Varpatau awoke in dark water. It drifted away from the mass of hair they had snagged with their tentacles. The light of the chamber had changed almost to twilight. Varpatau oriented itself, the water writhing like baby snakes just beneath the surface and then they dove deep into the pool. The small creature extended a single thin tentacle above the surface, an unnoticed flexible periscope barely marking Varpatau’s location. A small opening at the tip opened, and a small white eyeball peered towards the other travelers.
Three other figures floated on their backs in the pool, two small ones and a third larger form where Varpatau had awoken. Three wooden staves floated beside them.
The figures began to stir.
The two smaller ones were Trefan and Neesy, Varpatau now knew from overhearing their conversation on the other side of the doorway pool. The raincusi opened their eyes and righted themselves in the water, fluid draining from their short fine fur.
Varpatau noted the furred raincusi had lost all their clothing, but they ignored their own nakedness.
“Are we safe? Is it over?” began the female. Varpatau supposed she could be talking to Trefan or the other figure floating in the pool.
The tip of the tentacle above the surface rotated as Trefan, ignoring his student, snagged his stave and made his way across the shallow pool to the third figure that floated for a moment and was still bleeding into the water.
“Tom!” he called to the human beside them in the water.
Gone was the sleek figure of the black raincusi with the white leg. Instead was a slight, definitely human, old man.
Where his raincusi body boasted a muscular white leg, Tom’s human leg was splotch ansd whithered from disuse. The toes were crimped and horny bones pushed on the thin skin. The ankle was skinny, with narrow tendons and muscle showing, and the knee was swollen and discolored. The skin had ugly bruising and inflammation that spread upwards to his hip.
The old man used one hand to hold his side, and tried to cover his genitals with the other. He groaned.
A huge gash was laid open in his side, matching the location of the injury on his raincusi form. On his wrinkled potbelly, it looked even worse than it did on the raincusi form a moment before, especially with the inflamed skin of the whithered leg.
Tom reached out a mostly hairless human arm, pretty wrinkled, and he gestured. The stave in the water shivered, stretched itself to the length of a cane, and then it sank into the water. It bent when it touched the wooden bottom of the pool and then straightened itself, pushing up to Tom’s hand.
He concentrated for a moment, and the staff widened to a thin board that lifted to support his body like a flotation device.
He allowed Trefan to guide the board to the shore.
“Now hold still,” he said to Tom.
The old man nodded, gasping at the pain.
The pool was the same shape, but they were in a different room, though with similarities to the hollowed burl in the world where they’d just been. For one thing, it was darker, and the walls were not as smooth in their curves.
Trefan tossed his own stave to the wooden wall of the room, where it landed and bent in the middle to softened its own impact. It ended up leaning neat and purposeful, beside a set of wooden steps spiraling upwards.
The board that had supported Tom narrowed and became a wooden cane. Tom moved as if to bring the cane to his other side, and he again gasped in pain.
The elder raincusi reached his hand to Tom and murmured some words, closing his eyes. The wound closed itself as if the tissue were moving backwards in time, leaving the blood and other spilled fluids behind.
Tom heaved a huge sigh of relief. He used his cane to push himself up on the shore of the pool, eying the place where the wound had been. “That was bad.”
Tom looked at Neesy, who was fishing her own stave from the water, as Trefan finished his aid. “Do me a favor, child, and bring me a few towels so I can cover myself and clean up this mess.”
She eyed him critically, checking that there were no more wounds before nodding.
As mentioned before, she wore no clothes, but her short fur was reminiscent of a leotard. Her fur was brindle, gray and white, and covered her entire body, including her face. She was the size of a child, but had the form of an adult. She moved like a confident athlete, a furred curvy pixie.
She strode over to a box, a wooden chest that appeared almost manufactured, because of the wooden handles, yet merged with the floor as if it were made from the same block of wood as the entire room. She lifted the lid and began rummaging through folded clothes, personal belongings and towels.
“What was that thing?”
Tom responded, “I’ve seen it once before. The records in Gravenar called it a blight beast.” He was using the cane to help him climb, groaning, to his feet. He kept almost all of his weight on his left leg, which was old, but not nearly so damaged as the right. He winced when his whithered leg touched the floor. He raised his hand and gestured at Neesy, who handed him the towels.
He placed one end of the towel over his groin and used the other end to wipe the worst of the blood away.
“So it was the same creature that poisoned your leg?” Trefan asked.
“Well, probably not the same creature, but one similar.”
He shook his head at the mess around him. “I’ll have to clean this up before we head into town.” He stepped away from the bloodied spot on the floor, leaning on the cane.
Tom was clumsy trying to keep the towel over his groin and while hanging on to the cane at the same time. He hopped once before he caught his balance on the one leg. Trefan ignored Tom’s struggle as he removed robes from the wooden chest. Neesy realized she was staring and joined Trefan at the wooden box.
After setting his balance, Tom released the cane while he stood on his one leg to use both hands to wrap himself with the towel. The pole stood there, point on the ground, rocking back and forth as if it were maintaining its own balance. Tom secured the towel around his sagging waist, and seemed more at ease.
Trefan continued, “And you think it will just leave after a bit? I ask, because we need to inform the abbot as soon as we can go back. The return of the blight is a serious development.”
“I hope it will leave. When I researched it after it attacked me when I was a kid, the library records described the blight beast as a clever predator, but said it must keep moving to find enough calories to live. It will be somewhere else by the time the doorway pool is ready.”
Tom joined the two smaller figures, each donning children’s terry cloth bathrobes.
