The Power of Ten, Book Three : The Human Race

They reached the top of the ridgeline quickly, the horse following nimbly enough. As this area was a little rough, the horses followed behind their riders as they made their way along the ridge.

“Chomps, any scents?” Sama asked calmly, touching the Alsatian mix. He growled and whined softly, and she just nodded. “She did not come this way, Papa. Let us go to the overlook, where Cujo is waiting. Chomps, let him know where we are.”

The dog promptly burst out with a long, rising howl that was like a wolf’s, but not. It trailed off, and they all started walking.

From off in the distance, walking down the ridgeline, a rolling ululation came back to them. Chomps barked.

“Cujo is there, waiting,” Sama translated as they continued, and taking up the lead again, moving with the ease of a born forester and controlled grace.

Darren was impressed with her poise and control, and reflected that if she was a Three, it was only to be expected. “So, those Whiskers,” he sighed and prompted.

“To explain them, I must give you some background, Papa. You have heard of the Hags, yes?”

He blinked. “Evil, magical crones? They work with ogres, trolls, and giants, I think? Lots of black magic?”

“Yes. Hags are souls of evil people, being punished by being reborn into new lives, and turned into horrors representing the evil they did in their former life. That is the Hag Curse, manifesting at puberty. With the rise of magic, they have been called out of their hidden valleys, and new ones are being born among humans, the source of most of the tales about them.

“Hags are not meant to endure; they are meant to be killed, their lives as pointless as the evil they committed before and do again.

“Unfortunately, the Hags found a way to turn the Hag Curse against its intent, and that was by creating Hagchildren.

“By birthing a soulless child, a Hag has it devour an innocent newborn babe, and take their place. The soul of that innocent child becomes part of the Hagchild, and will, like its mother, face the Hag Curse when she comes of age... thus damning an innocent soul to Hagdom.” The expression on her father’s face said it all.

“They can be saved by the Grace of Sylune, and having the willpower to give up all magic forever.

“One of these Hagchildren drove herself to great power, greater than anything we have seen on Earth... strong enough to affect the Hag Curse itself.

“This is the Rantha Curseline. As opposed to normal Hags, the Ranthas are the souls of those killed by the actions of great Evil.

“When we are born, we are encoded with the knowledge of our Curseline Progenitor, the first Rantha. So, I have been self-aware since the moment I was born. I have the memories of my Curseline Progenitor at a certain point in time. I am not her, and I know this. I am Samantha Piotrowski, and no other.

“But whoever I was in my last life was slaughtered by a great Evil, and I am afraid I am, we are, not the kind of persons to let that slide. When the time comes, I will look into the past of my soul, I will see how that person died... and then someone is going to pay.”

He heard her knuckles crack as her fist clenched. He had seldom seen his daughter get angry, but there was a sudden terrible light in her blue eyes; it said justice was coming, and someone was going to get a surprise years in the making.

“Is there any chance you’ll get lost in the old you?” he had to ask first.

“No. The impressions I receive is that it will be like watching a movie of someone else’s life, without the emotional investment of my own. Also... I will be a Rantha Hag at that point.”

He paused despite himself. “Uh, that doesn’t sound good?”

“I said she affected the Hag Curse, Papa. She naturally changed not only its target, but its effect. Think of it in mechanical terms of power, Papa. The Hag Curse can turn an ordinary human girl like myself into a seven to nine-foot monstrosity with iron skin and razor nails, stronger than an ogre or troll, fiendishly intelligent, with innate magical abilities, and a talent for witchcraft.

“Consider how much power that takes.” He did, and figured it was quite a damn bit of it. “That’s what we Ranthas get out of the Hag Curse, but it doesn’t turn us into stupid powerful evil crones of black magic. We get a few Class Levels, and we get kind of an evolved Human Class we have to build up over time like any other actual Class. We get plenty tough and strong and all that stuff, but no magic. We never, ever have magic.”

“So, the Whiskers?” he had to ask, pointing out the flaw in that.

“They are like a tool, carved on our souls by the Curse. They still have to be filled up with power and actually made magical.”

“But you had it when you were born!” he protested.

“And I’ve got almost twenty more of them. Guess how many I’ve been able to charge up, Papa?”

“Um... none?” he murmured, trying to remember any other strange stuff, other than her having access to things she probably shouldn’t know...

“And it took me six months to charge up the first one, when I literally had nothing else to do than to sit in a crib and poop my diapers on time.” Sama rolled her eyes at him, which with the Whiskers up, just looked rather damnably cute, and her father had to fight down a smile.

“So... what do you think the odds are that we’ll find another werewolf out here?” he asked her, coming to terms with the fact his daughter was much older than she looked.

“I am totally certain there is at least another one checking on her. I suspect it is the sheriff or his deputy, and I suspect both of them are unannounced weres, which can mean many things.”

“Getting on the bad side of a clan of weres does not sound like a good idea, Sama,” her father said grimly.

