Demonic Devourer's Development

"You do?" I asked hopefully.

Marianna made a languid blink. "Voren, Voren, Voren… Such a short, boring name. Are you sure you don\'t want me to come up with more names for you? I think Xoroarimu would fit you very nicely."

What was she talking about? Being annoying must\'ve been a special hidden ability of draining curses, whether or not their voice was pleasant. She must\'ve been using magic to speak, anyway, which meant that she could sound whichever way she wanted. Just like Pest.

I scowled at her. "I like my name well enough. Tell me what you know about the poison-immune monster!"

"Of course, of course. Why are you so impatient? Where do you have to hurry? Oh right, you are poisoned.. A pity. I would\'ve like to chat some more. It\'s been a while since the last time I talked with anyone. Listen, then, Voren. It\'s a rare monster that you won\'t see just anywhere—Rock Crawler. It looks like a centipede with two flaps at its sides, like a cobra\'s. You won\'t miss it—it\'s half of my size. It\'s not very aggressive, though. You might want to kick it a few times if it doesn\'t kill you outright. As I said, they are very rare, but I know just the place where one such made a nest. It\'s not so far away."

I listened as Marianna described the road. The landmarks were all conveniently described from an altitude of a bird\'s flight. It really wasn\'t far away—less than an hour of flying in a straight line. But damn, centipedes again, and giant ones to boot. Well, I will think about how to kill it when I get to it. I gave Marianna the curse inside a dragon a curt nod. "Thanks for the info. I won\'t stay to chat."

"A pity." Marianna let out a loud sigh through her nostrils. "Maybe come back later? It can get kinda boring here."

"I will consider it."

I already planned to as I left. There was no question that killing Marianna directly was too risky. If I killed her and she transferred into me, and the curses in my body fought… I didn\'t want to bother fighting to get the loyalty of another draining curse when I already had Pest. That didn\'t mean that I couldn\'t kill her indirectly, preferably in a way that would kill Marianna for good.

\'Pest, what sort of kill won\'t make a draining curse transfer into the killer? Say, if I dropped a rock on someone cursed, would it let him transfer onto me?\' I asked as I flew towards the Rock Crawler\'s lair.

\'It would. You\'d need to be more indirect. For example, leave a rock balancing over someone so it would eventually fall on its own.\'

So it was like that. I thought again. \'What if I crushed someone under rocks in a way that didn\'t kill them outright, but would eventually kill them with suffocation?\'

\'That\'s indirect enough! How would you drop so much stone on Marianna, though? Even you have your limits!\'

Now Pest used the limits of his ability to speak and reply to my questions to ask questions of his own? How interesting. But I approved he didn\'t ask who I planned to bury under stone enough to answer.

\'I don\'t know. Hit the entrance hard enough? Or cause an avalanche. Or a rockslide…\' Maybe I could just shout loud enough. Something from my old memories told me it will work, though everything else in me felt that this was a stupid idea…

Pest didn\'t say what he thought about it, probably because I didn\'t address him with a question he had to answer or an order he had to confirm his understanding of. I could plan in silence, and then suffer in silence as I stopped for a poison break.

The Rock Crawler\'s lair was another cave. Mountains, caves—there were so much of them that almost anyone could find themselves one. But that one stood out a little, because when I got closer, I realised it was not a cave, but a burrow, dug inside a rock.

From inside, I could scent a distinct scent of an insect. A creature that could gnaw on rocks was a threat, and I had about three quarters of an hour to beat it before my next poison break. To attack a beast inside its own burrow was, though, not the smartest idea. My goal wasn\'t to die from its jaws, after all.

I decided it would pay off to be patient, no matter how torturous it was, and spun a web at the burrow\'s entrance. As transparent as my webs were, it was almost impossible to spot. To protect it from the snow, I set it not at the very entrance, but a little deeper, but still far enough away to hopefully not be noticed.

After that, I walked at a safe distance away, burrowed myself in a heap of snow, and waited.

It took a while—a while of waiting, made much more torturous by regular onsets of the poison. The day turned into late evening by the point when the burrow\'s dweller decided to get outside.

And its head got stuck in my web.

It was just like Marianna described—a huge centipede with something that resembled a fish\'s spinal fins on its sides. At first, it appeared confused by the thing that stopped it from leaving the burrow, but then it began to try to pull itself out. My webs held, but I didn\'t wait to see for how long they would do so.

I jumped out of the snow and raised my hand, preparing to strike the Rock Crawler between its eyes with a volley of wind blades. It froze as it noticed me, making it an even easier target; but then, a disembodied voice that came from it made me freeze, too. A boyish tenor that didn\'t belong in this place and this creature in the same way Marianna\'s voice didn\'t belong to her body.

"Wait! Don\'t kill me, stranger—you are making a huge mistake!"