FMH ~ 19!!

Luke looked at his weapon again and gulped. It was at least four feet long and about two feet wide at the thickest point. “Good thing whatever this came from is already dead…”

Over the next three months, Luke worked to familiarize himself with his ‘hammer’. It was as though he was learning to fight all over again, and only the fact that he had been conditioning his body every day for over two years allowed him to survive until he had gained some proficiency with the club. Every time the bone started to get cracks or flaws, he would put it in the pool until it regained its luster and soothness.

As time went on, he found that the outside of the weapon was getting damaged less frequently and was becoming more and more blue. Then, disaster struck. Luke was using his weapon like normal, which he had named ‘Crustulum Capra’, nicknamed ‘Crust’. That translated as ‘Goat Paste’, which was what the goats turned into when he got a good hit in on them. 

It could also translate as ‘Goat Cookie’, which still made him laugh a month after he had realized that fact. He had immediately thrown all other names out and started calling his weapon ‘Cookie’.

During this particular excursion, Luke was swarmed and Cookie got caught between a few rocks and charging goats. Their odd magic made them hit harder than they had any right to be able to do, and the portion that Luke used as his normal handhold snapped off. Not the spar, the actual end of the teardrop. Luke managed to finish off the remainder of the goats by falling back on punching them to death, but he was furious at himself for his carelessness.

He collected all the new pearls and the broken chunks of his weapon, then made his way back to camp. Luke inspected the break, and found the issue. “Ah… I see… the outside has been getting harder to damage, but the interior is still soft bone. How can I…”

Luke scraped at the bone, and found that the inside, the area marrow formed, was far softer than the exterior had ever been. “Now this gives me an idea…”

Cookie was out of commission for the next few months, which infuriated Luke. Luckily he had a ready and never-diminishing population of small animals to take his frustrations out on. During the day, he destroyed goats from the right herd. In the evenings and night, he slowly hollowed out the enormous bone. When he needed to do something non-tedious, he shaped the bone that had broken off.

Eventually, Luke had most of the teardrop hollowed out. He had even drilled through the spar and made a twisty ‘U’ bend in the marrow on the interior. He lifted the broken teardrop tail and started to turn it. The shaped screw fit into the main body and held! “Yes! Now to fill you up with water…”

Luke did so, first washing out the bone scrapings that had accumulated, then filling the entire thing. He simply left the bone underwater overnight, making sure it was totally filled with water. In the morning, he saw that blue gas was leaking from the hole in the spar that he had drilled, and nodded in appreciation. It was working exactly as he had hoped it would. Time for the next test.

He twisted the screw, really putting effort into it. The end eventually popped out, and he grinned as the remainder of the water trickled out. It wasn’t as blue as the exterior yet, but that had a few months of extra time where it had been hardening. Still… Luke refilled the hollow portion and replaced the bone screw, then looked at the shifting grass.

Cookie was back on the table.

“Time to make some goat paste.” Luke charged downhill and into battle, crushing twelve goats and laughing the entire time. No longer did he need to slowly get the pearls out; a simple smash, and the pearl practically rolled out on its own! 

He spent the next few weeks making minor adjustments to his weapon and fighting style, and was finally ready to make his next big push. “Three years and… four months? Better make sure I keep that tally up to date…”

Luke was covered in six inches of padded leather across his whole body. His neck and head were wrapped with hardened goatskin, and Luke felt that he was as prepared as he was going to get. “No stopping, no slowing. It’s time to get past these creatures. You ready for this, Cookie?”

There was no reply as Luke scooped up the pearls and added them to his goat hide. “Hey. Cookie! Come on, don’t give me the silent treatment like that. I just these pearls, we’re still gonna go break that-”

Heat.

Luke yelped at the foreign sensation and jumped away. It didn’t help: his leather was on fire! He dropped and rolled, smothering the flame. Luke looked around to see what had happened, and his eyes locked onto a nearly see-through pearl that was generating enough light that only the fact that the sky was brightening allowed Luke to look directly at it. Beyond the sight, he could feel it. He could feel it as though he was standing next to a burning building. “Where did…?”

“You have goat to be kidding me.” His eyes widened as the area around him started to be filled with noise; he grabbed the pearl and sprinted toward the pool. As he did so, a cry went up from all around him. Luke had just created a tier four pearl, and the goats wanted it. Luke tried to think over what had just happened, and nodded as everything fell into place. The water had boiled and churned even when the smaller versions of the pearl had been created. With this one, the reaction had apparently flash-boiled the water and caused him to catch on fire. 

Fire was over-effective here, on all things, and he had no idea why. Luke was just glad that he hadn't started a wildfire. If this bluegrass path had caught… it was unlikely that he could survive very long. The goats, as much as he hated them and wanted them to burn, were his food source. Also, who could tell how long the area might burn for? He could be trapped in the pool for weeks, and he wouldn't survive that either. 

Still, what mattered right now was surviving the next few minutes! He could hear hooves stampeding, so much so that it felt like the entire population must be heading his way right now. The pearl in his hand was hot, not in a way that was physically burning him, but in a way that made him know exactly where it was. It practically screamed at him, and he was sure that everything for miles around was coming for him.

“If I can get this home… make it into a necklace…” Luke puffed as he ran uphill, “Sell it to some random lady. She becomes Queen, no one can take their eyes off of her. She gives me a Noble title, I hide there forever. No goats allowed on the property. Yeah. There we go.”

Luke reached the edge of the pool and dived in without hesitation. Instantly the hot feeling vanished. The loss hit him so hard that he almost sucked in a breath. That would have been bad, being underwater and all. He came up and could hear confused calls coming from everywhere. 

“Baaa!”

“Yeah, like I care that you’re unsure of yourselves. Stupid carniverous goats.” Luke floated in the water for a while, relaxing and floating until his skin started to pickle and the noise level had reduced to normal. “Good thing that happened this early. If every one of them was awake and worked up… I can’t imagine that I’d have gotten away.”

Luke looked down and saw that the entire pool was filled with light thanks to the pearl in his hand. He could see all the way to the sandy bottom a dozen feet below him, and was a little disgruntled to notice that the bottom was positively filled with bones. He dove down, and as he got close he saw that most - but not all - of the bones were from goats. 

He knew what goat skeletons looked like; he was likely the foremost expert on goat skeletal structure right now. He surfaced and took a long breath of fresh air. “There were some human bones in there. I’m not the first to arrive here? Am I the first to survive, for some reason?”

“Come to think of it, I can't remember the goats ever drinking the water.” He knew for certain that there was nothing else in this pool. In fact, it was the cleanest, clearest water he had ever been in. “I wonder why? Also, why are these ones in here? They died of old age, maybe?”

“Now, what to do with you?” Luke looked at the innocently shining pearl and smiled. His waterskin had burst and was now a set of tattered hide, but there was an easy solution to this problem. He already had a tool ready-made for this! “Looks like you’re going in the Cookie jar.”

Luke unscrewed the end of Cookie and rolled the pearl inside. There was plenty of room for it to move around, and he wasn't at all worried about it getting stuck in there. Since Cookie was already filled with water, the pearl stayed ‘cool’. Luke got out of the water and started walking. There were goats to get past, and today was the day.