PART III - NEW BEGINNINGS

“Where have you been!” Lena chided as Callie entered. Her hands were on her hips and she wore a stern expression. “We were worried sick!”

“I was in the shower,” Callie said, confused. Everyone seemed to be barely awake, rubbing their eyes, and the room was barely illuminated through the opened shutters.

“And why were you there?”

Callie was getting annoyed. “Because I woke up and puked all over myself, Lena, and I needed to wash it off. I told you that.”

Lena was about to scold again but abruptly stopped. “You did?”

“Yes, I did,” Callie said, her voice rising slightly.

“Oh, I must not have remembered. Sorry.”

“I was not worried,” Xin said, sitting with her feet on the floor, rubbing her head.

“Nor was I,” Vanis said, still lying on his bunk, his arm thrown over his face.

“Was anyone besides Lena worried,” Callie said, looking at Tazrok. The Ogre, lying much like Vanis was, arm thrown over his face, simply said, “Nope.” Callie turned to Pixyl. “What about you?” and Pixyl responded, head buried in her pillow, with something that sounded vaguely negative.

“What the hell,” Lena said, “I’m turning even more into my mother. Vanis, you’ve got to kill me before this transformation is complete.”

“I’ll kill you later,” Vanis replied, “I am still trying to stop the world from spinning so much.”

“Callie, I’m really sorry for …” Lena began and then trailed off . “Oh hell,” she mumbled, and she dropped to her knees and leaned on her bunk. She grasped her head and groaned.

Callie rushed around the bed. “Lena! What’s wrong?”

“Another reveal,” she moaned. “Give me a second.” Everyone paused, waiting for the moment to pass, before Lena finally raised her head. “That’s at least over.”

“Anything good?” Vanis asked.

“Not at all. It just revealed my racial Nightvision, so all that for something I already knew about.”

“Great, I still have that one to look forward to,” Vanis snarled.

“Did anyone else get sick? Or just me?” Callie asked.

“Lena somehow knew to warn everyone would get hit with several when she woke us up, so we were prepared,” Vanis said, “I take it you weren’t?

“Lena knew that because I told her. That was the same time I told her I was going to the shower. And no, I wasn’t prepared. I was standing and seven hit me at once. Everything came up soon after.”

“I swear I don’t remember us talking,” Lena said, surprised.

“I think you may have only been half awake. In any case, I’m glad you all survived. Me? It wasn’t pretty.”

“How did you get a clean robe?” Lena asked.

“The Commandant was in the showers, too. They asked one of their people to bring one for me. And for them, for that matter.”

“Why did they need one?

“Oh, that’s a funny story, if you want to hear it.”

“We are not going anywhere,” Xin said, lying down on her bunk again.

Callie proceeded to tell everyone about how Xera came to her rescue when she got slammed with the after-effects of receiving her Sniper Shot skill. How they simply flashed into position next to her, and made sure she didn’t fall.

“There was literally a flash of light?” Lena asked.

“Maybe? I think so. I was a little preoccupied. But they moved really fast for sure.”

“Sounds like they used Flashstep, or something similar. It allows you to reappear a short distance away in an instant. I brought that skill here with me.”

“Could they be a Bladedancer like you?” Callie said. “I didn’t think to ask.”

Lena shrugged. “Possibly. But with a missing arm, they won’t be able to function as that class very well, since so much of what we do revolves around dual swords. They weren’t able to regenerate it?”

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“No. They said their arm and wing were lost to an Etherdemon. I guess they create swords like Bladeweavers, and that prevents regrowing.”

Pixyl sat up suddenly paying attention at the mention of her class and Demons. “Etherd-d-demon?” Her face made a scowl of pain.

“They didn’t say anything about it, just that they can make powerswords like you do that come out of their claws. Whatever they are, they sound scary.”

“They are,” Pixyl said as she looked at one of her own hands, and then at the twin holes burned through her headboard from the night before. Her head started to spin again, and the Pixie laid down once more to listen to Callie.

“In any case, because the Commandant was totally soaked from helping me, and the one arm thing, getting out of wet clothes was pretty much impossible for them. So, I helped them get undressed, which took a bit of doing.”

“Must have been awkward,” Tazrok said.

“It was. And their being in charge of the place while I’m only a recruit probably made it all the more weird. But they needed assistance, so you just work through the awkwardness and help. I’d do it for any of you, if you needed it.”

“It was good of you to help, Callie.” Vanis said,

“The only thing is that I feel awful. I hurt them by accident. They said it was nothing, but I get the sense it was really painful.”

“What happened?” Lena asked.

