only that, but their language has diverged so harshly from any surface languages that only magic will let us communicate. Most have agreed that it is best to leave them alone, and that angering them would be more trouble than it’s worth.

Ann snuggled up to Kat, trying to give her scaly lover some warmth. The armour got in the way, but it was the thought that counted. “So, what do they look like?”

“Still short, an’ stalky, but their eyes ‘ave all but gone. Ears’re feckin’ huge, though. Bigger than mine,” Kat laughed, wiggling hers to prove the point. “Skin’s ghostly pale, an’ I’m pretty sure they eat stone?”

“Minerals and metals,” Rosalyn corrected.

“Minerals are fancy rocks,” Kat shrugged. The motion bounced Ann’s head on the metal shoulder. Kat cracked under Rosalyn’s glare. “Fine. Tae the point. Their hands ‘ave fused intae the toughest claws ye ever saw. Use ‘em in place o’ picks. Ye can imagine what their jaws’re like tae chew minerals. That’s really it. Not too special a creature.”

“No magic?” Ann prodded.

“Yes. I am surprised Kat glossed over this one,” Bren grumbled. “Stone magic is used every day. Our stone shapers have made significant advancements by studying abandoned settlements. They are actually how we learned the enchantment to harden shale for use in book covers. The Ghouls could do it without Voltium. Pure magic spells. It is truly a wonder and a tragedy that they are so isolationist. Korvas is already a marvel, but with their skills, it would be a masterpiece for the entire world.”

The sledge lurched. “Apologies!” Alruna called back as a rock with a scrape retreated behind them.

Ann laughed. “Mothman probably exists. Gods, my sister was obsessed with him. Wonder if his ass is as stupidly sculpted as that statue.”

“The feck is a mothman? Sounds like a Warped,” Kat asked.

Rosalyn was also paying rapt attention.

“Oh, it was some monster people made up. People really tired when driving on a road say they saw two giant red eyes flying behind them, then a monster that looked like a man with a moth head and wings. I think. It was down in the US. We had all these forest, mountain, and ice myths since… y’know.” Ann gestured widely to the surrounding landscape of white, black, and the very dark green of the conifers. She hadn’t taken the time to check their needles to see if they were pine, fir, spruce, or the dozen other types of needled trees that could be growing up here. There could be even more that she didn’t know about, now. She’d have to take a sample back for Da..

Shit.

Dad. Even Mom would have been happy to see something like this. She did go on hikes with Dad. Every time she’d huff and say it was to keep fit, but Ann knew that was a lie. Her mom had admitted that one night they’d gotten wasted on a bottle of wine together. There was a reason her parents were together. They just enjoyed the other person’s company too much. Dad had taken her on a date pretty early on and got her fitted for hiking shoes. She complained that he was spending too much on a girl he’d only known for a few months, but was disarmed when he told her this would transfer to other shoes. Her mother hated unitaskers, and that had been another push for their inevitable marriage.

She’d never gotten too far into the natural science angle her dad had, but her mom did start looking into forestry statistics, animal endangerment, and everything she could better quantify. Nature never fit into her preferred neat boxes, so she found the parts of it that would. Dad was great at that as well, but usually deferred to her so his wife could be involved.

On the flip side, Dad wasn’t great at finances or the dozen other things Mom was. His schedules were a mess, and he just budgeted by vibes, as he’d put it after learning the term. The budget and tax nights were long, full of coffee, and an exasperated Mom walking him through stacks of paper. She refused to let him flee the responsibility. In her eyes, it was part of being partners. Even though it drove her nuts on a yearly basis, Ann suspected she actually looked forward to it. Especially when Ann and her siblings came into the picture, it was a few hours that she could spend with Dad that the kids were completely uninterested in what they were doing. Coffee and whiskey were always paired on those nights.

“Ann, are… are you ok?” Rosalyn’s voice cut through Ann’s memory.

Ann looked around, then wiped a cheek. When had she started crying? It was only a few tears, thankfully. “Sorry.” Her voice was husky.

“Thinkin’ about home?” Kat asked. She was getting very good at telling what Ann was thinking about when she got sad or wistful. Their shared morning trauma bonding did a lot on that front.

“Yeah.” Ann cleared her throat. “Yeah. Was just thinking about the trees, and it hit me how much Dad… Mom and Dad would have liked me bringing home new stuff like those needles. Such a stupid little thing.”

“Not stupid,” Lucia growled. “Is treasured?”

Ann just nodded, still sitting there with her head on Kat’s pauldron. The side of her head was starting to bruise from the Ironbark. She didn’t want to move.

“Then, not. Bad talk. Make doubt, hesitate, death. Treasure good. Important.”

Ann nodded along as she pieced together the woman’s scant words. She was right. Didn’t need to go to therapy to figure that one out. “Yeah. Bad choice of words. Just, it was silly back then. Little trinkets that they could find a million places, but I still brought them. I still thought of them. Now, they make me remember them.”

