Born a Monster

527 Sacred Mission

[Angel of Sobek has assigned you a quest!]

[Holy Quest: Avenge yourself on your captors!]

[You Must:]

[Exact revenge upon Sulema ibn Kumar ibn Kazif, 0/5 points.]

[Exact revenge upon Murud ibn Uzik ibn Kazif, 0/10 points.]

[Exact revenge upon Sarai ibn Kolar ibn Achmed, 0/15 points.]

[Exact revenge upon both twins, Omar and Ubay, 0/5 points. Objective failed.]

[Exact revenge upon Hassan ibn Hajji ibn Hajji, 5/5 points. Objective completed.]

[Save the life of Taranda, adopted daughter of Masaad, 0/5 points.]

.....

[Keep Taranda, adopted daughter of Masaad, from being raped, 0/5 points.]

[Extract Taranda, adopted daughter of Masaad, to civilization, 0/5 points.]

[Success condition: Complete 25 points of the above objectives.]

[Success awards: 0 bonus points, and one champion point.]

[Critical success condition: Complete 50 points of the above objectives.]

[Critical success awards: 5 bonus points, one champion point, and 10 XP toward choice of Holy Avenger, Inquisitor, or Torturer class.]

[Failure penalty: You must resume twice monthly dream visits to Sobek the Great, at the banks of the Eternal River.]

[Quest points: 5/55 points. Quest Status (if ended now): Failure.] f𝐫𝑒𝗲𝙬𝒆𝚋𝐧૦𝘃𝗲l.c𝚘𝘮

Of course I reacted the way many holy men would to such a gracious request from my deity. I flung myself to earth, cursed his name and his angel, and myself for being so STUPID as to agree to this arrangement in the first place. I hammered the sand, and flung fistfuls into the wind, and spat and cussed and drew a picture of him in the sand and urinated upon it.

And then:

<System. Quest. Most Recent. Track. Begin.>

[Now tracking objectives of quest: Avenge yourself upon your captors.]

I took two deep and slow breaths, and then another two just in case. My blood was still pulsing at my temples, which moved oddly because of the lack of scales.

I moved another load of grains and fibers into my stomachs, saving what fruit and nuts remained for when I truly needed to gain nutrition fast.

Six stomachs, ten servings, three nutrition per serving. Each time I could do that was a fraction over what I needed for a day.

One might have expected me to just devour it all; I had given the idea the thought it deserved. But since I wasn’t doing transformations...

WHY wasn’t I doing transformations? A quick change to a different form and back might restore my scales fully.

It took me a while to place the camp back into my System inventory, and I conducted the test. I lost some mass going to human (kobold was closer to my form, but the number of level two tissues to be created was more than both transformations together), and another loss as I reverted to myself – complete with a resplendent, if soft and new, set of scales.

I conducted a visual examination, and determined that physically I was none the worse for wear. Nowhere near full or even half Health, Sanity, or Serenity, but nothing worse than [Anemia] and an infection of foot fungus that a quick conversion into Disease mana took care of.

My first clue that they were about was when [Beast Sense] showed unusual movement or stillness of the local fauna. The second was the smell. Carnivores smell terrible, even to omnivores like me. And even as I set my senses to find another clue, three Hyenadae stepped out from behind low bends in the land. They laughed, I presume at me.

“Do you know me?” I asked.

“You are in our territory, that makes you our food.” replied the largest of the three.

Ugh. So much for conversation. Or... not?

None of them moved to string their bows, nor to move to flank me. These had spears, and their bows on their backs. Unlike the Hyenadae I had met a few days before, these were armored, and showed signs of having groomed themselves earlier in the day.

“My current quest has nothing to do with you.” I said. “I need only enough of your land to set my feet upon, and only for the time it takes me to pass.”

“Pass to where?” the largest asked.

“There is a human encampment ahead of me, surrounded by a wall of mud bricks.”

“It speaks of our new camp, our new home.” tittered one of the smaller ones, who I decided to call Brown Mask for the dual overlapping spots around his eyes.

“You won’t make it that far.” the large one said. “The four of us will eat well.”

Four?

I flung myself to the right, went into a roll, and came up trying to look every way at once.

