Story: The Smiling Man

woah. that's a really good way to end a story....like one you'd see out of most books that aren't bad. This really hits me where i live *breast pumps* damn...just awe shockingly good. Good as old wise marines telling their tales of famity. keep it up dude! you got serious potential.

Awesome he has no fear, so the adventure continues. Where will he find himself next?

Have you thought about writing a novel? Because I would buy it.

Really a great ending ! And I loved the explanation for the smile ^_^
Your stories are really good. Very nicely written with fascinating characters !

*Insert giant lol face here*

Thanks for the compliments, everyone.
@ KaiLeingod - I am writing several novels right now. None published yet though.
Glad to hear my tales are decent.

Dude, love it. Write more. NOW!!!

A short piece. Most people tend to forget giant preds aren't that common, and there's a lot of things that could kill you out there. References to vore and gore here.

Lucky Break

Thatris edged around the side of a building, keeping his breathing at a bare minimum and trying to suppress his movements as much as was possible. He was up on a crumbling part of a larger building, creepers covering the place, on a narrow, rubble-strewn ledge that ran across the outer wall of the structure. It was nearly fifty feet to the ground, and although the fall wouldn't have hurt him at all he very much wanted to avoid tumbling down to the ground.

He was in the ruins of Ur-Sagol, a massive complex of half-collapsed, archaic stone structures. They were all in a state of complete disrepair, broken, some nothing more than jumbles of brick and shattered stone, others mostly intact but chunks of mortar and blocks missing, the brick roads that wound through the labyrinthine maze of the dead civilization huge but falling apart. Everything had plant life growing on it, moss covered stone and vine-enshrouded temples, overgrown and slowly being integrated to the great jungle, returned to nature by the infinite flow of time.

It was rather awe-inspiring, the kind of place Thatris could sit in and think for hours over as he ran his eyes over the ancient buildings. There were many places like this in Evenwood, his homeworld, rotting remnants of what the now-rare humans there had accomplished. They had been wiped out some three thousand years ago by a massive wave of what amounted to ridiculous bad luck, three famines, four deadly plagues, and a series of natural disasters that reduced them to wandering or semi-sedentary villages.

Not that he was gazing at the scenery. He had other things to concentrate on, like the elephant-sized wolf-thing keeping pace with him in the streets below. It was a russet-furred creature, six legs striding in a rippling motion that was perfectly coordinated, the slightly slimmer lines that bespoke a female canid. A set of heavy scars, claw-marks from some larger creature, shown with that slight shininess scars had out of the beast's cinnamon pelt here and there, and across one empty eye-socket.

Animals were nearly as rare as humans on Evenwood, plants the dominant form of life, but he had found and read books over them that had been preserved in old vaults underground. He judged by the outsized paws and ears that this was a juvenile, barely half-grown, and probably driven from her pack by a interclan battle or ambushed by a predator and accidentally left behind. Maybe she had even been thrown out by her own packmates for some reason.

He could appreciate the abandonment, given his past, but that didn't mean he wanted to go down and comfort the predator. She was looking at him in a decidedly hungry manner, staring up at him and licking her chops in an almost wistful fashion. The Kensha couldn't get to him, not even by jumping, which was why he had immediately climbed up here in the first place, going up using the thick green ropes of creepers to scale the building as soon as he had spotted the wolf-pup.

Of course, his boneless nature could allow him to squeeze his way out of a stomach, but that wouldn't matter if he was torn apart beforehand. The Kensha wasn't large enough by half to swallow him whole, and would most assuredly rip him to pieces before devouring him. She also had a dull gleam to her claws that he very much did not like, a sheen that bespoke poison of some kind. A double-threat, meaning he was stuck up here, slowly scooting along this crumbling, precarious ledge and hoping not to fall.

Being in this situation, his empty smile didn't even twitch an inch out of place, and it never would. He looked down at the beast with that vacuous grin, and spoke, just in case she was sentient. One never knew in this insane world of Felarya.

"Good day. My name is Thatris Jibbs. I am guessing you want to eat me, as nearly everything else I've met has tried to do so, but I'm going to warn you that I'll defend myself viciously if you attempt it." he announced.

The creature simply tilted her head at the words, and panted heavily. Obviously not intelligent on a human level, or at least not in terms of speech. He wasn't THAT worried, as he was relatively safe up here, and the beast had to give up eventually. He had a few fruits in a pocket of his knapsack, and a leather water-skin hanging from a belt, nearly full. It was more than enough to outlast the Kensha. Wandering across whole continents in his own world, most of it nigh-unto impenetrable wilderness, had let him experience extreme hunger, and a couple of days without food had occurred often in his travels.

He finally got to the edge of the building, and looked around for some other place to get to. He wouldn't starve, but he couldn't just stand on a eight-inch wide ledge for hours. There was a kind of square building next to the one he was on, a tad lower and with a decent-looking integrity to its structure. There were a great many heavy cracks in the edges of the roof, but he wasn't heavy enough to collapse it, he was sure.

Of course, there was the problem that it was about twenty feet away.

And that was a very long way.

Thartris considered it. He could jump for it, no need to fear the fall if he didn't make it, but the Kensha pup would be right on him if he landed in the streets below. The alleyway between the two buildings was easily spacious enough to allow the beast through. There were vines that he could grab growing on the side of the building, and he could grab those, climb his way up as there was no real chance he could take a flying leap and make the roof on this ledge.

Well, it was that or fall off his perch later when he had to sleep. No way to beat the sandman, after all. This, at least, gave him the greatest opportunity to survive.

With a deep breath, he bent his legs and launched himself out into the empty air.

As he'd predicted, he didn't make the roof. He got that brief stomach-levitation feeling that came with falling, and then slammed into the side of the square building with a heavy thud. He lashed out with both arms, grabbing the thickest creepers in range. He was thankful for his leather half-gloves, protecting his hands from the occasional thorns on some of the green-brown tendrils, as he jerked to a halt, fall stopped.

The Kensha made an almost-human whine of disappointment below, and he clearly heard the slurping smack of the pup's tongue running over black, lupine lips. Too bad for you, Thatris thought, climbing higher up. He was safe, now. Or at least as safe as one could be in Felarya.

At that point, the cracked bricks the vines were attached to decided to be jerks, and gave way with the grating sound of stone falling apart. A whole chunk of the wall, ten foot by ten and three feet thick easily, came loose, creepers and ivy snapping as the weight of more than a ton of rock ripped free and came crashing down. Just before the falling piece of debris collided with him, Thatris managed one word.

"Lucky"

The Kensha yelped as nearly three thousand pounds of rock came crashing down, the beast trying to dodge. It was too late, though, and with a screaming roar of pain the juvenile Kensha had its whole front half crushed by the falling chunk of building. Its skull and spine were shattered instantly, flesh pulped by the impact, splintered bits of bone and blood splattering out in a starburst pattern. Then there was no noise, only a few grumbling complaints from the bits of rock still rolling around and falling in the aftermath.

For several seconds the only thing moving was the slowly spreading pool of blood emerging from underneath the rubble in a crimson lake, the only sound the echoes of the crash fading as they dissipated through the ruins.

Then Thatris squirmed out from underneath a heavy slab of stone, not hurt in the least.

He got to his feet, brushing off as casually as if he had merely tripped and fallen, and looked at the mangled corpse of the Kensha. It was a reminder that death was everywhere here, even for predators, and it could grab you in an instant if you didn't pay attention. He walked over to the splattered beast, patting its still-intact hindquarters.

"Well, don't pay attention, and you get this."

With that simple truth, he bent and picked up a shard of stone, quite sharp, and began cutting. Carnivores didn't taste all that good compared to herbivores, but it would do. At least he would be eating well for a while, maybe make a knife out of one of those foot long claws. And get a fur blanket out of it.

He would have to work fast, though, because the scent of blood would bring something along sooner or later, most likely sooner.

* * * * *

Thirty minutes later a rather sorrowful-looking giant slug-girl came across a black ball of vultures squabbling over something. Chasing the carrion birds off, thinking it might be someone almost-dead and in need of help, she gasped. It was the back half of a Kensha Beast pup, stripped of its skin and several chunks of meat, and one of the back claws missing.

Squiggle immediately slid off, gagging. She hated the sight of blood.

* * * * *

Thatris unrolled his new blanket that night, after having washed and sun-cured it. Rather warm for the jungle, but it was better than sleeping on the ground.



Well, sometimes being lucky is just as useful as being skilled. Criticism and critiques are welcome.

Felarya is Karbo's

Kenshas are credited to Randomdude.

Named characters are mine unless otherwise stated.

such a great skill to have in Felarya

Finally back at school and free to write at will again.

This is the first chapter of a new story arc for the Smiling Man. It starts off from a rather unusual perspective. References to vore but nothing else.

Urban Incursion

Chapter 1: Hat

The Shard River was quiet today, languidly flowing along as it had forever, as it would continue to do for many, many years. The water was cool but not cold, a perfect escape for many from the hot sun that was out today. The blue, sparkling ribbon wound its way from the Jewel across the land, flowing through the Forest of Whispers where fey ran about in the canopy and flitted through the trees, flowing into the Fairy Kingdom as if there was no massive chasm in its path, flowing and flowing and flowing, to a destination only the river itself was sure of.

The river contained many things.

It contained fish of all kinds, tiny, huge, colorful, colorless, ferocious and lethargic. It contained treasure, long-forgotten chests in its depths, sunken, some, perhaps, never to be opened. It contained many things, that beautiful river, a wide variety of things that all seemed to fit in, somehow.

Except for the hat.

