FINAL CORE - Chapter 87 (Patreon)

You think an undead is frightening? You think some slack-jawed, loose-skinned, glowing eyed creature is the true terror that haunts the nights? Vampires, ghouls, and zombies are certainly frightening in their own way. But the classical monsters of the world, as we call them, are nothing in the face of real monsters.

They are toys, play-things, standing in the shadow of a thousand-toothed juggernaut.

Horrific constructs that can steal the stars from the night-sky.

Demons with more skittering, chittering legs that can fit onto a coherent body.

Entities made up of the screaming yarn of a horrific soul, creatures that transcend the simple, childish title of ‘monsters’, that is what scours in the darkness, waiting, watching, reaching.

We call such amalgamations of bones and screams ‘terrors’ and they are unique in that they are far and few between.

Only the Demon-King has ever had the ability to manifest such things in our world. Now, after his defeat, they remain, residing in dark, distant corners of the world where they continue to hiss and click in excited hunger, snatching children who wander too far from their beds at night and men who wander too far from their walls.

~ On the nature of TERROR-entities, constructs separate from the monsters of the world

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The Humming Man

The humming man hums, as a humming man is want to do, as he strolls through the city to his appointment.

Things are going well. Of course, he has to make some nudges here and some adjustments there to have the machine output the result his client requires, but this is the nature of his work. It’s what he does.

The man stops in the middle of the road. Water splashes next to him from a fountain that he has stopped by.

It is night-time.

He hums to himself, fishing a coin out of his pocket. He vigorously rubs it against his chest until it is sleek and shiny.

Money isn’t useful to him. It’s just another tool, a piece of cheese to lure in a mouse.

— He carefully sets the coin down into the middle of the street and looks at it for a moment. The man tilts his head, and then gently nudges the coin a tiny, weensy bit further to the side, and then nods, standing back upright.

The humming man does a small, graceful spin to the side just as a cart thunders past him, the driver going somewhere in a hurry at midnight. The carriage rolls over the stones, missing the coin and causing it to rattle.

Playfully jumping over the coin, now that the street is clear, the humming man goes to the window of the store next door and breathes against the glass, lifting his sleeve to wipe it squeaky clean, so that the displays behind it are clearly visible. He looks at his own reflection, staring back at him in the moonlight that bounces off of the glass. His arm lingers for a time as he stares at the level one dagger on sale behind the glass. It isn’t that expensive. The coin is enough for it.

To be the humming man isn’t a difficult job. But it is a difficult job to acquire. After all, he has the position and he isn’t intent on retiring soon. Business is good.

He steps to the side and looks at the coin, glistening in the moonlight as one of three things. There is the coin. There is the wish-fountain in the middle of the plaza, and there is the window of the store.

The humming man steps back to the side and sits down, crossing his legs as he waits for a mouse to arrive.

— And arrive it does.

Meandering out of an alley, comes a wretch. A scrawny, stick-like, hungry thing wanders out of the darkness, looking around the plaza. A child, some girl. He doesn’t know her. But he knows of her. He knows what she can be.

This plaza here that he is at, the one with the wishing-fountain, is the central, main plaza of the city. It’s where the dungeon-gate is and where, during the day, thousands and thousands of people move about. Adventurers, merchants, and all sorts of strange figures.

And, this little crafty creature has learned that this is the place in the city where people drop things most often. So, on nights when the streets are empty and the moon is full, she’ll sneak out of the alleyways when she is safe from being trampled or kicked by the crowds, in order to scour the plaza for money and for any other baubles that have been dropped by those in a hurry.

He sits there, with crossed legs and his hands on his knees, as he watches her snoop around on her hands and knees, crawling like a mouse as she looks for a little nibble to survive with. Her clothes are patchwork and raggy, her skin clings to her bones; and her hair, straight, is still somehow so knotted and tangled that it may as well be the patchy clumps of a sickly rodent’s fur.

She sees the coin.

The humming man leans in, not getting up as he watches her eyes go wide, shining like the starlight above their heads as she throws herself onto it, wrapping her whole body over the coin as if to protect it from someone who would strike her to take it. Yet, despite her instincts telling her blows and kicks are to come, none do, and she quietly gets up to her feet, looking at the coin.

To be the humming man means many things. It means that he is tasked with guiding certain events towards certain desired outcomes. But it also means guiding certain events to allow certain choices to be made.