“As I was peeling their shirt off their shoulders, I accidently bumped my arm along the inside of their wing. They grimaced in pain and almost fell to their knees. I feel awful.”

Pixyl sat up straight again, emitting a little yelp of her own pain. “Y-y-you did what?” she gasped, her eyes wide.

“Oh no, was it that bad? It was an accident, Pixyl! My arm just bumped her wing, but Xera said they are super-sensitive and it just surprised her.”

“Here?” Pixyl said, gingerly turning her back to Callie and pointing to the underside of a wing where it met her back.

Callie winced. “Yeah, right about there.”

The Pixie scrunched up her face in a scowl. “Th-th-that is a bad place to hit. Like kicking a m-m-male between their legs.”

Instinctively, both Vanis and Tazrok made a sucking sound and winced.

“Oh no!” Callie cried. “I feel even worse. It was totally an accident!”

“She w-w-will be f-f-fine,” Pixyl said. “Just know about that area in the f-f-future.”

Callie felt even more awful now. Instinctively she knew it had been an accident and Xera had promised they could walk it off, but from Pixyl’s telling, Xera was definitely understating how much it hurt. Callie vowed to try to come up with something nice to do to make up for it, somehow.

Tazrok’s grunt interrupted Callie’s thoughts as the Ogre grabbed his head. “New skill,” he said as everyone turned to look at him. The house was quiet while the delayed vertigo spun through, although Tazrok seemed to weather the effects better than Lena had and much better than Callie had. For Callie, these new reveals were crippling.

“Did you get a good skill?” Xin asked, having returned to lying back on her bed.

“Cure Poison,” Tazrok said. “That is very good.”

“It sure is, Tazrok,” Lena said. “That skill is quite literally a life saver!”

Tazrok nodded with a grunt. “Will make sure to practice, then.”

Callie smiled, looking around the room at all her new friends. All of them, just like her, were coming into their new powers. All of them, just like her, excited and nervous and feeling like new people. It warmed her heart for some reason.

Regrettably, Xin was the next one to be hit with a new reveal. She groaned and grabbed her head. “Not another one,” she said with a mixture of a mumble and a whine as she buried her head in her pillow..

Vanis winced. “Shamans have a lot of flexibility and skills related to their Totem, so I think it’s going to be much more frequent for her.”

“Was it at least something good?” Callie asked as Xin finally raised her head, shaking it as if to clear any residual fuzziness.

“A skill for my Totem called Healing Pulse.”

“Assuming it does what it sounds like, that’s a great skill,” Lena said. “I don’t know a lot about Shaman capabilities, though. I just know most of your combat skills are elemental based. I used to know an Elementalist, and she would complain constantly about being shown up by a Shaman she knew.”

“From what I have seen so far, that appears to be true,” Xin said. “I have learned Elemental Bolt and Elemental Weapon. I have also learned Elemental Blast for my Totem. This was my first skill related to my Healer side. I am eager to know how to use them.”

Callie debated passing on the information she had received from the Commandant on how to access skill details, but remembered the promise she made. She wrestled with a way to find a loophole in the promise, but couldn’t see one.

“I keep knowing ‘requires form’ on new skills,” Tazrok said. “Doesn’t say name. But learned to make healing fruit.”

“Requires form?” Callie asked out loud, but then got it. “I bet that means you need to know your shapechange animal first, and then you find out the name of the skill. Healing fruit is good, too!”

“Hmm. Yes, make sense about form. If could be Wolficorn, would have all now,” Tazrok said, sounding a little sad, still dwelling on the mythical creature.

“So far, Tazrok has been the least impacted by receiving our new skills,” Vanis said. “Just a little disorientation for him.”

“It’s so awful,” Pixyl whined.

“No kidding, Pixyl,” Callie snarled in agreement. “I wonder if smaller races have more issues.”

“That could be,” Vanis pondered. “Lena, Xin and I seem to fall somewhere in the middle on the effects. More of a momentary dizziness, whereas Pixyl needed to sit or lie down for a minute.”

“We’re in this together, girl!” Callie said, raising a fist into the air towards the Pixie. “Power to the Puny!”

Pixyl weakly returned a raised fist. “We got this!”

“I wonder when …” Callie started to ask the group when the warning hit.

NEW PERK: WILDERNESS TRACKING

NEW PERK OF UNKNOWN ORIGIN: CARPENTRY

NEW PERK OF UNKNOWN ORIGIN: BOOKKEEPING/LOGISTICS

“Oh shit!” Callie said, her eyes opening wide in panic. “I just got three of them!”

“Three?” Lena said, just before Callie’s world spun.