It was a simple hat, brown, soft leather, a mid-sized brim with several nicks in it. A tan band ran around the base of it, just above the brim, made of some kind of cloth. The person who owned the hat was nowhere to be found, but evidence of the owner was there for those who looked.There was a stain on that tan band, a splotch of color that, like the hat in the river, did not fit. It was red, that stain, the telltale color of old blood.

Still, the hat seemed unconcerned with being alone; it floated down the river, right-side up and serene, calmly and slowly. Alone in its strangeness, its lack of belonging in this river, it went along as if it hadn't a care in the world. The hat was silent as it followed the water's flow, explaining nothing to anyone, because it was a hat, and a simple hat, at that.

The note, tucked into the band, was another matter.

It explained much, at least to anyone who could read the language written on it. Unlikely that anyone could, but it still was there. It was not actually paper, that message, but rather written on a handkerchief. The information on the cloth was concise and brisk in tone.

"Whoever finds this hat, please take care of it. If you have it in your hands but don't see me, then I am most likely dead. You can have the hat, though. It's a nice hat. -Thatris Jibbs"

Despite the macabre message, the hat kept going along with no compunctions. It felt no guilt at leaving its master behind, none at all. Afte-

A fish exploded out of the water, interrupting the placid journey of the hat with a spray of water and its furious thrashing in the river. All glinting silver scales, powerful muscle, and heavy, pegged teeth, the mycorpe snapped and flailed, sending the previously peaceful hat gliding quickly away on the waves created by the beast. Regardless of how it struggled, however, the aquatic predator couldn't remove the man clinging to it.

The fish slammed itself back down under the water with a crash and a cascade of glinting droplets, vanishing under the surface with its unwanted passenger in tow. The rivers motion quickly erased the evidence of the fight, ripples disappearing in the unceasing flow. The hat, still uncaring and as implacable as the man who wore it, continued on its way without so much as one pause, one backwards glance of regret.

After all, it was only a hat.

It kept going, but its stubborn march was halted after only a few meters. It gently came to rest against the side of a dock, trapped between the flow of the river and the wood of the structure. It stayed, caught and immobile, seething with the rage of being stopped in its eternal travels, as the seconds ticked by. Why must it be halted by nothing more than a simple collection of boards and planks, nothing but wood and ropes? It wanted to keep going, finish the never-ending journey of the river, but it was not to be.

A gigantic hand, skin the color of a robin's egg and large enough to completely engulf a human, reached down. It was a hand strong enough to sink a yacht with one good swat, crush a shark with a single squeeze, punch a hole through a house. Yet, it was incredibly careful not to crumple the hat as it pinched the tiny article and lifted it clear of the water. The hat, previously enraged at the delay, calmed. This was one who knew how to handle a hat, what hats liked, and how hats should be dealt with.

* * * * *

Calimn examined the hat held lightly between her thumb and forefinger, turning it this way and that as she looked it over. It wasn't what she was keeping an eye out for, but maybe she would keep it. It was probably too big for Swiftlit, but she might as well hold onto the thing until he came back.

"IF he comes back . . ." he subconscious muttered.

She shook her head, hard, to get that foreboding whisper out of her mind. He would show up again, she was sure. She had been waiting for him to return for nearly three days now, worrying occasionally but mostly keeping herself occupied by looking for a place she might find any information on the subject of shoes. She had talked to Jab (and been unable to bring herself to tell the harpy about her smaller friend, to her embarrassment), but the harpy hadn't been able to tell her anything.

Though Jab was incredibly sharp, she obviously had never thought to ask over the matter of shoes to either her few friends or her previous prey. Admittedly, Calimn would have never thought of it herself, if she had been in Jab's position. As such, the mermaid had to find some other source of footwear-related information.

She was still staring at the hat and thinking when a familiar voice drifted up from the river beside her.

"I beg your pardon, but I believe that's mine."

She looked down as a human hauled himself up onto the dock she was leaned on. Sopping wet, his mismatched clothes hung on him, dripping dark spots everywhere on the smooth boards of the structure. He was dressed in the most ridiculous fashion, so bad that even SHE noticed; quite something considering that she didn't wear so much as a stitch and had no interest in clothes at all. He had on a set of sweatclothes, but leather boots and a coat of the same material, both brown and the coat marred by a pair of parallel rips in the sleeve.

She blinked, surprised to see someone simply pop up out of the river like that. Well, surprised to see someone small and not a mermaid pop up out of the river, anyway. And suddenly lay claims to the hat in her hand. And be seemingly unafraid of her.

"Your hat?" she asked, turning and switching her gaze back and forth between the man and the hat.

"Yes, my hat. Could I have it back, please? I'll give you this." he responded, indicating the thing floating in the river behind him, held still by the one-handed grip he had on it.

It was a mycorpe, a young one, but still half again as long as the man was tall. The fish was belly-up, obviously dead. One of its eyes had been nearly ripped from the socket, clear fluid leaking from it, and there was a long, ragged, vicious gash running along the gills of the predatory water-dweller. Both that and the four stab wounds on the belly let long trails of blood merge into the blue of the river in lines of dull crimson.

"You killed that? Yourself?" she inquired, incredulous.

"Yes. Its lucky I just got a knife made. I think I might've drowned if it had attacked me while I was unarmed."

Calimn found herself quite impressed. To fight a fish that large (large to a human, anyway) in the water and win was a feat, all right. Why not trade the hat for the fish? This human had certainly earned it. Dropping the article onto the man's head, she picked the mycorpe up and bit it in half, thick, slightly giving bones crunching between her teeth. If only fish didn't have bones; she wasn't much for the feeling of them grinding on her molars, and liked squid, octopods and other soft creatures better for that reason. Still, it tasted just fine, and after a moment of chewing she polished off the first half of the fish and finished the tail just as quickly.

"Mmm, mycorpe is pretty good. I kind of like exovoles better, though. Well then, I think dessert is in order, don't you?"

Calimn was reaching for the human when she caught herself. It wasn't that she didn't want to eat him; she did, regardless of how impressive he was, and the brief threat he gave 'If you don't mind being hurt or killed, go ahead' similarly gave her no pause (okay, maybe a little with that dead monotone and face). However, doing so meant she would be kicked out, forced to leave the docks. Or at least, that's what the rules, tacked up on the side of the café, stated.

She withdrew her hand, giving him a smile and re-directing her words with a quick verbal twist.

"I'm going to order the citroise pie. That'll go well with mycorpe, don't you think?"

* * * * *

Thatris nodded. Citroise he had never eaten, at least not that he knew of, but it seemed like a good choice to go with a large fish of that type. This mermaid had some sense when it came to food. She also didn't appear to be ready to eat him, or at least unwilling to do so. Curious, but as he was in no danger it was of no concern to him.

And if she did attempt to eat him, he would crawl into her lungs and test his new Kensha-claw knife on more than just an aggressive fish.

The giant, though not interested in eating him, peered at his face for several seconds before her face lit up with the spark of recognition.

"Hey! I know you, you're the one who beat me at a staring contest. I'd recognize that blank smile anywhere."

"Not immediately, apparently. I've been here a good six minutes."

The predator flushed a darker blue, a sheepish look crossing her face for a moment.

"I was preoccupied with something, okay? Why are you here, anyway?"

"I tried to swim the river and got attacked halfway across by that fish. Then I stabbed it to death underwater and came looking for my hat." he explained, reaching up to adjust the headgear to just the right angle.

"And yourself?" he queried

"I'm ju- . . . why do you care?"

"I don't." he allowed, grin never wavering.

"Why ask, then?"

"Because you asked me."

* * * * *

Calimn felt a twitch of annoyance. She was excellent at predicting how people would act given a certain circumstance, part of what made her a good liar and a good hunter, and Thatris seemed to be intent on defying that. His creepily empty smile and lifeless eyes made it nearly impossible to tell what he was thinking, and that irritated her. His deadpan face and queer paths of logic created a conversational enigma that could inspire headaches in even the most patient of people.

"Well, if you don't care, then don't ask." she huffed, pulling the string that set the service bell inside the café to ringing.

"Where is this, anyway?"

"It's called 'Everyone's Cup of Tea Café'. My harpy friend Jab told me about it. Apparently it's really, really good. It serves anybody that follows the rules, too. Predators, people your size, even tinies. Weird way to run a restaurant, but it has good food." she gave.

In reality, Calimn had come not for the food but information. The dridder proprietress was supposedly from Sineria's reign, a remnant survivor of the old dridder empire. Not only that, she talked to and interacted with humans and the like on a semi-regular basis (given that the café was fairly close to the Ascarlin trade route). If any giant predator would know where to procure a pair of shoes sized for Swiftlit, it would be her.

A giant, dressed smartly in a dridder-silk waiter's outfit, stepped out into the fading light of late afternoon, then stepped out onto the dock to take the mermaid's order. He raised a greying eyebrow at the human standing beside her.

"Do you need a seat, sir?" he asked, somewhat hesitantly.

"Who, me? Not at all. I was actually just standing here for no reason." the man responded.

The giant obviously didn't know what to make of the answer. The words could be taken, perhaps, as rude, but the vacuous smile on the human's face hadn't so much as twitched. After a moment, the waiter decided to chalk it up as neutral and turned his attention to Calimn.

"Well, your order, miss?"

"Umn, citroise pie, please. I heard you have it, and it's very good." she requested, remembering her previous comment.

"We do indeed, and I have no doubt that it IS good. I'll have it out in a moment."

"Thank you. Oh, and could you ask the owner to come talk to me?" she added.

The giant nodded as he ducked back inside, leaving the two alone again.

"Why do you want the owner?" Thatris asked, after a brief silence.

"Do you care?"

"Not particularly."

"Then shut up." she snapped.

