[The Primeval Apocalypse] - Chapter Sixteen(collaboration with u/hydrael)

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The Primeval Apocalypse by Robert Keene and Alex Raizman

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It wasn’t until it was happening that I had entertained the possibility of rescue. It would have been a pretty good reason to seek out some therapy—if we still had therapists in the apocalypse.

After all we’d been through in the last few months, death just seemed inevitable.

But despite all evidence to the contrary, death wasn’t here for me. Not yet, at least.

A sound came from somewhere nearby. Crushed under the monster’s bulk, I couldn’t really hear it with my ears, but I could feel it through the ground. It wasn’t as loud as the roar of the monster currently killing me, but it was a similar timbre. Another monster in Jamestown, challenging the attacker.

It took a moment for me to control the panic caused by my oncoming death. Once I did, my Detection skill started to resolve what was going on around me, even though I couldn’t really see, hear, or smell anything but the massive creature on top of me.

Nearby, there was a group rallying just west of my position, gathering for an attack to shove the creature out of the camp. I couldn’t tell exactly who was who, but I could feel that they were on their feet with weapons ready. It was safe to assume that James saw what I was doing and was falling back on the usual strategy of using my distraction for maximum value. Either because he trusted me to get out on my own, or because he didn’t want my sacrifice to be wasted.

There was another group gathering farther to the south, along the bramble wall. It seemed like most of the people there were prone, and even from here, my detection skill identified some of them as injured. A handful of people were frantically dragging others away from the crater and towards the group. Gathering the wounded.

But not all of them were wounded.

More than a few were already corpses.

Nearer at hand, though, was the source of the sound. It startled me when I identified it. For the sound to reverberate through the ground like that, I had expected something larger. A scavenger seeking to drive off the predator once it was fatigued from its attack to reap the spoils.

Instead, it was Noaich.

Despite the obvious size disparity, the creature was standing up to the giant monster. I could respect that he was willing to die with me after I’d rescued him, but a part of me hoped that he would be able to go on without me. I’d imagined him trying to find his way home and forgetting about me, but apparently liberating him from the Mandrills had earned me a little more loyalty than that. Either that, or it was the smoked fish.

Despite any rational expectation, the flames chewing away my hit points stopped. More than that, the lesser version of the searing aura didn’t take over. I was no longer taking damage. It would have been a little more reasonable for the monster to finish me off before dealing with any subsequent target of equal or lesser threat, but it stopped killing me entirely. For a long moment I just lay there, flattened to the ground, wondering what was about to happen.

The rumble of the monster responding to Noaich’s roar of challenge shook my bones. It wasn’t like standing next to a giant subwoofer at a concert. It was like having one literally on top of you, crushing you to death.

What was strange was that my Wild Empathy was trying to intuit the meaning of the rumble. The beast’s growl had a tone that conveyed meaning. Without being able to see body language, and utterly unable to hear anything besides the low bassy sounds from deep in the monster’s chest,

I couldn’t really process it as a sentence. Instead, it was just a tone. A vague sense of intent.

Relief. Maybe even joy?

What?

Slowly, the weight on me was reduced. The creature was backing up off of me. My instincts screamed to start hacking away at its belly again as soon as I could move my arms, but I held off. Something was happening that I didn’t fully understand yet. Maybe Noaich could enlighten me.

I rolled to the side and scrambled out from under the enormous beast. Despite its height at the shoulder, its bulk meant that it was more like crawling out from under a slightly lifted truck. The whole time I feared that it would change its mind and flop back down on top of me.

Emerging from beneath it, it only took a second to parse exactly what had happened.

The giant beast had lowered its stubby snout to Noiach and was gently nuzzling at his face. Noiach was nuzzling it back in return. Both of their nostrils flared and snorted, and the larger one made an affectionate growling sound that sounded almost like a person saying “no H.”

Wild Empathy gave me the full picture.

Momma, Noiach was saying.

In return, the giant beast was lamenting how hard it searched, promising that it never gave up, not to eat nor sleep nor rest for an instant. Its baby was too precious to lose.

A lot of things started to make sense at the same time.

I hadn’t really wondered about the detection-blocking censer in the shed with Noaich. It had inconvenienced me, and had isolated and tormented Noaich, and so I expected that to be enough of a reason for it. But now it all came together.

The censer had been hiding the Noaich’s scent from his mother. The alpha had been so concerned with the security of the imprisoned critter because if we had fucked up the censer, this monster would have crashed down on them like a meteor, killing them all in a fiery rampage.

And once I led him out of the shed and got his scent loose in the town, that had likely happened. And when it hadn’t found its baby, it had followed the scent through the woods to continue the hunt.

“So this has just been one big misunderstanding,” I said aloud, drawing the attention of the two monsters.

Noaich’s mother snorted angrily, moving to put itself between me and my pet. Noaich made a cute little chirruping reptile noise, stopping it from lunging at me again.

Friend, Noaich conveyed. Sidekick, he added.

I gave my most disarming smile. I still had the pacify effect of my Charming class ability in case I needed it, but I knew that if I did something like that, the monster would not be happy to be robbed of control of itself. Besides, I wanted to trust Noaich, if he could end this peacefully, I wanted to help him do that. There had been enough death here for one day.

Noaich and his mother conferred briefly. Noaich conveyed his pact with me to help him become powerful, and explained that becoming my companion had made him healthy and strong again. His potential was so much higher with the power of a Beastmaster behind him. He told her that despite my size, I was cunning. I could protect him with brains where brawn had already failed.

The mother was saddened by this. It hadn’t been ready for its child to grow up and leave the nest. But it had always known the day would come. It didn’t trust me. It thought I was brazen and suicidal, and I honestly couldn’t argue with that. But it did trust Noaich. If this was what he wanted, she wasn’t going to stand in the way of his dream.

It would have been touching, if the adrenaline hadn’t all drained out of my system.

As soon as my body let me escape the tunnel vision of combat, my surroundings returned to me.

Death and destruction surrounded us as Noaich’s mother gave him a last nuzzle of affection before it went to leave. It was hard to find it heartwarming when I could smell burning flesh and knew that it might be someone I knew.

As Noaich’s mother’s powerful claws scrabbled against the trunk of the nearest tree, just before she vanished into the forest canopy, a voice came from behind me, before I could say anything.

“What the fuck!?” James demanded.