I stare at them all, clad in scales of rune-carved iron, my despair hidden as I start to stand straight, attempting to look confident as I ask, “Alright, can I get any leaders over here so that I can understand what’s going on?”

And with that, the entire crowd erupts into furious discussion, and as my eyes dart from place to place, I see the sheer panic and despair instilled in the crowd. As if fear was beaten into their minds with an iron rod.

But with a sigh of relief, I see a group of three ancient tribesmen take charge of the disparate discussions and calm the people. Before they look at each other, they nod and come over in my direction.

I stiffen my brow, getting my game face ready as I face the impromptu leaders of the kidnapped tribe. They are each very old figures with robes remniscencent but lesser than Patient Bridge’s; they are covered in silver jewelry, necklaces, elaborate earrings, and such dot their frame, giving off the feeling of old power and wealth. Noting the similarities, I judge that they are probably some type of community leader.

And taking that in, I am quite surprised when they completely abandon any sense of dignity as they bow before my feet, their knees undoubtably creaking, their steps not hearty or hale.

“My name is Furaha, and if you need to wrangle the children, I can help,” the wrinkled old woman says.

“My name is Jemilo, and well, my expertise in arithmetic won’t be very useful, but I am honored to serve great spirit” the man so small as to seem shrunken says.

“We are the elders of the Daraja tribe, and as such, we are honored to help you great spirit in your endeavors. My name is Bongani, and I am the leader of the council members.” One of them says, standing proud and tall, the youngest among the ancient circle.

I wince uncomfortable with the bowing and scraping. They are elders; they should rest their bones, not be on this cold stone floor.

Gesturing for them to get up, I say, “There is no need for such a thing, now tell me about the situation. For example, as to why there are so many of you here!”

I witness all of the elders slowly get to their feet. I try to help, but they slap my hands away as they rise, their bones creaking with the effort. Eventually the smaller one named Jemilo says “Well, it is quite the embarrassing thing Great Spirit, but if you must know, a shaman two generations back made a deal with the spirit of mystery.”

“And that idiot said that he would pay the price of 1/3rd of our children each year to be raised by the spirit!” The elderly woman, Furaha, says hissing and spitting with rage at the sheer idiocy of offering up something so precious as the future generations.

“But Patient Bridge refused to give the children this year; he never approved of the meek policy, so when he became the tribe shaman, he spent the last 3 years gathering up favors to protect the village and defy the spirit. But it was all for naught; the spirit slipped past all of his measures and teleported everyone out of the village. The only one not caught was Patient Bridge himself, who used a precious item to resist the teleportation.” The youngest Bongnani says, regretful at their complete failure to make a stand.

Waving my hands, I say, “Wait, wait, wait, I’ve essentially been contracted to help Patient Bridge wiggle out of a debt? A pretty terrible debt, but still slimy nonetheless. Ugh, I can’t exactly leave you here, but you have very much put me in a compromising situation, so you better spit out something useful since Patient Bridge elected to tell me nothing at all.”

The old woman, having quickly gotten over the scraping unlike the other two, looks at me as if I were an idiot before saying, “What would we know! Our jobs are to take care of our people, not research old gods and magic. All we know is that the cunt has quite the ability for teleportation. Considering that they defeated Patient Bridge.”

A bit embarrassed at the uh fruitless attempt at gathering information, I rub my helmet before asking, “Well, is there anybody who would know something?”

One of the other men who sneaks a glare at the woman says, “We do not have the expertise necessary to teach you more than parlor tricks, and time is of the essence. Additionally great spirit, although we do have a chronicler, they are unlikely to know much due to the spirit’s lack of a doctrine. The great spirit is a creature of favors bought and sold, not earnest devotion.”

Weighing my options and the most likely imminent threat of whatever the mystery spirit will throw at me, I decide to skip getting more information in favor of just getting these people the fuck out of here.

Projecting an aura of confidence, I step out of my conversation with the elders and walk to the front of the room, my armored boots clanging against the floor, drawing everyone’s attention.

And I stand straight and as tall as I can be in front of a crowd of thousands. I draw a deep breath in before saying, “Before us stands freedom, and now we must grab it with our own hands.”