It was rude, maybe, but that smile and bizarre logic were beginning to chew on her nerves. She was already nervous about Swiftlit wandering around on his own, and she most certainly didn't need a wierdo like this guy hanging around.

"I think you're evolving into a shark. Or a squid."

"Wha-? That made no sense at all."

"It made perfect sense. You are becoming aggressive. Sharks and squid are aggressive. You should calm down before you grow tentacles."

Calimn had no idea what to say to that. Well, only one idea.

"You're completely insane."

"Maybe. But you could be, too. You could be seeing all kinds of things, but you don't know it. The dock could be on fire and full of giant shrimp, in your head, and I'd never know it. Unless you said so. Not before then, thou-"

Calimn picked the man up mid-sentence. She couldn't take any more of this crazy nonsense spouting out of him. The rules stated that manhandling customers was prohibited, but he wasn't actually buying anything, now was he? She dunked him under the water once, twice, quickly, then set him back down on the dock. Hopefully his oddness had been doused.

* * * * *

Thatris was soaked by his abrupt dousing, but he didn't much care. It wasn't as if he had been all the way dry before. He looked up as the giant came back, a piping hot piece of pie on a ceramic dish nearly ten feet in diameter. There was a fork, as well. Thatris briefly wondered how you might make a fork that large, but was interrupted by the waiter's voice.

"Ah, I'm sorry, miss, but the proprietress is very busy with something at the moment. Could you come back tomorrow?"

"Umn . . . I guess. Thank you for the pie, though."

"Of course. Just pull the bell if you want to order something else." he nodded, once again going inside.

Thatris decided it was time to leave. Why he had stood here so long in the first place was really a mystery. He headed off, waving at the mermaid. Her only response was to roll her eyes and take a bite of pie. Apparently it was as good as rumored, because her face immediately bloomed into a smile. The human traveler's own dead grin stayed in place as he headed southward, hopping off the dock onto land. He walked past the café without going in; a nice restaurant, but he had places to go.

As he left the building behind, he patted his hat.

"Nice to have you back."


First chapter. Thatris has another run-in with Calimn. The first part of the story is from the hat's perspective, and we gain some insight into how Thatris' hat thinks.

Felarya is Karbo's

Named characters are mine unless otherwise stated

Odd little scene. Very enjoyable.

I liked the scene with the mercs, you showed competent ones here, I was worried that I was going to see another example of "mercenaries/adventurers are incompetent" thing I see.So this is all pretty well written.
However, there is one thing that gets me. You have a giant neko. There are no giant nekos, they are a human sized race. It's not a major detail though. If you ever have to rewrite for some other reason I'm sure that you could change it.

Thank you. Fixed the neko problem.

That was a fun little chapter, the introduction wit the hat made me chucckle

Thank you. Thatris' hat is a rather important article of clothing, and quite sophisticated.

Thatris wanders in to populated areas near Nekomura and Negav, and a bit more is shown about this enigmatic fellow. No vore.

Chapter 2: Another Day

Thatris could feel his feet beginning to degenerate in his boots. They started to lose their shape somewhat, toes softening and becoming less defined. The traveler actually did not have ankles, with no bone mass in that area, and so anyone looking at his legs would have probably notice this. Now, though, his weight had begun to sink lower, and the muscle was slowly bunching on top of his feet. Thatris never felt the ache of sore feet, the flesh too yielding for that, but when the muscles in his legs and feet began to slacken like this, he knew he had been walking for too long in one go. He thought back, trying to remember how long it had been since he had last sat down for a rest. A few hours? No, the sun had gone down at some point during his walk, and now it was back up near its zenith. A few days? That seemed about right; it took about two days for his feet to get like this.

He could remember when he had been younger, just a child, and walking for only thirty minutes would have his legs as limp as noodles, pitching him into the dirt because he didn’t know his own limits. His mother had always been there to help him to his feet with a giant index finger to support him, though, and always encouraged his passion for traveling. Laurel had been a good mother as he was growing up in her care, even though she had originally raised him for the reason that she wanted to eat him once he was big enough. That had never happened, the dryad becoming far too attached to her little adopted boy and giving in to true parenthood. How she had managed to take care of a human baby herself was something he was often amazed at, but with a lot of perseverance and love she had made due.

He wondered how she was doing. She knew he could handle himself, but she still worried about him on occasion. She couldn’t help it. That was what she did, being a parent, just as she listened to the tales of his journeying when he came back, told him to be careful and fussed on the rare occasions he came back with a scar or sometimes a still-mending wound. It was quite surprising how few he received, considering he was always out in the wilderness of Evenwood, which was mostly jungle, forest, and unending fields of tall grass, all of it with quite a few varieties of man-eating and poisonous plants. He had gained more scars here in Felarya during the three weeks he had been here than in a two-year trip in homeland.

Thatris was still thinking as he sidestepped a small knot of cat-eared people talking amongst themselves at the edge of Nekomura.

One of them, a female with darker hair that lightened to chocolate on her ears and tail, gave a snicker as he went by. Most likely because of his clothes, he guessed. Dark grey sweatclothes two sizes too large didn’t look very good when combined with a weather-beaten hat, boots and coat. As such, he let it go. No sense in taking offense to being laughed at for a legitimate reason.

Nekomura.

It was a pleasant place. It had something of a comfortable, countryside feel to it, rustic and calm. The houses were made primarily out of wood, some of the larger with a little stone for a more stable base, wooden shingles or even thatch on the greater part of the roofing. Trees, and large ones, grew up in multiplie places, and the nekos had made use of these natural features just as economically as the other resources. Lines were strung between them, thicker ropes but still no wider than three fingers. Despite this, several of the cat-people were walking along them with no trouble whatsoever, balance tuned so finely that the task was no harder than taking a stroll down on the ground. More nekos walked the dirt streets below, going about their business.

Indeed, besides himself there was not a human in sight, though there were a few in the village. Nekomura lived up to the foremost part of its name; Thatris was standing in a sea of ears and tails. He stood out, both from this and his clothes, and so he gained plenty of raised eyebrows and curious glances. No one commented except casually to a conversant, though, and no one said anything directly to him.

Both in attitude and in style, it was reminiscent of a small village in Evenwood he had been to once. Out in the plains, it had been called Windward, because of the breezes that were always blowing. A beautiful town, inhabited by some hundred people, Windward had been a calm, sunny, sleepy little place. No one there had known about his odd condition that made him so deeply disliked among the people of his homeworld, and it had been so pleasant that he had actually thought about settling down in that village of warm summer grass and softly creaking windmills. He had left for a few weeks, traveling to think on that idea, and come back to discover the whole place had been destroyed by a Verada, one of the incredibly rare giant winds that rushed across the grasslands and blew away everything it hit.

There had been bits of both village and villagers scattered across the plains for miles.

The memory called up a slight swirl of nostalgia. He was a tad surprised at this; it was a rare thing that he felt that longing for old times. Well, here was hoping that this village didn’t get decimated like Windward.

Someone yelling “HEY!” made him crank his head around, letting it rotate all the way like an owl’s, to see who had just shouted behind him. Possibly at him. Dashing down the street was a neko man, fairly large, holding a bag under one arm as if he were seeking to strangle it and running towards the traveler, though a meter or two to one side. Other nekos in the street were dodging out of his way as he roared at them to move, ears flat and tail lashing, the members of the crowd snapping that he should watch where he was going. Thatris, assuming that this neko had yelled at him for some reason as the cat-man was running towards him and seemed to be paying no attention to anybody thus far in his way, waved at him.

And stepped right into his path.

“Yes? You need something?” he asked, blank grin now aligned with the neko’s snarl.

The man didn’t see him, glancing backwards for some reason, and that second of inattention to his line of trajectory resulted in quite a collision. He yelped, both startled and hurt by the brunt of the impact, and flailed wildly as he lost his balance and went down. Thatris took the crash with his usual smile, the blunt impact doing absolutely nothing to him besides throwing him back a few steps, and tensed up some to reestablish his feet as something that would hold him up rather than turn to flesh pudding and dump him on the ground. He wobbled in place for a moment as his legs threatened to fold, but managed.

“Apologies for getting in your way, but I thought you were calling m-“ he began, reaching down to help the neko up.

He had to cut off then, because the neko was up again and swung pointed nails, almost claws, right at his empty smile. Only his lack of a spine saved him losing an eye, head lolling back impossibly far and in an impossibly liquid manner to avoid the attack. Still, the neko was fast, and Thatris felt a pair of hot lines dart from the corner of his mouth to his chin in two shallow but painful slices.

The sting of it didn’t slow his reaction on bit, though.

He continued his motion, bending backwards, letting all the momentum build up and then using it. He grabbed the neko by the collar of the cat-man’s brown tunic and just fell, allowing the combined force of his weight and movement to yank the aggressor, larger than him by six inches and probably twenty pounds, off his feet. The runner was about to land on him, but Thatris kept going with the motion, pulling the neko into a tandem reverse roll. Three revolutions, the centrifugal force growing with each rotation, and then the cat-man was released in mid-cycle with a kick in the stomach to hurry him on his way. The total energy sent him flying into a vendor’s stall, the owner hurriedly diving out of the way as fish went in all directions.

The neko, dizzy and bruised but still able to move, started to rise. Or at least, he tried. Try being the key word, as Thatris picked up on of the larger specimens among the fish lying on the ground and clobbered the neko with it. The two-handed blow brought the scaly, glassy-eyed club crashing down on the cat-man’s head and he was out cold in an instant.

Thatris sighed through his smile. Running into trouble so often was tiring, and Felarya seemed to have no end of trouble to hurl at him. First a pantaur and giant, then glouteux, after that a fairy and two more giants, that mermaid twice, even a mercenary squad (and what a mess that had been) for good measure, and now a neko that had tried to slash his face off. What next? Giant spiders coming to devour everyone in sight? Why not? He was imagining how the spider might look when someone put a hand on his shoulder.

