SoK Chapter 192

The path forward was clear, to TJ surprise. after everything that he been through, he more expected to run into troubles every step of the way, no matter what journey he took. In this case, he was thrilled to be proven wrong. Walking through the night, the sky cleared of his storm he created, their path was lit by the bright moon overhead. Even without it, with both of their perception, they would’ve been able to walk without worry through the regular night sky. There would have to be some magically created and enforced darkness in the area to keep them from knowing everything that was happening all around them.

“We’re nowhere near done with them.“ Fareed didn’t say it with any apparent intent of engaging in dialogue, and TJ couldn’t say that he disagreed at all. There were four Thunderbirds that remained, and TJ had made himself an absolute enemy of them. If he hadn’t used storm manipulation to create the two Misty copies of himself, and then he could guarantee that he wouldn’t have been able to kill even one of the monsters tonight. They were simply too quick and clever, and unlike the Wendigo, raven mocker, and other elites that he’d run into before, the Thunderbirds were always quick to disengage and keep their distance. The question that Rose became how he could close in with him. The reality in that was that he couldn’t. They were too quick, and now that he’d revealed his trick, he couldn’t imagine that he’d be able to do it again.

“No.“ TJ spoke around the Thunderbird patriarch body in his mouth. “But at least we’ve driven them off for at least a while. Maybe they’ll just decide we’re not worth the trouble.“

“You’ve talked with more monsters than I have. What do you think?“

“I don’t even know what to think, honestly. I mean, the Pack wedgies were willing to negotiate, though I guess that it wasn’t in good faith. The Wendigo wanted to kill everything they could catch, alkaline is at least kind of an ally, and the system tells me that, even though I killed them all, the Minotaurs could have been a neutral or even friendly faction. What’s monster and what’s not just… It doesn’t compute. So are these Thunderbirds intelligent enough to negotiate with? Maybe. Going off of how they reacted when some of their number died, I’d imagine that they have some measure of feelings, so would they hold a grudge?“

As TJ‘s voice, Peter, he tried to shrug, but couldn’t, given that he was currently a snake. even so, the feeling was communicated, and Farid simply nodded as a seat continued to walk. Several steps later, Farid again broke the silence.

“Do you want to try to bring them into the pantheon?“ The question was posed as neutrally as possible, but it made TJ‘s hackles rise. He felt the feathers around his head flare out in an attempt to intimidate. He felt his heavy breath’s catch in his throat for a second, then shook his head.

“No. They try to take and you serve my position. There can only be one day of a particular path in any particular pantheon. Unless they could be convinced to become something entirely different from what they have always been, we will always be at odds.“

“Huh. That’s new information to me. Is this something that you learned as you were called a deity by the system?”

“I wish I knew specifically.” TJ answered as he slithered into view of the city. “Sometimes I just know things, you know? The System plants plenty of information in my head through the day, for whatever reason. Just… learned it. You had an experience like that?”

“Yeah.” Farid nodded as TJ dropped to the ground as a human and walked the rest of the way towards the sleeping group of people. “I learn where the weakest locations are on individuals when I look at them for too long. Can see where they don’t keep up their guard and where their bodies are just less defended.”

“Like on me? As a coatl?”

“Sure.”

“Tell me about it.”

“You sure?”

“Of course I’m sure, Farid.” TJ scoffed. “You’re one of the few people I can truly trust to have my wellbeing at the forefront of their minds, and I want to be safer tomorrow than I am today, you know?”

Farid nodded before saying, “Well, it’s a surprisingly strong body. I mean, the scales keep you pretty well covered and protected, and they’re sturdy. For most things, the insides of their mouths are pretty vulnerable, but with you, I get the feeling that going into the mouth is a good way to get yourself killed. Instead, if I was getting into a fight with you as a snake, I’d go for your tail and middle of your body. The most important organs in your body are in the middle and there’s no real defenses for your ‘torso’, or whatever it’s called for a snake. Anyways, it’s the center of your body that’s least protected and is worth attacking.”

“My scales cover my whole body, though. I think they’re probably thickest in the center, though I don’t know if that’s the absolute truth.” TJ disagreed.

“So your ‘armor’ covers you, but in the middle of your body, how can you protect yourself? Do you have arms or feet or other appendages I don’t know about keeping you from being hurt somewhere in there?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean,” Farid said with a shrug, “that you’re a massive snake. Biggest snake I’ve ever heard of. Like, a hundred feet, I’d guess. That’s really big, and in the middle of that, your tail and head are both fifty feet away. If something gets the drop on you, eating into the center of you means they’ve got all that clearance to do what they’re trying to, and there’ll be a second before you can address that.”