While this interaction happened, Varpatau stayed in the water, hidden in the dim light, a smallish wet mass of tentacles, quivering occasionally at what it heard.
“Are you whole?” Trefan asked Tom. “I remember that time when we were both young. There was a lot of pain back then. Are you sure you are okay?”
Balancing on one leg and allowing the crutch to lean against the box, Tom removed some clothes.
“Yes…yes.” Tom muttered in reply. “It didn’t poison me this time, for whatever reason.”
He spoke to them both as he dressed. “We’ll take my truck to Chester Lake and you two can finish your research at the library. I have several chores in town, and I’ll still have to clean up this mess.”
While the two raincusi and the orgate druid moved about the room, Varpatau stayed hidden.
Soon they were dressed. Tom was in loose jeans and a t-shirt that said, “Metzger’s Cafe” and showed a smiling mustachioed man in a chef’s cap. The two raincusi wore their terry robes, Neesy’s with prints of cavorting cartoon horses and emblazoned with the words, “My Little Pony”. Trefan’s was a brown and black Star Wars bathrobe with a stitched print of a bandoleer stretching from shoulder to hip.
The three figures walked to the wooden spiral stairs, and began ascending. The raincusi had to lift their legs high. A rooted ridge acted as a rail for Tom to hobble along using his cane as a crutch and careful steps that allowed him to make the curves, though he was grunting as he climbed, almost groaning.
“You okay there, Druid Tom?” Trefan asked as they went up.
“Just Old Man noises,” he said. “They’ll stop one day.”
Trefan and Neesy shared a glance in the long silence that followed. The three disappeared through a hole in the wooden ceiling.
The water stirred, and Varpatau emerged from the pool. It waited until the voices mostly disappeared before it followed the three figures up the spiral path. The surface of the walls, the floor, even the steps were smooth and polished.
The blackened eyeball moving like a six-legged spider while the seventh appendage pointed up like the tail of a scorpion. It rounded the curves of the spiral stairs.
Varpatau wished they still had the blight beast to ride. Varpatau literally grew the creatures in nests across the Great Tree to allow themselves to move about the unfathomably huge volume of space which the Great Tree encompassed. Blight beasts made useful steeds. Still, with a little luck, they knew it would find many other steeds in the coming months. Steeds were kind of Varpatau’s specialty.
Opportunity always returned, even during hard times, Varpatau thought. Opportunity always returned if one just had enough patience and the willingness to endure the wait. At the top of the spiral, the path went through a low wood exit that open out on shaded grass and dirt. Varpatau emerged from a tree, microscopic compared to the Great Tree, but enormous by Earth standards. The trunk must have been 15 feet wide. The doorway resembled a cave entrance from the outside, made from bark and wood rather than stone and soil. Varpatau recognized the form of the tree, which it had seen on countless worlds. A human would describe it as a combination of oak and maple. The branches extended outwards thick and strong and then curved upwards, forming a tight thick canopy of interlacing arms that overlooked a sheltered area almost hundred feet in diameter.
At one edge of the cleared area was a round yurt, a simple fabric and wood dwelling, that stood proud and anchored in the morning shade. Beside it was a small pickup truck with a topper and a teardrop trailer. Different parts of the truck were different colors, as if assembled from other trucks of the same model. The old man and the two raincusi were heading to the yurt.
Neesy spoke to Trefan. “Master, are we still going to see that lawyer first, and then spend the rest of the morning at the library? Shouldn’t we be doing something about that…animal?”
Trefan responded in a mild tone. “There’s really nothing we can do. We have to stay here until the orgate is replenished, and we won’t find any information about the blight beast on this side of the tree. Neesy, everything will happen whether you worry or not.”
Varpatau watched the figures. All three would eventually become their steed, their beasts of burden, they thought. But not yet. The blast of power Varpatau had experienced in the Great Tree made them cautious. The human was Varpatau’s victim, but not yet.
They stayed low and made their way to the other side of the tree trunk. Once the bulk of the trunk was between it and the tiny circular building, Varpatau sprinted to the edge of the clearing, its gait a cross between a tumbling chair and sliding black mercury. A forest surrounded the large tree, but this one seemed diminished and tiny compared to the place Varpatau had just left. The creature traveled slowly through the forest, though with agility.
After a short distance, Varpatau saw a red fox moving through the trees. The fox did not see them yet, and Varpatau settled low in the shadows that the morning sunshine left on the ground.
The fox, a female, came trotting, quick and alert and passed the shadowed spot. Varpatau leaped, straddled the head of the panicked scrambling fox before plunging a needle claw from one appendage into the back of the vixen’s skull.
It immediately collapsed, allowing Varpatau to adjust the remaining six legs into a black shiny wet helmet that crowned the fox’s head, Varpatau’s body clung to the back of her skull like a too-tight hair bun. The fox stood up, did a quick twirl, and turned back towards the truck and trailer beside the yurt.
Varpatau peered with interest at the vehicle, fox and the parasite rider rising up on the vixen’s hind legs to sniff at the multi-colored panels. It moved to examine the trailer, also made of wood, but for the wheels. Varpatau had memories of thousands of worlds, and it recognized a transport when it saw one. It was time to scout out the local territory of what must be a rich and life-giving planet.
Varpatau was pleased. All the plant life and the complexity of the nerves of the fox it controlled indicated this world would provide ample resources for Varpatau’s plans. So many steeds to ride. So much food to eat. They planned to listen some more to the raincusi and the door druid through the walls of the yurt. Then it would follow them wherever they went.
And soon after that, it would feast.