Weaponsmith - Chapter 132 (Patreon)

What is ‘three’?

A number, yes. Sure, it represents the owl, yes. That much is clear. But… what else lies behind it?

The gods and numerology are tightly tied to one-another. They’re as inseparable from one another as are the stars from the night-sky. This is simply the nature of a god’s magic, that it influences the world around them, and this includes the pattern-recognizing entities that are people.

Or rather, it is the other way around.

Barring the oldest, most primal gods of the world, the newer gods were created by people — by their beliefs and fears coming together as a collective thoughtform, manifesting itself onto the physical world as something living.

So what ties the owl to the number three? Well, it’s simple. It’s stupidly simple, in fact. It is simply the fact that the word ‘owl’ has three letters.

This is the same concept that ties the big-frog, the frog god Nekyia, to the number ‘four’. ‘Frog’ has four letters.

Given that the new gods are direct results of the sum total of people’s  beliefs, it’s only natural that they too, take on the strange, seemingly nonsensical quirks of the people who proginated them. After all, people are strange, nonsensical creatures.

Then what of the number five?

In the journal from the woman who raised him, his step-mother, it was attributed to the word ‘demon’. This makes sense, of course, given that she was on the run from the south, from the old owl-god — an entity that regularly ate humans and other such things.

But does it really make sense?

How can one entity have two numbers attributed to itself? It doesn’t add up in the followings of this nonsensical logic. It seems like a fix, like a smear of fresh ink to cover up a messy splotch on a canvas.

There’s something bigger here, something that he’s been missing for a long time now, and it’s been in front of his face all the while.

— There are so many various things to consider.

Hineni looks around the area, trying to orient himself and his thoughts.

What happened?

The man blinks.

— He’s standing in the middle of the corridor, upstairs in the old house.

“The hell…” mutters Hineni, rubbing his head. What was he doing up here again?

The man looks around himself, feeling like he’s forgetting something. It’s that sensation when you walk into a room with an exact purpose, but as soon as you cross the threshold, you forget what it is.

Upstairs…

What was he going to do upstairs?

His eyes wander to the window in the corridor, looking out of its glassy pane. It’s bright outside — not bright in the sense that it is the middle of the afternoon, but rather it is bright in the sense that tonight the night sky is a glowing ocean, carrying in itself the resplendent body of the full moon.

Ah, right.

If he’s out here, that means it’s probably time for him to get down to the forge and get to work.

Hineni shakes his head, quietly laughing to himself about getting old as he pulls open the door to the stairwell.

— “Ribbit~” says a small frog, standing on the railing of the staircase.

Hineni blinks, rubbing his eyes. A frog?

He looks again.

The frog is gone.

Confused, the man looks around himself and then leans down over the railing, looking where it could have gone. Did it fall?

But he doesn’t see anything.

Weird.

Wait…

“…Frogs…” mutters Hineni beneath his breath. Why are there frogs in the house?

— Something hisses behind him.

Everything goes dark.

_______________________________________

Hineni sits down on his knees, holding a rag in his hand, and scrubs the floor of the washroom.

He sighs in relief, finally ready to call this day done with. It was a long one. He was in the forge all night, and then he had to wipe down this place because…

— Because why?

Hineni stops, staring at the polished tiles beneath himself. His distorted reflection looks back his way.

Why the hell is he doing all of this?

He lifts up the rag, looking at it and then around at the bathing area that he has spent hours cleaning now.

But why?

He’s the only one here. He’s the only one who uses the bath. He lives alone. It’s just him, ever since he got back from the orphanage.

The man sighs, rising to his feet. He drops the dirty rag, obscuring his reflection with it, and then turns to leave, sparing a glance to look at the bathwater.

— There’s a frog swimming in it.

Hineni stands there, perplexed.

He wanders over towards the bath, leaning in to look at the creature. A frog? How the hell did a frog get into the house, let alone all the way to the bath? Did it maybe come in through the water-system?

He leans over forward, grasping the edge of the bath.

— Something shoves him from behind into the water.

Everything goes dark.

_____________________________________

Hineni stands in the library.

He doesn’t come in here much. After all, what for?

Sure, reading would be a great way to pass the time, but… he doesn’t really care about that or about books. Besides, this place is such a dusty, forgotten mess that he’d be hesitant to even begin to touch any of the tomes here. He’s sure they would crumble into dust if he even looks at them wrong.

The man tilts his head.

“What the hell am I doing here?” he asks, confused.

He rubs his eyes, trying to think. Why did he want to come to the library, again?

It’s all kind of a blurry jumble. But this isn’t too unusual. Ever since he got back home from the orphanage, he’s just kind of been… existing. He doesn’t really think much or do much; he just sort of drifts on through life, day after day after day.

Once in a while he’ll make a sword to be able to buy some bread, and then he’ll sit by the window and stare.

…The window.

Why is he in the library, when he could be at his window?

Hineni sighs and turns to leave.

