KeyForge: Tales From the Crucible: A KeyForge Anthology by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Science Fiction, Collections & Anthologies, Action & Adventure, Media Tie-In, Fiction
Publisher: Aconyte
Published: 2020-09-01T00:00:00+00:00

Useful Parasites

M K Hutchins

Taryx had once removed a broken tooth from the maw of an æmberdrake that could swallow him whole. He’d set the legs of ether spiders. He’d even treated an entire school of piranha monkeys for stomach aches after they’d devoured a pack of cyber rats – flesh, fur, bolts and all. He did dangerous, difficult, complicated things all the time.

And yet something as simple as gathering the motivation for a morning shave seemed impossible, however much he needed it. Digging his root-like toes into the bank, he leaned out over the water. He didn’t just have lichen shadowing his face; moss grew in tufts on his bark-like skin. If he left it for a week, it’d cover his face and start moving down his neck and up his forehead. Still, he wondered if he shouldn’t just go back to bed and deal with it tomorrow. It wasn’t like he planned on talking to anyone today.

A crash broke the quiet of the forest, sending a flock of screeching sparrows into the sky, where they lived up to their name. Taryx spun around. Some creature was almost certainly hurt. And it would need his help. The melancholy that usually weighed him down dissipated as he catalogued what kind of creature it might be and what treatments it would likely require. Taryx put his obsidian shaving blade in the pocket of his cotton robes and ran. His two dozen long, whip-like toes were perfect for sprinting over uneven terrain.

In under a minute, he covered a half mile of ground. There, on the other side of the woodchip bed where he grew sky cap mushrooms, he spotted a twitching wingtip. Cresting the woodchips, he stared down at a being he’d never seen before. Its purple-magenta spherical body and tangle of black tentacles looked like something a school of piranha monkeys would cough up. Its body couldn’t be much bigger than that of a jewel-footed heron’s, though its thin tentacles looked like they might be nearly as tall as himself.

He had absolutely no idea what it was. Taryx could hardly claim to know about everything that lived in the Lesser Uncanny Forest, let alone on the whole of the Crucible, but his stomach still sloshed with unease. There was something deeply unnatural about this one. The wrongness of it seeped up through his toes and oozed into his gut, like he’d rooted himself near a toxic gurgle pool.

It pathetically twitched a tentacle and let out a whimper of pain.

Unnatural or not, Taryx’s patients had rarely lashed out at him, however huge or ferocious. If a creature had the instinct to find Taryx’s house for help, it had the good sense not to gobble him up afterward.

Taryx approached slowly. It was obviously injured, with an oozing cut on its round body. “Hello. I don’t know if you can understand my language, or any language, but I’m here to help you.”

The thing reached towards Taryx with the feathery end of a long, tangled tentacle.

Taryx flinched back, then curled his toes in shame.

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