NOVEL NEXT 23) Questions, and a lack of answers.
23) Questions, and a lack of answers.
I woke up a few hours later with a whining pup wanting some food by the side of my bed. Or maybe she wanted out again. Like I know, I had never dealt with animals other than the garage cat.
Sitting up I stared at the one eyed coyote looking back at me.
“Freeloader.”
She yipped in reply.
I did the diced up hot dogs mixed in with their cheap dry food bit again. They didn’t seem all that concerned about the repeated meal plan. All three coyotes just dug in as I filled the mixing bowls with fresh water.
Then I chopped up some greens. Lettuce, cucumber, and spinach topped the pile off with some carrots and tomatoes, before dumping grated sharp cheddar and a diced up cold chicken breast on top.
Along with some red colored salad dressing that had been on sale that week.
As I turned to take it over to the table I had all three moochers staring at me, their food left ignored half eaten.
I glared at each of them in turn. “No. You got yours, this is mine. And I’ll lick the plate too.”
Hmm. Maybe some toast too. As long as I hit myself with some warming it will keep the sugar down.
Finishing up and putting the ‘clean enough' plate aside for later, no coyotes spit on it after all, I went to my office to get lost down the rabbit hole that is Wikipedia.
After my nap, it wasn't like I was going to get any real sleep that night after all.
So a Genius Loci was what they called a household god back in old time Rome…
“So what, it gives me a little boy for the house? The last one I had didn’t turn out all that great.”
[ Genius Loci ]
[ You may channel Life into the land under your care to awaken a spirit of the land ]
[ The spirit can be bid to either enhance the bounty of the land, the power of its spirits, or the health of its inhabitants ]
“Oh.”
Well, the question isn't which one do I pick, but if I should do this thing at all. Do I want a 'spirit of the land?'
I already got two coyotes which it looks like I’m going to be stuck with until either I or they die, that’s assuming I manage to leave Chubby as a normal animal in which case I can hope he moves on at some point.
Then I got Green Girly Godiva out front, which I just know is going to involve Child Protective Services at some point. How long do apple trees live anyways?
"Oh, Crap."
I had channeled Life into Brad.
Setting my face into my hands I muffled the scream of “Crappppppp.” until I felt a poking at my leg.
Reaching down to pet a furry head, I got some puppy sounds in return.
It’s nice to have someone around to be concerned about me, without asking any questions.
"Don't worry Blue, you are not getting any new roommates. Bread can be a free range Spirit Geezer."
I suppose I could call Beryl to see if anything happened to him if his eyes changed color or something. She would know what color someone's eyes were normally, women cared about shit like that.
But then she had magic powers to invade people's privacy, and if something had happened to the High Fiber Chef I’m sure I would have heard about it by now.
She does know where I live.
I looked down at the pup that I had gone and picked up at some point all curled up in my lap.
What happened to Spirit animals after the guy who made them croaked?
...”Yeah. I want an answer on that.”
[ Spirits bond to new guardians over time ]
"...Am I talking to a person or a machine?"
This time I got nothing, but apparently, I had a resource I had been neglecting to use since it involved talking.
I set a protesting cyclopean Spirit animal on the ground and opened up a text file on my computer.
-Session 1 Concerning Spirits Animals-
-Are these Spirit Animals ever going to turn on me?-
The same gray square with blue lettering appeared as always with the squares reply, which I typed onto the page and then set to bold, and changed the color to blue while I thought about my next question.
Going through a few more questions let me find out that the wild animals I had magically altered into pets would break their bonds with me and run off if I abused them.
Which must require a lot more abuse than how I treated everyone in general, but then animals are dumber than most people.
Feeding them Beast stones turned them into tougher Spirits, bigger, tougher, stronger… more intelligent. It would even give them magical powers at some point based on what Essence was used to turn them into Spirit beasts.
“Wait, there are other ways to turn them into Spirits.”
[ Normal Animals, Plants, Structures, and Items may have Beast Cores bonded to them by channeling a Talent's Essence through a Beast Core into a target ]
“Well. How about that…”
Originally I was going to share the document in the comments of one of Dungeon Dan's videos, but…
Imagine a bunch of old people turning a bunch of stupid pets into magically enslaved fighting animals to drag into a Dungeon to die for them. Or creating a living breathing being out of some tree in their yard.
You know, like I did, but on purpose.
Do I want to send this out there?
...it will get out though. No matter what. All someone has to do is keep asking what they can do with a Beast Core.
...someone probably already has. The Government has already put out orders to gather them up.
“What does channeling Essence into a Beast Core do to a person.”
[ Beast Cores have no effect on lifeforms which are innately awakened. ]
“...are we talking about something with a soul here?”
[ ]
I leaned forward to look at the blank spot between the two brackets until they finally faded away after I had to blink.
“What does bracket bracket mean?”
This time I didn’t even get a nonanswer. But it seemed like there were some questions the squares just weren't going to reply to.
“Wished I never asked. If something of me is going to have to put up with more bullcrap even after I’m dead, I don’t want to know.”
After a few hours of meandering around online, letting the coyotes out into the backyard with a marble loaded up in the contraption on my arm while they did their business, then I settled in to stare at the ceiling for a few hours. Not able to be fully asleep or awake until I finally drifted off for a few hours.
Felt like old times.