Thatris wasn’t very good at direct fights, his thinking too slow and therefore preferring surprise, but there were a few moves he had down so well he didn’t have to think at all. He dropped, sweeping his opponent’s legs out from under him, then followed up by slamming the fish down on his abdomen. He was about to bring the fish down again when he realized that the new person had both hands up in a gesture of surrender and he held back.

It was a neko, a younger male with jet-black fur and hair, large green eyes, and a ragged chunk missing from on of his ears. His dress was nearly identical to how Thatris’ had been before running into the Catchers, lighter exploration clothes with good shoes and a leather coat, although he lacked a hat or satchel. He didn’t seem to be any threat, so Thatris helped him to his feet with an apology for mistaking him as an aggressor. The neko, winded by being hit in the gut by a nine kilogram fish, was wheezing as he stood back up and spoke.

“Oh fu- . . . ah, knocked the . . . wind out of me . . . whew. Didn’t mean to startle you, there, but I . . . ah, wanted to thank you.” he managed, hands moving down to hold his stomach.

“For hitting you with a fish?”

“What? No! For stopping that neko guy. I was just sitting down for a meal at one of the open-air deals when that guy grabbed my bag and took off running. He might’ve gotten away if you hadn’t tripped him.” The neko explorer explained, bending down to pull his pack out of the unconscious thief’s now limp grip.

“I actually thought he was running at me to tell me something important, so I just stepped in his way. He’s a criminal?”

“And so are you! You destroyed my stall, you nitwit human! You’d better pay for this! You try to run and I’ll call the town guards, I swear I will! Oh gods, how am I going to make rent with this mess?”

Thatris turned around to face the owner of the stall that had been crushed by the neko robber. His blank smile, as it tended to do, made the fishmonger all the more irate.

“You think this is funny, eh? Probably from Negav, huh, think it’s funny to ruin a neko’s business. Fah! I’ll show you funny. Somebody get the town watch on this guy for vandalism- and don’t take those fish! Those aren’t free!” the vendor snapped at the crowd standing around to watch this spectacle, several of them attempting to gather up the fish lying around with delight.

The neko was still fuming and trying to get someone to go find the watch when an arm slipped around his shoulders, curling around his neck.

Then the neko adventurer dropped a black pearl into the vendor’s hand, whispering in his ear for a moment. The black-haired neko was smiling the whole time in the most congenial fashion, tone warm and familiar. After a few moments, the merchant nodded rapidly and set about cleaning up the mess. That done, the explorer turned back to . . .

“Hey, wait up there, my friend!” he shouted, chasing after the human who had begun to walk off.

He quickly caught up, falling in step beside the blank-faced man, before starting to talk.

“Where you going? There’s nothing this a-ways besides jungle, jungle, a bit more jungle for good measure, and a buttload of preds.” he asked, looking ahead to the forest into which they were going.

“I prefer jungle to towns. People . . .”

Thatris let the sentence fade out, hanging in the air until it strangled. In reality, he didn’t like people much. They were too . . . people-ish. He liked the endless traveling by himself, all alone in the wilds. The fact that he had been run out of several of the very rare villages in Evenwood because of his odd condition hadn’t helped his disposition towards crowds or populated areas, either. It was back into the Tolmeshal Forest for him.

“Ah, you like walking too much, eh? My grandma had that. Traveled all over the place, walked here, there, everywhere. Walked herself to death, in fact. Went into Deeper Felarya and no one ever heard from her again. I’d say you should stop, the way you’re limping, but I doubt you would listen. Anyway, thanks for nabbing that guy. All my spoils from the temple in Jadong Lake were in there, and a few black pearls from Siren Beach. Put a lot of work into getting it all, plus a couple buckets of cold sweat and adrenaline.”

“Thank the fish. It was very brave. It even has a dent in its skull, from hitting that neko so hard.” Thatris said, holding up the unfortunate creature (he had forgotten to put it back down).

The explorer just laughed at this.

“You’re a real odd guy. Crazy, too, to be headed this way. Better turn around or head farther east, or when you cross the Shard you’ll be at the Great Tree. And everyone knows what’s at the Great Tree.” he added, face darkening.

“Pantaurs? I’ve met one.”

“You met-? No, not pantau- . . . Well, yes, there are, but I was talking about Crisis*.”

“A crisis? Is there a war going on? Or a plague? Famine?”

“No, no, nothing like that . . . although you could definitely call her a plague. Not a crisis, the Crisis. She’s a naga, and she’s a nightmare to human-sized folks. We nekos . . . brrr, I’m getting chills just thinking about that blonde devil.” he elaborated, shivering, fur standing on end.

“Oh. Well, I think I’ll keep going. I’ll just stay out of her way.”

The neko raised an eyebrow, but he could tell there was no turning this man aside. He was going to keep on walking come preds or high water, an-

The silence was what tipped the neko off. He was a fair hand at exploring, and one of the first things you learned was to ‘feel’ your environment. You watched out for everything. Shadows that didn’t match up, broken brush and branches, animals quieting, any sign at all that something was up. When the jungle went quiet in particular was a big, fat ‘WARNING!’ Something big was hanging around, probably hunting, too. It could be staring at a duiker nearby . . . or it could be staring straight at the two walking in the forest a few miles from Nekomura.

It was obviously the latter, because a second later a long strand of what appeared to be white-clear string shot down out of the canopy and hit the human in the back. It stuck there, the end slightly spherical and as sticky as glue. The traveler rotated his head around, a full one-eighty turn, to look at what had just smacked into him. The neko’s eyes went wide, both from seeing the man turn his head in such a way and from the knowledge of what was about to happen.

“What is tha-?”

That was all he could manage before the line of dridder silk snapped taunt and he shot into the branches above as if he had been fired from a cannon. The neko looked up, wide eyes following the man as he vanished, backing up the whole time. He took several steps, very slowly and gaze constantly shifting about, before running for Nekomura. The guy had helped him out, but, hell, what could you do? He was gone, and now the explorer had to make a dash for safety or he would go in the same manner. Heroics were for complete morons, the ridiculously powerful, or those not facing hundred-foot man-eating monsters.

A moment later he felt something slap against his back.

“Ah, fu-“

Then the neko, too, was yanked into the canopy.

A few minutes later, the sounds of the jungle resumed.

Another day in the Tolmeshal forest, nothing out of the ordinary.



Comments and critiques are most welcome.

Felarya is Karbo’s

*Reference to Crisis –Crisis belongs to Karbo

Named characters are mine unless otherwise stated

I wonder where this is going. Be sure to write more soon.

I liked your take on Nekomure and how you described it ^^
It was nice also to learn more about his adoptive mother and former world.
And I'm now realizing that brawling agasint Thatris would be incredibly difficult XP

Indeed. Fighting Thatris hand to hand would be a very bad idea. Thank you both.

Here we get to see him employing one of his scariest abilities. There is no vore here, but references to it.

Chapter 3: Double Deadpan

Thatris let himself dangle from the dridder’s line of silk, completely limp, slowly spinning as his weight twisted the tether around. Unlike the neko beside him, he didn’t struggle at all, didn’t thrash like a fish at the end of a fishing line, didn’t snarl and swear and scream. No, Thatris did the thing he always did. He just kept smiling through it all.

The dridder that had caught them was a male, some ninety-seven feet tall, a lime-green exoskeleton that matched his eyes perfectly. His legs and spider half were thinner than most, abdomen more of a stretched oval than a circle. His hair was short, wild, and dark, skin also a more swarthy color that made it hard to tell where his hairline was. He was wearing no clothes, although he did have a leather bag, just big enough for four or five human-sized people to fit in, tied by a strap to his waist. Interestingly, he had a fishing pole, a simple thing made from a length of tapered wood, the silk string attached to a point just below the tip. He swirled the rod in a quick, practiced motion, the line wrapping around the pole.

He held up the two he had snagged, the two tethers he had used in his hand, the human and neko hanging below his fist on the lines. Bored eyes looked them over, face utterly neutral. He shrugged, still with no expression to speak of, and flicked his hand. The both of them turned into yo-yos, silk wrapping them up as they spun, entrapping arms and legs as the organic chains cocooned them. By the time they hit the peak of their spinning ascent, the only thing left out was their shoulders, heads and feet. The dridder caught them both once this process was done, now the two in his massive hand.

“Hm. Decent catch.”

“Are you planning to eat us?” Thatris asked, face empty.

“Yes.” was the response, just as empty.

The neko thrashed even harder at this bland announcement, shaking his head furiously in frantic denial. Regardless of his wriggling, though, the flailing did nothing to extricate himself from the grip of the giant. He was still yelling, but he had gained more coherence now that he had enough time to recover from the sudden shock of being reeled in so quickly his back felt like it was going to break. He started to argue for his life.

* * * * *

Mehren had no idea what to do.

He had been an adventurer for some twenty years, exploring far into the Tolmeshal forest, all the way to the temple that stood in the middle of Jadong Lake. That was an accomplishment, to be sure, but he had been extraordinarily lucky and extraordinarily stealthy to get as far as he had. All he had ever done was to hide or dodge the smaller beasts he encountered, no heroics, nothing but ducking out when things got too hot for his liking. He got some spoils, other times he didn’t, but he got by.

Why the hell hadn’t he done something else with his life?

