As her translucent wings buzzed nearer to me, her features came into full view. From the over-large eyes, a dark amber colour not dissimilar to my Mana Bolt, to her spindly limbs which bent at angles which were just uncanny enough to bother my brain subconsciously. The forearm was too long, her wrist further back than it should be while her upper arm was little more than a small pivot.
I had never been a fan of bugs. I won’t lie and pretend I didn’t scream when the insectoid woman approached me, her invisibility relinquished after the promise of safety. However, it had been like ten minutes and she was still cackling every time she looked at my face. “Seriously, please,” she begged me, holding her tiny stomach as she doubled over again, “stop, please.”
Wanting to keep my eyes open for incoming attacks, I had joined the fairy on the roundabout which I spun back and forth slowly. “I’m not doing anything,” I intoned monotonously, keeping my face as passive as I could. I wasn’t. I hadn’t for the last three times this had happened.
The fairy began howling even harder.
Eventually, long enough that I was almost at full health again, she calmed down. She wiped away large, exaggerated looking tears and shook her head. “You really are a funny one, you know?” She asked, seriously. I snorted, but managed to hold back the childish refrain of no, you. She must have seen doubt in my eyes as doubled down. “No, no, you are!”
“Sure,” I gave her a flat look, not bothering to gesture to my gore-covered clothing, “I’m downright hilarious.” I almost rolled my eyes at my own voice. For whatever reason, the fairy had an Irish accent which was causing my own to become thicker. My guess was that maybe the System just bastardised pop culture on Earth to create as many weird nightmares as possible. The fairy sat up and looked at me, her face serious.
“Is a joke not funny just because you weren’t told it?” The fairy asked. Feeling put on the spot, I tilted my head. There was… magic, in her question. The air between us felt charged, though I couldn’t say the feeling was mana. Not even a twist on plain mana, like the streams of draconic energy locked away inside me. This was something else entirely.
“A joke is only funny when both parties get to tell it together.” The words fell from my mouth like oil. Where had they come from? I stood, creating some distance between myself and the fairy. I wasn’t sure what had happened, but I didn’t like it. She tittered, amused. My hackles were up. This was a dungeon monster, after all. I had nearly been tricked by a fae. Had I learned nothing from nursery rhymes?
“See? You even know how to play the old games without falling apart.” As she began rising up into the air to become level with me, I noticed she didn’t use her wings to float initially. A burst of mana, small but enough to give her some lift, went into the movement. It was an elegant use of magic beyond what I had seen so far and it intrigued me.
“What was that?” I demanded, fingers flexing around the knife in my hand. I honestly doubted I could hit her with any kind of thrown weapon, the darting speed of a dragonfly showing when she chose to move. “I don’t really want to play any games right now,” I added as gently as I could. I hadn’t been able to get a read of this creature’s level yet, which worried me.
Now it was her turn to snort. A single forlorn type of a laugh. Then the fairy was shaking her head. “Oh, well, I’m sorry human but you’re all playing the game now I’m afraid. Don’t you worry, I’m sure it’ll all be over soon.”
I wasn’t following her gibberish but I could tell she was being intentionally frustrating. I had four siblings. I knew that energy well. Even the old games comment probably meant nothing more than to confuse me. “Over?” I asked. “Things will go back to how they were?” My breath caught in my throat as I asked the question. A Mana Bolt flickered into being in my hand and I quickly dropped it. It popped on the floor with a snap.
I didn’t miss the momentary expression of pity on the face of the fairy. “No, nothing so simple I’m afraid. Things are still getting settled, so even I’m a little bit all over the place.” I felt guilty at the relief which came over me. People had died. I nearly had multiple times, and I was sure that it wasn’t all kittens and rainbows outside the dungeon either. It was a bad thing that things weren’t going back to normal.
Was it a bad thing that I didn’t want to go back, though?
Survival within the System had been more thrilling than any singular moment of my life. My victories had unfortunately come with unconsciousness for the most part, so I had yet to revel in one but I felt accomplished after the fact. I had defeated three hulking monstrosities with nothing but my own magic. It was the coolest thing which had ever happened to me.
The world outside might be burning while I fucked about in a playground with a fairy. Reading my expression, said fairy spoke up. “If it makes you feel better, I meant that you would probably die. All over soon for you. Right?”
Whether it was the genuine attempt to cheer me up, or the absolutely terrible way she was doing it, something about the moment broke the tension in me. I began to laugh, mirroring her minutes long chortles with a fit of my own that I simply couldn’t stop. Every random thought brought me to tears, howling at the ridiculous situation I found myself in. It was on the very edge of too much.