TJ remembered the bunyip that fought to drag him back into the bogs and he’d been largely unable to do anything about it. It just kept pulling on his tail, and he’d had to revert back to his human form to get close enough to do anything to it. If there’d been another biting into the center of his body at the same time, then what could he have done to them to protect himself through it all? He quickly realized that the answer to that was, of course, nothing. TJ grunted and nodded.

“Thanks, Farid. I’ll see what I can do about that moving forward.”

“Sure.”

The Acolyte nodded as he walked away to a small place where the grass had been cut and made into a Farid-sized pile of loose grass. A better mattress than TJ’d prepared for himself tonight, and also what he’d prepared for Luz, he realized. He’d taken charge of her, but he wasn’t being nearly half the father he’d been for Junior. Sure, she wasn’t his kid, but the thought, as it crossed his mind, sickened him. He was just leaving Luz behind. Sure, he’d saved her life, but that was far from enough. He took a deep breath and followed the familiar scent of another one of his fellow descendants of Kukulkan. As he walked through the camp, he saw each one of his followers spread out, sleeping. Most were bundled together, and only then did TJ realize that he’d brought snow and storms to a calm, relatively warm winter night. Each person nearby was woefully underprepared for a snowstorm, and although most’s Vitality and Toughness kept them safe, Luz’s didn’t. He rushed towards the little girl, though he knew she wouldn’t have been abandoned. She was cuddled next to Molly, actually. The Neophyte had the little girl in her tee shirt and laying on Molly’s jacket, and TJ just nodded in approval.

Walking a little ways away, TJ looked at his people, most cuddled together for a combination of warmth and comfort. Then, not feeling tired enough to sleep, he instead lay down and allowed himself to fall back into Meditation. There, he let his mind wander into something that he knew he could do to help out the settlement and something that only he could do for now—crafting with organic materials. Sure, Michelle could do some work with it, but she worked best with metals, so far as he knew, while he could bind things together with his Skills and create armor and weapons better than what just about anyone around had. 

His mind flicked from one possibility to the next, though he didn’t settle on anything solidly. Instead, he entertained various possibilities. What materials were there to use for now? The lantern from the will-o’-the-wisp, the stone and metal from the golem, the claws from the Asanbosam, and the materials from the thunderbirds were the most noteworthy. As TJ entertained various possibilities, he wondered how each type of material could be used with other parts from the same monster, like the Fungr and Geirr he’d made from the Vargr, or the Bloodsoaked Spear he so often forgot as he threw himself into battle not with his human body but that of his coatl. Then there was the Remnant and Shroud as further examples. However, what about mixing similar or complimentary parts of different monsters?

There was the metal of the will-o’-the-wisp lantern, could that be mixed with the rusted claws of Asanbosams? Or would the various metals in the corpse of the golem suit it better? How about the thunderbirds’ magical inclinations! Various possibilities drew him in, and TJ didn’t mind taking the opportunity to indulge in his fantasies. After all, what was nighttime for, if not to dream?

The lantern was the item that best held his curiosity. There was something about it that was interesting. It was effectively the entirety of the remains of the monster, and while the will-o’-the-wisp wasn’t especially powerful or noteworthy in its own right, TJ could feel that the lantern would make something that wasn’t just a fire when it was forced correctly. Maybe it would be something he and Michelle could work on together? If he bound it with his blood to something else, then she could forge it into a weapon that created mirages, or a shield that blinded enemies. Maybe a helmet that could let the wearer see visions or far off places?

He pushed his imagination further, knowing that his own logical hangups were what was going to stop his experimentations from being successful, not the limitations of the System and the materials. Maybe he could infuse something into the lantern and create a new will-o’-the-wisp that would follow commands. Would it be able to guide people through the swamps below? Or maybe other will-o’-the-wisps would follow its guidance? There were any number of possibilities for the materials to be used for, and TJ allowed his mind to explore the more interesting material as his mind floated from consciousness into the strange in between of Meditation.

The other materials they had on hand didn’t appeal to him, not really. The thunderbirds could be useful, but he didn’t want to use just their materials when he had three bodies’ worth of materials to experiment with. There were other things that he could use to merge into a particular piece of equipment that would suit him particularly well. There hadn’t been any other creatures with storm affinity or wind magic, so he couldn’t just use all these materials right now when he couldn’t say if he’d find a specimen of higher quality than the patriarch later on. If he could find something like a storm elemental, or whatever the name for it would be, but a version of the golem that was storm, then that would be wonderful. After all, the next best thing to that would be something—

TJ laughed at himself. He’d taken this long to realize what other options he had? He shook his head and continued to entertain different possibilities with his own feathers and scales incorporated into the thunderbird materials.