He could have set up a nice shop in Nekomura, even Negav. Whittling, he was good at that. He could have set up a souvenir shop or something. Why hadn’t he done that? Why hadn’t he listened to his dad, settled down with Nia, the peach-furred cutie who lived a few houses down from his own? Nope, had to go be an adventurer, head out into the wilderness where there was no protection at all, man-eating everythings everywhere. He regretted it, he really did, but he couldn’t turn back around now. He’d hit the end of the line, doing stupid stuff.

His thoughts were all over the place and going faster than he could take, just ZOOM, WHOOSH, ZING, there they go folks, there go my thoughts, and I can’t even figure out what I’m trying to figure out before they’ve up and shot by. Man, the adrenaline is going right up into my noggin, he thought, trying to straighten his head out so he could get back to untwisting his tongue.

He had to . . . he didn’t even know what. Try to get out of this or something. He didn’t want to die. When the word ‘die’ hit his mind, it woke him up, yanked him back out of the peculiar numb reactivity he had been stuck in before. He was going to die. He was going to die. He was going to be eaten and burn to death in absolute agony, the only ‘comfort’ being that he would probably suffocate from the lack of air long before he melted. Nutrition. That was all he was going to be, food that would continue the dridder’s life with the energy. Circle of life. Nature. Way of the world. All very spiritual and nature-y. He didn’t care at all about that. Who gave a damn if it was natural? He was going to die!

“Heyyoudridderguy!” he sputtered out, the words falling over themselves in a messy rush.

The neutral gaze turned to the neko, no expression at all.

“What? I want to get back to fishing, so hurry it up.”

“Look, I know this is natural, whatever, blah-blah-blah, but I want out! Don’t eat me! I mean, I want to at least get married before I die, or at least have kittens! Let me go, man, I want to change my life now! I want to go home and settle down, have a family! I don’t have jack I can give you, besides gold and black pearls, but you don’t want that stuff. So just let me loose.” he finished, quieting as his litany went on.

The deadpan look didn’t so much as twitch.

“Nice speech. You have anything to say?” the dridder asked, switching his gaze to the human.

The man said nothing for quite some time, a few minutes that seemed to lengthen to hours. His face was different than the dridder’s, a blank smile rather than a neutral gaze, but they somehow matched. There was nothing behind either expression, just a vacuum of emotion that showed not one scrap of feeling to the outside world. The neko felt something, an instinctive knowledge that something was going on between them, though he couldn’t tell what it was. The feeling wasn’t good, whatever it was, and both it and the empty gazes that hid the actual thought made Mehren’s fur stand on end. He couldn’t tell which was worse, the blank look on the dridder or the dead smile belonging to the human. The doubled void sawed at his nerves like serrated knives, and he actually started when the man next him in the dridder’s fist spoke.

“I will take you apart from the inside out if you eat me. I will squeeze into your lungs and rip at them until you drown in your own blood and suffocate on nothing at all. I will make it so that you can barely draw breath, cripple your breathing so you’ll never be able to do anything more than walk without choking and passing out. You know how it is to be freezing to death? That’s much how it feels to have your lungs ripped apart from the inside like that. You lose the feeling in your limbs, have a hard time moving because there’s nothing to fuel your muscles with.”

“It hurts, burns, though, when your lungs are first torn, hurts worse than you could ever imagine. It’s like having a bonfire in your chest, or a red-hot sword put through your brisket. Temporary blindness is common; this is literal blinding pain. Things get hazy, then clear up again, but it doesn’t matter because you’re bleeding on the inside and you can’t seem to get enough air. All the strength leaches out of your body, you feel cold and numb, but the sun’s shining on you and the weather is hot. You know it is, but you can’t feel it because your nerves aren’t working like they should. Your body is like winter even though the world is summer, and the only warmth in you is the burning spike stuck through your lungs. The heat doesn’t diffuse and warm you, though, just sits in your chest and burns, and burns, and burns, until it feels like you’ve got magma dripping through your insides.”

“You can feel yourself dying, all the dark coming in around you to ring your vision thickening as it closes in, the cold numbness eating away at what’s left of your consciousness. By then you know that there’s no way to stop yourself from falling, but you just can’t help but try. You hold out your arms and try to catch yourself, but all there is under and around and above you is blackness forever, and your hands pass through it and so do you and then you’re falling. It’s like a nightmare but you can’t wake up no matter how hard or long you try, because death isn’t a dream. No one can help you, and nobody’s there with you. You’re drowning, sinking so fast you can’t ever swim back to the surface, sinking into the dark like a statue into black seas with no bottom and no surface and no end.”

“Death is a long sleep? No. Death is nothing that can be described as anything in this world, not a sleep, not a reaper, not a shadow. It’s a void that goes on forever, a hollow spot in eternity that rings like a bell that can’t be heard. It’s the emptiness of inexistence, and it is a tasteless, unseen, unheard, scentless, intangible thing you couldn’t even know if you were in it, because if you were in it you would be nothing, too. Death is the end of everything. Death is nothing.”

The human delivered the entire thing without one single change in his face. His smile stayed, unmoving, empty, hollow, mirthless, relentless and remorseless. His eyes never gained any life, just a pair of holes in his blank grin that seemed to suck up all the light and air around them just as readily as his expression. It was terrifying.

Mehren would have wet himself if that smile had been turned to him at that moment. As it was, his mouth had been transmuted into a desert, his stomach into a whirlpool, and his spine into a column of crumbling stone. This man had to be insane . . . and the dangerous kind of insane.

* * * * *

Doyan stared at the human who had just woven a tapestry of fright. The man’s face was still stuck in a vacuous smile that ground away at your confidence like a millstone, the weight of the void behind it pressing down to the point of crushing the breath out of you. The dridder schooled his face back to neutral from the slight frown he had gained while listening to the iteration.

He couldn’t tell whether the human was bluffing, serious, or just completely mad. That hollow smile blotted all sense of his thoughts and emotions out like an eclipse hiding the sun and changing it into something fearful.

It was unlikely he could do as he said, but that emptiness was so unnerving . . .

Should he let the human go and eat the neko? Eat them both? Leave them both? He wasn’t a man given to indecision, which made it all the harder to decide; he had no practice with it. His mind worked behind his even face, the bored look he presented to the world most of his time. He had been threatened only a few times by prey, each time frantic bluffs that meant nothing. This was different, on another level entirely from those desperate tries to throw him off. This was fear mongering, instilling terror through words and expression alone, surpassing bluffing by light-years. The question, though, was whether he could actually do as he claimed.

“Proof?”

Thatris sucked in a deep breath, making a tiny amount of room under the webbing. It wasn’t enough to move for anyone with joints and normal muscle, but of course the man had neither. He managed to work his arm out after a minute of work.

“So?”

Then the human twisted his arm around behind himself, reaching into his backpack from the barely-exposed top of it that had been left out of the webbing. A moment later he pulled out a nasty-looking instrument.

It was a knife, a good nine inches of blade and three of handle, the whole of it a single piece of whitish something that somewhat resembled bone. It was curved slightly, a bit of a bulge towards the end of the grip, the point chiseled down to the point of invisibility and the leading edge honed to a razor-like keenness. It had a peculiar gleam to it, more than merely the shine of ivory but a glint that bespoke a chemical coating, possibly poison, maybe something even worse.

The dridder recognized it immediately, even though the shape had been distorted a little by the work put into making it even more deadly than it had once been. A Kensha claw. This human had a Kensha claw, from a juvenile by the size of it, but still a Kensha. Unless he had killed it and then cut the ivory sickle off, there was no way he could have gotten a nail from one, except for ripping it out with brute strength and somehow surviving the ensuing fight. In either case, that put him miles higher up on the food chain than Doyan had first placed him. If he were that far up, that meant he wasn’t bluffing, and that meant Doyan definitely wasn’t going to risk eating him. Whether the man was a mage or simply powerful for some reason or other, he wasn’t something the dridder wanted to test his insides against.

That left the neko.

He put the fishing pole down on the branch he was standing on, careful to set it so that it wouldn’t fall, and moved his hands together. He was just about to switch the neko from one hand to another when the human muttered “out of patience”. Then he set the point of the knife against the dridder’s hand, letting it rest there without quite breaking the skin. Doyan halted his switch-off; though one claw from a Kensha didn’t have much poison coating it, it was still fairly potent, and that bulge in the hilt of the natural knife meant the venom gland was still there. A squeeze that bent the keratin enough to pressure the gland could send a complete payload of poison directly into his bloodstream, and even though it probably wouldn’t kill him an entire claw’s worth of toxin would most definitely make him violently ill for hours, maybe days. In the jungle, even for a predator his size, that was serious.


“I just want the neko. You may go on your way, but I’m eating him.” he assured.

The neko snapped out of his trance, astonished eyes tearing away from the vicious knife to flicker over to the dridder.

“What!? That’s not fair!”

“Yes it is. He’s got the credit of being a step higher than you on the food chain, maybe several steps. You’re still food. So it’s perfectly fair.”

“No it’s not! We’re the same size and same everything, except he’s not a neko! Yeah, he’s got a knife, so what!? That doesn’t mean he’s any better than me! I want to live, too!”

“Well, have you killed anything impressive? And do you have proof if you did?”

“YES! . . . I . . . I killed a . . . a –“

The rest came out as an inaudible mumble. It was such that even Thatris, with his head practically touching the neko’s, couldn’t catch it. The dridder leaned in closer, raising an eyebrow and turning his head so that his ear was facing the cat-man.

“Speak up a little. I didn’t hear what amazingly frightening beast you killed.”

“A –“ another mumble.

“Say it out loud or I’ll eat you now.”

“A HARPY!” he screamed, the claim bursting out at full volume.

