A goddess's legacy weighs heavily on the shoulders of a socially-challenged college freshman.
***
Liza Shiel-Smith--so named for an otherworldly ancestor who easily cleaved space with a flick of her finger--wants nothing more than to enjoy college...
Mar'kost hadn't moved. Two cat-sized rodents with six legs each and tentacle-like whiskers dangled from his right hand. His hand had been about the size of mine, hadn't it? How was he holding both of those things so easily? Maybe he'd just looked smaller in my dreamscape than in real life.
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I stepped toward him with every intention of helping him inside. Something made me stop. How had he gotten here so quickly? How'd he find me? Why wasn't he saying anything? Maybe he was trying not to attract monsters. That made sense.
"Hurry up and come in," I whispered.
Mar'kost squeezed through the door hole and straightened before walking forward, making no effort to push the furniture aside. They screeched against the floor and toppled over.
"The hell is wrong with you?" I hurried to untangle the furniture from his robes.
Bent over with my face an arm's length from his knee, I watched part of his robes pass through a chair leg before twitching and folding over on itself like a malfunctioning ragdoll in a video game. That was just an error in Weylan's scanning, right?
"Edible." A deep, gravely voice sent cold fear washing over me in a wave. The thing that was most definitely not Mar'kost offered me its rat monsters.
I fought to keep my entire body from shaking as I straightened to meet the thing's eyes. No, it was just one eye now.
It opened a mouth with too many round teeth. Its voice sounded a beat behind the wiggling tongue attached to the roof of its mouth. "Want?"
What could possibly be the right answer to that question? If I were dealing with a normal person—or even a normal animal—I would've assumed this was an offering I should take gratefully, no matter how much the dented faces and dripping blood of the rats made me want to puke. Unfortunately, I was on an alien spaceship with literal monsters. Even the Ortai called them monsters. That had to mean they were worth fearing.
Wait, was this a monster or a mimic? I'd assumed it was a monster based on my own biases from fantasy, but a parroting robot seemed to fit a mimic's description more accurately. Not that knowing its nature helped me much. The only mimic I'd seen had tried to kill me in my sleep, and Mar'kost had definitely talked about them like they weren't much different from monsters.
"Don't want?" The mimic's frown literally turned upside down as its second eye reappeared.
I shuddered. "Weylan? Any suggestions?" My voice was the barest of whispers, but I hoped his minimal telepathy could pick it up.
"To what are you referring, specifically?"
"Should I take the mimic's monsters or not?"
"Are you hungry?"
I fought the urge to turn and glare at him. "What does that have to do with anything?"
"Keeper avatars—also known as 'butchers'—are excellent at every step of preparing meat for consumption." He paused. "Though I doubt this one possesses many spices."