“No, no, it does not. And they take family very seriously, too. But our choice is confronting them head on and making their identities public, or staying up all night for decades while they stalk around us, looking for a time to take us out. I’m the kind that would rather have them looking over their shoulder, rather than us.”

“Amen to that,” he agreed. “If this blows up, we might just have to move, however.”

“I know. Fucking weres. They might well chase us off, but they are definitely going to pay for doing so. We’ll be lucky if we get half the price of the farm if that happens.”

“Yeah, everyone will bid low, knowing the circumstances,” he agreed. He was friends with his neighbors, but when a farm was going under, there were no friends, only money and land.

“It might be time for another year of Sunny Corn, what do you think?” Sama asked. That seminal season had gotten them completely out of debt and given them a nice cash reserve that had only grown with the excellent crops in the following years. Natural Alchemy combined with a clerical Blessing of the Fields and not spending so much money on fertilizer, the latest wowza hybrid seeds, and insecticides had really turned the cash situation around. They always had one crop of really good edible stuff, and so the Sunny Crop of the Year was now a hot topic throughout the state.

“That would give us a nice nest egg if we needed to go somewhere in a hurry,” he nodded thoughtfully. “Maybe do a corn shack and really rake in the money?”

“Not a bad idea. Just have to make up some boilers...” she hummed to herself, thinking, but her eyes never stopped moving as they approached the cut to go over the ridge.

----

Chomps barked, and Cujo answered down below. The low point of the cliff here was about fifty feet, and Sama listened to the dog barking up at her. “Alright, thanks! Head back home!” The big mastiff turned around and bounded away back in the direction he’d come.

Sama sat back on her toes and pointed. “She went down here. Those gouges in the stone there are fresh. Cujo says he could smell her pretty much all the way back here. Chomps, how about you?”

Their escort dog barked and growled a few times, and Sama nodded as she stood up. “He only smells her and the dead guy, but multiple times. She’s been here more than once or twice.”

Sama and her father looked over the trees, down at the farm houses just visible in the distance about a mile away in the rolling landscape.

“More than just twice...” Darren repeated, hand on the pistol at his hip for reassurance.

“Yeah, she’s either been planning something for us, or fighting doing something to us. It isn’t like we were wandering up here and being a threat to her for the past couple of weeks. I haven’t been up here on the ridgeline for a good month.”

Being watched from the distance by a werewolf was never a good sign...

“Let’s go find where she laired up, then,” her father murmured, and they led the horses up the draw and over the ridge, and then down the trail towards the forested slopes below, Chomps leading them quietly.

-------

Her camp turned out to be not too far away, about a mile off the service trail that wound along the back side of the ridge, about five miles away. There was a shallow hollow in the rock, which looked as if something had been clawing it up angrily... and a little pop-up trailer underneath the trees, completely hidden from overhead view.

Sama immediately inspected the way in, frowning. “They brought it in with a bigger pick-up, on what looks like a spur of the old logging road, about a month ago, but haven’t been up here with a vehicle since. But, there’s a man’s bootprint over by the black water drain, and she’s been wearing sandals or going barefoot.”

She let Chomps sniff around, and he growled at her. “He says the deputy has been here.”

“Wonderful,” her father murmured, looking around. “You want me to set up a camera here, see if anyone else comes back?”

“Well, I can’t do it, Papa.” She met his eyes, and they both half-laughed at the reality of it.

“Is that part of this Rantha thing?”

“I think so. I can’t seem to master anything that isn’t part of steam age tech or earlier. I completely forget anything I’ve learned about it within minutes, every time I try. There’s a big disconnect between what I want to do with technology items and what actually happens. And no, I don’t know why guns are off-limits, either.”

“Haven’t heard of any Hags using guns, either,” he mused.

“That could well be it. Amazons don’t use them, either.”

“They don’t?” He blinked as he looked around. “Huh. Never noticed...”

“They can, but they’ll set them down in favor of a bow and arrow at first chance, and so they don’t carry them. But, they can use grenades, and they can sling-chuk them over 200 mph and pop you in the head with one at a hundred yards. They make some variable-length fuse models just for them.”

“Really? Never thought you’d be interested in Amazons...” He suddenly blushed red at the ears. “Uh...”

“Amazons and Hags tend to grate on one another. We come from different ends of the Warrior Woman spectrum. Amazons of Eryl are particularly annoying. It doesn’t help that most Hags are things eminently worthy of being despised.”

“Where do you think I should put it?” he asked, holding up the camera.

“Over there.” She pointed at a cluster of bushes up and off the trail. “Stake it over there, center it on the front half of the trailer, take a couple shots to confirm it, and we’ll turn it on when we leave.”

She sent Chomps down the trail to watch for anyone coming, huffed and stared at the door, and Darren watched her as she strode forward grimly, undid the catch, and stepped inside.