Doyan instantly discounted that claim. A neko slaying a harpy was ridiculous. Unless he was talking about a trochili he had eaten or maybe a seagull harpy* he had fought, he was lying. A giant harpy would’ve eaten him in a moment, no contest. He was about to continue exchanging the neko between hands –though carefully as that human still had his knife out and pressing on his finger- when the cat-man made one last, desperate attempt to save himself.

“Hey, guy! What are you doing!? Help me!”

“Why?”

“WHAT!? I’m about to get eaten! Don’t you have any sympathy?”

“No. I doubt I can help you, and if I can’t help you then I can’t sympathize with you, either. Pity without action is a waste of energy and a waste of time.”

“What the hell is wrong with you!? Help me!”

Doyan was running out of patience with this obstinate neko, and re-started his motion to switch hands.

* * * * *

Thatris sighed.

The neko kept yelling at him to help as the spider-person’s other hand came closer to grab the cat-man, screaming practically into his ear, and the noise was annoying. He had asked for aid, which meant Thatris would give it if he could, but he didn’t see any way to do so. Unless the dridder swallowed him or for some improbable reason let him close to his gigantic eyes, ears or nose, there was no way to hurt the colossus badly enough to cripple or kill him. Asking the dridder to stop also would most likely bear no fruit, as well. There was really nothing he could do.

Except ram his knife into the dridder’s finger, all the way in to the hilt, pushing it in until his pinky impacted the spider-man’s forefinger.

He hadn’t been expecting it, that was evident, because the jolt of pain, the hot spread of venom that slipped through his veins, made him let go.

The both of them went flying on the path gravity chose for them: Down.

* * * * *

“Nooooo!” screeched the Mehren, flailing as he fell.

“You asked for help. Land on your feet like any respectable cat would.”

“That doesn’t count when you’re falling fifty stories!”

“Oh. I guess not. For you, with bones to break.”

The both of them were rushing toward the ground. They couldn’t see where the forest floor was, the foliage rushing by obscuring it, but it was coming up fast and they would splatter when they hit. Mehren snatched wildly at whatever vines and branches came his way, but he could never get a solid hold. He thrashed, trying to grab something, anything, but he couldn’t get ahold of one single thi-

The sound of his own body crashing against the ground, his organs bursting inside him as his bones splintered to dust, drowned out all thought. The sky was blue and then it was black and then it wasn’t there at all.

* * * * *

Doyan lowered himself to the forest floor on a thicker line of silk from his spinnerets, back legs reeling him down at a controlled pace. He broke the tether, letting it hang in case he wanted back up, as he placed his feet on the ground and looked down at the pulped body of the neko. The cat-man was lying on the loam, spread-eagled, a bloody splat that was slowly turned the moss and earth around it red-brown. Insects were already beginning to gather to the body; scavengers were everywhere in the complex matting of roots and mud and moss that made up the Tolmeshal Forest’s lowest level.

The dridder leaned over, picking the corpse up. The neko’s body was full of mud and blood now, bugs crawling on it, but washing it up in a stream or pond would remedy that. Doyan didn’t mind it, unlike some, who claimed dead things tasted “stale” and of course didn’t squirm around on the inside. You took what you got.

Of the human there was no sign. Whether he had managed to grab a branch and save himself or been similarly killed in his fall and was simply out of sight somewhere Doyan had no idea, but it didn’t much matter. His finger was swelling up from the dose of venom he had gotten, and it was painful, but he didn’t think it was going to do much else. Wherever and in whatever condition, the human was not his concern anymore.

He reattached himself to his silk rope and slowly pulled himself back up into the canopy.



One of Thatris’ major skills is his ability to say horrifying things with no change in expression, which is a definite plus while threatening someone. Even better, he’s got a poisonous knife, too.

Felarya is Karbo’s

Seagull harpies are Moonlight-Pendent13’s, not mine.
Bolas dridder base idea is credited to Zoekin.
Kenshas are credited to Randomdude

Named characters are mine unless otherwise stated.

that's a scary skill ^^;
That wall of threath would already be sufficient to shake anybody's confidence but with that blank smile all the time ? Scary XD

Nice fear inducing speach. Blank, souless smile made it better. I was almost freaked out. Almost.

The Smiling Man, I've gotten only up to the part with the dridder. After the neko goes splat.

Hmmm, Roxas, this guy looks a lot more like a pest or minor annoyance than a scare to me. He comes off as a little too arrogant to be scary- "we're giving up our rights at the same time"? Nobody was giving up anything, he just got a predator tempted on his meaty ass. And all he felt like doing was preaching to a choir that didn't care. A cool customer, but not my type. I still recognize it was fairly good- just not my kind of good.

The short with the dryad and the elves felt oddly ironic to me, but it was still a fair reminder that people are arbitrary, even the ones that, like Ronald McReed here, claim to act by a few rules. These people were doing what he was going to do to her- if he got to. And he had enough objections to take a hostage and threaten to kill him, just because they were being too cruel? HE complains someone ELSE was being too cruel? I'm guessing this freak loves his mother- meaning this with no second intentions, except to put an emphasis on the "freak" part. No, come to think of it, I do mean second intentions. This freak doesn't know himself as well as he thinks he does.

Now about the next plotline, where he has to babysit a giant neko. The plot was pretty darn unexpected- babysitting the giant neko seemed like it'd be fun, but then it became just another opportunity to show just how dissociated he is from his circumstances. That, and the action scene- it's a pity you pulled a discretion shot just when we were getting to the good part. Sitting ducks are only so much fun, but I guess it's fair enough. They weren't the stupid type, at least. They just weren't prepared for someone to pick them off under cover of darkness.
Unlike Thatris, who seemingly can't keep from running his mouth in every direction he can think of the instant he thinks of it. Which is strange to me, considering he had no problem keeping his trap shut at the beginning.

The next plot, with the kensha beast, and the hat, and Calimn, that was a welcome reprieve. Finally I meet a like mind! I'd befriend that hat. On the other hand, a moment of luck is always welcome.
And for the next one, I sure appreciated that background information on Everwood. Gives us a little to think about how Thatris came to be... and it was appreciated, because in hindsight the whole issue makes a lot more sense- of course he's more likely to talk to himself than to other people even when trying to talk to other people, and it makes sense that he would appreciate the chance to talk everyone's brans, beans, bread and brains off.
The encounter with the dridder helped me get the point in perspective- that long, graphic description of agony would've elicited a tl;dr response from anyone else, but in this case, it makes me wonder just how long has Thatris spent on a notepad with his lungs lacerated from the inside.

I know this sounded a lot more challenging than encouraging- just wanted to let you know, with all possible clarity, that I've read this through and thorough. To say I didn't enjoy it would be a lie. I found it strange at times- but it happens always. That's why I don't comment much, but you looked like you deserved more encouragement.

Well, a surprising fact is, we have come to the point that was supposed to occur much, much earlier in this story. No vore is here, but there is violence and gore. Comments are welcome and appreciated.

Chapter 4: Glass Dagger and Glass Smile

Thatris bounced off of a branch, then slammed his head against the trunk of the tree hard enough to cave in the back of his cranium. The force put a fist-sized dent in his head, and sent him spinning toward the ground. Another branch, this one snapped off halfway and sharp in the way that wood can be when splintered, flew up to meet him. He spun, but he couldn’t get completely out of the way. The point pierced through his coat and sweatshirt, cutting his shoulder in the process, but luckily it didn’t impale him altogether.

The limb creaked, bending for a moment, but it was dry and old, unable to hold up the combined force of gravity and Thatris’ weight. A new break appeared in the branch, a sharp crack announcing the birth of a fellow to the original wound of the limb. The man continued his journey to the ground, the interruption only lasting a few seconds, and crashed into the floor of the jungle. He struck headfirst, the total pressure finishing the job the tree had first attempted by collapsing his non-existent skull. He grated his teeth at the unpleasant feeling of his brains being mashed, then fell onto his back as inertia yanked his legs after his body.

He lay there for several seconds, waiting for his head to fill out again, before moving. He got up, the last dip in his head vanishing slowly, and checked himself. He never had to worry about crushing blows, but any lacerations he made sure to examine. He tore his shirt a little, sliding his coat off his injured shoulder, and viewed the wound neutrally.

He dismissed it right away, though; it was no more than a four-inch, shallow rip, torn more than cut, in his skin. There was more blood around the wound, turning the sweatshirt a darker shade, than the size of it merited. It was sluggishly bleeding now; the previous gush of crimson had been when he had fallen on his head. The impact had forced the blood in his head towards his shoulders, and the resulting rush had caused a burst of heat and pain in his shoulder as the red liquid came out much harder and faster than it should have. The gnawing pain chewed into his flesh, but he let his breathing deepen to combat it, smile held in place.

He had handled worse pain than this, much, much worse indeed. He had been knifed, shot, and nearly drowned before, not all of it in Felarya. He struggled to his feet, and he wasn’t sure why it was so unbelievably hard. He actually had to put a hand on one knee to force himself up. A deeper breath made a sharp spike of pain dart through his chest and shoulder. He was probably exhausted from walking so far, but hadn’t felt it until now, he guessed. He stumbled over to a root and sat down, much harder than he meant to.

He stayed seated for a time, waiting for the pain to ease up and his strength to return. The sun began to go down, and he felt the same sense of tired, injured memory that always came with the death of the sun. Dusk came with the ease and slow inevitability that time had always possessed. It seemed that the only thing time hadn’t yet erased for him was the pain in his shoulder and the limpness that stubbornly clung to him. Instead of leaving, both sensations began to worsen, growing into constricting wires that kept on tightening.

