My final spear thrust occurs just before I succumb to the pain that had been building up. Between my cracked ribs, the shocking burning pain of Vampguppy’s dorsal area, its fangs in my shoulders, and now the terrible burns on my left hand, I feel quite finished. My thrust, however, literally explodes outwards. A massive gout of flame crashes into Vampguppy, sizzling away over half of its red bar, and I swear my spear multiplied. I may have been seeing double, or quintuple at the end there, as the spears crashed into Vampguppy. The world pauses once again as Vampguppy’s red bar seems to dwindle away to nothingness. I can’t remain conscious to confirm though.

Some time later, I awaken to Lil worriedly bouncing on my chest, apparently they’d dragged me out of the pond. Lil was unsure if I might drown while I was passed out in it. Lil was also able to do something that I can’t quite do. They gathered all of the little bags and sashimis physically, and moved their little floating rotating icons onto shore, near my unconscious body.

Nursing my bruises and puncture wounds, I carefully sit up. Looking over at Lil, my eyes are wet and my vision blurred, I just want to thank them. I was definitely going to die. I glance down at my charred left hand, and wince in pain as I try to open it and then curl it into a fist.

Lil hops into my lap, and playfully butts my chest. “That was crazy, partner! I didn’t know you could do anything like that!”

Dazed, groggy, barely comprehending what Lil was saying to me, I respond as best I can, “Me neither Lil, at the end there I was just desperate for anything that could help, and I remembered the weird bitey blood icon, and how when you were burning it, it had taken some damage, without regenerating.”

“Oh yeah, I noticed that too. So it must have had a skill about blood, but that skill had a weakness to fire?” Lil surmises.

I exhale what must seem like a panting sigh before responding, “Seems like it. How, and why a creature had a skill relating to blood is beyond me, since neither you nor the fish nor any other creature in our entire world seems to bleed. You just lose resolution as little blue polygons float away, tiny empty translucent blue triangles. So weird.”

Lil responds by blowing a raspberry, “Nuh uh, you’re the weird one.”

Chuckling, I nod in agreement. It’s true, I’m the odd one out. The only thing in existence that appears to bleed. Trying to return to the moment, I ask Lil, “So what are all the things on the shore?”

“That’s all the stuff from the fish and the guppy. I picked up what little I could, my space is nothing compared to yours.” Lil must be talking about their capacity in their inventory.

Surveying the items, there are several clay canteens, a candle, a few bottles with a blueish clear liquid, a small grey orb that looks like a polished magnet, an ovaloid chunk of pumice, and what appears to be two sheets of vellum, or maybe parchment, I’m not sure. There are also sheets of hide, and what looks to be the membrane from Vampguppy’s dorsal fin, and a whole segment of dorsal fin, spines included. There are also plenty of other odds and ends, mostly food or currency.

I begin collecting everything, though I’ve no idea the uses of some of the objects. As I get around to picking up what I guess are scrolls, they both say the same thing, something along the lines of: “Identify, single use, identifies all possessions.”

Curious what the single use could possibly mean, I take one of the scrolls out of my inventory, and begin focusing on using it. There’s a sudden fwsh sound, and a puff of charged smoke. As the smoke dissipates, the scroll is no longer in my hand. Looking into my mind’s eye, it’s pretty obvious what the effects were. The objects I was most curious about all have descriptions that sound basically magical.

Waterlit Candle

This candle functions underwater, it ignites when submerged, and stays lit until it surfaces once again.

Compass Orb

This orb faintly tugs its holder to face North.

Minor Potion of Water Walking

This potion allows its imbiber to take one stride atop water without sinking. The effects of this potion are stackable. The imbiber transfers all kinetic energy into the surrounding water on contact with water, until they take another step.

Soapstone

This smoothened porous rock contains the magic to remove dirt, grime, germs, and more from a person and their clothing. This stone is capable of cleaning nearly anything, a single touch is all that is required to activate its magics.

