Chương 215: Chapter 291: Loth Good, Will Bad

The Devourer of Worlds was freaking out. It had never done so before, so it didn't have the vocabulary nor the prior experience to categorize it as such. This was a new experience. A new, awful experience that it was sure had never happened before in the history of ever. Every fiber of its mind was lit up with terror as it worked double-time to try and puzzle a way out of this. These soldier ants were persistent. They were chasing The Devourer with supernatural persistence. I haven't even eaten any workers in DAYS!

DAYS! The idea that these things could have an attention span longer than a few seconds was fascinating and also terrifying. Up until this point in The Devourer's life, every creature had been interchangeable with every other creature of the same species. If a feathered flying monster failed to eat The Devourer, it would be just as happy to eat another predator, forgetting The Devourer's existence entirely within moments. The same could be said for the other way around.

Prey was prey, and the Devourer had never bothered to think about what the prey was doing before or after. It had never given one attention for longer than the time it took to hunt and eat it. And if it got away, so what? There were plenty of other prey walking around, and maybe the one that got away would stumble back into the devourer's nets. They lacked the 'thinking about things' super power, after all. I should've known!

This was a new application of the 'thinking about things' superpower being levied against it. If a 'thinking' prey escapes, it will then 'think' about the future. About ways to avoid becoming prey. The simplest one would be to remove the predator. They had identified a specific predator hunting their workers, and it was not interchangeable, therefore they were hunting it across oceans of time until that specific predator was dead. How horrifying.

Other predators could not catch these world-sized creatures in their webs, let alone consume them. They were barely even aware of these gargantuan creature's existence as blurry forces of nature that occasionally tore up their webs. The Devourer had risen above that plane of existence and debuted on a stage it had no idea the rules of. Up until this point, it had been pretty sure it was doing quite well. But apparently it made some mistake, and now it was going to die.

Okay, calm down, The Devourer of Worlds thought as it tumbled haphazardly through the forest, moving at speeds that boggled the mind. And yet, they're keeping up! Calm, calm. I know a few things. Devourer's Hoot-brain was telling it that the pale one's hoot-tag was 'Will' and the black one's hoot-tag was 'Loth'.

'wait' caused them to pause for a moment. It was a command to halt. Loth had used it on Will, and then The Devourer had used it again to great effect. It had worked every time up until this point, but The Devourer had no reason to expect it would work every time. It was strange arcane knowledge that The Devourer was using entirely without context. The Devourer was simply mashing every possible option in a desperate bid to buy time.

"Loth, Will, Wait!" The Devourer hooted, the hoot-brain vibrating the air to create the sounds as the two soldiers flanked it. The two soldiers halted, and turned their disgusting ocular cavities towards each other, eyes widening. That was just enough time to tuck in it's mind and jump through a copy of one of the tunnels that 'Loth' had been jumping through to flicker from place to place.

They were nearly identical to the connection The Devourer was using to control its decoys remotely, so with a little modification… The Devourer swapped positions with its decoy.

"GODDAMNIT, it can-" Will shouted before his mouth clicked shut. The 'Will' soldier ant began making gestures towards the Loth. The 'Loth' nodded and began flashing finger-movements back at the 'Will'. The Devourer almost shit itself. MULTIPLE THREADS OF COMMUNICATION!? CODED THOUGHT-SHARING!? I'M SO FUCKED*! *Jason Salazar would like to take this moment to explain that the Devourer did not have the vocabulary or the concept of being 'fucked' yet.

This is merely a translation of how The Devourer of Worlds felt at the time. Okay, think, think! They are persistently chasing me, The Devourer, until I die. Or… The Devourer of Worlds gave a mental gasp. Until they believe that I've died. … I can't tell the difference between any of those four limbed ants. Except maybe the black one, because it looks slightly different. How do they tell the difference between me and another Predator? It would have to be my mind. What if I…

put a decoy mind on another Predator's body and let that get caught? That… might work. The Devourer got to work. Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more. William Oh and Loth the Luminary were left standing in a clearing, flickering Climber-sign at each other because the creature was figuring out spoken language way too fast. It can teleport now. Will signed, giving Loth a pointed look, since she'd obviously given it the idea.

'It knows our names. Isn't that adorable?' Loth signed back as her domain ripped the decoy to shreds.

'I think we've got different ideas about adorable.' Will signed back. Also, how long until it figures out how to kill us?

'At this rate…While fighting it, maybe three days. If we avoid it, a few months or more.'

'Yeah, I thought so too.' Will signed with a frown. This thing was learning abnormally fast, and they needed to kill or subdue it as soon as possible. The only reason it was avoiding them was because it knew it wouldn't win. As soon as it found a way to do that… it wouldn't show any hesitation. At least that was the vibe Will was getting from fighting this thing.

It lacked the complexity that fighting Bakton had, merely seeking the most ideal way to accomplish it's goals, the way an animal might approach it's goal without a hint of subterfuge. That was changing, though. Will could feel layers being added to the creature's thought process, reflected in its behavior. The thing was a cold-blooded killer without even the concept of empathy. It wasn't the creature's fault it was like that, and there was nothing personal to Will's decision to kill or contain it.

It just needed to go, otherwise untold numbers of Climbers would lose their lives to this thing. Plan? Will signed. Good cop, bad cop. Teach it English and then lie our asses off? Loth signed back. Need a cipher. I think it might pick up on a misdirect. Will signed. Sentences starting with a 'T' are treachery? Loth asked. I think I could do that. I'll be the bad cop. Will nodded and they both went back to English so that the little bastard could learn just enough for them to trick it.

"Okay, so it can teleport." Will mused.

"Do you still know where it is?"

"It's zigzagging at high speed, bouncing around between its decoys." Loth said, raising a single black talon and tracking its position with her finger.

