Chapter 2-58: Stories Around a Fire (2/2)

He started to bridle again. “Are you giving me orders, little Sama?!” he demanded, emphasizing the size difference.

“If you’re not going to be hospitable, neither am I, since you are abusing guest-rite. Go sit off in the trees or something if you want to watch.”

“And if I do not?” he challenged back.

“Rude people without heads sit there much less annoyingly than rude people with them.”

He stared at her. She stared back. His muscles rippled, debating between combat and peace. Sama was unconcerned. Part of the Combat Focus state was in being in a state of fluid relaxation, ready to move without being overly tense. In reality, she was balanced on the head of a pin, ready to go off on this werewolf at the slightest real threat, and she had no doubts she could beat him, just based on how much punishment she could take... and he was probably not prepared for Anathema and what it would do to him.

Did he even have any experience fighting human Powered? Did he know just how badly he could get could shrecked by a ready human not afraid of a werewolf? She wasn’t some poor schmuck off the street or working a farm. She was a Hagchild with all the memories and foundation to be really kick-ass when it was her time to be so.

Of course, he didn’t know she had a boosted Soulsword, either...

“What manner of story would you hear?” he finally offered.

“You were watching the factory there for some reason, or you would not have seen me. If it is not secret, I will hear the story behind that.”

His green eyes glittered. “That tale is not short,” he told her.

She glanced at the Spinechain. “Four hours and twenty minutes until it is done. Is it longer than that?”

He glanced at it, too. “What is time, to the Manitou?” he replied rhetorically.

“Not being a Manitou, I have not the slightest idea,” she answered him, which seemed to satisfy his curiosity.

He seemed to ruminate for a few more minutes, and Sama waited patiently while he did so.

“This group of men who call themselves Hexar are just tools of a far greater, more sinister force... the corrupt hand of Petron, Limited.”

“The oil company?” Sama asked calmly.

The werewolf nodded slowly. “It is not merely oil they deal in. They deal in corruption, pollution, the weakening and dissolution of the World-Mother...”

Sama frowned slightly. “Has this gotten better or worse since the Haze?” she asked, not refuting his words.

“The Coming of the Alien Dead.” His eyes rose towards the Haze far above, which had taken away the stars, locking away the sun and the sky. “Without the sun, men seek heat and solace in fire. Their machines thirst for the black blood of the earth and spew poison into the air and toxin into the waters. Their thirst for such things has not stopped, and even though there are those among men who fight to turn such things back to a balance, it does not stop the uncaring thirst of the rest, who seek what light and warmth they can gain amid the darkness.

“This Hexar is the most uncaring of them, and they flaunt the wishes and health of the Land. There is a darkness guiding them, and it has only grown more rampant and brazen since the rise of the Haze.”

“Really.” And if those Scurve creatures were able to hide so easily from the Powered, it would be no small wonder if those controlling them were totally inhuman, Sama mused. “There were two different breeds of werewolves working with them. One seemed fairly normal, and were the first ones I encountered, as well as the local sheriff.” His head came up alertly at that news. “I believe his daughter was the first one I killed, and she was going through a late Awakening of her, hrm, change... with human flesh being part of the process.

“Those inside the company were mutated, with malformed limbs, horns, spikes, deformed muzzles, serrated ears, and the like. Definitely not the same... or, perhaps the same, who drank a little too much Abyssal juju and got them some hardcore demonic Taint.” She gestured casually at the Spinechain. “That’s not an unusual Weapon among the lower demons of the Abyss.”

His expression wrinkled, surprised again at the knowledge coming from her. “They call themselves the Uncaged,” he finally admitted slowly. “They have gone on spirit walks to very dark places, and lost themselves within the Maze of the Dream, going to realms that have driven them mad. They claim that the Great Mother is lost, is dead, and that the Coming of the Dead is a sign of it, and all that we are doing is delaying the final death of the world.”

There was both a bleak bitterness about him, and yet a burning will to keep fighting. Sama found herself impressed at the admission, and slowly began to laugh.

“Dead? This world?” She laughed even more, her eyes lighting up with a hot lack of mercy for that viewpoint. “Humanity hasn’t even begun to fight! I haven’t even grown up! They think sweet Mother Terra is dead, aye?

“Renewal still comes every morning when Aru rises in the east!

“The Moon is veiled, but She still shines at night!

“Magic burns with The Light, even beneath the Shroud!

“They think this world is done? They think this world is doomed?” Her laughter began to rise into an eerie, hair-raising cackle as the mad thirst for battle rose in the blue eyes of this masked girl.