Actually, reading the descriptions, they literally are magical, with references to magic in at least one of them. Magic doesn’t exist though, right? Well, my memories say it doesn’t. But my space skill seems pretty magical, being able to materialize things from my inventory out of thin air, launching them and so on. Oh no my spear!

Worriedly, I ask, “Lil, were you able to drag my spear out of the pond?”

Lil’s answer is mildly remorseful, but reassuring, “Sorry pal, it was too heavy for me to swim with, but with all those leaves, it’s just kinda floating a few feet beneath the surface.”

“Oh, whew, I threw all I had into that, it’d be a shame to lose it now.” I’m glad I don’t have to recover all the material that I had been collecting over the course of days or weeks, since I attached nearly all of it to the spear.

Lil chuckles and teases me about its heft, “It looked too big for you to handle, honestly.”

“Yeah, it was, it definitely was.” With that admission, I walk to the pond’s deepest edge, and stick my face beneath the surface. Spying my spear, I try to will it back into my inventory, and thankfully, it obliges.

Vaguely remembering something, since I saw a skill called energy climbing during the fight, I figure I can ask Lil for confirmation, “Lil, is energy that blue bar in my mind’s eye?”

Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

“Yep yep! Did you not know that before today?” Lil’s answer is as I suspected.

I ramble in reply, “I guess I had kind of guessed, I just didn’t know for sure. Doing stuff with my inventory, and space skill uses up a lot of energy, and also raises the number in my skills page pretty quickly.”

Lil continues in a chipper fashion, “That’s handy! I mostly use mine to move around faster, or breathe fire.”

“It takes energy for you to move around?” Now I worry that Lil, like some kind of robot, will just sort of go dormant randomly if they’re too active for too long.

“Well to pounce, otherwise I just have to wiggle my tail and slither along the ground, or maybe roll on my face, I’d rather not do that.” Oh, good, Lil can at least function without energy. I wonder what would happen if my own energy was stuck at zero. I honestly hope to never find out. Though, it’s mildly amusing to imagine Lil rolling as a form of locomotion, since they’re basically a sphere with a tail. It’d be like a flat tire every time they were on their face, and a lumpy tire every time their tail landed.

I vaguely mirror Lil from earlier, when they were trying to console me without really knowing how, “It sounds rough to not have any limbs, Lil buddy.”

“Some day, I’ll have all the arms, all of them!” We both laugh at the absurdity of Lil’s comment. I try to picture Lil as nothing but a sphere with a ton of arms and a tail. It’s just awkward to imagine.

I feel a little less safe near the pond, but then again, if that’s the most dangerous thing it could throw at us, I feel like we’re better prepared to face it should it happen again. Just, just not right this moment. I gulp and glance around, making certain that nothing might have heard my hubris. Also, I’ll make sure to pad the edges of any scales I use as armor, because the edges are so sharp! That scaled armor cutting my arm open is what started the whole mess!

I’m tempted to try to use Vampguppy’s dorsal fin as a glider, or make it into some kind of pair of wings. But I have literally no experience making or controlling such things. To me, leaping off of a cliff, trusting something I just imagined might work, is probably not a good idea.

With containers now, I’m also less afraid to travel farther away from the river itself. In fact, there’s a new icon in my mind’s eye, it’s kind of like a rain barrel. Maybe? Before I fill all the clay canteens with water, I decide to try to disassemble one of the water walking potions, to see what that does. To my pleasant surprise, I learn two more skills, disenchanting, and alchemy. The breakdown of the potion turns into several types of herbs, and liquids, which I then recombine into the same empty potion bottle. I wonder if I could combine two or more of them into a greater, or maybe moderate water walking potion? But I have no idea if it’s that simple, and I’d rather save them in case of an emergency.

It actually sounds like, if I was falling off of a cliff, and had drunk one of these water walking potions, if I land in water, well, on water, the water takes all the impact. That sounds amazing, life saving even.

Before I get carried away in my own mind, I try to include Lil in my curiosity, “Lil, these things, they’re basically magic, one even says it has actual magic. Is magic real?”

“Of course it is, why wouldn’t it be?” Lil is playfully headbutting my shins, though they stop to answer my question.

