What About the Monsters? Part 3

25 years ago

“What about the monsters, mama?” Pelone Tavish looked up from the book she was transcribing. She’d let herself get absorbed in the work and it took a moment to remember where she was. She blinked and looked around. The question had come from a child in one corner of the room. Her son Harlon sat in a simple wooden chair next to the bookshelf in her office with a book that weighed more than he did open on his lap.

“What did you say, sweeting?” she asked. The boy cringed at the name. In his six short years, Pelone’s son had grown serious and stern. Soon he would ask his mother to stop using it. It broke her heart, but Pelone knew she would acquiesce without argument. So long as he didn’t ask her about his father. “Monsters?” She prompted him to forestall that conversation a little while longer.

“Yeah,” Harlon said, forgetting his indignation. “What about the monsters?” Pelone’s father had told her throughout her entire life that she had the patience of a saint. She tried not to think of her earnest, inquisitive, though more than a little... distracted son as a test of that patience.

“What are you referring to?” she said.

“From when we were talking about being nice to animals before.”

“Before?”

“The day before yesterday.” Pelone thought back. She didn’t have to have more than one conversation about being nice to animals with her sons for the lesson to stick, thank the Gods, but Harlon could take messages from her lectures that she had not intended to send.

“Ah,” she said, finding a potential match from her memory. “You mean about whether or not they have souls?” He nodded and his face shone. Harlon couldn’t always get his point across, but Pelone had taken many confessions from people under the influence of mind-altering substances. That conversation had gone on for nearly two hours, and Harlon had paid close enough attention to never ask the same question twice.

“Are you asking if you should be nice to monsters as well as animals?” she asked. He cringed and looked away, embarrassed.

“Not exactly,” he said tentatively. He paused for a moment to more accurately phrase his question. “You said everything in the world was created by Graythor.”

“That’s right,” Pelone said. She would make a priest of him yet.

“And animals don’t have souls, but they were still created by Graythor so we should still be kind to them.”

“Very well said,” she smiled. “So where do monsters get involved?”

“Do they have souls?” Harlon asked. Pelone opened her mouth to say of course not, but she hesitated, realizing that her son had just asked her the most philosophically dense question she’d ever been asked. She was reasonably certain most “monsters” didn’t, but there were some things out there that used to be human. On top of that, while she was monotheistic, Pelone was well aware that there were other gods in the Continuum besides Graythor, and it was reasonable that they all created their followers' souls. Yes, Graythor had created humanity, granted them sapience, and given them souls, but humans weren’t the only “people” out there, nor was Graythor the only god creating them.

Pelone looked at her son. Young Harlon radiated curiosity. Pelone decided on a different approach.

“What is a monster?” That gave the child pause for thought, but as Pelone predicted, he thought he already had the answer to this simple question.

“They’re... Monsters,” he said unconvincingly. “They hurt people and they do bad things.”

“Yes, but what are they?” Pelone asked, again putting italics into her words. “Are they a kind of animal?”

“Some of them are,” Harlon said, gears turning in his little head. “Like the giant frog granddad saw. That was like an animal.” Pelone nodded. She would play the shepherd to her son’s train of thought.

“Yes, the Broga is basically just a giant frog with some strange powers. I would say that the same rules that apply to ordinary frogs would also apply to the Broga.”

“But not all monsters are like that,” Harlon countered himself.

“No, I suppose not,” Pelone said patiently. “What other kinds of monsters do you know about?”

Harlon’s face lit up and Pelone worried that he would lose sight of himself in a more interesting topic. Good, she thought. She would rather he focus on blood thirsty monsters if it meant he didn’t focus on the empty seat at their dinner table or ask her why they had to live at the temple now.

“There are dragons,” he began with his current flavor of the week interest. “They look like they would be animals, but everyone says they’re not. They say they can talk and do magic and they’re smart.”

“I'm not sure that I would call a dragon a monster,” Pelone said, earning a curious look. She explained further. “Dragons can be either kind or cruel. History has given us plenty of examples of both. They're like humans, or elves or orcs; they all have the potential to be good or evil.” Harlon wasn’t convinced.

“But… if they're not monsters, then what are they?”

“They're dragons,” Pelone said simply. “Dwarves are dwarves, halflings are halflings, cows are cows. There's no such thing as a ‘monster’, not really. You can't go out in the forest and happen upon a clutch of monster eggs in a monster den with a family of monsters living inside. It's a word that people use to describe actions more than anything else.” The carefully blank look on Harlon’s face told her that that was too much. He was trying not to look confused.