— Something wet drops onto the top of his head from up on a high shelf. The man jumps in surprise, swearing up a storm as he looks at the damp frog that lands down on the carpeted floors from his head.

Very confused now, Hineni looks around the library and then down at the frog.

— A book falls from the top of a shelf, crushing it flat.

Hineni pulls back, disgusted at the wet crunching noise that splatters out together with so much blood. His eyes look up just in time to see the shelf cascading down on top of him.

Everything goes dark.

___________________________________

The man exhales, sitting on his bench.

His eyes wander out of the window of the restaurant. He’s sitting at his favorite spot in the whole world. It’s the little bench right next to the window in the back. It offers a good angle to look out at the people walking by. But because of the way the building is situated, they have a harder time looking back, which makes it an ideal place for someone like him to just stay and watch the world go by.

He watches people walk by in their groups. He watches adventurers walk by in their parties of two to six people each. He watches partners walk by, hand in hand. He watches families stroll down the street. As he does all of these things, he sits there with folded hands, doing his best to not realize that he is pretending to hold someone else’s.

He sits here every day, alone.

He watches the world with hungry eyes every day, alone.

This is all that there is for him; it’s all that the world has in store for the man called Hineni.

His eyes drift away from the glass for a moment, wandering over the surfaces of many tables that are covered in layers of ash and dust, nearly a decade old. He couldn’t be bothered to clean them when he got back from the orphanage. He just sort of… left it all like it was, when he left — when they died — his family.

He killed them.

Hineni looks back out of the window. He doesn’t like to think about that day, for obvious reasons. He regrets what he did. But he understands why he did it. After all, after what his parents had brought to their door, to him… how could he, as a child, frightened, confused, and overwhelmed with an abundance of magic, react any differently?

How could he have done anything else when his mother and his father had brought -

— A frog sits outside, its face squished against the window. “Ribbit~” croaks the frog.

He rubs his eyes.

— “Hey, I got that ledger you wanted,” says a voice from next to him. “Lined ‘em up just like you asked.”

“- HOLY HELL!” yells Hineni as she speaks, jumping up to his feet as some strange elf walks past his table, past him, inside of his house, where he lives alone, by himself. He fumbles around, grabbing the collars of his coat to lift them up to cover his face so that she can’t see him.

She looks at him, confused. “…You good?” asks the woman, wiping a dusty blonde bang out of her face. She sets down a sheet of paper and slides it his way. “Take a nap, boss-man. You look like shit,” says the elf.

“Who the hell are y-?!”

Hineni stops, looking to his side, down at the piece of paper that she slid towards him.

His hand grabs it and he picks it up to look at a list of names, the very first one being his own.

— The glass of the window violently shatters.

Everything goes dark.

___________________________________________________

*Thook*

*Thook*

*Thook*

Hineni stops, exhaling. The man wipes his brow, getting off the sweat that is beginning to form on him, even if it is the middle of the night and he is out in the forest.

Cutting wood is hard work, after all.

The man looks at his axe and then at the log that he’s cutting.

It doesn’t make much sense to do it like this, honestly. An axe is a horrible tool to cut a lying log with. What he needs is a saw. But he doesn’t have a saw. He has an axe.

Even if he were so inclined to get a saw, where would he even do that? At the saw-store? And what if there are different kinds of saws? He’d have to go there. He’d have to talk to people and ask questions, all so that he could get a stupid saw.

No.

No…

It’s fine this way. It’s harder and worse.

But it’s fine this way. This is how his life is. This is what it has to be.

He continues his chopping.

*Thook*

*Thook*

*Who hoo hoo~* calls a voice above his head in the darkness.

Hineni stops, looking up at the crown of the tree that he’s beneath. There, sitting on a very high branch all by itself, is an owl.

*Who hoo hoo~* calls the owl out into the night.

Hineni, with bated breath, follows the echo of its call as it vanishes into the dark of the forest, tensely waiting for a response.

But none ever comes.

He can’t help but smile a sad smile as he looks back at the bird. “I know the feeling,” says Hineni.

With wide eyes, the owl stares his way for a moment, as if shocked that someone had spoken to it, and then hastily vanishes, flying away into the darkness.

“Ah…” He reaches after it. “Shit,” mutters the man. He didn’t want to scare it off.

Hineni sighs, shaking his head. He lifts his axe, getting ready to return to his work, now that he is all by himself again — as is the norm. He lifts the axe into the air and then stops.

After a strange moment of being frozen, Hineni turns his head, making sure that he is alone, before he, for a reason that he can’t really coherently explain, decides to mimic the call of the owl.

“Who hoo -”

“— Ribbit.”

Hineni startles together, jumping a step back as he looks down at the log, where a frog sits.

— Something horrifically screams in the darkness with a shrill, piercing harpy screech.

A silhouette shoots down past his eyes, ripping the frog off of the log and into the night.

He stands there, perplexed.

After a moment of nothingness that follows, the man shrugs and just returns to his chopping.

Life is just weird sometimes.