Interlude II - Mort’s Banana

  Mort had never been fond of daylight. The heat, the light, the people. It lacked the privacy and comfort of the beautiful night. Nothing about daytime was appealing in the slightest.

  Alas, despite both Kizu and Anata possessing night vision, they both insisted on being awake at the worst possible hours. Completely nonsensical. But Mort had learned long ago that there were some battles not worth fighting. He bet he could win if he wanted to. But it required too much effort.

  So now he crouched, nodding off, as Anata played card games with her friends at a table below him.

  Ever since they returned from Hon, he’d been seeing less of Anata. She now had human friends…or close enough to human at least. He didn’t mind though. He liked Anata, but it was important for her to build a troop of her own.

  He yawned and stretched. Then he let his mind wander over to Kizu. He focused on their bond and saw through his friend’s eyes.

  Kizu was muttering the same twenty words over and over. He looked unwell as he paced back and forth in front of his sleepy summoner friend. At first, Mort worried Kizu might have caught some sort of madness plague. But then he recalled Kizu’s meeting the previous day with the gnome. Kizu was meant to pretend to be something called a ronin, his clan killed by local creatures and stranded on the other side of the world. It was all very human. Everyone knew that humans struggled to get along with others they didn’t know. They were a very tribe based species. While great at expanding to the most inhospitable places in the world, they only managed to do so by killing everything local that posed a threat to them. They embodied both ambition and intolerance to a terrifying degree. Mort believed that alone was how they managed to spread so widely. Well, that…and magic. If more owl monkeys had magic, the world would be a very different place.

  Mort disconnected his sight from Kizu’s and looked down at the children below his perch. They’d moved on from their little game with paper and now gathered their things as if preparing to leave. Anata gripped a rolled-up, ancient-looking piece of paper. They all looked over their shoulders suspiciously. Likely on the lookout for the former Elite healer mage. But he wasn’t around.

  Nobody bothered to look up at Mort’s perch as they left the room. After a moment of deliberation, Mort decided keeping an eye on Anata was more important than another hour or two of sleep. Plus, these children looked as if they might soon be finding themselves in some entertaining shenanigans.

  Mort hopped rooftop to rooftop, tailing the little group of four children. The two Kitsune kept sniffing about and the boy in fox form looked up in Mort’s direction twice, but Mort knew how to avoid predators. These little pups stood no chance at discovering him. Soon enough, the white Kitsune became too preoccupied with snarling at every passerby.

  They exited town and entered into the forest. Which suited Mort just fine. When offered the choice, he far preferred leaping between tree branches more than manmade shelters of stone.

  Then the group’s quiet conversation turned to excited squabbling. Mort heard them mention something about treasure, but something far more important distracted him from their discussion.

  A bunch of bananas grew from a nearby tree. Ripened to a beautiful hue of yellow, while still maintaining that greenish tint. The absolute perfect time to rip into them.

  Mort eagerly jumped over to the tree growing the bananas. A wonderful discovery that promised bliss.

  The moment he touched the green-yellow fruits, they peeled back, revealing yellowed teeth rather than the white mushy insides. Betrayal!

  The teeth attempted to sever Mort’s fingers, but Mort was quick. Faster than any normal monkey had any right to be. With an enhanced reaction speed, his hand narrowly dodged as the teeth clamped down.

  He growled at the faux fruit monster. How dare it. This creature had taunted him with ecstasy, only to snatch it away for its own personal gain. Deplorable.

  The plant monster might not know it yet, but its actions had doomed itself to oblivion.

  Far away in a study room, Kizu paused mid-soliloquy as a wave of wrath nearly knocked him over.

  Mort performed two rapid jumps, one into the body of the bunch of bananas, and the second to a branch nearby.

  Disgusting fluids dribbled down off Mort’s fur. Decidedly not fruit-like in their metallic taste.

  Despite the internal damage, the monster remained functionally alive. Disappointing.

  The peels of the bananas twisted back, the jagged teeth flailing about, seeking whatever had damaged it.

  Mort snapped a nearby branch and jabbed the stick into the monster’s gaping maw. It reeled back, but then Mort smacked its side and its peel opened up in another attempt to grapple its attacker, only to have the branch jabbed into its gullet again.

  He went through three sticks before he finally pierced the back of its mouth and exposed the internal damage he’s left behind with his earlier jump. From there, expanding on that damage was easy.

  The stupid monster sagged, limp and dead.

  Vindication and satisfaction filled Mort. Then he looked back to where Anata and her friends had been. He cocked his head and hummed, curious about where they’d headed off to.

  —

  After an hour or so of hopping through the trees, Mort ended up in a clearing he often visited. It tended to have a good amount of tasty insects.

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  Today though the clearing was already occupied. Kizu’s Tainted pal performed punching maneuvers in the air. He was shirtless and his arms shone bright with his enchanted tattoos illuminating shadows cast by dusk. After only a few months, the boy had built up the muscles of a predator. Every punch sent shockwaves through the clearing’s grass.

  Unfortunately, that dashed all of Mort’s hopes and dreams of a decent meal. No insect still existed in the vicinity. There might be a few dead corpses scattered across the grass. But most of the fun was catching the snack. Eating them was just an added bonus.

  Mort almost decided to leave and return to his search in the forest for Anata and her pals. But instead he hopped out of the trees and approached the Tainted boy.

