Reincarnation had its challenges. Cas knew that.
Among these challenges was ignorance. You just didn't know anything about your knew world, and had to constantly fake your way through every conversation. If you were lucky, some kind person might subject you to a lore dump, and Cas lore dumps.
Cas knew this, too, and she'd braced herself for it, but... it just never seemed to end.
She’d been in this army for two days, and already her life was unbalanced by more questions than a Lost episode.
What are Regalias? What are Trinkets? Why did no one care about the prince’s brother? Why did her eyes function as magical protractors? What was Sara so mad about? And, most immediately: what was that guy’s name again?
“Good evening, Lady Cassandria,” a regular soldier greeted in passing.
One of the pitfalls of fame: everyone knew your name, and you had to constantly pretend that you hadn’t forgotten theirs.
“Good evening to you, too, my good sir!” Cas returned the casual salute and shifted her course to avoid any more awkward interactions.
Heading south, Cas went to the dinner field.
‘Why couldn’t life be simple for once?’
Cas sat next to an abandoned fireplace. The embers were black, but still radiated a comforting warmth.
Cas took a deep breath. The temperature was nice, thanks to the ash, so… why couldn’t she just sit and enjoy that? She sank further into the log, attempting to feign a casual posture.
There, that wasn’t so bad, was it?
Then Cas remembered the little Angel Girl, who had saved her from Sable, and a thousand worrying implications demanded her attention.
Who was the mysterious girl? Why could only Cas see her? Was she really a friend? Did Cas need to be worried? What were Regalias again? Why did the Angel Girl care so much about the prince's brother when no one else did? Seriously, what was that guys name again?
It was torture!
Cas was beginning to miss village life. It had been troublesome, but at least the troubles were straightforward. Here, Cas couldn’t even be sure if she should be worried, which was the most worrying thing of all. Hell, Cas was starting to miss being in the screaming cloud!
Running for her life amidst thousands of monsters had felt… quite reassuring, in a way. It was a situation with clear answers. Sure, the answers were invariably something like ‘don’t die’, but at least there had been answers.
Now, sitting peacefully in the safety of a camp, Cas was more flighty and nervous than ever.
Funny… hadn’t she been a bit too calm and collected in the screaming cloud?
Cas remembered the racing speed of her thoughts at the time.
Her running theory had been that Aura augmented her intelligence but – if that was the case – why did she feel so normal, now?
Maybe her aura had to be more active?
Would she get that boost again if she activated her aura in the right way?
It couldn’t hurt. Goodness knows she could use an intelligence boost right about now.
So, Cas tried to ‘utilize her aura more actively’, whatever that meant.
Leaning forward in her seat and shutting her eyes, Cas focused, trying to grasp at that blue glow which flamed around her.
Several hours passed like this, and eventually Cas ran out of gas.
The lack of results was frustrating, to say the least. Her aura was right there. She’d used it before. She was using it now, so why, why, why wasn’t it just giving her that intelligence boost she was so nicely asking for?
The entire camp was asleep around her. Only a few blips of aura in the distance – the regulars running night patrols – showed any signs of life. Certainly, now would be a rude time to throw a fit and curse the universe, so Cas managed a quiet reprimand in her thoughts:
‘darn’.
In truth, Cas couldn't sustain any anger. Hours of mental effort had exhausted that part of her.
She remembered how nice it had felt when her aura boosted her, how easily all the answers came to mind, and the experience only highlighted how terrible she felt now, straining under the weight of a thousand unanswerable questions.
Vainly, she tried one last time. She tried to call forth memories of anger, and frustration mixed in with the comforting nostalgia of a warm house in the middle of winter.
Nothing. Another complete failure of an attempt.
Cas, too tired to even think of humoring her frustration, simply let go… and stopped trying.
And that’s when it happened.
Aura XP Cap Reached!
Aura Level modification: Aura LVL 5 -> 5.
Aura Proficiency Improvement: Untrained -:> Novice
Additionally, for the first time, there was a description tied to the changes:
Aura is a speckled vision of what lies beyond reality.
Unconstrained by natural laws, it is the host of infinite power.
Be careful.
That was new.
Usually, her updates were the circular sort, stating something that was either obvious or damn obvious. The kind of thing you’d find in a book of tautologies or videogame loading screens…
Fair enough, Cas decided.
