Kahli was shaking. She could hardly believe it. She was seeing messages from a system for the first time in her life. It was in many ways a dream come true.

She'd always heard of how people were either born with or without a system, and with that the ability to gain [skills]. It was something you had or you didn't and it was all based on luck, a roll of the dice. Yet here she was after petting this disgusting thing from the bottom of the Pit of Despair, seeing messages from its system saying she had paired with it.

Kahli had but only heard of legends from about five centuries prior of heroes and villains that paired to the systems of beasts. Usually, the beasts in question were dragons, as dragons were creatures most likely to have systems and probably also because they were quite cool.

Kahli didn't necessarily think that the whatever itself was cool, in fact she still found it nauseating to behold, but then again wasn't it the Harbinger of Doom? Being a monster of the apocalypse had to be cool. Right?

Kahli didn't have time to go over any more inadequacies, real or imagined, before messages from the creature's system flooded her conscious experience yet again.

[Please name ____ to continue]

[...]

[Please name ____ to continue]

Kahli shuddered. She had to name the damn thing? What, was she supposed to give this thing some sort of cute, froufrou moniker to go by?

[You've chosen the name 'Froufrou']

[Continue?]

Kahli had to laugh. Still, she looked back at the whatever and felt a tinge of sympathy. She almost felt indebted to it, as awful to behold as it was. Hadn't Kahli always wanted a system? Sure this wasn't her system she was seeing, it was the whatever's system, but regardless naming the creature Froufrou, while funny, felt like kicking it while it was down. Plus, if it was going to evolve into some sort of terrible doomsday beast, wouldn't it be better to give it a name that the creature might like? Kahli didn't want it to end up smiting her out of frustration or something when it became obscenely overpowered as detailed in the prophecy. So she racked her brain. Why couldn't she think of anything?

[Naming timeout]

[Naming complete]

[Would you like to see Froufrou's character sheet?]

Kahli chuckled as she looked at the Harbinger of Doom. Apparently it was too late now. This horrible thing that just [paired] her to its system was named Froufrou.

Since there was apparently no point in trying to go back, Kahli decided she might as well see Froufrou's character sheet. Better to see what she was working with under the hood, right?

[Froufrou]

[Level: -1]

Kahli chortled under her breath. Froufrou was a negative level? Everything about this creature seemed too ridiculous to be true. It was almost... pitiful. This was the Harbinger of Doom? Maybe Omar was right about that scroll after all...

[Skills: Putrefy]

Once again, Kahli couldn't help but laugh. There was a skill called [Putrefy]? She had to admit to herself, at least it was appropriate regarding Froufrou's appearance.

[Description: Froufrou is of an indeterminate species. Froufrou has spent their entire life in the Pit of Despair. Froufrou's favorite things include eating decomposing corpse matter, expelling bile, and slam poetry.]

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

That was... quite a description. Kahli wondered if there was any way she could see some actual stats in this character sheet. She'd always heard of character sheets and pictured them as being full of numbers and calculations, but all this seemed to do is specify Froufrou's negative level, mention Froufrou's single skill, and give a vague description of Froufrou's... favorite things? It just seemed ridiculous on so many levels. Systems were supposed to be powerful and robust, and Froufrou, as the Harbinger of Doom, should've had something incredibly impressive for a [skill]. After all, from the prophecy itself, didn't Froufrou have the ability to grow and change? Unless it wasn't the Harbinger, although Kahli felt confident that nothing could match the scroll's prophetic description like Froufrou could.

Of course Omar could've been right. What if the whole thing was nonsense? Kahli pictured the smug look on Omar's face, his eyes gleaming with proud glee. No, there was no way Omar could've been right. He’d been way too smug to be right. And even if he was right, well, maybe Kahli would just train Froufrou up into an apocalyptic monster anyways. After all, Froufrou had to be halfway there already, with how gross it looked.

Maybe [Putrefy] was much more powerful than she had thought. Kahli wondered if she could learn more about the [skill] using Froufrou's system.

