The people on the shore were in a panic. Some were running away, others were running from further inland to the shore, and there was lots of gesticulating and shouting as my boat inched closer and closer to land.
I slowly lowered the hands I had been waving. I had no choice but to come to shore—my rudder needed fixing, I needed new oars, and I needed supplies—but it seemed I was not going to be welcomed. The reason why was apparent as I started to catalog the differences between them and myself.
None of these people were Bloodied.
I couldn’t spot any names marring the bodies of these people, a legacy of kills which I had grown up thinking were just tribal tattoos. Perhaps some people did have them, and they were just hidden under the clothing these people were wearing, which I was pretty exited to see. The Uli I was familiar with barely wore anything, basically just loincloths and a few wraps, but here I spotted tunics and pants.
Since I was just wearing a loincloth, my own list of those whose Blood resided within me was on full display. Even if I tried to hide it, though, the more Blood I gained, the more my skin took on the darker red tone that all the adult males of my tribe had, compared to the more orange hue the children and females had. All of these people were orange, even the adults, and it was even a slightly less vivid orange. More apricot or peach than carrot.
There were other physical differences, too. We were definitely of the same clade, as they had an almost identical body shape; they were upright, bipedal with four arms, and when I squinted, I saw the same three fingers and one thumb per hand that I had. But, the fingers looked a bit more delicate, as was the case for the entire frame of these people.
What wasn’t quite so similar was the faces. I felt like I was looking at a bunch of oversized children. Grown Uli had a large nose with wide nostrils, with a dark rhinarium, kind of like a bear. And, like bears, it was much cuter on the cubs, or the Uli children, than it was when fully grown. Except these people all had a smaller, child-like nose, even into adulthood. Also, their tusks were tiny.
Uli tusks weren’t massive when compared to something like mirulu, but even the smallest-tusked Uli couldn’t totally cover their lower tusks with their lips in adulthood. The jaw grew wide and jut forward enough to display them at all times. To my eyes trained on the Uli of my tribe and the tribes I had encountered, these people all looked to be suffering from an overbite, with smaller, sharper chins.
To an Uli, this would certainly look bizarre and maybe even wrong. It even took me a moment to see it as anything but off. But I had a perspective spanning other worlds, and with those memories, it also looked ever so slightly more right.
The different in facial structure and jaw size could be part of what was freaking them out. I couldn’t help but have my nostrils flared by comparison to them, or my tusks peeking out, though they weren’t fully bared in aggression or anything like that. Though, realistically, it was the Blood.
Well, at least I don’t have to worry about that, I thought as I got within range. I don’t want to scare anyone, but with [Blood Augmentation] and [Blood Recovery], I shouldn’t need to worry about getting seriously hurt. Hopefully I can calm them down, and things won’t escalate since they don’t have any Blood techniques—wait, what?
On shore, several of the people who had run towards the commotion had joined hands. Up and down the shore, I saw other groups doing the same. Sometimes it was just a pair of them, and sometimes it was five or six, but mostly it was groups of four. And, somehow, they were creating javelins of Blood, all pointed in my direction.
“What,” I said quietly, in shock, “the actual fuck.”
By the time my boat hit the sands of their shores, my hands were up again. Not waving, this time, but in submission, which I hoped translated. The group I assumed was the main group, or something like a police force, were shouting at me, and while I didn’t understand the words, the intention was clear: submit.
I was happy to submit—I hadn’t come here to harm people, and had no intention of fighting my way out of this predicament. My emotions were roiling, but not with rage, only a visceral disturbance as my past was illuminated with a new light, because these people were using Blood techniques without being Bloodied!
And I needed to learn how.
The shouting continued, but since I didn’t understand the words, and I didn’t want to do anything that might cause someone with a hair-trigger response to skewer me, I simply stood there, eyes down and hands up, trying to show I wasn’t hostile. Eventually, the shouting transitioned into a heated debate, and eventually, some of the Blood was changed from a lance to a shackle, wrapping around my double-torso and tying down all four of my arms. It was quite masterful [Blood Control], for a larger-scale working. I wasn’t sure I could apply so much stable pressure without crushing my target.
Had I been an actual threat, I’m not sure it would have contained me, though. I was pretty sure if I fired up [Blood Augmentation] with the fullness of my stats—even just my in-world stats, without my Will advantage—then I could probably break free and kill a few people before they could take me down. Not that I had any intention of that, because I wanted to be caught, so I could take a closer look at what was happening here.
I was led off my boat, which from the corner of my eye I saw another group approach and start to prod at. Like my tribe, while they worked the shores, these people didn’t have boats, likely because I still didn’t see any trees. Now that I was ashore, though, I could smell more smoke, so they were burning something.
Seeing the four people more closely, I realized I was the tallest person around. Considering I was one of the shortest grown Uli I had met, these people were small. Or the Uli were larger than I realized. If these people were the height of the average human, the average Uli was easily seven feet tall, with the tallest being eight feet tall. On the other hand, if Uli were human-height, that meant these people were probably only around four feet tall. I couldn’t decide which was more realistic, which was frustrating, since I’d likely never know.