But, this. Cas brought up her status sheet to look over the changes.
image [https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdgKnCeOSgSg9CQNkg9lrXOPvdPvmFGhFlqRDvVr5kFQg3YlVg2YAq1LqENh5Fb4tp5rnv8byiiVRTUSR10sIOuN3xZuvYSynhDyKGEyKnaRXEBdYTSq8Qa0TNIl0TQh-wTGxNRAw?key=59o9chQCUS--wB5MvW7ZmlHv]
This was new.
Obviously, there was more to aura than the level number. Proficiency was probably a hidden stat. It made sense, a beginner wouldn’t know how good they were until they started learning, after all.
The description was very new, however, and it surprised Cas how easily she found herself able to ignore it.
That was just the thing with the Aura boost. It didn’t necessarily improve the quality of her thoughts, but it was helpful for ignoring distractions.
This 'Aura' stuff, the Angel-Girl, Regalias, Trinkets, socializing: these were all incomprehensibly complicated subjects Cas couldn’t possibly expect to understand right now, and so – with the decisive confidence of her Aura-Boost guiding her – it was easy to move onto things she could do something about.
For instance, there was the fact of her status screen.
It was a familiar sight. Cas had seen it hundreds of times, at this point. But looking at the same same thing over and over again… if familiarity bred contempt, then surely over-exposure did just the opposite.
Looking at it with a fresh mind, Cas was able to see just how… wrong it was. The color choices were jarring, the spacers were unnecessary, she’d wasted space up top stating her name and species, both things she already knew, and this wasn’t even mentioning the fact that her aura modifier went all the way down to magic affinity: a stat which she not only didn’t use, but also wasn’t affected by her aura!
Wait… how did she know magic affinity wasn’t affected by her aura?
Cas accepted that she just did… probably a result of her new proficiency.
With a shrug, she put that mystery on to the ‘later’ pile and looked upon her new and bedazzled character sheet.
image [https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcZ-o7_fHDdPmJ4wW9bb_bEqqHJPOxOLFZihtyo2cGabuCIlX3zT4QlYSYk48_lPChZ3rF9Nw_5hOl4bpCb2buLfg1gooTTIWnkmdv35KFHRwwEDWyseiaezHu9_NlDz-aaEYw1?key=59o9chQCUS--wB5MvW7ZmlHv]
But she’d hardly made the changes when something new struck out at her.
That was the refreshing thing about the aura boost. Normally, thinking required effort. Now it felt like quite the opposite. It felt like her mind was rolling down-hill, and it was Cas’s job to tap the breaks.
But, perversely, Cas wondered what would happen if she neglected that duty. What if she let it go on rolling, gaining speed?
For instance, glancing down at the bottom of the status screen brought her age into view.
She was 16.
She’d been twenty two just days ago, hadn’t she?
Repressed memories of getting blasted into chunks and being eaten alive by flying piranhas returned themselves.
Right, Cas remembered. She’d probably lost about six years worth of mass in the monster cloud.
Her teenage body also neatly explained why she’d been so nervous and awkward recently. Honestly, with such stark differences in psychology, it was a wonder Cas hadn’t noticed earlier. She’d have to make a habit of checking her age in the future.
Unfortunately, she’d probably have to stay in her teens, now that everyone had seen her at this age. It was nothing a few years worth of false aging couldn’t fix, but she would also have to be careful about taking damage in the future. Taking damage caused her to grow younger, and growing younger would probably cause some unwanted questions.
Cas’s mind was in free-fall, now, and thoughts passed by like telephone poles on the highway – flashing briefly into view before another insight took their place.
Given this speed of thought, it was quite a painful experience, when her mind suddenly made a squealing u-turn onto just that last topic.
Because, after all, wasn’t there something really strange about the way she’d been taking damage?
The fact was, Cas couldn’t remember ever actually taking any damage.
At most, her status sheet would say things like: HP Updated, but that didn’t sound like taking damage, and in fact it never felt like it either. Honestly, it seemed like her HP stat was just tracking how much material she was carrying at the moment.
Did that mean her “HP” stat was just some arbitrary multiplication of her current mass?
Status Sheet updated: “HP” replaced with “Current Mass”
Apparently so.
image [https://i.imgur.com/tSalD2L.png]
If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
Cas looked up at the new status sheet. Her current weight was 136 out of 250.