[Putrefy: With this skill, Froufrou naturally imparts an attack on the senses of all living beings within a five foot radius. Notable affects include lack of physical comfort, loss of appetite or indigestion, dry eyes, hives, brain fog, physical malaise, lack of ability to smell pleasant things, and loss of libido. Generally, people in Froufrou's radius will be less friendly and more willing to do anything to get away from its influence.]

Kahli frowned. That was quite a laundry list of ill effects. Was [Putrefy] supposed to be imparting any benefits? Or was it really so that Froufrou's [skill] was at this point more of a hindrance than a blessing? Did systems work differently than she'd thought?

Kahli needed to do something more than simply muse about these things. She needed help, help to understand how systems worked now that she had access to one. Ideally, she needed to confirm whether or not Froufrou was the Harbinger of Doom, or if it was just some sort of disgusting sea creature with a system that had managed to [pair] with her.

Kahli sighed, picked up her oar, and started paddling. She and Froufrou wouldn't do anything but waste away at this point if she didn't get to land soon. Well, maybe that wasn't necessarily the case for Froufrou, and Kahli also didn't have any real idea whether Froufrou was safe staying out of water for this long. Still, she didn't want to toss the thing back. It had given her a system, after all!

Paddling water seemed to be getting harder and harder for Kahli. Was she getting weaker somehow? With every stroke of her arms, they seemed to expend more and more of an effort. She could feel the skin of her face sweating under the plaster with every hard thrust like the waters had turned to molasses. Kahli pulled up her oar, or at least she tried to, only to find that it was seemingly caught in the dark, syrupy mess of liquid her canoe was floating across.

"What in the name of Theseosus?"

Froufrou made a sound that sounded in part like a belch, kind of like flatulence, somewhat like a hiccup, and mildly similar to someone cracking their knuckles. What followed was a smell that seemed to embody Froufrou's singular [skill] with unparalleled putrescence.

And the sky went pink, a pale pink that was confusing and bewitching. A pale pink that looked almost like bubblegum was dipped in a heated water until it liquefied and mixed with disorderly blotches of watercolor paint.

The faint sound of slow clapping echoed in the air.

"Who's doing all that snapping? It sounds like a slam poetry session or something!" Kahli said with a groan.

Froufrou looked excited at the mention of slam poetry. As excited as such an odd cretin could, at least..

"Kahli, Kahli, Kahli," said a hoarse voice from afar.

"Who just said my name? How do you know my name?"

"How could I not know thy name, my dear?" replied the voice. Kahli noted that it was strangely familiar.

"Show yourself! And release me and Froufrou from this torment!"

Froufrou made a squelching noise that suggested it was taken aback, as if to absolve itself of any ownership of Kahli and what she had to say vis a vis relating the current situation to torment. After all, Froufrou didn't really know what was happening, other than that slam poetry had been mentioned briefly.

"Very well, Kahli, very well." The voice cackled. It was a strange noise, and it sounded not dissimilar to a chicken being choked.

Kahli gasped as a bizarre figure floated from outside of her vision and down out of the sky. They were above her regular field of vision so that it was only barely inconvenient to look up. Sitting cross-legged on a wool, tartan rug was a blue-boned skeleton holding a banjo.

"Very swell? What's very swell?" Kahli squinted suspiciously at the skeleton.

"Hairy smell?" the skeleton asked. It lowered its large, orange sombrero so as to slightly obscure the eye-holes in its skull. "I'm afraid I'm not certain what a hairy smell is, but I do know that whatever crepuscular entity you've got paired to you smells worse than one of my old pairs of sandals from back when I was alive."

Kahli's mind rushed with energy, and her heart pumped fast as she was hit by the realization. "Dad? Seriously? You're a blue skeleton now? I thought you were just dead!"

"Yes, my daughter, I am both dead and a blue skeleton now," said the skeleton that was Kahli's father. He strummed three chords on his banjo with dramaticism. "And it's finally time for me to teach you how to make proper use of a system."