I can only guess it must be these mysterious memories of mine, “Just those weird preconceptions I have, that I don’t know why I have them. What’s the most magical thing you’ve gotten?”

“Hm, since I can’t carry much, I tend to only pick up the meat I’m going to eat for a while, so nothing really. I’ve also never fought something like that! Before.” Lil pointedly emphasizes the word that, as they nervously chuckle.

Since I’m continuing to guess at things, I make another assumption, “I see, well, I’m kind of surprised that the only creatures that have come to this pond are you and me, but maybe the Vampguppy is why other things stay away.”

“I dunno, I think you somehow triggered it when you started bleeding in the water. I don’t think it’s normally here.” Lil however keeps me from being too assumptive. Or is it presumptive? That’s two things related to my blood that our world interacted with. So freakin’ weird.

I have to acquiesce, “Yeah, I feel like you’re right, I gashed my arm on a giant fish scale I was using as armor to protect my back, and that’s when the whole mess started.”

“I’ve never seen anyone bleed before, usually when we fight, the one that loses will just derez.” Lil sounds a bit somber, through their text anyway.

I want to hear Lil’s explanation of it for absolutely certain, since the word had popped into my head earlier, “Derez?”

Lil clarifies with the similarly mysterious terminology, “Yeah, when we shatter and our resolution reaches the vanishing point.”

“Those terms, they sound like, well, computer terms. Digital things, resolution, derezzing, is that why we have knowledge without having to learn it? Are we computer programs?” Could I possibly just be a glitchy program? An AI?

“I’m not sure what most of you said means, well, okay, I understand the words’ definitions, but I don’t think so.” Lil’s answer leaves me unsure.

I blow a breath through puffed cheeks before responding, “Ah, don’t worry about it Lil. I guess I’m just still exhausted from the fight. I’m going to try to get as much water as I can carry. Maybe we can journey south along the river tomorrow, or sometime in the next few weeks. When we do, let’s try to find the ocean down to the south, and maybe some other friendly creatures to start our community to come back north with us?”

“Sounds good to me, partner!” Lil immediately snaps back to exuberance after our surmising and guessing. Lil is pretty remarkably resilient that way. I hope they know how much I appreciate them, and their great attitude.

“Oh, hey, speaking of north.” I call the Compass Orb out of my inventory. When I try to focus on using it sure enough, it faintly tugs me in the direction I’ve been calling north.

Lil boggles at the randomness of my exclamation, “What does that mean?”

“Oh I just wanted to verify something. So, with this, if we’re heading basically directly south, it will always lead us home, here, in case we stop following the river for some reason.” I indicate the Compass Orb thing item that we just earned as loot. My brain says in a videogame, this would have been a boss monster guarding an optional door, or in a tabletop game, it was the side quest boss that guarded a trove of treasure. What a weird series of thoughts. Or is it my world that’s weird? It’s hard to distinguish.

“That’s pretty neat!” Lil exudes praise about our good fortune.

“Yeah, I think I’ve got a decent sense of direction, but it’s nice to have a tool to help out.” Honestly, if Lil could hold it, I’d just hand it to Lil. I feel like I must have some bird DNA or something, a magnet in my nose, something like that. Somehow I absolutely knew where North was. Heck, maybe bird DNA would explain my oddly cherubic, goblinoid pixie-like appearance. I'm mostly lanky, with slightly rounded cheeks and such, but my ears are pointy, and peak out a ways from beneath my wild mane of red hair. My nose is humanoid, but doesn't really seem typical for a human. I just don't fit the picture of what my mind says a human is supposed to look like, at any age, but I'm closest to what a human might look like somewhere between adolescent, and young adult. Somewhere in there.

I nod, mostly to myself, as I approach the pond again. Reaching into the pond, I try to scoop some water, while mentally focusing on taking as much as my containers will carry, and maybe more, to see what happens. After a few moments, I swear the pond level drops several inches, and a loud obnoxious buzz sound rattles my brain. A box pops up with wording to the effect of capacity reached.