Cas had never weighed even close to 250 as a human, so that was probably referencing the maximum amount of weight her absorption level would let her carry. She wondered what would happen if she tried to exceed that weight. Would parts of her just start falling off?
That certainly sounded plausible. Slimes were hardly ‘solid’ after all.
Back in the village, Cas had been stuck as a sixty pound 12 year old because of her Absorption level.
Further back in time, in the cave, when Absorption had been at level 5, her weight limit had been 6 pounds.
Opening a second screen to her notes section, Cas hurriedly began making a chart as she delved into her memories.
When Absorption had been level 6, the weight limit was 8 pounds.
Level 9 was 20 pounds.
Level 13: 70 pounds.
And, now, it was level 17 at 250. That… sounded exponential. In fact...
Pulling out her excel chart… or, pattern square, rather. Cas backtraced a plausible equation. She’d had to do some janky work with throwing her current level into the exponent, but:
250*2.72^(0.3163*((Current Level)-17))
There! The result of her hard work, and it had some interesting stories to tell. According to it, Cas would have a max weight of four thousand pounds if she leveled Absorption to 26. Fourteen Thousand, if she went all the way to thirty seven.
Skills in Siablo three had a cap at level 40. Plugging that number into the equation, if Cas could level Absorption to the same level, she would have a maximum weight limit of…
Cas blinked, feeling her racing brain pause. She ran the calculation again, just to be sure.
And the same answer came back. At Absorption 40, she’d have a weight limit of 400,000 pounds. Exponentials were a hell of a drug, it seemed.
Of course, levels were an in-game abstraction for Siablo. Real life had no need to humor Cas’s simplified equations. Besides which, the equation itself was only a guess, but… even, say, ten thousand pounds of mass was a lot, all things considered, and Cas would be able to gather it from things as simple as river water and dead-wood.
The things Cas could do…
Cas was a creative person. And, normally, even without an aura boost, such an exciting prospect would have her simmering with ideas late into the night. She could have spent days, weeks considering the implications. The heat dissipation requirements alone would have oh so many juicy consequences for her to consider, not to mention the square cube law.
Even with aura, 400,000 pounds was quite a lot to lug around, an aquatic form might be the best, or maybe something like a low-lying carpet creature. A sedentary clone.
Implications and limitations and opportunities jumped up like pageant starts seeking for her attention.
But Cas wasn’t normal at the moment. Her aura boost had only continually intensified its effects. Cas brought her hand up into view. It was shaking in time with the butterflies in her stomach. Everything around her felt more alive than ever. She was noticing details she’d never even seen before. It felt as if she’d just taken a gallon shot of espresso.
Given this, it was impossible for Cas to figure why she was so… bored wasn’t the right answer, no. Cas was just calm.
She found it easy to ignore the mass limit.
Instead, a far more interesting problem gripped Cas’s mind.
In the midst of all her fantastic speculating, a memory recalled itself to her. It was an important memory, Cas could feel that by how intensely it stuck out.
Cas remembered, back when she’d given Sara a blood transfusion, that she had done so in a ruined town.
Afterwards, they had walked through a ruined countryside.
Destroyed houses and burnt fields stood out as the markers of battle. Even the forests had been subject to general devastation.
The cause of this was obvious… enemy units along with runaway monster clouds were bound to cause mayhem.
The question remained, however: why was this memory important? What could cause Cas’s mind brand it with such an intense halo of significance? It felt important, certainly.
And then Cas remembered the other thing she had done while staying in the village.
Namely, she’d looted the place, finding clothes, training dolls, and other miscellaneous accouterments of daily life.
Her investigations had revealed that all recent inhabitants had been women and children, and that they had evacuated recently.
That village couldn’t have been the only one subject to such disruption. The way battles usually worked, probably this entire region was the subject of a sudden refugee crisis.
Given that – at last Cas’s mind pounced backwards onto the original conclusion: where were all the refugees?
It was an important question. Without her boost Cas might have been content to ignore it as a background sort of thing, but… potentially thousands of moving humans was an important thing. They could hardly be expected to move as quickly as an army unit.
Recalling the road networks she’d seen while in the air, the borders of this region extended a hundred miles back to the west so… there should be refugees that hadn’t caught up to them yet.
As is often the case with investigations, the right question can set everything into place.
