Born a Monster

Half rations, as it turned out, was pretty close to 45 nutrition, which as anyone with a System knows, is not enough to keep an adult of my... needs... alive. Whatever. I was still better off inside the walls than I had been outside.

I had been expecting Kismet, or possibly Madonna, to come fetch me from the inn. I hadn’t been expecting Lian Zhi. He scurried up to me, and engaged in a hasty bow. I stood, and bowed appropriately. I mean, at what I guessed was appropriate, my System was still down.

“Sergeant Meng Wa requests that you requisition new equipment and return to the wall immediately.”

“Wounded!” I tried to say (forgetting I had no vocal cords), gladly turning to let him see... well, not much. I mean, I’d lived with my scales all my life, I could tell where the wounds were.

“Yes, Monitor. But that does not relinquish you of this order. Many among our squad, but chiefly Tang Ning, are also wounded and desperately need relief. Now that the rebels have Shi Xinyi, it is believed they will attack in force tonight.”

I sighed. I suppose I didn’t have a lot that I needed to get. Damn me for a fool, laughing gods; I knew I was below half health, and I ventured forth toward danger anyway.

Not blindly, of course. I was able to get a vest, a jacket, and pants of leather that generally fit me. I was issued spear and sickle (yes, sickle, the type you harvest herbs with, not the two-handed monster for crops, the scythe) and shield, and even a knife. I got a ratty leather backpack with perhaps a third of a soldier’s normal kit.

If I’d been given the impression that the inmates had been idle during my slave-jaunt, I was cured upon seeing the top of the wall.

.....

Tired looks emerged from sunken eyes, deep in bruised visages. Soldiers sagged or slumped, or were even sitting propped up by the outer lip of the wall. Armor was crudely stitched together, more often than not lacking even a patch. Shields were... well, I could use Mend Wood for a week, and still not get through enough of them to matter.

But there was obviously no shortage of whetstones, for the speartips and arrowheads in evidence were sharp. From what I saw of the swords, they were likewise kept to razor sharpness.

They were tired and hungry and wounded, but these were warriors, and tonight they were going to hold their wall.

Tang Ning was already on a cot waiting for transport, complete with eye-patch.

“Heh. Disguise your voice all you want, Little Monitor. I know that horrid accent.”

I asked, lacking any manner of diagnostic sense. I’d have added it to the massive System list, but those were also offline.

“There is only a sixty percent chance of them damaging it to remove the arrowhead from inside my skull. I like my odds, and besides, I like the mommy-with-the-eyepatch look.”

“Ha. Yes, when we got to the wall, that was true. If the gods are kind, maybe I’ll fit into her maternity armor in two seasons.”

“Came clean off the shaft when they pulled it loose. They tell me my choices are to have it out, or to die from infection.” She snorted. “I asked why wait, and they blithered on about surgical conditions and germs.”

“So long as the magic doesn’t involve your fingers inside my wound. Knock yourself out.”

I broadcast to the others.

“Do your worst! I am Tang Ning, daughter of Tang Ranko, who is daughter of Tang Aisha. I need no hand to steady me... Oh, crap.”

This is when it began to move, and she uttered, “Oh, crap. Get over here and hold me, you worthless pieces of crud! Get over here and let’s see if you can restrain a true warrior born.”

I didn’t know the spell. I didn’t have my System to guide me. I mean, cripes, I invoked upon my social class rather than anything magical.

But it moved, and she screamed throughout. With sickening noises, it forced itself backward, slicing open her stitches to come into my grasp.

It shouldn’t have worked. It COULDN’T have worked. But I had an arrowhead in my hand that said otherwise.

“Huh.” She said, and passed out.

Meng Wa shoved me, and I moved to a different position near Tang Ning’s head.

Crap. The arrow was out, but had it done more damage? Could I heal any of it?

I tried melding together mana from Nature and Animal, Blood and Sun. My usual recipe for healing mana, with Death pulling off the undesired elements, but the effort failed in a burst of exhaustion.

Good thing I was already sitting down. I didn’t have my usual fatigue gauges, but... I could tell I was somewhere between a third and a fourth.

Okay, there was another way around that. I merged the arcane elements of Earth, Metal, Water, Wood, and Fire together, the Five Elements quintessence. And then I nudged this universal mana toward healing faith. Again, that should have been hard, because of the barrier between arcane and divine.

But I forced the resulting energies into my hand, and held the glowing extremity close enough that it improved Meng Wa’s vision of what she was doing.

“Is that – Miko light?” a soldier from the next squad over asked.

“Don’t be a dolt.” The woman next to him said. “Miko light is only mastered by women. That’s just some manner of magical light that looks like it.”

“I suppose. Pity, though, we could use a Miko with the light here, rather than downstairs in the hospitals so far away.”

“Yeah.” She spat over the wall. “But I’m not the latest incarnation of Luo Jin. We’re simple soldiers, we make do with what tools the Emperor’s universe makes available to us.”

And so, we did. When Meng Wa tied off the stitches and cut free the line, I let the unfocused faith into her wound. The squadron let the bearers who came to pick her up know that the arrowhead was out, she had lost a lot of blood, and needed rest and clean bandages.

I took a look at my new arrowhead.

Lian Zhi did. “Smith’s mark. House of Makoto. Southwest part of the island, most likely. I don’t know for certain.”

When my System came back up, I’d have to use my Bloodline Sense to figure out which of our enemy archers were Pearl Coasters. After all, it would be RUDE not to return such a loyal arrowhead to its owner.

But first... it took little effort to find a mostly intact arrow shaft. A short incantation of Mend Wood, and it was ... well, not as good as new. It wasn’t as springy as it was supposed to be, and the lacquer on it needed to be re-done.

Did I remember the ritual, the one from over a year ago? I almost...

So hard to remember things without my System to prompt me! But why not? I’d done two improbable things tonight. Why not press my... luck...

And THERE, RIGHT THERE. THAT is the danger of magic. Using more and more, channeling the defenses of your mind and soul thinner and thinner, until you couldn’t help but burn yourself.

And blood magic! It was far too dangerous.

But I had remembered the ritual.

I felt the presence of something else, and so I added to the incantation.

the angel responded.

And thus was Tang Ning’s Vengeance enchanted, with only six days before the new moon. I needn’t have worried about that timer, the inmates attacked in force that night.