He was getting used to it, just a little, when the pain abruptly switched places, and hot dampness spread through his whole torso. Now his shoulder was fine, but his chest was one burning ball of hot, pulsing agony that matched his heartbeat perfectly. His breath, before strictly controlled, went ragged in a moment, wheezes that sounded slightly wet underneath. He felt something well up in the back of his throat, and when he swallowed it down again . . . blood. It was a slightly metallic, saltine taste, as if he were holding a salted penny in his mouth.

He looked down, very slowly and very carefully so as not to fall off of his seat on the root. That branch . . . the branch he had avoided while falling wasn’t up in the tree where it belonged, but in his chest. Rammed between his lower ribs, on the right, the natural stake was pressed up against the lower part of his lung. Blood stained his sweatshirt, a darkened, wet spot that consumed most of the front of his sweatshirt. The material was bunched around the branch, wrinkles pronounced and all leading into the depression around the stake.

“Wha- . . .” he mumbled, fingering the blood-splattered branch that had suddenly decided to attempt growing in his chest.

The touch sent a shock of pain through him, and the sharp breath he took due to that caused an even worse pain. He couldn’t have missed this. There was no way he could have. The question was: Why had he? There had to have been something, a bout of unconsciousness, a false memory. Where? He couldn’t go unconscious except to sleep, no matter how hard his head was hit, no matter how heavy an impact delivered to his brain.

. . . unless he kept thinking while he went unconscious.

“No . . .” he murmured past his smile.

Yes.

He had been stupid, he realized. Years of thinking his brain couldn’t be harmed by constant blows and compressions, that the delicate organ could handle it all without ever taking any damage. No skull to protect it, and likely not as elastic as the rest of him. He thought back on all the times he had squeezed his head through a narrow space, the times staves and clubs and simple falls had collapsed his head in on itself. He lost count quickly.

Any time he had done that, he could discount the memories right before and after that unmistakable sensation. Dreams, false memories, whatever they were, he couldn’t trust them. The immensity of it stood before him like a massive monument, a void in his head. That was a gigantic chunk of his life that was simply gone. He took a long, very deep breath, disregarding the stabbing pain that lanced through his chest as a sword of molten heat.

Not only his memories, either. It was likely his judgment had been impaired by this. He had always been slightly reckless, but now that he looked back, he could see a slow progression from simple recklessness to something deeper and more morbid. It was disregard for danger altogether, asking to be killed.

If he couldn’t tell what was what in his memories, he would have to go over the most important things.

The most recent thing was the two giants, killing those mercenaries, and the kensha pup. He had his kensha-claw knife, so that was that. He also still had the scars from fighting the Catchers, when he checked, but his earlier encounters with the pantaur and giant couple, he wasn’t sure about. Next . . . next was the worst moment of his life . . .

* * * * *

Meeting his parents had been something he had wanted to do as soon as he had learned that Laurel was not his real mother. It had taken him half of a day to reach the village from her glen, so astonishingly close he had wondered why he had never gone to that tiny town. Barely sixty people in the whole collection of small, wooden houses, and it was run by a pudgy man who looked something like a chubby, cheery piglet.

“Don’t . . . be disappointed, Thatris. The world . . . it can be a bit . . .”

“I’ll be fine, Mom. They’re my birth parents. I’m sure they’ll be happy to see me.”

The young man had no hat, and no backpack. All he had was a lively grin and the vigor of a person just out of their teens. A skin jacket, trousers, and moccasins were his only attire, and all the protection he had from the unknown he was about to encounter. He left the dryad with a wave and the bright smile he carried always. The small, tattered journal sticking out of his back pocket, a book he had found in an underground base, was what had lent him that grin.

It wasn’t long before he was at the door of his parent’s small cottage, knuckles rapping against the smoothly polished oak of the door. A middle-aged woman, with small wrinkles starting to become apparent at the corners of her eyes and mouth and graying hair that had once been mink, answered the door. She smiled in response to his own upturned lips, friendliness reflected in her grey eyes.

“Can I help you, young fella?”

“Do you recognize me?”

“What?” she asked, confusion creeping into her features.

“Who’s that at the door, honey?” a man’s voice echoed from further inside the house.

“Just look closely.” Thatris requested, leaning in.

“What a- . . .”

The most terrifying change came over her face at that moment. Instantly there was a sharp, hard intake of breath, her mouth going into a rictus of horror and disbelief. Her eyes widened as her entire body tensed up to the point where he was sure she would shatter when touched.

“No . . . no no no . . . w-we threw you into the forest . . . a gh-ghost . . .” she gasped, barely able to speak.

A husky man of the same age as the woman, but with dark eyes Thatris recognized as his own, came up behind the woman.

“Who is i- God’s breath . . .” he whispered, his entire being seeming to recoil without him needing to physically back up.

“What’s wr-“

“You’re dead . . . we got rid of you when we found out . . .” his mother murmured fearfully.

Thatris tried to step forward, but suddenly a heavy hand was on his chest, shoving him backwards. He fell, elbows catching himself, and looked up at the looming form of his father. The man’s jowly face was set in a hard, almost enraged cast. Thatris’ head was spinning. Why . . . ?

“You get the hell out of here. We got rid of you. I don’t know who you thi- . . . we don’t have a son. We never did. Never.”

Thatris tried to get back up, moving back towards his parents, trying to embrace them. This time it was not a shove but a punch that struck him, one that turned his face in on itself. He backed up a step, his face going back to normal, and was greeted by the sight of the man frantically wiping his knuckles on his cloth shirt, as if he had accidentally punched a rotten fruit rather than a human being. His face showed supreme disgust.

Thatris felt pain, even though the punch hadn’t done anything to him physically. That fist had been filled up with hatred, nothing else. Rejection. His parents had rejected him. That fact caused more pain than he thought was possible, a glass dagger that went through his heart and snapped off inside him, shattering to send a thousand shards through him. What was worse, his father and mother both twisted that dagger in him, with their last words before slamming the door.

“We only had a boneless freak.”

The glass dagger turned, grinding its shredding shards into his chest. For a second, he wanted to cry, but instead, anger welled up in him. He rose, threw himself at the door, and began pounding on it.

“I’m not a freak, I’m your son! I came back to see you both because you’re my parents! Why are you acting like this?! Why?!” he shouted, slamming both fists against the door in rapid succession.

He could hear his father bellowing at him to go away, to never come back, to crawling to the forest and die like he had been supposed to. The man roared that he would come out and beat Thatris to within an inch of his life, beat him to death, but still the younger man continued to bang on the door. His original mother began crying, sobbing horribly and screaming to stop, for him to disappear.

All the noise quickly attracted the neighbors, and in such a small community it wasn’t long before a fair-sized crowd had gathered. After a short time, the leader of the village showed up, puffing and sweating, and had several men drag Thatris from the door.

“Now, now, now, what’s all this yelling and hullaballoo going on in the middle of the day, eh?” he panted, using a small handkerchief to wipe his shiny, bald head.

“I don’t know, this fella’s just pounding on the door of Enal and Jeren’s house, screaming like a maniac.” one of the men holding Thatris responded.

“They’re my parents!” the young man cried, tears starting for the first time.

Immediately, everyone in the crowd went tense. Though the only person who Enal had told about her child had been the village head, secrets never stayed that way for long among sixty some-odd people all living within a mile of one another. Everyone knew about the baby that had been inhuman. The baby whose arms and legs moved like the limbs of an octopus, not a joint to be found. The cursed baby, the one that had no bones. The baby that had been taken out into the woods and left to die.

Thatris found the arms holding him back now gained new strength, and in a moment he was thrown to the ground. Boots, heavy working boots, pounded into him a dozen times, never hurting him but still hurting anyway. He began crying in earnest now; not only his parents. Everyone in this village, humanity, all of Evenwood, each and every one of them rejected his existence in entirety. To them, he wasn’t even a human being. He was a freak that should have died right after being born, should never have been born in the first place. It was the worst pain he could imagine, worse than that. Everyone hated him, everyone he knew.

One of the men was still carrying a sledgehammer from pounding in fence posts, and at the urgent urging of a dozen of his fellows, he brought the head of the hammer to bear against the head of the downed man in the street. It put a massive crater in Thatris’ head, one that slowly refilled.

Thatris felt his brains go flush to the dirt of the road, and it was such a strong hit that it actually hurt him, physically. If he’d been one of them, a member of humanity, his skull would have been spread over a square meter of ground. That had been meant to kill him. He scrambled up, dodging the boots swung at him, taking a second blow from the hammer in his side but ignoring it, and ran.

“Don’t you ever come back here, monster!”

“We’ll kill you if you ever show up again!”

“Go find a hole to crawl in and DIE, freak!”

He kept running until he could no longer do so, until there was nothing left for him but to fall down and sob into the loamy jungle floor. He was shaking so hard it seemed as if he could never stop, that he would go through the rest of his life constantly trembling with grief. Everyone hated him. He was a freak, right down to the last particle of himself. Everyone . . .

No.

There was one person who didn’t hate him. A tiny kindness, but it was the only one he had. Laurel was the only thing he had left to him. He got up, after a long time of lying there, and went back home. Laurel was waiting for him, but she hesitated when she saw the blank smile, a hollow imitation of the one he had set out with. It defied the reddened, still-teary eyes, defied the small trickles that remained running down his face.

He would never stop smiling.

He would never die.

* * * * *

The hammer came back up, leaving the boneless horror twitching before abruptly going still. The mob went silent, somehow shocked that this had progressed so far. The thing’s dark eyes, the eyes they knew from seeing them in Jeren every day, were empty now, no consciousness behind them. The village leader muttered nervously, polishing his head to a mirror shine.

“Well, well, I think we got a bit excited there, eh? Little off our rockers, yep. Can’t be helped, I suppose. Let’s get this body out of here before it messes up the soil. Cursed flesh and all that, yep.”

