Born a Monster

380 280 – How to Fall

There is no way to scream in a dignified or manly way while spinning through the air, already with less than a quarter of your health.

And I may have given the impression, quite wrongly, that I was no longer afraid of falling.

That said, from a rational or logical standpoint, I was in the ideal form to survive such a circumstance. Cats, squirrels, and even the mountain hare (sometimes also called a snow rabbit or snow bunny) had various evolutions critical to... not controlling one’s fall, exactly, but of at least managing the conditions of landing and mitigating the impact.

In this particular instance, there was a roof, only one floor down and far, far too close for me to land on. Normally.

I locked my gaze on the far lip of the roof, and activated [Catfall], an ability that only unlocked after slightly more than four hundred biomass of evolutions. With a lithe twisting motion, my body spun a quarter of the way, slowing both my spin (mainly) and my inertia (but not by enough). As the spinning slowed, I began to see by how much I would still overshoot the wooden safety of the roof.

I myself don’t understand the physics of wind resistance, but then neither do cats or squirrels. I just knew in that instant that I couldn’t land where I wanted to.

It took all of three seconds to go soaring over that building, feet reaching out for a ledge that was easily one and a half Rhishisikks away.

The next building, I saw, was also two stories, and more than broad enough to catch me... if I still had inertia to reach the roof, which I did not.

Window? No, there were tiny arrow slits, the cross-hatched ones that allowed crossbow use as well. It wasn’t lined up straight with my angle of approach, nor with the window from which I had been flung. I could see clearly the logs into which I would collide, logs stripped of bark and sanded smooth. I might have been able to climb them, but I saw nothing but a smashing halt and a long fall.

.....

I can’t call what I did a plan; please understand this was all a matter of six or seven seconds.

My shield, my very expensive high-carbon steel shield, broke apart and again before dissolving into metal powder and blowing away on the wind.

I smacked into the wall with sickening crunches and a splat-like rearrangement of my internal tissues.

[You have suffered an ORANGE... a YELLOW critical ... You have suffered 24 points of Impact damage; after ability activation, you have taken 20 points of damage. 4/80 health remain.]

I hadn’t been expecting to remain conscious, and flailed uselessly at the wall, unable to gain purchase with talons.

[Ability has run out of uses per day. To purchase...]

I must have mentally slapped that message twice before it vanished; but I did get activation before the ground met me, shoving my legs so far up that my hip sockets wrenched, and slamming on my butt so hard that my tail ripped.

[You have taken 12 points of impact damage; after ability activation, you have received 8 points of damage. -4/80 health remain. You are at negative health, and will experience...]

[Ability: Stalwart Health has activated. You will remain conscious.]

I got to experience the joys of nearly bleeding out, of losing control of both bladder and bowels, and of being coated in a warm shower of blood that I had just coughed up into the air. I didn’t dare to move, not with nine variants of [Severe Injury: Broken Bone], and encouraged the nearby soldiers not to move me for this same reason.

When the bleeding stopped, I had -25 health, and a warning that I would die if I reached -40.

Thanks, System. That message is so useful delivered when I would normally be unconscious and mostly dead anyway.

I passed the time with uncontrollable screaming and weeping, until it wasn’t. I spent much of the rest trying to control my breathing and find the least hellishly painful position to wait in.

The medical assistant originally arrived with a sheet of burlap for wrapping and dragging a body in. I’ll not dignify that discussion to writing, only to say that I was uncharacteristically rude and demanding and even condescending. In retrospect, that may have been a factor in how long it took him to return with a proper stretcher.

I didn’t bother staying conscious much longer than it took him and two volunteers to move me onto it. Or perhaps more honestly, I released Stalwart Health while on the brink of passing out from the sheer pain in any event.

I woke with a grunt, because someone’s plains kitten was playing with my bandages.

[You have -4/80 health. You have double your Might score in Serious Injuries, and must succeed a Healing check at difficulty rating 4 to regain a point of health daily.]

I wasn’t actually on a bed, I realized, but rather suspended from my wrists and ankles.

For a moment, just a moment, I panicked. I couldn’t be back on the prison island, back in the clutches of the rebel army. But for that instant, I thought that I was.

Of course, I wasn’t. I was suspended low enough that the top of my head rested on the floorboards. I quick flick of my tongue verified more than a trace of blood; I presumed this to me mine.

I was missing a number of teeth from my left side, and the eyeball hadn’t grown back. But from the shattered collarbone up, I was otherwise in pretty decent shape.

“Mwheh.” I said, startling but not dislodging the kitten.

I thought back at it.

Properly speaking, the word-thoughts used were talon belonging to/possessed by the hawk, but I take the liberty here of identifying them as they are known among their fellow Uruk.

I told her-him.

I sighed, picked my forehead off the floor and let it fall back.

I said.

she-he said.

I attempted; I even succeeded. The spirit even gently helped coax that faith into itself, and then was gone, presumably to the other tent. She-he was back soon.

I said.

I lifted my head, plopped it down on the back or top of my left shoulder, depending on one’s viewpoint. I asked, putting my reticule on him.

[Sepsis – Severe]

[Manahuru Fever]

[Head Lice]

she-he exclaimed.

A moon?

I asked.

I gathered my focus, directing my sight toward him. It was when I realized my tail wasn’t just not in the way...

I reigned in my breathing, my heartbeat.

[Severe Injury – Severed Tail], my System confirmed. Great for actual survival, but not so great on providing useful information in a timely manner.

That was my fault for not asking for a full list of injuries, and I didn’t have time just then.

Because as I reached out my Lifeshaper magic toward the body, Manahuru the Fever reached out of his host to grab it.

the healing spirit said, and fled the tent.

Her name was Gangrene, and she turned out to have adopted the surgeon, whose name was Cletus. His wife and two sons had professions of Medic, and his daughter, his youngest, had broken through with three levels of Doctor and one of Surgeon. Needless to say, her parents were proud of her, and her brothers jealous. Don’t ask me how that happens without a university education; a small miracle, lost in the unending stream of patients that a war tended to generate.

Among spirits, gender is more a concept of behaviors rather than a set thing. Some, like the nameless healing spirit in question, fall upon two spots of the male-female personality. Look, it isn’t a physical thing, and it isn’t easily explained in physical language.

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