Chapter 84: Little Guardian

Valera stood, stretching her arms overhead until she felt the relaxing series of pops that she was waiting for. Her jaws forced themselves open into a heavy yawn, and she rubbed her bleary eyes. She looked back towards her small bed, checking on the bundled mass of clothes gathered at one of its corners. A tiny snake lay motionless at its center, all but dead to the world.

Still asleep, she thought.

It had been days since the battle, and the little guy hadn’t woken up yet. Still, Valera felt like he was starting to do better at last. There was a while there, not long after the tiny seer feasted on the strange monsters - even Captain Wren hadn’t recognized them, which had caught Valera off-guard - where the little guy hadn’t stopped trembling. Which...wasn’t good. Valera was almost certain that snakes weren’t supposed to shake like that.

Hopefully, he had known what he was doing when he ate those things. He could see the future, right? It should be fine.

She stepped a little closer, lightly running her nails across the snake’s scales. It might not have done anything, but she could have sworn that the shaking slowed down every time she did it, so maybe it helped.

“Good morning, Little Guardian. I hope you’re starting to feel better. The kids have been asking about you, again.” She laughed. “They ambushed Doran when he came back from his hunt last night. You should have seen it; a giant, armored Seeker panicking in the face of overexcited children.” Her face fell. “It’s good that they have something to focus on. Better than the alternative.”

She pulled herself from her melancholy with a quick shake of her head, deciding to head out and face the day at last. Her limbs dragged; the long hours spent hunting for monsters had not been kind to her, but they were necessary. The influx of refugees had caused the population of Orken to balloon, and they had to eat somehow. Without the ability to rely on the crops of Verdant Grove, their food stores were quickly dwindling.

Thus, the long hunts. It was dangerous and tiring work, but it helped keep everyone well-fed. They had gathered the screaming bat monsters first, but those were small and didn’t last long. The other monsters, which Captain Wren had finally dubbed Hexablades - a terribly uninspired name, Valera had told him - were disintegrated in the null-water. After seeing the snake’s reaction to eating them, nobody was brave enough to try.

She didn’t blame them. It was the smart choice. There were a lot of monsters with toxic meat, possibly a defense mechanism to deter attacks from other monsters. Still, it was a shame; the Hexablades had been quite large and would have gone a long way towards keeping the overpopulated city fed.

Making up for that loss had done a number on every Seeker’s sleep schedule.

A second yawn slipped past as she exited the Barracks. As the door opened and she stepped outside, something blurred at the corner of her vision. Another ambush. So early in the morning, too.

The little bastards were dedicated, she’d give them that.

She jolted forward on blurring limbs, feeling the wind rush by as a body soared through her previous spot. A moment later, she twisted, dodging the second attack that always came next. Then, with her token resistance given, she let the next one land.

The air left her lungs as a child slammed into her unprotected stomach, arms reaching around in an attempt to pull her down. Another little gremlin grabbed her right leg, while a third and fourth tugged at her arms. She let herself fall in a slow, exaggerated manner, careful not to land on anyone.

The moment she hit the ground, it was her newly-healed ears that were in trouble.

“Miss Valera, Miss Vale-”

“Is he awa-”

“I wanna say-”

The little monsters talked over each other in an indecipherable mess, leaving no room to answer, let alone actually understand what they were trying to say. After what seemed like an eternity to Valera’s sleep-deprived mind, they finally stopped talking.

She smiled, bright and wide. Valera may have been tired, but she didn’t intend to show it. These kids needed a little brightness in their lives, even if she had to force it.

“Good morning to you too, little gremlins. Isn’t it a bit early for this?” she teased. As always, their tiny little faces scrunched up in annoyance at the nickname she had given them.

“...’m not a gremlin, Miss Valera. ‘m a kid!'' one of them protested. She smiled wider, giving him a light poke on the cheek before shifting her expression into one of deep thought.

“Oh, really? Huh. I guess all brats look like tiny gremlins to me.”

Expectedly, that got another unsurprising response. “ ‘m not tiny!”

She almost squealed, but held it back. Mostly - some of it might have slipped out. “Oh, but you are! So tiny and cute!” She gave the gremlins a giant hug before they could escape.

They tried to get away, but far too late. Still, it wasn’t long before their put-upon grumbling shifted into uncontrolled giggles. She smiled again at that - a real one this time.

Finally, she let them go, and they scrambled to their feet. One of the younger kids, his face smudged with dirt, looked at her hesitantly. His grubby little hands held tight to an object around his neck, but she already knew what it was. A tiny darkwood carving of a little snake, whittled by one of the survivors of Verdant Grove and affixed to Webweaver threads.

It had been a stroke of genius, she thought, a way to help encourage the kids who had been scarred by the journey. A lot - most, actually - of them had been suffering from nightmares, even before they finally arrived at Orken. Even worse, many of them had no real families left to hold them at night.

A group of wonderful old ladies had banded together with a brilliant idea - a combination of a story and a totem to keep the nightmares away. When she had seen one of the snake necklaces for the first time, the kids had recited the story to her proudly.

The best stories started with a kernel of truth, something that could be pointed towards that made the rest of it seem all the more real. This was one of those stories. Most of the kids bore witness to a tiny snake defeating the final monsters all on its own. That was the truth. That was indisputable. The story moved from there.

According to the story that the children were told, there was once a tiny snake that traveled through the tunnels of the world. He was smaller than even the children themselves, small enough to slip into the places that others couldn’t. The little snake spent many years on his journey, roaming through tunnels and seeing sights unseen. Hiding from the bigger, scarier monsters that called the darkness their home and tried to attack him.

However, one day, as the little snake slithered out of a tiny hole in the wall, he heard crying. He moved closer, curious about what it was, and found a lonely child. The child was lost, separated from his family, and scared.

The tiny snake recognized a kindred spirit. Someone small, alone, and afraid. He stayed with the child, keeping watch in the darkness despite his own fears. Eventually, the child noticed him - but the snake was not forced to slither away. The child did not try to attack the little snake.

Slowly, hesitantly, the little snake left his hiding place and approached the child. Still, the child did not attack him. At that moment, for the first time in his life, the little snake felt safe.

With his new friend at his side, the child began to search for his home again. The little snake could travel through places that the child could not, peeking at the other side of cracked walls and hastening the search. Through the little snake’s efforts, the child finally found his way home.

Untold years later, the story said, that same little snake found other children who had lost their own home and their own families - the refugees of Verdant Grove. And when he saw that they were in danger, attacked by the monsters that tried to hide in the darkness, he slipped out from his hiding place again. Alone, he defeated the monsters. He saved the children that reminded him of his first friend.

Finally, knowing that there was more to be done, the little snake slipped into a deep sleep. The tiny serpent remembered the way that his friend had cried out in nightmares, his mind attacked by monsters that the little snake could not see. And so, this time, he went to find them.

The little snake slithered through dreams, searching for the children that he wished to protect, the ones that carried a simple little totem - a tiny necklace whittled into the shape of a tiny snake.

One day soon, the old women had told the children, the little snake would defeat the monsters and wake up again. The children’s Little Guardian would overcome the nightmares at last, and the monsters in their minds would disappear as if they never were.

Until then, they said, the Little Guardian slept. He held back the nightmares every night, so that the children could feel safe again, just as the original child made him feel safe for the first time.

It was a silly little story, Valera thought.

Yet, every time she saw another lonely child clutch onto a necklace of a little snake and smile wide, she couldn’t help but admit the story itself had a certain truth.

Tale or not, Valera’s moody, amusing, and cute tiny seer was the children’s Little Guardian.