The person who I considered the leader of the group of my “captors” said something else to me, chasing away my stray thoughts.
“I’m sorry, I don’t understand,” I said, frowning. That raised the hackles of some of them, so I immediately lowered my gaze back to the ground. Please don’t kill me yet, I pleaded internally.
Finally, after more debate, something in the dynamic of the group shifted. The four people holding hands split into two groups of two, and the confining blood also split, from the straitjacket into two pairs of blood manacles, for lack of a better word, each controlling one of the upper or lower pairs of my arms. My lower pair were secured to my waist, while my upper pair were secured to my neck. One of the pairs stepped behind me and prodded me to walk, with the other pair leading the way.
It was less secure, but I hadn’t presented any threat aside from, well, my entire existence. Or they were underestimating my abilities, which was also possible. In any case, my captors marched me away from my boat, and while I didn’t know where they were taking me, it led through their settlement, giving me a chance to study them a bit more.
One of the main differences from this land and my homeland was the plant life. There were shrubs here, similar to those that I had grown up around, but there was also something much closer to grass than anything I had seen on this world. A native Uli might not have recognized it at all, and it took me a moment before I made the comparison, because it was still almost black, like the foliage I had grown up around.
Away from the ocean breeze, the smell of smoke grew rapidly, though that was appreciated because the scents of the settlement were pretty strong to my nose. It was different from the smell of wood smoke, deeper and muskier, and there was an occasional acrid tang that came and went.
I glanced around as much as I could without drawing the ire of my captors to figure out how this was possible, and spotted a man tending a herd of animals that appeared to be comfortable with him and in his care. Seeing domesticated animals was incredibly exciting, for a multitude of reasons, but my nose told me that was the primary source of the sour smell I was picking up.
Dry dung cakes could be used as fuel, and probably was to some degree since it had to go somewhere, but wasn’t likely the only source of fuel, since fire almost certainly preceded domestication. Sure enough, we passed by a stack of light brown patties drying out that seemed to be just that, but there was a second product nearby that I couldn’t immediately place.
At first, I thought it might just be another kind of dung, perhaps from another, larger animal. They were shaped a bit like logs, though, only more squared off. It wasn’t chopped firewood, but it definitely filled a similar niche, I could smell something like moss as I passed it by.
Then I smelled something distinctly unlike moss, which caused my stomach to let out a loud growl.
Cooked meat! I thought, drooling at the smell. I had, on rare occasions, gathered enough shrub sticks to attempt cooking small portions of meat back home, but it was a huge chore for so little reward that I had given up once sashimi was on the menu.
One of my captors behind me laughed, a bit cruelly, at my stomach’s protestations.
“I almost starved to death out in that boat,” I grumbled. “You’d be hungry too.”
He jabbed me in the back, pretty hard, so I shut up and kept walking. They hadn’t killed me yet; if they were going to jail me, maybe they’d feed me.
A different animal ran by, geckering loudly, which I identified as one of the background sounds I had been hearing in what was clearly early civilization. By comparison, Uli tribes were only the nascence of civilization, but I had no idea if it was the differences I was seeing between the Uli and these people or the difference in geographic location. There was far less to work with where I had been born.
Hot on the heels of the first animal that ran past was a second, which was whining and whimpering slightly as it followed. I wondered if they were another animal raised for food that had escaped, or if they were something like dogs or cats in the niche they filled here, but I couldn’t turn my head to watch them without raising the ire of the pokey guy behind me.
The structures were thatch-roofed stone, held together with mortar, which I had never figured out on my own back home. My attention had mostly gone into boats and fishing, since that had been working out quite well and translated to more wanderlust rather than a desire to build in place. These buildings weren’t terribly large, though, despite the mortar. Either it wasn’t very good and they started to have structural issues when built larger, or there was another limitation. Again, I was denied a closer look at any one, though there were more buildings to sneak glances at to try and learn from.
We came to some kind of village square, where I saw the biggest building yet, but something else demanded my attention. In the center of the square was a magnificent statue carved out of stone. It was a representation of a person, except larger than life and clearly not a portrait or monument of a real being, as she had sixteen arms, extended in various positions. She radiated warmth and love in how she was represented, her many arms ready to embrace her people.
It was, very obviously, a statue of a goddess.
Seeing religion again after so much time absent from my life was such a shock that it took me a beat to recognize the significance of it. I had no idea when, or whether, I would ever get another opportunity to see this statue, so I came to a snap decision.
I broke free from my blood constraints, causing my four captors to all shout at once and turn on me, but I immediately leapt away from them all and threw myself to the ground in front of the statue.
My eyes slammed shut and I prayed with everything I had, hoping to make a connection.
I opened my eyes to a familiar white void and a feeling of unreality I had become quite familiar with in my past life. In front of me stood a towering woman with way too many arms, though they were less of an issue for her than they should have been, as they seemed able to pass through each other as she moved.
The goddess’s eyes widened as she took me in, and a look of utter disbelief settled on her face as I lifted my head.
“What in the world is an Uli doing here?”
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AN: I have been looking forward to this part of Mali's story for a month now. Finally! Hope you enjoy!