There were, in fact, four. The fourth had an arrow nocked, not quite at my back. He was taller, but much skinnier than the big one, marked by the clear signs of prolonged starvation in his past. But that was far enough in the past that he was able to fire arrows quickly, and accurately enough that I actually needed my [Agility/Ranged Defense/Dodge/Dodge Projectile] skill.

It was a skill and subskill I’d neglected to work on since being reborn, defaulting to my Agility at rating five. Any kind of prolonged contest at range, and I was done for.

Seeing no other option, I charged, [Fleet of Foot] and trying to press even that to its limit. When the option to expend a champion point appeared, I accepted without reading the full text.

“Diarhea on the gods!” the archer shrieked. “Hamstring Shot!”

[You have taken 8 points of Piercing damage; after armor, 2 points have been received. You have 23/120 health remaining.

[You have been affected by [Hamstring]. Your movement...]

<Stalwart Health.>

My speed picked back up, and I was on him while his shaking hands dropped the bow and tried to ready his spear. Too slow! I darted into a grapple before he could bring the point of his spear online.

I bit him once, twice.

[No venom to inject.] scrolled through my vision.

Crap.

“Ah! Ah! Stop! I surrender. Surrender. Parley!”

[You have resisted a social feint. To determine...]

No, I didn’t need to know that. I rolled off of him, and the arrows he had hoped would find my back struck the ground on and around him.

He screamed, but I had no time to be certain of his demise. Zigging right and zagging left, I managed to avoid the worst of the other arrows, managing to have 17/120 life when the melee started. They had spears; I had a fifty pound sack of grain.

Incidentally, those make really poor weapons. The sack broke on the first hit, kicking up a cloud of white dust which covered us all.

It was enough of a distraction to reach the dagger of the nearest’s belt; after that, it went very badly for them.

Coughing up blood, Gaunt called out. “Flee, brothers! I shall cover you.”

I would not have fired into that cloud of whirling flour, but Gaunt had no such limitations. Even as the other three fled laughing in various directions, I span around and made back for Gaunt.

I needn’t have bothered; he was deep into the process of bleeding out.

He coughed up more blood, laughing and falling onto his back. “Monster. You slay me, but my family lives on through my sacrifice.”

“What is your name, that I might remember it?”

But he was wracked by spasms of coughing and laughter; there was nothing to do other than close his eyes and take a respectful bite. <1 >

Some day, I may go into the wonders of Hyenadae. There’s no shortage of evolutions, including a [Tracking Scent] that rivaled that of hunting dogs.

[System. Transformation. Hyenadae. Begin.]

Of course, my System spat out a list of reasons I couldn’t do that. One by one, over the next two hours, I made my way north. One by one, I resolved those issues. It’s amazing how fast one little shapeshifter can go through damn near a quarter of a pantry when properly motivated.

As I have indicated, the process of transformation is a messy one. There was more than enough bloody tissue to soak my fur in strategic places to make it look like I’d been in a battle. (Which I had been, but I didn’t look like it.)

It was a very scruffy, blood-spattered Hyenadae who approached the walls.

The guards laughed upon spotting me. “You there! Halt!” one finally called. I halted. “Where is your family?”

“I don’t know.” I said. “There is some manner of scaled monster outside the walls.”

The guards laughed. “Your brothers gave us servings of fish to pass.”

I held forth the butchered rock lizard that had been on Gaunt’s corpse. “Where do you think there’s water? This is what I have in the way of meat.”

“Good. The monster wouldn’t know that. Give us your food, and you may pass.”

I made a point of looking downcast, of kicking the dirt in frustration before saying, “It doesn’t look like I have a choice.”

“Indeed you do not. Throw your food up here.” freℯ𝓌e𝚋𝐧𝘰vℯl.𝐜𝚘𝗺

“Open the gate.” I said. “I’ll hand the food over on my way inside.”

They did, so I did.

Was it a sign of weakness? Should they have challenged me to see what else I had? Possibly, but they did not. I set off toward the camp’s buildings unmolested.

<1 > Yes, I would normally not have done this. My health was too low, and I needed every evolution he had.