“Let me ask you this,” she said, pulling his mind back from the abyss with a change of subject. “Do you know what Graythor has to say about dwarves?” Harlon shook his head. As it happened, and as Pelone knew full well, Graythor didn’t have much to say on the subject of any non-humans, and the oldest texts in his temples tended to describe orcs and demon born as monsters. The temple the Tavish family followed was far more modern, thankfully.

“He says that he walks with their gods as brothers,” she said, loosely quoting The Book of Rebirth. This updated holy book was written in the final days of the Nightmare War, and as such was more focused on peace and harmony than the Kindred of the Gray had been in earlier years.

“He says that while his children certainly have no place worshipping the dwarven gods or the Nameless God of the Orcs, they are still to be respected, as those gods expect their followers to respect Graythor.”

“Right,” said Harlon cautiously, “but people don’t think of dwarves or orcs as monsters.”

“They used to,” said Pelone lightly, earning a look of incredulity from her son. “My son, Nightmare War was more than just a name, it was a nightmare. Everyone in the world was part of it. It wasn’t like those foreign wars the Acredians are always getting involved in, that the travelling merchants are always bringing news of, it was happening everywhere. Gods and demons walked Gadria, giving and taking power to dwarves, orcs, elves and even humans, who then used that power to commit atrocities. Back then, everybody was a monster to somebody.” Some people still are. She didn’t dare say that part out loud. “But things have gotten better now,” she said instead. “The point is that we used to think of other people as monsters because of what they were doing. Maybe it started because of what they looked like, I know people can be terrible about that, but it is action that makes a monster, not birth.”

Yes! Pelone thought as she watched Harlon descend into thought. She hadn’t been a priestess for long, she’d only begun working as an acolyte after Harlon’s younger brother had been born. After she had been made a single parent. Pelone had only been formally anointed with the rank of Lower Priestess about a year previously, and like many who are new to theological professions, she often worried that her messages were misinterpreted. More so with her sons, who tended to think more literally. Harlon spent so long digesting this new information and had nearly allowed Pelone to return her thoughts to her work before throwing a stone into the still waters of her life.

“What about the monsters that killed dad?” he asked suddenly and with all innocence. Pelone’s breath seized in her chest.

“Excuse me?” she said after forcing herself to look up at him. Harlon sensed her tension and began to stutter.

“Just... Would the monsters that killed him...” he trailed off and began to blush.

“Should we hate them?” Pelone finished for him. He looked up at his mother, and she was not shocked to see tears filling his blue eyes.

“Grandad said they were monsters.” Pelone’s heart ripped in two. Harlon had been a toddler when his father was killed. Pelone was heavily pregnant and in another town at the time. Two days before she was expecting them to return, a traveler on his way to market found Harlon wandering about, all alone in the forest. An expedition from the local constabulary had been sent to the nameless hamlet they’d been visiting, and returned with the news that everyone in town, including Harlon’s father, had been torn apart by some kind of clawed monstrosity. The culprit had turned out to be a mad sorcerer, living on his own in the woods, who had been of the mind to enact revenge over some perceived slight by the towns people. He had summoned demons from the abyss to murder everyone present, and while Harlon’s father hadn’t escaped his grisly fate, Pelone thought it would always be a mystery how her child had managed not only to escape, but to be found completely unharmed less than a day after the event.

Harlon was unaware of most of this, and would remain so until his death, if Pelone had anything to say about it. She looked into his sorrowful, innocent eyes. Would it be better for him to think that way?

“No,” she decided, trying to keep her voice from breaking. “Your father was killed by a man. He may have sent monsters to do it, but your father was killed because an evil human man sent monsters to kill other people, and if I knew anything about your father, I know that he chose to give his life protecting them.” Tears had begun to stream freely from Harlon’s face. Pelone rose from her desk and knelt before her son to wipe the tears from his cheeks.

“Your father was the best man I’ve ever known,” she said with all of the honesty in her soul. “Our world, our lives are lesser for his loss and there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t wish he could be with us. But he’s gone to the Lands Where the Sun Sets now.” Harlon was nearly sobbing now.