Slowly, hesitantly, a few men approached the corpse. They were stopped, however, by the man with the sledgehammer. He shook his head at them.

“No. I did it; it’s my responsibility. I’m the one who got carried away.” He intoned solemnly.

He bent to pick up the body, one heavy-muscled arm wrapping around the corpse. The body was limp and utterly alien to the touch, no bones to restrict the movement of the limbs and no resistance when squeezed. It was like holding a blasphemous caricature of a human, a slime-filled doll or manikin. He felt disgusted just touching it, but he lifted the corpse anyway. He didn’t want to bother his neighbors with something he himself had done.

He should never have been such a righteous man.

Fingers rammed into his eyes, ruining them in an instant. He screamed, surprisingly high for such a large man, and dropped the suddenly mobile monster to grab his own face. His sledgehammer fell from his grasp, but it never hit the ground. A limp hand shot out to catch it, using the motion to bring the hammer all the way around like a pendulum. The head of it shattered the man’s skull, brains spilling as the man’s body dropped to the ground.

The crowd gave a simultaneous gasp of fear and utter astonishment, but that hesitation was what cost them another one of their number. The sledgehammer came flying out of the intruder’s hand, spiraling through the air before turning the village leader’s chubby face into a pulped mess. The crowd milled around the injured mayor, who was still breathing and moaning with pain. They turned to discover the thing staring at them with the eyes of someone still asleep and far away.

Thatris had killed two people without being even aware of it.

The crowd turned into a mob in a moment, but the killer was still running on nothing but unconscious instinct. Sensing them, he took off, and he was far faster then they were. Traveling had ensured that he could outrun them. A long chase yielded nothing for the enraged villagers, and soon they returned to their town to bury Erik and try to patch up the mayor. Even with aid, the village head soon joined Erik.

Thatris woke up on the ground, rose up, and walked home, crying at the less bloody memory his mind had tailored for the empty space in his consciousness. No matter how the tears flowed, however, he held onto the dead smile that had been burned into his face the entire episode, even while bringing that hammer down on the man’s head.

* * * * *

Thatris took ahold of the stick jammed through him, twisted it in the same way that the glass dagger had been twisted in his heart. The pain was unbelievable, but it was exactly what he wanted. He kept twisting, new blood welling up around the puncture. He wanted to pass out. He wanted to forget what he had just remembered. No matter how much he twisted, though, his smile wouldn’t leave, and he couldn’t drive himself into unconsciousness.

He stood, thinking to slam his head against something, but he didn’t have the strength for it. He fell, and the branch was pushed in even deeper. The agony that accompanied that press of splinters erased his existence in a blaze of white light and white heat, but even that couldn’t throw him down into the abyss. He regained sight after a few seconds, and found himself back on his feet.

He took the opportunity to throw himself directly at the trunk of the nearest tree. He felt that indescribable squishing feeling compressing his brain. He knew he was going to keep thinking, that he was going to keep thinking he was awake, and he did indeed do so. He sat back against the tree, knowing that he was now moving about with nothing guiding him but instinct. He sat . . . waiting for his recent memory to be rewritten . . . and it didn’t come. He waited, truly afraid for the first time since realizing he had been discarded at birth, and wondered what reality he would wake up to.

* * * * *

The Catchers were on the move, searching for the team they had lost. The mission had obviously been a failure, and the Catcher’s had scrapped the whole operation. A whole team going down was an unacceptable loss, and the people up top caught on quickly. Felarya wasn’t a very good place for practicing the “If at first you don’t succeed” rule. However, intel was invaluable, and that meant the recon team was sent in to see what had gone wrong, why, and how not to screw up again on other missions.

Vers, the neko in charge, dug a scrap of something unidentifiable out of his teeth with a sharp pinky nail. He was less experienced than his late compatriot had been, and it showed. His team of two humans, another neko and a dridder was clumped together, an easy target if a large predator decided to go after them. Vers was in charge mainly by virtue of his special talent. He was an astonishingly good spearman, and the long blade that tipped his stave was impeccably kept and impeccably sharpened. He also had a fair grasp of conventional tactics, though not so much against predators. Reconnaissance wasn’t about fighting, after all.

A sound caught his attention, suddenly, and he held up a hand to stop the stealthy movement his team had been using up until now. Everyone went into deep crouches, quieting their breathing as they suppressed all motion. Vers tapped one of his pointed, feline ears, then pointed ahead. He made sure to avoid tapping the other ear, of course. His other ear was only half-there; the rest had been shot off by a sniper in a war in his homeworld. He called it his lucky ear, although it was useless now.

The team, understanding, nodded, and all of them listened for the sound their commander had heard.

It was the sound of someone moving through the underbrush, and the unmistakable sound of someone hacking away at said undergrowth to clear the way.

“It’s a person. Cool your guns, folks, but keep ready. Could be the nasty sort.”

Standing up, the dark-furred neko showed himself to whoever was coming. He made sure that his team stayed down, though, to cover him in case this person was a bandit or the like. It was only a second before the man showed up.

He looked like fear.

The smile he carried had turned into something even emptier than what he held usually, with more teeth to it. The eyes were even more of a void than before, but they were somehow enraged at the same time. The knife in his hand, a slight curve of razor ivory, reflected the slice of ivory that showed in his smile. It was hard to keep up with it, too. The blade was flickering everywhere, random in its hard, convoluted slashes. He looked like a sleepwalker intent on murdering anything in front of him.

If he looked like anything besides that, it was like a zombie. The branch rammed into his torso, all the blood staining his sweatshirt, the blank, unseeing eyes, the unrelenting swinging of his dagger. It all added up to something fearful, something he didn’t want to screw around with. He set his spear so the point faced the man, bending his legs a little in preparation of the shock of a charge. He heard a creak behind him to indicate Elani, the neko archer, had seen his shift and drawn.

That quarter-second lapse in attention, that brief moment where he was concentrated on his team, was one of the worst mistakes he had ever made. Suddenly the crazy man was right on top of him, with a hoarse panting that wafted the smell of blood and internal damage right into Vers’ face. Good gods, this guy was fast! He was already far too close to engage with the spear, and the neko threw himself backwards. That reflex saved his face; the knife split a long, vicious line across his forehead, deep enough that it scored bone. If he hadn’t ducked, it would have been his eyes and nose that would have been cut.

“Shoot him, Elani!”

An arrow flew by him in a blur, and the man swung at the projectile with a kind of mad precision. The dart skipped off of the blade of his knife and buried itself in his upper arm. He didn’t flinch for one second; he didn’t even feel it. He flew at the archer, ducking under a swung sword from one of the human members and nearly disemboweling the man at the same time. He fell on the archer, ignoring finesse in favor of rapid, powerful slashes that opened her neck, scored her right breast, and then ripped out her organs. She barely even had time to cry out before she was dead.

Minathi, the dridder, saw that trying to fight this crazed human like this wasn’t going to work. She turned, pulling a net of her silk off of her back. She spun it over her head, once, twice, gossamer threads glinting in the light, and hurled it over the man. He struggled, flailing senselessly in the trap. With startling speed, however, he began slashing around himself with that knife, the honed edge splitting multiple threads.

Two of the humans ran up, one putting a sword into the crazed man’s leg, the other getting his hatchet stuck in the man’s shoulder, but the thrashing pulled their weapons out of their hands, and they dared not retrieve them for risk of being cut to bits. Vers, blinded by the blood that was pouring down into his eyes, knew what to do.

“Light him up.”

Minathi pulled a flare out of her pack, lit it, and chucked it right at the furiously struggling mass of webs and maddened inhuman beast. In a second, the mass of webs became a mass of fire.

* * * * *

Thatris woke up to flames.

One minute he was leaning against the tree, wondering what was going to come for him when reality kicked back in, then he was standing next to two mutilated mercenaries and surrounded by four more.

He was on fire, wrapped up in an insatiably hungry inferno that was quickly eating him up. His skin shriveled up in that intense heat, muscle catching soon afterward. It was more painful than anything he had felt before, the only thing worse than that being the glass dagger of rejection splintering inside him.

Now he knew why every living thing not fireproof feared this element. His foster mother had told him that fire was the most vicious of rabid dogs, something that he could only use if he had to, and even then he had to keep a tight, tight leash on it. He hated fire, hated it more than anything but for the word ‘freak’. Now it was gnawing him to ash, and he couldn’t get rid of it no matter how he tried. He hurled himself to the ground, rolling and attempting to smother the flames, but that wasn’t happening. It wasn’t long before he couldn’t feel the ground, the only sensation immense heat and immense pain.

He had felt this kind of heat before, caught in a massive fire out on the savannahs of southern Evenwood. Smoke and red light that pulsed like a rotten heart, heat so intense it pulled the spit right out of his mouth, ate the moisture in the air.

“What was that guy thinking?”

“Don’t think he was.”

“Crazy freak.”

That last bit ended all the resistance. The glass dagger exploded, chips and shards flitting through every inch of the almost-corpse. The smile finally, finally broke. It turned into the grimace of pain it had been hiding for years without fail. Dagger and grin died together, both breaking up and fading to ash in the blaze.

Thatris lost his smile.

A few seconds later, he lost his life.



Originally, Thatris was going to be a quite stupid character who was going to die within a few chapters. Of course, that didn’t happen, so I decided on a different death, quite a bit more dramatic, and a lot farther in. Thank you to those who have commented, critiqued, and otherwise helped out with this story.

Felarya is Karbo’s

Named characters are mine unless otherwise stated.

wow what a powerful chapter !
The fact his life is essentially made of lies and false was very unexpected and striking but it makes sense, when you look at his terrible life.

Poor Thatris .. he really had it hard T_T