“HEAR ME, DARAJA TRIBE, FOR TODAY IS THE DAY YOU WILL ESCAPE YOUR SHACKLES. FOR I AM HERE, AND WITH OUR POWER, WE SHALL WALK OUT OF THIS HELL TOGETHER. NOW WITH ME!”

And with that, the entire makeshift city bursts into action; things are packed, babies are squashed, and the elderly and the weak are transferred to slings and then carried together. And before long, we walk out together in one grand mass.

I stand affronted, and as I pass through the door, I begin to rally them for a charge, but as I look back, I see that there are no people around me. I gasp in surprise as I see through the doorway, a massive procession of people walk out from the back of the room. As if someone had made a loop out of a single strand of corridor.

Redirected back into the storage room as they *pop* back into existence in the room. I stand in the entranceway baffled, but that confusion ends when I hear the ridiculous poppy laughter of the spirit echo throughout the room.

I whip my head back and forth looking for the source of the sound, but as I do so, I realize that it comes from everywhere, from the floor to the ceiling, as if the entire room were their mouth.

“OH, YOU BLOODY FOOL, MY MAIN ABILITY IS TO TELEPORT OTHERS, AND YOU THOUGHT YOU COULD WIN BY WALKING AWAY!” The spirit says hysterically laughing.

I grit my teeth because, well, while a thought might have drifted through my mind, what could I possibly do about the ability to treat space itself like a slab of clay.

Shaken I comfort myself by reminding myself of the fact that, well, they can’t use the magic forever, everything has a price, maybe I could just tire them out? Eventually, with enough brute force, they would go catatonic and be unable to cast magic, or act, allowing me to get all the people to safety.

Burning with anger at my own inability to help, I gesture for them to stay as I stomp further in the hallway, so that I might think of a solution.

As I carelessly stomp, I realize that the intensified gravity has stopped. I sigh; hopefully this means that he can’t keep up with the use of the magic, and that he will have to start making sacrifices soon.

But those are just idle hopes, what materials do I have in hand for how to solve this? And as I think back to the incident, I realize something very crucial. I wasn’t teleported.

Which summons a storm of questions, from the simple why to the how. And the answer could be anything from my armor absorbing the magic required to teleport me, to my special points for being such a nice girl, made me resistant to teleportations. Of which I doubt both, considering that it certainly didn’t absorb the gravity, and that I certainly haven’t accrued any grand amount of nice girl points from my estimations.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

Plus it would be faintly ridiculous for my body to consume the energy of atoms repelling each other, or weak force. If that was the case it would both completely ignore all sensible laws of reality, and anyone who approached the armor including me would be ripped apart into their composite atoms.

But I think frowning, then why can it absorb electricity? Isn’t electricity like the weird cousin of magnetism, which is itself the weird cousin of the forces that push atoms of opposite charges away from each other.

I grab my head before I promptly give up. I can’t reach any sort of reasonable conclusion on the case of my armor’s abilities without proper research. And it isn’t relevant right now, but if my armor is what did the trick, then maybe I can get them out of here using similar techniques.

I walk to the center, and I slowly shuck off the armor, which falls with an alarming clang to the floor. Soon enough, I stand in a skintight suit in front of the entire tribe. I am no shy flower, so I don’t mind the gazes. What I do mind, however, is all the people wincing at me.

I frown before I remember that the shaman saw me as a figure of piercing light. Am I essentially flashbanging them?

I stew in my own thoughts, but noticing that the situation has stalled, I try to wave them off before I belatedly call out, slightly embarrassed, “Alright, which one of you wants to try my armor on for size? We need to test if we might be able to get you out of here using its enchantments.

Scanning the crowd I am quite surprised when a litany of voices volunteer, but with further inspection, I am less surprised, for the vast majority of the voices are those of teenage boys eager to prove themselves.

I let myself have a little chuckle at the eternal stupidity of teens before I gesture for the elders to come over and choose who would be best.

—

I flutter around the young man, carefully fitting my armor onto him. His eyes are scrunched, most likely from fear, but he puts on a brave face. And although that is admirable, let’s get him to stop panicking here.