“He didn’t have to go to that village,” the little boy cried. “He only went because-”

“No!” she said sharply. Evidently her father had told Harlon the purpose of that visit had been to invite his paternal grandparents to the temple to attend the birth of his brother. “This is not your fault, and it is not your brothers. As I said before, your father was killed by a man. Not by monsters, not by demons and certainly not by you.” She wrapped her arms around Harlon and held him tightly while he cried.

“I hate them,” he wailed into her shoulder.

“Who do you hate?” she asked, pulling his face back so she could look at him. “The sorcerer?”

“Monsters,” he muttered simply. “I know you said it was a man, but he was a monster. He was a monster, and he killed my daddy and I hate him!” Pelone pulled him close again, letting fresh tears stain her robes. She didn’t say anything while he cried. Indeed, she wouldn’t have been able to say anything for several minutes without bursting into tears herself.

“Do not let these feelings win, my son,” she said eventually. “Do not let this hate fester in your heart. The sorcerer was put to the sword when he was found, and he will do no more harm to you unless you let this hate grow. You must learn to let this go, Harlon. We must honor your father’s memory and we must never forget the man he was, but we cannot let his memory be sullied by more pointless hatred.” Harlon dried his eyes and looked at his mother.

“Even monsters.” she said, guessing his next question. “Hate will lead you nowhere but destruction, my son. Even hatred for monsters.

…

Even monsters. The words of Harlon’s mother echoed in his memories as he watched the kelpie’s distress in one of the Broga’s many stomachs. The creature screamed in anguish as the pool of acid it was standing next to seemed to have reached out of the pool and wrapped around one of the kelpie’s back-facing hooves. An unfamiliar echo of terror edged the monsters voice as it struggled to understand what was happening, but Harlon knew full well. One of the creatures that was able to happily coexist within the stomachs of the broga, helping it digest prey, were carnivorous ooze. The formless, translucent piles of slime were as corrosive to the touch as a dragons stomach acid. Many of the acid pits in the Broga’s many stomachs were actually just piles of these invisible hunters, waiting for something alive to wander by.

Harlon was conflicted. On the one hand, the kelpie was innocent of the crimes it had been accused of. The son of a priestess of Graythor could pick out a holy weapon a mile away from a pile of mundane weapons, so Harlon was confident that the Baggodh arrows the tinkerer had sold him were real. But since they didn’t kill the kelpie, he knew that the monster had never consumed human flesh, even before this incident. On the other hand, it was a thoughtless monster. Even if the tinkerer had been wrong about these most recent killings, the book he’d shown Harlon was genuine, and the book said that kelpies were remorseless killers. And yet...

Oozes were another story. Like mimics, they could all range wildly in size, but this one was at least four times the size of a horse. Or a kelpie. It was obviously well fed. Amorphous, translucent flesh from which the blob can extend and retract thin tendrils of slime. Dexterous and corrosive, the ooze could form rudimentary tentacles to ensnare and drag living prey to be digested within the center of mass. Just as was happening to the kelpie now. The inky black monster screamed its throat hoarse and scraped its back-facing hooves against the flesh of the stomach in a desperate bid for escape. The tentacles burned the kelpies flesh where it wrapped around it’s lower half. The flesh beneath could be seen through the slime burning. Harlon thought he could see tiny morsels being sucked from the kelpie and into the center of the ooze.

Suddenly, a golden streak rang out in the noxious gastric air. As it struck the ooze at the point where the tentacle gripping the kelpie met the main mass, Harlon realized that he’d fired a Baggodh arrow at the mindless creature. Instantly, slime transmuted into a golden powder. The ooze became ash faster than the blink of an eye and a golden light began to grow from within. The kelpie tumbled forward with stored momentum and turned around to see the soft eruption of fine ash in a dissipating holy aura. Then, it looked up. Its forward-facing eyes locked with Harlons. The mercenary lowered his still extended bow arm and held his breath. He got the impression that the kelpie was doing the same.

After a few tense moments, the kelpie swung it’s equine head to look around. This stomach, which no longer held an acid pool, had two large tunnels slowly gliding across the wall. The kelpie chose one and began a slow trot away from Harlon. Harlon released the breath he’d been holding and leapt down into the chamber. He looked down the esophagus that the kelpie had taken, then he looked down the other. Both were identical. Both probably lead to more stomachs with more oozes and God Above knows what other unfortunate monsters dying in them. Harlon shouldered his bow, leaned back and gave his spine a good crack. He took the tunnel that the kelpie had ignored.