Cas remembered that morning, when the Luitenant had ordered them to prepare for movement. Her team had been asked to pack away all the explosives into one cart, while the rest of the army unloading the provisions.
At the time, Cas thought that was to dump dead weight – what with the expedition being cut short due to the prince’s death – but that didn’t make sense. The carts could move themselves, and unloading the food and water would only take them more time.
Of course, such discrepancies could be well explained if you, for some reason, needed to unload those provisions. Say, perhaps, if you needed to give it away to a load of refugees.
But, if that was the case, then why hadn’t the Luitenant told them about the refugees in advance?
Maybe there was someone important traveling with the refugees? Someone who’s identity you wouldn’t want the enemy to know about, so you had to keep things like this under wraps? Loose lips sink ships and all that.
In fact, it would have to be someone who you’d expect to travel with refugees, and who you’d expect to be greeted with honor by an Army unit? Why else hide the seemingly mundane facts of the case: that you were meeting with a group of refugees.
Perhaps the governor of a distant province?
Cas blinked, standing up. She had a long night ahead of her.
----------------------------------------
In the end, a night full of intense speculating had done little to move the needle forward on the progress of her assumptions.
There was only so much one could do with limited information.
Cas still maintained the aura boost of course, and only ran it faster in the excitement of the morning, when Sara’s mental voice spread over the camp like an early morning radio announcement.
---------------------------------------- Cas had been planning to skip the ceremony. She wasn’t much for organized religion, and was happy to bask in the knowledge of her superior intellect for a few hours more. As the Chief Auxiliary had rudely informed her, however, ‘encouraged to attend’, in this case, ended up meaning ‘required’. Naturally, not all soldiers could attend. Someone had to stand guard and run patrolls, after all. Cas had volunteered, but only regulars were granted the privilege of such vital tasks. And so, Cas had the privilege of experiencing her first involuntary volunteering effort. In truth, despite her cremudgenism, it was a genuinely moving sight. The caravan of Refugees, battered, wearing worn clothes and tired faces, trudged despondently over the beautiful field. As they drew closer, some of them – those in the front, carrying swords and make-shift shields – looked at the first line of soldiers and raised hands in salute. The whole of the army formation – numbering a thousand – stood vigil over the harrowing scene, giving a united front of stoic and brave faces. Looking at them, one couldn’t have guessed the magnitude of the defeat they’d suffered just two mornings ago. The scene had it’s intended effect. The refugees delighted like children, growing especially excited as they noticed the fluttering unit standard with the symbol of Trinket Ember emblazoned onto the front. It was grey to Cas’s eyes, but the people’s eyes moved immediately to the eye-catching crimson banner. The invincible jewel in the empire's crown. To tell by the reverence shown, it had a storied history that belied the recent horrors it had suffered. Cas – by dint of her connection to Sara – had been given a front row seat to the whole affair. Wearing a white shawl to cover her tattered and blood-stained coat. She stood directly beside Sara and only a few rows behind the Lieutenant. Given this, Cas had expected cheers, or singing, or some sort of celebration, but nothing so spectacular happened. Rather, a big, exhausted sigh of relief seemed to go through the whole group. Cas could almost feel the hundreds of miles they had marched in that expression. Some of them were in tears, and most looked ready to collapse. They all remained standing, however, not a single person so much as dropping a pack. In fact, some of the older people, who had to be supported or otherwise carried by their grand-children, took it upon themselves to stand up straight, under their own power, for a moment at least, as the palanquin passed. The palanquin was a massive thing. Thick, timber logs were its frame, and it had the impossible look of a floating house, as twelve men – dressed in obscuring robes – carried the litter on steel rods and tired shoulders. And it wasn’t just Sara either. Looking forward and glancing back, Cas saw that even the steel faces of the soldiers and officers had softened, and turned reverential, as the palanquin was placed with a thud and the white curtains in it’s face parted. A woman dressed in glimmering robes stepped gently out. The Lieutenant bowed and moved a hand to greet her. “It’s an honor.” The woman was older in age, crows feet at the edges of her eyes giving her face a rather pained and long-suffering expression. It was a perfectly fitting face, for the look of mourning that shrouded her features. “Oh,” she said a bit sadly, and painedly, at seeing the Luitenant in front of her. “Liutenant, or should I say Commander. I take it this means the prince