Tsaimath
patreon
Chapter 1148
🕑 Added 2025-03-21 17:00:19 +0000 UTC“Mom, you might want to look at that,” Luna’s voice pulled me from Sigmir’s embrace, despite it having been Hypnos who had embraced me. For a moment, I was disoriented until I could shake off the sudden switch from a wonderful dream to the slightly stark reality of our latest shelter. Sure, said shelter was quite comfortable, Earth Magic and the various pieces of furniture we had looted on our way were an incredible combination to make a home away from home, but compared to the wonderful dream? It was lacking.
After grumbling to myself for a few moments, I pushed myself up and walked outside, where Luna was controlling the enchanted pool of Water I had created to allow her access and control over a scrying construct. That way, she could keep an eye out without having to risk herself, something I considered incredibly advantageous. Sure, the constructs had fairly bad senses, at least compared to our own senses, thanks to our high attributes and a few traits enhancing them, but the constructs were relatively stealthy and easily blended in. And, above all else, it was just about impossible to harm Luna through the construct. There were ways, but those ways required advanced magic wielded with a lot of power and skill, a combination I doubted was currently present on Terra.
“What?” I asked after a yawn tried to break my jaw. It was far too early for my tastes, and I had hoped to sleep a few more hours after working a little too long during the night. Trying to make equipment that would let Lia, Luna and Silva fly was no easy feat, and, at the moment, the project was stumping me completely. My own cloak worked largely because of my ability with Wind Magic, something none of them had in spades, as well as my large pool of Astral Power and its fast regeneration. I might be able to make something that let them jump long distances but controlling said jumps or gaining additional acceleration while in the air seemed to be impossible. At least for now, I wasn’t willing to give up just yet.
“Good Morning,” Luna gave me a somewhat amused grin, likely because I must be looking quite frazzled, thanks to my lack of sleep. “One of the Sasquatch managed to get themself into trouble, a younger one. They fell down a steep slope and might have broken a few bones. I’m not sure. But I doubt that they’ll be able to get themself out of the mess, and even if they do, I don’t think their community will be able to carry that burden.”
“Yikes, that must suck,” I managed to keep myself from shuddering. For things like that, Healing Magic was the biggest boon possible. Without the medical infrastructure, Western people took for granted, any serious injury, like a broken bone, could be a crippling, if not fatal, injury, forcing the community you were part of to decide whether you were worth the resources necessary to support an invalid. Just the need to consider whether the resources one had were sufficient to allow an injured person to heal or if they had to be, well, discarded would be demoralising. But to know that a friend, maybe a member of your family, was doomed to die because of an injury you would habitually dismiss as something that would heal in due time would be even worse. The old, pre-change mindset would horribly clash with the realities we were forced to live with. Luckily, my Blood Magic and Luna’s Life Magic were both sufficient to deal with broken bones.
“What do you have in mind?” I asked, curious why she had woken me up for this. I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to go heal the Sasquatch, even if it might be interesting to get a closer look at one.
“You said you wanted to have one to study, right? Why not take one doomed to die anyway? That way, their community doesn’t lose anything, well, other than the trauma of having to discard a loved one, which I doubt they’ll miss,” Luna suggested, making me worry my lip as I considered her idea.
Looking at the scrying mirror, I could see that the Sasquatch was in fairly bad shape. By the looks of it, they had been moving across a ridge above a steep, almost vertical, slope, and it was likely something gave way beneath them, causing a tumble down said slope until a combination of rocks and shrubs at the bottom stopped them. Curiously, the Sasquatch looked to be conscious at the moment, but they didn’t make noise to guide other Sasquatch to find them, as one would expect a human to do. Instead, it looked as if they were trying to extract themself from the mess of rocks, vines and branches they were trapped in but had minimal success.
“What do you think? Is it a male or female?” Luna asked as I was studying the creature from afar, bringing up a frequently debated topic. A few of the Sasquatch, we could easily identify as female thanks to their fairly pronounced breasts, while quite a few others had been identified as male by way of the dangling genitalia visible despite the thick fur. But some others lacked the pronounced breasts or bits dangling below the fur, leaving us a little confused. It was possible that Sasquatch, like some other mammals, only developed actual breasts during their first pregnancy, making them female, or their genitalia might simply be too small to be visible under the fur. It was difficult to tell.
Granted, a big part of that was because we hadn’t tried too hard, even if it was a curious biological distinction, especially as the overall body plan of the unidentified Sasquatch varied widely, leading us to the assumption that both were factual answers.
“We would be able to check,” I admitted, looking at the pool once again, “Why don’t you pull the construct back a little and check if any other Sasquatch seem to be moving in that direction?” I suggested to Luna while I thought about the best way to deal with this situation and which way would glean the most information.
A little later, after getting confirmation that no other Sasquatch were in the area, I decided to extract the fallen one. It would be fascinating to see how nature had apparently managed to make the jump from Shattered to Sasquatch, at least I was fairly certain that was what happened here and compare the natural development to the one that had happened when I turned Lia from a Shattered into a Vampire.
Stealthily making my way over to the area where the injured one had fallen, I kept an eye out, even while knowing that Luna was controlling a scrying construct above me, able to warn me if I missed anything.
The fallen Sasquatch was exactly where it had been when I left, tangled up in shrubs and vines, looking to be in a considerable amount of pain and, from what I could tell, despair. Or maybe resignation, either was possible. Either way, I doubted that rescue would come from their community. So, it was on me to step in and get this fascinating specimen for study.
Given the current situation, I didn’t even try to approach the injured Sasquatch. Instead, I struck from afar, using subtle Mind Magic to put the Sasquatch out, sending them into a fairly deep coma, which would allow me to work on their body.
I kept myself concealed while stepping up, just in case something went wrong, and placed a hand on the unconscious body, extending my Blood Magic into it. What I found made me want to swear, though it also confirmed that the Sasquatch wouldn’t be going anywhere, even if she was found. And it was a female of the species, that much I could readily tell. The breasts simply remained small and inconspicuous until they were needed to nurse their young.
Something that wouldn’t happen to this one, not with the almost completely shattered foot, with numerous broken bones, and the somewhat complicated break in their arm. Without healing magic, this one wouldn’t walk right again, and whether the arm would heal back correctly was questionable at best. Either way, the healing would take months, and she would need to be nursed and fed, which was not something a somewhat primitive hunter-gatherer community like theirs could afford.
Nodding to myself, I first used some Blood Magic, alongside a bit of Ice Magic, to secure the broken bones, aligning them and creating splints to keep them in place while I moved the body. Then, I carefully extracted the body from the mess of vines she had been caught in and placed it over my shoulder, briefly marvelling at the ease with which I could pick up a body easily the same size as I was. My high attributes weren’t obvious all that often, but in times like this, I absolutely loved being superhumanly strong.
Then, with my newest experimental subject secured, I walked away, erasing all traces of our passage with my magic. There was science to be done.
Comments
Jiokuy
I have a running theory that, so in many stories the manasphere is sentient not sapient per se, but possessed of memories, this allows mana itself to be mystical. So my running theory is, the mass culling of the population into shattered was not a design flaw, but a part of the process. And the shattered are what's leftover after the mind-soul? Is violently extracted from the body. Hence part of why there was nothing of Lia's former life there. And these Mind-Souls are / were used to make/shape the formation of the Astral Sea. And incidentally the astral Sea and the system remember the memories of the gestalt. Hence things tend to slide into tropes shaped by the gestalt culture of the soul component of the culled population.
