First off, thank you to my patrons who share their sustenance to give me time to devote to my stories. It means a lot to me.
Thank you guys for reading. If you like my work, you can get chapters a week early on triple W, Dot, Pee, A Tee, R E O N, Dot, Com, Slash, Jakecrown. Jakecrown
10101
Chapter 13: 1,000 hands is better than 2
10101
(Age 22)
I was sad to be leaving. Ven was crying into my shoulder as children were want to do. I'd spent more than a year here, at the boundary between the vast grassland and endless forest, building what I needed. The town I'd built with the hands of my skins was soon to be abandoned.
Rubbing Ven's hair softly, I gazed at the town I'd built as I prepared for the trip south. Much of the time was spent finding deposits of copper and tin to create the bronze I needed for my clan. Once I got started, the rest moved quickly.
Building felt covered wagons to allow my snark skins to survive the trip through the lands of always winter was easy. Building thousands of snark sized spears, bows, shields, and arrows was not as easy. I had finally finished outfitting my snowbears in bronze plate armor. Each one weighed several hundred pounds.
I only had 12 grown mammoths that I had left in the valley before my adventure into the snark infested inferno. My bears were doing very well with their fattening. I fed them thousands of young snarks. For the most part, they were my own spawn with their snark mothers, but I had far too many births to keep them all.
I had 30 adult snowbears and 20 juveniles at various stages of growth. They were truly massive creatures, and were worth all of my other skins put together. Fang had a massive helmet that doubled as a shield against arrows for me as I rode his thick neck.
The snark skins birthed a litter every month if I let them. I had found that the ones spawned from my own loins were slightly larger in size, but lacked in human cunning. They were animals. Smart animal, but beasts all the same. I'd gotten them to average out to the size of a 8 or 9 year old child, instead of a 3 or 4 year old. I had pushed my control to its limits with 520 snark skins controlled at once.
No one can understand how strong your will must be to be in hundred of places at once and not lose yourself to the mass of minds. If I did not crush their minds at birth, and make them think only my thoughts, I never would survive stretching my mind so thin.
My half-giant son, Ven, Was far larger than a human baby, but nowhere near the size his mother had been. At a few weeks old, I would compare him to the size of a snark. But as I brushed against his mind, I could feel his own reaching out to brush against mine.
I smiled down at my only real son.
He had human cunning, unlike my other children. He had a will of his own. In time, he would grow to have his own thoughts and desires. He would have different opinions than me. He would be as powerful a skin-changer as I.
I brushed my mind against his. He looked up at me showing off his toothless mouth as he let a cute giggle slip passed his chubby little lips. I wrapped my mind around his. My will gently caressing his. I smiled down at my son, my will curling around his mind protectively.
He didn't have enough time to scream in agony before I was he. I could suffer no competitors at this time. It was too soon.
1010101
With Ven's mind added to my own, I could control twice as many skins. The taking of another skin-changer seemed to double my strength. I spent a few more months gathering food to haul in the mammoth carts and selecting the best specimens of snark to take the frip back south with me through the cold.
There wasn't enough mammoth to carry 1,000 snark skins. Their smoked carcasses went a long way to provision my bears for the trip through the cold. The 50 female and 50 male snarks I had left were the peak of their hybrid specie. Bundled into the felt wagons, along with a massive arsenal of weapons and armor, they should stay warm enough.
I and Ven bundled into Vera's furs as we set off into the cold south.
Travel with the wagons made our progress far quicker than it had been when then it had been before I had the wagons. What took months before took weeks now.
It took months travel through the cold. Shivering and frozen, my snark skins huddled together in the wagons for warmth. The bears seemed to enjoy the weather. Their thick layers of fat protected them fkrom the icy wind. All too soon after several months of travel I saw the first tree I had seen in months. Soon after passing it mountains were visible on the horizon. I was back the land of the Thenn.
I started taking birds as skins to scout out a trail to the Haunted Forest. It soon became clear that the Thenn had caught wind of my arrival. Styr, the Thenn leader, was apparently holding a grudge as a massive army began to trail my convoy.
There were at least 15,000 of them.
I pushed the mammoths as hard as I dared, without driving them to exhaustion. The Thenn were always on guard for the snowbears I sent to harass them in the night. I lost two bears to a volley of spears as the bears crept through the darkness into the ouskirts of the Thenn camp.
I didn't have any rats to do the listening for me, and any birds were shot down if they got too close. They were ready to fight a skin-changer.
I was not ready for this...