is…” “Yes. I am taking temporary command in the meantime,” the Liutenant supplied. It was an honest answer. The lieutenant's command was temporary, until a new commander was appointed. But, it was also just vague enough to hide the ugly fact which lay beneath it. The Priestess raised her hand. A blessing, perhaps, and the Lieutenant rose back up. “Carry your responsibilities diligently. Be certain the Trinket Ember has not failed you. What is human expectation, after all, to a power given by God?” “And to you!” The priestess now raised her voice to address the larger crowd of the army, “I-” It was quite an involved sermon. Cas found that she was able to appreciate it more than usual under the influence of her powers. There was a layering to the composition she usually wouldn’t have appreciated, or tried to appreciate, for that matter. Of course, it was a sermon for the general audience, so the basic message was simple enough, if cryptically transmitted, eulogy for the lost prince. It was masterfully woven together, in a way that would be meaningful in different ways for the soldiers – who knew the truth – and the refugees, who wouldn’t be helped by knowing of the prince’s death. It was also a brief sermon. Afterwards, the Priestess called for a brief, public meeting with the Lieutenant. Cas didn’t know why she stayed. More likely, though, it was because – despite her premonitions and biases – Cas was fascinated by the figure of the priestess. The old woman had a worried look to her figure, like one used to bearing the weight of terrible secrets. That was the thing about the clergy. They were the ones people turned to in their darkest hours. Divorce, death, tragedy, whenever something happened that a person just couldn’t handle, religion was what they turned to. The clergy were who they called.. Except, of course, in a large enough population, there was something terrible happening every day. Naturally, a holy person with a large enough parish would live a life dedicated to confronting darkness. So, it was natural that a holy person might have dead eyes, but… Cas had met with priests back on Earth, and none of the ones she liked ever looked like the priestess. It was an impossible suspicion. To all appearances, the priestess was just another uptight holy woman with a humorless expression. But… Cas noticed small discrepancies in her expression, which confirmed to her the weirdness of it all. It felt like her Aura-Boost was highlighting them for her eyes. So Cas stuck around. What followed was a private-public conversation between the Priestess and Lieutenant, full of many blessings and discreetly worded conversations that hinted at, but never directly addressed, the late prince’s death. It was in the midst of all this that the priestess finally asked a direct question. “And,” she spoke, waffling a bit on the matter before finally committing. “What has happened to the prince’s younger brother in all this? I understand, he was travelling with the prince on this expedition.” “He’s under my care. In fact–” The Lieutanant, as was her manner, began explaining the facts of the case, but Cas couldn’t hear her over the loud sight which took over much of her vision. Angel Girl was back, and she had crossed arms and a cross expression, as she sent a glare of hatred over at the Priestess. Cas didn’t understand why, despite her earlier premonitions. At least, she had no clue until the Priestess snapped her fingers, and one of the robed figures stepped forward, carrying a large vase, taller than they were. It was a clay jar, fired with an intricate pattern. It led out a solid, heavy thud as it was placed before the Lieutenant. Cas could hear that it had been filled with sand… a strange choice to harbor a flower, but– “It’s a desert plant,” the priestess explained, pointing to the drooping, nectar filled cups and vine-like leaves of the Sand Angler. “It was meant to be a gift for the prince's brother. My men crossed the mountain at great expense to retrieve it for him. Of course, recent emergencies have gotten in the way of its delivery, but, if you feel the boy is up to it, I would be honored to present him with his late birthday present.” It was a perfectly natural thing, apparently, to tell by the ease with which the Lieutenant accepted the gift. However, to a discerning and suspicious eye. There were things off about the whole scene. The Priestess had explained herself too much. Cas remembered Sara's advice on this matter: that it was the sign of a liar. The second oddity was the vase, which stood at the height of a man and carried a flower barely larger than a bouquet. Of course, none of this was confusing to Cas, because she recognized that flower. It looked like moss grass, but it had a characteristic spout along the rim edge of the nectar cups. It also had a man-sized monster buried underneath it in the sand, using the false plant as a lure to kill unsuspecting things. One of its kind had nearly bitten Cas in half, with a jaw like a bear trap. And, now, it had – according to the priestess – been procured at great expense, so as to be placed in a young boy’s room, for the sake of birthday present. Cas was beginning to understand why Angel-girl was glaring at the woman.