[Beastborne: Tower of Blight] (Book 6) Chapter 20

Hal awoke to Level Ups he hadn’t bothered to deal with during the day.

Osseochemist reaches Level 5.

You have 15 attribute points awaiting distribution.

Your HP, SP, Spirit, and MP are fully restored.

You have 1 Osseochemist Perk point awaiting assignment.

Some slimes let out squeaking cheers for his success. Even Vorax joined in, mimicking their balloon-like sounds, much to their startlement.

Spooked, the trio of slimes rolled around in circles, bumping into each other and even Vorax a few times.

And then something else emerged from the commotion, using it as cover. A long, yet small, dark shape darted out from a hole in the wall Hal was sure hadn’t been there before.

It moved fast, appearing on Hal’s worktable in a flash. He caught a glimpse of mismatched armor on a ferret-like body before a paw swiped some of Hal’s extra bones.

Rubbing his eyes and yawning, Hal wasn’t ready for so much commotion, much less a little thief stealing some of the bones he had left out overnight.

“Hey,” he said muzzily. “What’re you doing?”

With a dook and a cackle, the maybe-oppa took off, his pilfered goods rattling on his backside.

Hal was up on his feet in a flash, but he was still slower than the oppa who vanished out into the blindingly bright morning. The oppa’s bone-white fur against the snowy backdrop made Hal lose him immediately.

With the cold seeping into his cottage and spoiling what warmth he had managed to cultivate with the fully stoked fireplace, Hal shut the door and let the oppa-thing go.

He shut his eyes, sighed, and pressed his forehead against the door. “I’m going to have to go after him, aren’t I?” Hal asked nobody in particular.

Leaving a soul aeder out there in the freezing cold, no matter that it stole from him, was an unforgivable sin. How Brightsong had attracted another soul aeder was beyond him. Maybe it wasn’t an oppa at all, but that was no excuse.

“Vorax!” Hal called to his familiar.

Strapping on the rest of his equipment, with Vorax nestled around his shoulders in his cloak form, Hal opened the door once more and headed into the freezing, blinding white that was morning time in the Shiverglades.

The first thing he did was look for any tracks, but considering the snow was still falling in thick tufts, any tracks the little guy made would have been immediately covered up.

Grumbling to himself, Hal waded through the hip-high snow. He cycled Dragonfire and used it to warm his body, creating a melted path wherever he walked.

Though it churned through his Spirit, he was able to walk with relatively little encumbrance caused by the snow. He was nearly 10 yards out from his cottage when he heard the sound that made him spin around.

From behind him, he heard his cottage door creak. A tiny flurry of snowflakes fell from the overhanging roof.

“Shashsha,” Vorax said, pointing out that the thief was likely taking another run at Hal’s things. For some reason, Vorax seemed almost… impressed.

“Yes, Vorax, I gathered that.”

Instead of going inside to catch the little thief red-pawed, Hal tried something else. Something he wasn’t sure what he could do, but figured now might as well be a good time to try.

Communicating his intention to Vorax, Hal stopped cycling Dragonfire and stepped into the snow, crouching down slightly right beside the cleared space around his cottage’s door.

Vorax concentrated and, much to Hal’s surprise, he saw the edges of his cloak turn white and speckled with glinting edges just like freshly fallen snow.

Perfectly camouflaged, Hal made sure his hood was almost entirely covering his face. With only a little ridge peeking out where the casual observer might think it was little more than a shadow.

Hal waited, doing his best not to shiver and give himself away.

He had no idea Vorax could do this, but it stood to reason given that his friend was a mimic. Mimicking the exact pattern of snow turned out to be a very easy process for Vorax.

Looking like little more than a misshapen mound of snow, Hal waited for his thief.

***

Snickering to himself, the oppa without a name took advantage of this excellent opportunity. He had bamboozled that fellow real good. That man chased him out into the snow, but the oppa never put a paw into that frigid stuff!

Instead, he climbed all around the building, waited and then let himself in again.

This is as easy as taking candy from a Nelana!

Rubbing his paws mischievously together, the oppa helped himself to the many piles of loot lying around, just begging to be taken by an enterprising young thief like himself. He wasn’t familiar with this Worldshard, so he wasn’t sure what was the most valuable thing to take.

However, it was clear this was an important person. He had an aura of authority and power about him that marked him out as special.

And that meant he had dosh. Cash. Moolah. Cheddah.

He wouldn’t mind if the oppa took a little.

Or maybe even a lot.

It didn’t matter much whether what he took was valuable or not. The oppa had tons of inventory space. You had to when you were always on the run, looking for the next score, searching for that one place to finally put down an oppa stash.

Every time it didn’t work out, the oppa told himself that place just wasn’t good enough for his oppa stash, so he moved on, adamant that somewhere on the horizon would be the Big One.

Always keep moving. That’s how you stayed ahead of the sadness.

One of those slime monsters didn’t like him piling a tower of loot atop his back. The rest of them were plenty scared and spineless. Made sense, considering they didn’t seem to have a bone in their bodies.