I asked him his name in order to ease him into further topics.

“My name is Adjo Great Spirit,” he says, his voice a bit squeaky.

I sigh as I look over him; he truly doesn’t look old enough to be volunteering, but he was given it by the elders. And well, anyone would do; I just needed to not start a weird, not religious but still religious, debate over who got the honor to serve me. Eugh, that concept is weird.

Either way, I push forward and say, “Don’t worry, Adjo, you will do great. With this, I might be able to take the next steps toward getting you all out of here.”

Examining the straps, I make sure that everything is perfectly aligned before I step away. The young man was encased in a suit of armor that would beggar nations. Not that I would or, hell, even could, sell it.

Regardless of that, I say, “Alright, Adjo, can you walk out the entrance? We are trying to see if we can maybe get the tribe out with my enchantments.”

But as I see him stand, I see him stumble forward, having difficulty with the armor and quite surprised by its strange weight.

He curses under his breath, saying, “Why is the armor so heavy? Did the skin forgers forget that the rest of us aren’t as strong as us?” It’s so heavy that it’s unwieldy. What type of ignorant cook made this?"

My face burns red with embarrassment as a teenager scolds me for my faulty armor-making. Not that it’s really my fault; who could have expected to meet a guy with gravity powers wearing armor that is specifically screwed over by the thing I no longer really experience?

But before Adjo can mutter more insults towards my person, I start to explain, “I, uh, didn’t exactly understand how to make armor. The best way for you to understand is to essentially read a book on how to make armor. And with the weightlessness I live in, it doesn’t really matter.”

He looks me up and down his body, just screaming confusion, before he asks from underneath the suit. “You are standing on the floor right now.”

A bit of laughter bursts out, unprepared for such a proper young man to say such a thing to me. I see him start an apology as he realizes what he’s done, but I stop him with a gesture.

“It’s fine, it’s fine; the path of exploding at any piece of criticism quickly leads to you turning into an unaware, crazy bastard with an overinflated ego.” I say laughter is still ringing through my heart.

“Plus, I am no spirit, just a human in a bad place; I deserve no additional respect beyond my own skill.” I am not willing to let them put me on a pedestal, especially when that pedestal is crowded with many actual gods.

I see him squint at my apparently quite literal radiance, which is quite ridiculous considering that they need light from somewhere for them to be affected by it. Before he makes what seems to be a gesture of indifference and walks to the doorway.

—

Nervous I nibble at my newly exposed fingernails, an infinite notebook in hand, ready to take notes. I take a deep breath before I say “go.”.

Stumbling and careful, Adjo walks through the doorway, only for him to “pop” back into existence at the back of the room.

I make a groan of regret before I quickly school my expression. It’s not a good idea after all to fight too hard for one set of results lest your entire study crumble into pieces. So I write down the disappointing findings before I walk over to the boy.

I pad along on the ground towards him, and as I approach, I see his dejected look, like he expected something grand to happen. I pat the armor currently encasing him before saying

“It’s alright, we have to try some more to get more information, and you are being so brave, so let’s look at your armor and give this another go, alright?” I said I was peering at the boy.

He nods, although unethically and reluctantly. I sigh; it seems like the elders had a good reason to choose him. He’s got a good heart.

Anyway, I examine the armor to make sure that everything is in working order, but as I expected, everything is completely fine. No damages, no extra magic expended; the armor is as it is supposed to be: an intimidating force of protection, power, and prowess.

Frustrated, I pace around the boy, examining every little strap, but no matter how hard I look, I cannot find a thing wrong with it. Sighing, I direct the boy to stand by the entrance. I, at the very least, need more data than just one try.

Getting back into position I raise my notebook and say, “Go!”

The boy, carefully stepping into the heavy armor, strides over the frame, only to be met with nothing at all. As he quite comically falls through the floor and out of the center of the ceiling.

Although it isn’t exactly funny to hear a child’s screams as he falls from on high or to hear the dreadful clang, people both draw away and rush forward at the cruel sight.

I stand with my notebook in hand for a moment, shellshocked by the sudden turn of events, before I drop the notebook and bound towards him, bringing to mind times and thoughts of healing.