"Seems like it's looking for something." Will grunted, then manifested his map and laid it out in front of Loth, sitting crosslegged in front of a war table summoned from the earth.

"Promise me you're going to forget I can do this," Will said.

"Not a chance." Will grumbled, then highlighted fear on the map, following Loth's finger for a moment to isolate The Devourer's specific flavor of fear. Then he removed all the other fear from the map, giving Will a blinking dot of fear on the map that was shifting from point to point in a semi-predictable pattern as The Devourer blinked from decoy to decoy.

"Will, what terrain are you using on the map to track something that doesn't want to be tracked?" Loth asked.

"Nun'ya business, Loth." Will said with a smile, prompting Loth to punch him in the shoulder. In about a minute, The Devourer fell into a regular pattern of blinking between seven different decoys, who were each moving. It was a complex dance, but it was still a predictable one. Aaaand… there. Will mentally grabbed the map, focusing Aspect on a spot high above the point that The Devourer would be.

There was a scream of displaced water and a roar of flame as a beam of light came down from the sky in the distance, scorching a swatch of the forest about a quarter mile distant.

"Is that a cantrip?" Loth asked, eyes wide.

"Yep," Will muttered, flickering through fear filters.

"Ah, damn, it tanked it." The blinking dot of fear began shuffling across the map randomly, the fear redoubling and changing slightly, forcing Will to change his filter to track it better.

"It's fear isn't it?" Loth said, peering down at Will's map.

"You got something that makes it a terrain for your Abilities."

"I told you to forget about it. And stop making yourself afraid of things to see what will show up on the map," Will said, pushing Loth away from where she was looming over the map, gushing fear of pillows.

"Ooh, check this out," Loth said. Hello World! The fear on Will's map spelled out, over several miles. Oh great, Loth figures out one thing and now she's got partial control over my Map.

"It's like you don't even want to catch this thing," Will said.

"Catch? You just tried to burn it to a crisp." Loth replied. I thought we agreed to keep it alive. It's a rare and valuable creature that has gained sapience. We should be trying to talk to it. The lives of thinking beings are valuable and should be respected." Will knew she was saying it aloud for the spider's benefit, and knowing what he knew about Loth's respect for the sanctity of life, it almost made Will crack up. He muscled back the laughter.

The Devourer was listening to them from an earpiece at the edge of the clearing, after all.

"I really don't care either way," Will said, leaning into his 'bad guy' persona.

"If this thing comes to us and says 'Mr. Oh, I'm willing to negotiate,' fine, but if not, I am more than happy to kill it and prevent further loss of life."

"You brute!" Loth cried for the benefit of their audience.

"How will it even know that negotiate means 'to talk about things and reach an agreement' if it doesn't even understand what you're saying!"

"I prefer to think of myself as a pragmatist." Will replied, arms crossed.

"Now let's get this over with."

"Hold up." Loth called, pausing Will.

"There are two of them now…and one just blinked out of existence." Will consulted his map. The one that was afraid had just stopped moving. He couldn't see a second one on his map.

"Here," Loth said, tracing on Will's map with a single shiny black talon.

"The decoy is moving around… here." Will created a bigger lens through his Map and scorched the site from above. A moment later, the two of them flashed toward the charred circle of earth. In the very center of the burned clearing was a tiny, charred spider, small enough that a gust of wind would carry it away. Attached to the mote of charcoal was a tattered web of miasma, partially destroyed by the sheer force of Will's attack.

And a hundred yards away was a mote of fear that 'Will' and 'Loth' would see through the ruse. Will sighed. No lies, Loth signed quickly. Will understood what she meant. It had discovered subterfuge, but there was a good chance it hadn't considered using language to lie yet. They should stick to the truth as they spoke, in order to prevent it from getting wise.

"And now it's smart enough to fake it's own death." Will complained, continuing his bad cop persona.

"I don't think this is gonna work out. Just lemme kill it."

"Noooo…it's so smart. Just let me teach it some language and we can talk to it. I'm sure The Devourer of Worlds can be reasoned with."

"You're saying something called The Devourer of Worlds… can be reasoned with? Will asked incredulously.

"You know, I bet it gave itself that name because it thought the first large animals it ate were entire worlds unto themselves." Loth said.

"A more accurate translation would probably be 'the hunter of things vastly larger than myself."

"Doesn't exactly rolls off the tongue," Will said keeping a mental eye on where The Devourer was hiding.

"Anyway, it's hiding under the tree root over there, and if it doesn't say the magic words, I'm gonna squish it into paste."

"I see it too, but please wait a moment." Loth said, holding Will's arm.

"Think of the amazing things that we could learn from The Devourer of Worlds. I've never seen anything quite like it. I should know more than anyone the pain of being treated like a threat just because of my intelligence. The Devourer of Worlds could be a force for good."

"Nah, I'm squishing it." Will said, rolling up his sleeves and tromping towards the hidden spider.

"Wait!" a voice somewhere between Will's and Loth's cried from the upraised tree root as The Devourer unfolded, revealing itself.

"Mr. Oh. Want I Negosheeeate." Wow, that was fast.

"Only Negosheeate with Loth. Loth Good. Will Bad. Will keep back."

"Wow." Will said.

"Yeah, that's pretty surprising, even for me." Loth said.

"Sure you can handle it?" Will asked. Loth glanced back at him. Depending on whether she started her response with a 't' would be the signal to betray the monster's expectations and gang up on it.

"I would hate to disappoint." Loth replied. So she's going to try and catch it with Master of the Vivarium after all.

"Good luck then." Will said.

"But seriously. Don't teach it anything new before you come to an agreement."

"We'll see. I don't have any control over what this little guy learns." Loth said, walking towards The Devourer. Kinda what I'm afraid of.