“... Seven. Eighth!” Olkaz grinned widely, showing a mouthful of crooked tusks and immense tombstone teeth. The ogre had to stop at ‘eighth’ because that’s how many fingers he had left on his scarred hands.

“And what comes after eight?” Morghul asked.

The ogre paused. His brow furrowed up with intense mental constipation.

“Eleven?”

Morghul sighed. He had asked for a fighter who could count to three, and eight was more than three. In fact eight was more than double three.

“Aye, I suppose eleven does come after eight. You’ve got the qualifications for the task, my friend, and you’re welcome on my team.”

He offered his hand, which was quickly enclosed in the grip of an enormous meaty paw. They shook, comrades in arms.

The lamprey was making short work of my food chain. It moved with writhing, sudden jolts, using its long tongue and latching jaw to drag vermin from the cracks in the walls where they tried to hide. Its tendrils out, landing whipcrack blow that stunned its prey. Within the cramped environment of the tunnels it was an apex predator.

I suppose I should have admired that.

I couldn’t bring myself to find anything admirable about such any ugly, sluglike thing.

As I watched it encountered two of my vipers in the swampy waters. The fight was brief, brutal. A lashing tendril struck the viper that approached from the front, knocking it down, while the one that came from the side lunged at the lamprey’s flanks.

The viper’s teeth struck home but slid against the lamprey’s slippery skin, failing to pierce through, and with a sudden lurch, the vile slug-fish rolled sideways, dislodging the viper. It curled itself into a slithering knot and lunged before the snake could recover, and I mentally winced as I watched green scales vanished down that horror of a mouth.

The second viper, alone, could do nothing. It turned to flee into the water and the squirming horror chased it down. I couldn’t watch.

Aurum was on his way, moving silently down the passage between the two sides of my domain. I decided to tilt the scales. Silently, I began to hollow a space behind the lamprey, leaving a thin barrier of stone while eating a pitfall beneath.

And then it was time. Aurum’s head cut through the waters as he swum forward. I frightened a family of rats from their burrow, sending them darting through the lamprey’s sight.

The greedy creature went for the bait and lunged, a frantic spasm of motion that twisted and kicked through its long body. Aurum was precise and deadly- he lunged in the moment it caught a rat and its jaws were briefly occupied, coiling his body and leaping, jaws outstretched.

His fangs sunk into the beast’s eye. It let out a hideous, wet sound of anger, the rat’s bloody hindquarters dropping from its jaw. A tendril whipped out to smash into Aurum’s skull as he released his grip on the mangled eyesocket. The blow smashed him back into the water, briefly stunned.

I had no voice to scream and no hands to curl as the lamprey dived after him-

And he neatly curled away from its seeking jaws, only feigning injury. His teeth sunk into its side again, at the root of one tendril, yellowish blood billowing into the swirling mud of the waters as bubbles roiled to the surface. He clung on now, as the beast thrashed and rose and tried to throw him.

I could hardly follow the entanglement of bodies as the lamprey rolled over and over. Aurum let go suddenly, slipping away. He coiled up and spat a stream of venom from his throat as the beast tried to chase him, unable to catch up with its clumsy, lurching motions; Aurum was as fast as an arrow and as agile as a fish.

The poison landed against the beast’s remaining eyes on its wounded side, sizzling into caustic bubbles as it burned and the creature let out a whining scream.

Aurum kept to its blind flank now, the creature’s circling one another, the lamprey trying to hold him in its sights.

I wanted to believe it was over, but it would only take one good, stunning hit, and the larger beast would win in the heartbeat it took Aurum to recover.

He lunged again, grabbing the tendril in his jaws and rolling to throw his weight against the wound he had made earlier. With a wrench and a tear of flesh the whole limb was ripped away. The lamprey twisted and its remaining tentacle flashed through the air, catching Aurum beneath the jaw.

He reeled back, the lamprey coming after him with its slurping mouth wide. A kick of his tail and Aurum leapt back, evading the beast as its slimy bulk crashed down, and now the whole battle began to turn in our favor.

Aurum was in the blindspot now, harassing the beast’s sides with lightning-fast bites, withdrawing and slipping away each time the lamprey tried to turn and chase him. He was smart enough to hold position on the beast’s blinded flank and wear it down with repeated small wounds. I could see the venom starting to work, slowing its reactions.

Sensing its own death, the lamprey suddenly lashed out with its tail. In the moment Aurum darted back it turned and writhed for safety of a nearby burrow.

And it crossed directly over my trap.

At my command the ground dropped out from under the lamprey. It fell into a steep pit, and suddenly the mucus membrane that armored its body became a hindrance, making it too slippery to climb, rebounding off the walls as it frantically tried to escape.

I planted explosive blooms into the walls, watched them swell to bursting as the beast fought to climb out…

One by one, the fungal blooms detonated and tore the lamprey into bloody, twitching shreds.

Morghul was in a sour mood as he stomped through the low town. His first choice for a thief was dead. Two-Fingers had been hanged two months ago.

Aye, that was the way with them. The good ones got cocky and got themselves killed. The bad ones just went right to the second part. The world was at a loss for old thieves.

As he walked along, a young sprog shot past, bumping against the old woman in front of him for a split second.

Morghul stepped forward, checking the young man hard with his shoulder while his hand shot out to seize the pickpocket’s wrist. The thief sunk to the street in agony, holding back a scream as the dwarf’s rough hand twisted his wrist bones to the breaking point. The stolen coin purse dropped from his fingers.

The dwarf caught it on the toe of his boot and kicked it up into his hand with a jingle of coins as he let the young fellow go. It was a rough lesson, but one that would keep the sprog out of trouble for a few weeks while his hand healed.

“I believe this is yours.”

He was surprised that the old woman looked distinctly ungrateful. She was a tall, thin old biddy, with her hair back in a bun like a greying librarian. She took the purse back without the hint of a smile. “So was the kid. I was training him.”

She took the purse with her left hand, because her right ended in a stump. The surest sign of a thief.

“Oh?” Morghul’s eyebrows went up. “Say, how are you with your left hand?”

“I don’t do that kind of work, old man.”

“Aye, nothing like that. I happen to be putting an adventuring crew together and…”

Aurum had refused the emerald Core.

I offered it to him and he simply turned his head aside, slithering back to wrap around his egg and sleep the battle off. As he slumbered a hazy aura surrounded him. Thin ribbons of white light formed in the air around him and poured into his body until his scales glowed too brightly to be seen except as a brilliant silhouette.

One of my creatures had finally absorbed enough Mana to evolve.

I would start with the obvious. I was not choosing Lamprey Serpent, and I was not choosing Lesser Hydra. I would hope the first is obvious, and as for the second, I had the feeling I would be able to choose more powerful options in exchange for the bloodline as Aurum matured.

Ophidian was out for much the same reasons. In the end, the choice was rather straightforwardly King Cobra. The cannibalism was unseemly but the ability to distill their venom was precious.

As I made my selection, a thin barrier of orange-gold light surrounded Aurum. It was like he was trapped in amber, his darkened form within starting to shift, to blur at the edges and change form.

And now it was my turn. I had chosen my Attunement but not my bonus for levelling. Since I had yet to use the Schema slot I had chosen last time, I demured on taking a fourth, and while Mana expansion continued to interest me it wasn’t something I could regularly use until I began to devour larger prey.

So it was time to see how much I'd offended luck and the gods.