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I spent my day, which should have been a fairly boring, if important one, killing monsters and discovering magic in a park. After putting on what was essentially magical sunglasses, I saw a fairy who told me I was going to die. What else was there to do but laugh at myself? It was absurd.
“Ahh,” I sighed. The fairy had hovered nearby, sometimes catching my contagious laughter but mostly just looking at me in confusion. “Weird day,” I offered simply as an explanation. “Well, neither of us is going to hurt each other, right? You’re not going to kill me?”
I had promised, after all. You don’t lightly break a promise to a fairy. Surprisingly, the smile which came to her face seemed true, genuine and warm. “Right! And I’m here to help you out with the whole not dying thing.” Slapping her palm against her small forehead like she had just remembered something innocuous, I had my doubts about her ability to help.
Her being my first point of contact in this scary new world may have made me less discerning about who I might call a potential ally. “How would you do that?” I asked, leaning away from her. “And do you have a name?”
She ignored my first question. Her large bug-like eyes sparkled. “I do have a name, though it is mine to keep. You may call me Naea. May I have your name?” I recognised the way she framed her reply from old bedtime stories. You were never supposed to give your name to a fairy, or they would steal it, literally. The version my grandmother would tell had the whole world forget you if a fairy ever got ahold of your name.
I gave the fairy, Naea, my best withering look. “No, you may not have my name,” I replied as advised so long ago, “but you can call me Grant if you’d like.” Again, that strange magic shifted over the world, visible for a fraction of a second. Monochrome. A waft of floral aromas tickled the air. “What is that?”
“Old, powerful magic. Older than your magic, definitely. Which is why I’m here.” Naea smiled brightly, but didn’t continue. When she stopped speaking, I waited. The pair of us stared at each other, barely raising an eyebrow. Barely. I couldn’t help myself. I was getting tired of the riddles. She rolled her eyes, the brighter orange-gold iris within their fractal structure circling the dark shadowy yellows at the edge. “I’ve been watching you for a few hours and it seems like you don’t know what you’re doing. You found me, you didn’t kill me and you’re as helpless as a baby pixie. It’s tragic.”
Honestly I couldn’t argue against the need. I was definitely flailing and hoping for the best as far as the System went. That I had survived so far was more luck than anything. If I hadn’t unlocked Mana Bolt when I did… “So, you want to help me out of pity?” I asked with a self-deprecating chuckle.
“Something like that,” Naea answered. “I’m a dungeon fairy. I clean up the dungeon, and when you defeat a monster that means a meal for me. We can help each other!”
“Oh.” There it was. I was genuinely glad to get the real reason behind why she wanted my help, though it did open up a few important questions. “Okay, you said you clean up,” Naea nodded at me. “And that cleaning involves eating. Which you do to dungeon monsters.” Two more nods.
We stared at each other for a long moment, neither of us blinking. “So that means-”
“Look, Grant, I’m absolutely certain you don’t want to have that conversation. I’m not big on telling lies, so if you want to continue you can.” This time, the silence was a little heavy. I knew what she had done to the bodies inside Clive’s then. She knew that I knew. The moment became even more charged as we stared at each other in silence. There was an agreement being made between the two of us and a part of my humanity went with it. I knew I would give it willingly to survive even as the chance to say anything slipped away forever.
“Okay,” I answered, my breath leaving me in an angry huff, “where do we start? I’ve been doing okay so far.” Naea didn’t speak right away, hovering in the air with her arms folded at their odd angles. Slowly, she turned ninety degrees and began floating forwards, turning around and going back on herself. It took me two turns to realise she was ‘pacing’ in the air.
“First, you fight like a toddler. We need to teach you how to not be completely useless. Your Mana Bolt is alright,” she flicked her wrist and a ball of mana rolled into her palm, “but it’s only useful against the slowest, dumbest enemies in the whole dungeon. It’s going to take a lot more than that to defeat the Claimants. Open your Skill Window and tell me we’re not just using one skill.”
“Uh… Skill Window?” I asked, remembering that the System had said Mana Bolt levelled up. I was planning to check, I thought, consoling myself. I hardly reacted as the text box appeared in my vision immediately afterwards.
Skills
Mana Bolt (Level 2)
Common
Manasight (Level 1)
Common
“Ah,” I nodded, “Ask and ye shall receive.”
Matters of life-and-death, even those beyond death, were too much for me at the moment. The world was under siege by powerful magic for which we were almost wholly unprepared. The stories and games we had created as replicas didn’t do the danger and terror of existing within the System justice. It was an ordeal humanity might not survive, and if it did, it would be much changed. In a very real sense, the world as I knew it had ended. Yet, looking at the screens before me, feeling the changes inside me even now, I smiled. I could genuinely feel the Manasight getting stronger as I used it.
This I can handle.