  He considered leaping onto his head or trying to trip him up. Something funny. But that might not be wise when the boy was practicing punches that could take chunks out of trees.

  “Mort? Is that you?” He lowered his hands as Mort approached. The glow in his arms faded. “Did Kizu send you to find me? Please don’t tell me he got in another fight with Ulric. I know Emilia is meant to be returning to the academy today with a big group of the Tainted.”

  Mort hummed, amused. Kizu had moved on from that mate over to the summoner.

  The Tainted boy must have heard the laughter in Mort’s tone because he relaxed.

  “Okay, then what are you here for? Do you want something?”

  Mort wanted to hunt grasshoppers. But since that option no longer existed, he considered what he wanted and what this boy might be able to do for him.

  Music and punching. Those were the two things that Kizu’s friend was decent at. What Mort needed was someone to help him track down where Anata had run off to. Neither punching nor music helped.

  So Mort turned around and scampered off.

  “Uh, you want me to follow?”

  The boy quickly snatched up his shirt off the ground and chased after Mort.

  Now this was actually quite fun. While he lacked the natural movement and finesse Kizu possessed moving through the forest, the boy was powerful enough to charge after him through sheer force. Even when Mort made it more difficult, like leading him across a creek with mutated crayfish, the boy simply stomped through and punted the creatures out of the way.

  The sun was nearly completely down when Mort heard a familiar voice.

  “Maybe it will help us find Mother,” the Kitsune girl said.

  “I don’t know, Gomi wasn’t all that helpful when we spoke to him about it,” Anata’s new friend replied. “Might not be treasure, but at least this is exciting!”

  Mort leaped up to a tree branch on the edge of the forest and spectated.

  On the edge of a cliff, someone had built a small little marker. Mort recognized it as something humans liked to do when someone died. At first, he’d assumed that they were storing the flesh in the earth to eat later, but of course humans weren’t that logical. It would be one thing to forget about the food supply, but humans still often returned to the markers. Mort had witnessed them revisiting them. Just to…stare and cry. Another strange oddity of humankind.

  This grave marker was special though. Special in that it had the silvery form of a ghost hovering in the air just beyond it.

  Anata’s little gaggle of friends had wisely not chosen to approach the obviously dangerous spirit that floated ominously over the edge of a cliff. Not yet at least. They seemed to be discussing whether or not they should be idiots or be sensible and leave powerful dead magical creatures alone.

  The spirit turned toward them.

  It opened its mouth and Mort tensed, ready to jump into the fray to protect Anata.

  “Oh my love, where are—

  Oh my love, where are—

  Oh my love, where are yooou?”

  It sang in a chilling tone, filled with longing. It brought Mort’s mind back to his days with his sister in the jungle. The simple times, before all the problems of the world had become so real.

  As it sang the spirit’s eyes roamed the forest and rested on Mort for a few seconds before drifting over to its other audience members. Each of them received a moment of her attention as she sang.

  The spirit finished her song. The final notes faded into the night air.

  “Beautiful.” Mort turned to see the Tainted boy gazing at the spirit with watery eyes.

  The children began chittering again. The song put them at ease enough for the Kitsune girl to gain the courage to approach.

  “Do-do you know my mother?” she squeeked. “She’s a Kitsune.”

  “Kitsune,” the spirit said the word softly, almost wistfully. “My cousins. And you.” The spirit’s gaze went beyond the girl speaking to her and over to Anata. “You’re my sister, aren’t you?”

  Mort understood enough about Anata’s family to know that Kizu was the only decent one of the bunch. That meant this spirit was bad news.

  Finally making his move, Mort jumped to Anata’s shoulder. She glanced at him, but didn’t appear too startled by his appearance. He was fully prepared to drag her off to safety the moment this entity turned hostile.

  “Are you it?” the spirit asked Anata. “Did Father find his answer with you? Or are you yet another failure like me?”

  Anata shook her head. She clearly didn’t know.

  “I hope you are. I’d like to see Father again. He taught me to sing. But…there have been so many failures. So many centuries of failure.”

  “Are you like Gomi?” Anata’s human friend asked. “You’re a monster too, right?”

  “Gomi? Another sibling? I’m sorry. I’ve been tied to this location for many years. And no other siblings have sought me out.”

  “That sounds lonely,” the Kitsune girl said.

  “I have the sea to keep me company. See how it washes against the rocks below? The sea brings a constant flow of change. Never once under my gaze has it ever stagnated. Though…I am still happy to meet family.”

  “Were you human like me before you died?” the human boy asked.

  “Human? Died? No. Neither. I’ve always been me.”

  “But ghosts haunt their graves right? That’s a grave.”

  “My soul exists tied to this location,” the spirit said. “It used to be that I traveled the island freely. Many seasons ago.”

  “What’s your name?” Anata asked.

  “Father named me Ray.”

  “Anata.” Mort tensed as Anata took a step forward and stretched out her hand to the spirit. She floated toward Anata, a sad smile on her lips. A sadness that might very well precede danger.

  But the spirit simply took Anata’s hand and shook it lightly.

  Now up close, Mort would guess her age to be similar to that of Kizu. She might also be entering adulthood if she wasn’t some sort of spiritual monster created by a powerful Calamity.

  “So…” The human boy looked around. Then he gave an embarrassed smile. “Is there no treasure here?”

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