There was just so much stuff that the oppa had to stack it as it took more time to properly store it away. The oppa liked the bones the most. They were shiny, strong, and made of good stuff. Very useful for fitting onto his armor and making something new to mix with the old.

Any second now, that fellow could be coming back, ready to take it all back.

The oppa needed it. It was all he had.

Because the oppa had no one.

With an angry face, the frozen slime leapt at the oppa, letting out a tiny blast of ice magic from its mouth.

[Snowley | Lv.4] readies Ice Cube Dispenser.

The ice cubes pelted the oppa, bowling him over. However, owing to the physics defying nature of soul aeder magic, none of his lopsided tower of loot fell off.

Shivering, he scampered away rather than mess with this slime, and made a break for the door.

One of this oppa’s many talents was the ability to find a way out where there was seemingly none. He could break out of all sorts of containment. Not even Pobul Paradise—the big PP—could hold him, never mind that they sort of just let him do whatever he wanted.

So he did exactly that. The oppa slipped into the seam along the door, and a dark cartoonish mouse hole formed around him, tall enough to accommodate his new haul.

As if remembering that the door was in fact a door and had to obey certain rules when something was entering and exiting, it began to open.

The oppa shook his head at the door’s foolishness and stepped out into the freezing cold. He would need to fortify and tinker with his armor more to be able to survive here. That was fine. He was used to being on his own.

Good thing he had all these bones. What else was the point of wandering to new places, anyway? Sometimes the oppa found unexpected things and had to adapt to all sorts of obstacles.

That was just part of an everyday adventure.

Squinting his beady eyes, he searched for any sign of that fellow and his shape changing monster. All the oppa saw were heaps of snow that blended especially well with his own fur.

Feeling confident that he had once again gotten away with it, the oppa stepped out, intending to escape into the blizzard and find another mark.

 ***

Hal cottage’s door cracked open, but the oppa didn’t emerge from the door itself. He slipped out of some sort of pocket hole that vanished as soon as the creature was out into the cold.

The little guy shivered from the sudden exposure to cold, but he wasn’t stupid enough to immediately walk right in front of Hal. The oppa lifted his nose and scented the air.

He apparently found no warning scent of Hal’s proximity, probably because of how cold the blizzard was and the fact that Hal had instinctively positioned himself downwind. Sometimes, it was useful to think like a beast.

As soon as the oppa was in front of him, Hal lunged out and snatched up the wriggling creature.

While Hal didn’t have much experience with soul aeder, especially not oppas like Kow, he did know how to snare a monster.

Try as the oppa might to wriggle and slip through his grip, Hal kept finding another hold until he finally managed to scruff the white-coated thief.

“Coppa dog!” the oppa cried. “You’ll never take me, mate!” Despite what he said, the oppa didn’t make a move, as he was limp and shivering.

Hal hauled the little thief inside where it was blessedly warm after the freezing hail and snow outside. Shaking the snow off his cloak and boots, Hal stomped his feet to try to warm up, but he didn’t dare take his hands off the oppa.

Even though he was surprisingly easy to handle now that Hal held him by the scruff of the neck.

“Start talking,” Hal told him, walking over to the fireplace and pulling up a stool so he could de-ice. “Why don’t we start with a name?”

“I don’t gotta tell ya nothin’!” The oppa feebly struggled, but he remained immobilized by Hal’s grip.

Hal let a little fire fill his eyes, just a tiny bit of corruption that turned his eyes from normal brown to sapphire blue flame and back again. “Don’t test me.”

The oppa stared. Rather than being spooked or intimidated as Hal expected, he got really excited. His tail flailed around like a helicopter. “Cool!”

Hal rolled his eyes. “Listen, I don’t have time to be dealing with this.” He made a motion and Vorax removed himself from Hal’s shoulders and turned into a chest again.

That got the oppa’s guard up. He scrunched his face.

“I would much rather welcome you to Brightsong and have you join us, but if you’re going to steal… well, that I can’t abide, little oppa. We have precious little as it is. We can’t afford to lose anymore. Everybody works here, because it takes every soul in Brightsong to survive against the bitter cold outside. The Shiverglades itself wants to destroy us. We can’t have people stealing.”

“So I’m a prisoner, eh? What do I gotta do to pay off my time?”

Vorax’s open mouth shifted into a tiny cage with googly eyes, complete with a water bottle and shredded wood chips on the floor with a tiny furry hammock.

“See, I knew it!” the oppa said. “You are a coppa dog!”

“I’m the Founder here,” Hal told him. “I can get our equivalent of a cop, but I’d rather not. She’s hurt right now and I don’t want to bother her. She nearly died fighting for us.”

Hal drummed his fingers on his thigh, thinking about what to do with the oppa. He set him down gently on his lap, but still held onto the scruff of his neck.

That seemed to get through the oppa. His little ears flattened, and he suddenly seemed so pathetic, so small. “Oh, well… I’ll serve my sentence. Won’t be a bother to nobody. Just don’t put me out in the cold… please…”

The sudden shift in the oppa’s demeanor was curious. Hal hardened his heart against the piteous voice that chiseled its way through his defenses.

“Oh, you’re a crafty one,” Hal told him. “I think I know just what to do with you.”