A long silence settled over the party. Ann was grateful for it. She wanted to sit in this feeling for a bit longer. The melancholy was comforting in a strange way. Like a scab she couldn’t stop picking at, the pain somehow grounded her. It reminded her of how much she cared. A good pain.

It didn’t last, though. It couldn’t. Like the memory, it would fade as time passed. That scared Ann more than anything. She already barely remembered her own face from before. When would she forget her father’s face? Or her brothers and sisters? Her mother’s silky, long black hair? Jane’s exotic mix of their parents? Her curly hair that shone with the First Nations’ lustre?

Without them, without pictures or videos of them, eventually she’d forget. Her old life, her old existence, would continue to fade further and further into antiquity. She’d give anything just for a family photo. The one where they’d gone to Sunwapta Falls. Mom just about had a heart attack because of how close they could get to the crushing force of nature.  Dad had the doofiest grin on his face as he’d run back from the tripod.

“Miss me family, too,” Kat said quietly. That was right. Kat was similarly cut off. Not irreparably, but she still couldn’t go see her mom right now. “Gods, I hope Junia’s doin’ alright. Kierran an’ Jonathan, too. Wonder if Somnal’s made ‘is way back ‘ome yet?”

Ann’s heart ached for her girlfriend. They were both a long way from home. Even though Kat boasted a love for her freedom and independence, that didn’t mean she didn’t love her home. Ann wrapped an arm around Kat’s broad shoulders, ignoring the metal and bark digging into her arm.

Bren scooted a little closer to his blood sister and joined the hug. “We will see them again. I promise you that much. There was nothing done or said that can not be undone or taken back. The people love your family, and will be there to support them.”

“Aye,” Kat’s own choked-up affirmation came.

All of them were away from home, away from their parents. They were closer to Bren’s parents, and who even knew where Lucia’s were? At least they all knew their parents, which wasn’t something everyone in this village could say.

Ann recognised that she was starting to spiral, the negative feelings compounding on themselves. She needed to break the loop. It always took a lot of effort to pull herself out of this state of mind. Still, she sat up and took a breath.

“So, mummies?”

“I’m going to keep repeating this, but what do you mean by a mummy?” Rosalyn asked.

“More undead, but kinda powerful ones. They were dried out before they died and buried with their organs, while their bodies were wrapped in cloth. Some of them are shambling zombies, others are seriously magical. They’re usually in a desert area, though.”

Rosalyn pulled out her monster encyclopedia and wrote “mummy” into the book. Nothing popped up. She tried again, this time writing a description of the creature. Her charcoal words scattered, distributing across the pages with impossible volume as details and diagrams were created.

“The Bound Husk is a nomadic creature. They do not claim territory, nor stay in one region. When one spawns or is created, they begin walking. Their walk is endless, their tireless legs carrying them to their destination, wherever that might be. Any who come between them and their path are attacked without mercy. Even buildings and other natural obstacles, such as trees or mountains that they cannot climb, are attacked with as much passion as a living thing.

“A Bound Husk is stronger than the average adult with a combat Path. It is advised to contact local warriors should you find one. The strangest part of this is that they can be harmed, but killing them is incredibly difficult. Like a Mannequin Skeleton, if they lose a piece of themselves via injury or attack, they will divert from their path to retrieve the missing body part. This is the only time that they will do so. The recommended method for dealing with one is to remove a body part from behind and lead the corpse to a suitably hot furnace. Once there, lead the creature into the inferno, but do not dispose of the body part yet. If you dispose of it before or move towards an entrance, the Husk will follow you and escape. If the body part is destroyed before the main body, you will be marked as the missing piece and will be hunted until the creature can replace what it has lost.

“See the following entries for variants such as the Arcane and Royal Bound Husks.”

“Ah, so they do exist!” Ann crowed in victory. “That last bit about replacing body parts it lost is really interesting. There was a movie where a mummy kinda did the same thing to a group of people who raided its tomb. I think that’d be more of a Royal Bound Husk, though. Is it bad I kinda wanna see one?”

“Yeah, I think that’s kinda really super weird,” Eyes said. “Like, you want to go find one of these creepy things just to see it?”

“Well, we could try blowing it up with lightning, too. Right, Rosalyn?”

“Well, duh! Maybe Kat can try screaming it to death, or Lucia exploding it with explosive shots! I know someone has before, but I wanna see it put itself back together! Can you imagine how it looks to have all of those body parts wiggling around on their own? Oh, man, wait, does that tas… um. Nevermind. Still, I wanna blow one up!”

Eyes didn’t have eyebrows to raise with her cluster of bulging eyes, but Ann could feel the judgmental eyebrow all the same. “You lot are weird.”