While it is true that he takes influence on matters, changing and shaping people’s lives, what he doesn’t do is change or take their choices.

Those are their choices to make, and he can just watch and hum along the way, even if he knows what end both choices will lead to.

The girl beams, clutching her treasure to her chest with both hands as she looks around the area, making sure nobody saw her.

Her eyes land on the wishing-well.

Of course, this is, in the eyes of a logical, reasonable adult, foolishness. She is starving and creeping closer to the brink of death. This coin is her only lifeline; to throw it away into such a thing as a wishing-fountain is utter nonsense.

Yet, in the eyes of the child that sees the fountain full of coins that others have tossed in there, which act as proof of the fountain’s legitimacy, it is only reasonable that the wishing-fountain is real. It is obvious beyond a doubt, beneath the twinkling, mischievous starlight, that the fountain will grant her wish if she gives it her treasure.

After all, why wouldn’t it?

And grant it, it will.

The humming man knows that Witch Perchta has cursed the fountain to do just that, at a terrible cost. The girl will receive her wish, but she will likely not enjoy it.

He leans in closer, watching with bated breath, but he doesn’t rise. He doesn’t stop her from making a choice that would be beyond fatal.

— That is not what the humming man does.

She turns her head, as the starlight brings something else into her vision. The freshly polished glass of the store behind her glistens, glimmering in the heavenly shine. She stares, looking at it.

It’s a store that sells weapons.

The girl stares at the dagger in the window and then down at the coin.

And this is the choice that the humming man is blessed to be able to witness tonight. Both choices, the fountain or the dagger, will lead her down a road that is each remarkable in its own right.

But one ends happier than the other.

He sits and he watches, wondering what choice she will make.

He hums in the meantime, as she stands there, unaware.

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Isaiah

“Are you certain?” asks Isaiah, looking at the dryad, Seide.

She stands there for a time, considering and then nodding, affirming herself. “I think it’s time,” she says. “My goblins need me,” she explains. “I feel bad already because I’ve neglected them.”

Isaiah shakes its head. “No,” it explains, lifting a talon. “In a crisis, you must first look after yourself, always,” says Isaiah. “Only with a whole mind and heart are you able to help those who need you most.” It lifts her up, to carry her off of the tower. “I have learned this lesson myself in my haste to help and nurture, I only caused damage instead.”

She nods. “Sorry about biting you,” says the dryad, placing a hand on the space between Isaiah’s shoulder and neck.

Isaiah shakes its head, rising into the air. “No. I am sorry for having let darkness befall you to begin with.”

They fly off into the night, the uthra in tow.

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Grob

Goblin, Male, Scout

Location: The goblin’s nest, below the tower, to the east

Grob the goblin sits amongst his people. They are… headless.

A weak fire burns in their midst, and the bones of small rabbits fill the fire, picked clean of every scrap of meat. They are surviving, but they are hardly flourishing. Without a leader, a chief, like the one who died during the assaults on the tower when it was small and without a wood-mother, their clan, those who remain, are entirely aimless.

Goblins are relatively smart and crafty creatures, and they can certainly survive on their own. But their species has undergone a productive symbiosis with dryads, the wood-mothers, who allow them to not only survive, but to thrive.

Without her or a chief to guide them, the nights are darker than usual, the rabbits skinnier, and the fires weaker and hungrier.

Grob has told his story of hiding and then escaping from the tower a hundred times over now. The remaining goblins had planned many assaults on the tower, but none of them ever came to any form of realization. They are all just too incapable of leading such an onslaught against the massive construct in the shadow of which they live.

All of the goblins sit there in their nooks and crannies in the fallen logs and big, tumbled rocks that they nest near or inside of. Nobody really says much or does much. That is the nature of their life now.

It is listless and tepid, nothing more, nothing less.

— The firelight becomes brighter and Grob looks to see who is wasting wood. But nobody has done so.

He squints, lifting a hand as the night becomes brighter and brighter, until frantic shouts catch his attention and make him look up towards the sky where, silhouetted by the stars of the night-blanket above their heads, is the brightest, most vivid thing he has ever seen. A being surrounded by glowing lights of every color of berry, all harboring foods and provisions, and in the arms of the central figure, is draped their very own wood-mother, a dryad, — returned to them.

The goblin tribe all rise as they witness the coming of a revelation for their kind.