Chapter 159: Cerebus

Chapter 159: Cerebus

Mason came from the darkness screaming, Claws out and ready to kill, ready to die. He had gone from a ‘cave’ and a meeting with Blake, to a rotting forest filled with monsters. For a good long minute it was like watching a horror flick on acid, then it pulled him away.

“Well you look fun.”

Mason blinked until he saw a huge wooden totem in the center of spherical wooden room. A mutant goat-snake lay curled around it, staring at Mason before it yawned. Apparently it was also a talking mutant snake.

“Give me my wolf,” Mason snarled, looking at the snake’s body for any possible wolf-shaped bumps.

“Your wolf?” The snake body extended itself, ram’s head jutting forward to bleed green light from its eyes as it stared. “Mmm. No. I think not. What have they done to you, my beautiful white ape? You have been...trained and civilized.”

Mason clenched the grips on his Claws, quickly losing patience, anger covering any feeling of fear.

“No one did anything to me. Now stop stalling and...”

The snake-ram laughed, sound drowning out Mason’s voice easily before it spoke again.

“Oh but they did. Your eyes were just hooded as they broke you to their fist. You are meant to be wild and free. Oh what a beautiful creature you could be, with your cunning and your strength. The greatest predator of the great forest—patient and terrifying, eating both beast and leaf, taking whatever mates you wish. You should rule that forest like a king.”

Mason felt his anger cool, thrown off by the creature’s words and manner.

“What are you?” he said.

“Nothing,” said the creature, “if not Cerebus. If not the god of wild and dangerous things.”

Mason unsummoned his Claws and lifted his bow.

“Well, Cerebus. Are you going to give me my friend? Or am I going to put an arrow in your eye?”

The goat-head smiled, revealing snake-like fangs and two rows of teeth that belonged in a dinosaur museum.

“I’m not going to give you anything.”

Mason ground his teeth, hesitating. Whatever nonsense this thing was speaking, it wasn’t all bullshit. Mason understood. He felt the call. He heard drums and saw fire and a ring of men and beasts screaming their challenge into the night.

He felt..having no other proper word...freedom, radiating from the totem like heat waves.

He had felt it first with the gnolls in his tutorial, when he thought of nothing but survival and killing the next creature that wanted his life. Then again with Haley when he took her in the trees. When he ran through the woods with Streak at his side, away from the others with no laws or opinions or rules.

When he was younger the same feeling had come from violence and competition—beating those who stood against him, or hurting those he felt deserved it. It had always kept him sane.

Now Blake and Nassau kept him...civilized, in the creature’s words, that was true. So did Rebecca and Haley. But he understood what it was saying. Oh yes, he understood. What might he become if left alone? If he had nothing left to lose?

“Patron? Are you alright?

Mason blinked and looked back to find Phuong and the others emerging from the nearby tunnel. Apparently Mason had walked all the way to the totem, and his hand was mere inches from the symbols on the wood. Phuong looked at the totem, and his hand, and the creature staring from above.

“Do you...think that’s wise?”

Mason practically laughed at the tone. No, he thought, I do not at all think it’s wise. But he thought about Duality of Life and what it did to him, the loss of control, the almost alien feeling that overtook him. The nymphs, too, stripped him of control. It seemed something of a theme with Gaia, and Mason wasn’t at all sure he approved.

And apparently there was more than one ‘god’ of nature. Mason had been given a path before he understood, before he’d felt he had any choice. And even then, the system picked his prestige class too.

He was getting a little tired of being forced into things. Whatever this Cerebus was, he felt brutally, dangerously straight forward. He didn’t care and didn’t pretend otherwise. He offered a path, and you took it or not. That was the kind of god Mason could respect.

“I have to help Streak,” he said, knowing it wasn’t the full answer. But he decided if he hesitated here, if he refused to face whatever this was, he would always regret it.

He would always be frightened of his own power, of being controlled by forces beyond him, of becoming lost and resentful.

He reached for the totem, and looked back as the snake stared with no pleasure, no surprise, no judgment in its strange, slit eyes.

[Hidden feature activated: Essence Test. Discover and master your inner nature to modify your affinity with a unique feature! This is a mortal test and it cannot be exited. Would you still like to proceed?]

Mason looked at his hand and found it didn’t shake. He wasn’t afraid of death, not anymore. He thought of what the challenge might be, and found he was almost...excited.

He clicked yes, and the snake unfurled in the blink of an eye, wrapping around him without really touching him. He thought maybe he heard the others cry out in warning, then everything was green, ghostly coils.