But as I push past the crowd surrounding the boy, I am relieved to see the boy doing nothing but a dry cough, the dents in the armor quickly popping back into place, and the bruises and bits retreating with ridiculous speed as the armor itself heals him.

I smile. Of course, how could I have forgotten my own genius? As long as the user isn’t dead, the armor could get them into working condition extremely quickly, in fact even better than just using healing magic.

But my smile quickly turned into a frown. This means that the armor is perfectly functional; it just isn’t absorbing the teleportation magic. UGH, this is going to get a lot more complicated.

I start talking, but before I can finish, the boy stumbles to his feet, the weight obviously still causing him trouble.

“We need more information, right, in order for us to get out of this mess, so let us help you, great spirit; the Duraja tribe shall not kneel waiting for the bite of the blade,” he says, revealing a glimpse of his eyes underneath the ice, revealing unbending determination.

I step back as he stumbles forward through the doorway, only barely managing to make his way through before he is blasted out the back of the room.

Turned into an improvised rocket as he is thrown through the air by the spirit, his cruel laughter echoing with the screams of terror as Adjo’s armored body is turned into a missile.

—

I stand wearily, looking over at the people of the tribe as they fret, the weak hope I kindled starting to burn down to its embers. Adjo has gone back and taken a rest, but despite the fact that I now know that the armor isn’t going to save them,

They’re passing around the chest plates to all who need them in the aftermath of the last attempt.

Oh god, it’s so ridiculous that I’m talking about saving people. I’m no hero; I’m just a person, and yet here I am having people call me a great spirit, like I’m about to hand a child a sword.

And craziest of all, I basically just got handed the responsibility of rescuing not one or two people but essentially an entire town of people. If anybody had tried to tell me before all of this mess that I would end up rescuing a group of tribespeople in the past as essentially a capricious spirit, I would have laughed in their faces before wondering about their mental health.

Additionally, it’s not like I can tell them to fuck off or solve their own problems, like anyone would reasonably do when over their heads. Because their problems aren’t exactly that bad, Becky kept bragging about her family’s trip to the Arex’khan heartlands. It’s that a spirit with vast amounts of magical power is imprisoning them against their will!

So regardless of the insanity, I’m going to have to do something. So what do I know that can be used? I’m certain that I’m not being teleported around and that it’s not because of my armor.

But he was able to teleport me around when I was here first; if I remember correctly, his refusal to allow me to even touch his was quite annoying. What’s changed? I met him after I gained the power of language, so it’s not that I’m magically heavier than they are. If that is even a thing.

Is it those weird titles? Apparently there’s some weird ass magic in making people believe you, and currently an entire tribe is desperately hoping for me to succeed, so if the little spirit was correct, I should be metaphorically basking in free magic.

Not that I feel any of it, and well, that isn’t a workable solution considering that I can’t get them to worship themselves, at least not without starting a cult in like 2-3 hours.

No, I need more than just scraps. Fiddling with the back of my helmet, I reach for the amulet and look over the people with Analyze.

And my eyes shoot open as I see with my new eyes, stamped onto their very being, scarred messes that look like they were driven into the flesh of each of the people. And when I see those horrifying things, a screen pops up.

Adjo

Age:17

Property of the spirit of mystery. They who have baffled all they see and refused to taint themselves.

A proof of ownership, and I can feel that it isn’t place onto something so transient as flesh.

Fero

Age:25

Property of the spirit of mystery. They who have baffled all they see and refused to taint themselves.

I look at another man, and there it is again. Stamped on his existence is something that states that he is the property of the spirit.

Mendejo

Age:32

Property of the spirit of mystery. They who have baffled all they see and refused to taint themselves.

Frantic I pull up more and more and on everyone I see the same message over and over again.

Property of the spirit of mystery. They who have baffled all they see and refused to taint themselves.

Property of the spirit of mystery. They who have baffled all they see and refused to taint themselves.

Property of the spirit of mystery. They who have baffled all they see and refused to taint themselves.

And I realize why they were so easily tossed about with nary a care in the world. Because the spirit has branded them like sheep sent to the slaughter.

And they won’t be letting go of them that easily.