Knocking

Hunger Clock: 91%

My sore leg still didn't want to bend all the way when I woke up, so I gave it the morning. I sat in the root knot and thought, and when I'd thought enough, I started testing.

If the Loamback found its food by feeling footsteps, then it didn't really know what was walking. It only knew that something was. A frog hopping and a rat running and a mantis walking would all feel like the same thing to it, a knock on the ground. So maybe I didn't need to walk on the mud at all. Maybe I just needed to knock.

I picked a spot where the roots of the big tree ran out into the soft ground near the stream and ended. I crept out to the very end of the last root, as far as the wood would take me, and kept my feet on it. Then I reached down with the back of my right scythe and tapped the mud. Once. Twice. A pause. Three quick taps, like small feet.

Nothing happened. I tapped again, and then again, and kept at it for a long time, pausing between, feeling through the root for anything moving. I was starting to think I'd gotten it wrong when the pressure came.

It came up from the direction of the stream, slow at first, then faster. I kept tapping. When it was nearly under me, I pulled my scythe up and went perfectly still.

The mud burst open just past the end of my root, right where I'd been tapping, jaws snapping shut on nothing. The Loamback hung there half out of the ground for a moment, turning its head, looking for the frog that wasn't there. Its gold eyes passed right over me, sitting still on the wood. Then it sank again.

I waited until the pressure was gone, and then I clicked, very quietly, for a long time.

It worked. I could call it.

It reminded me of a man I used to work with, back in my old life, who answered every email within a minute of it arriving, no matter what it said. People figured that out fast. If you wanted him out of a meeting, you sent him an email, and he'd stop talking and start typing. He never seemed to notice he was being moved around. The Loamback was like that. It was strong and fast and much higher level than me, but it answered every knock.

I did it twice more that day, from different roots, to be sure. Both times it came. Both times it came up exactly where I'd knocked. The last time it stayed up a little longer, sniffing at the air, as if it was starting to wonder. I let it go after that. I didn't want it learning my trick before I'd finished learning it myself.

In the afternoon, I went down to the stream to drink, and the heron was there.

I knew it right away. It was standing in the shallows below the collapsed bank, tall and gray, its neck folded in an S, and there was a long, dark scar on the side of its face, just below one eye. My scar. I'd given it that.

[Sense]
Target: Spear Heron ~ Lv.7
Threat: High

It saw me at almost the same moment. It didn't fly off this time. It took a long step toward me, then another, and pulled its neck back.

I'd scared it off once, but that had been luck as much as anything, and it seemed to know that. This time it was ready for me. I backed up the bank with my scythes high, and it came after me, out of the water and onto the soft mud.

That was when I had the idea. It was a mean idea. I liked it.

I turned and ran, but not toward the trees. I ran along the bank, across the soft ground, stamping my feet as hard as I could, and the heron followed on its long legs, its beak stabbing into the mud behind me. Every step it took was a knock on the ground. Every step was so much heavier than mine.

I reached the end of a root and jumped onto it and spun around.

The heron stopped on the mud just in front of the root, neck drawn back, aiming. Its yellow eye was fixed on me. It didn't feel what I felt, coming up through the wood.

The ground opened under its feet.

The Loamback came up with its jaws open and closed them on the heron's leg. The heron screamed and flapped, beating the air with its huge wings, hauling itself up and away. For a moment it was being pulled two ways at once, the lizard dragging down and the bird pulling up, and its long neck was stretched out right in front of me, held still for the first time.

I didn't waste it. I came off the root and hooked both scythes into its throat, and I put every point of Might I had into it.

[Kill] Spear Heron ~ Lv.7
XP gained.

[LEVEL UP]
Nestling Mantis ~ Lv.8
All stats +3
Skill points: 4

I didn't stay to read it. The heron went limp, and the Loamback felt it go limp, and it started to pull it under. I let go and jumped back onto the root as the mud swallowed the heron's leg, then its body, then its long wings, folding them in like a closing umbrella. The last thing to go was the head, the scarred side of its face turned up toward me. Then the ground went smooth, and the pressure moved off slowly toward the stream, heavy now, carrying its meal.

I stayed on my root and shook, and this time it wasn't fear. I was clicking so hard my whole body shook with it.

I'd used it. I'd picked where it came up, and I'd used it to kill something that had tried to kill me. It had done exactly what I wanted, and it had no idea.

That night, back in the root knot, I spent my points. I thought about the stone scales and how my hooks had slid right off them, and about the claw in my side.

Nestling Mantis ~ Lv.8 ~ Mantara
Might 29 | Agility 35 | Shell 28
Sense 32 | Will 29 | Insight 30
Skill points: 4

Might 29 → 31
Shell 28 → 30
Skill points: 0

Hunger Clock: 89%

I lay awake for a long time after that, looking down at the place where the roots ended and the mud began.

I could call it now. I could make it come up wherever I wanted. That was half of what I needed. The other half was making it come up somewhere it couldn't get back down, and keeping it there long enough to find a place on it that bent.

"Tomorrow," I thought, "I start building."