The night vanishes in a moment of sleepless black, and when I wake from my Attunements, it’s nearly dawn. There’s a moment of disorientation—of wondering where I am, and if everything that had happened was just a strange, horrific dream. But the surrounding forest, highlighted with slivers of pink and orange, doesn’t make it hard to remember what I’m doing out here.

Something is pressed up against my glass that I don’t remember being there before, and when I start to stir, it moves away.

“Oh!” Noli signs, lowering a leaf. “Sorry. I thought you were still asleep. I just figured maybe I could get that mess off of you while I waited.”

Mess? As I shift, I finally notice most of the dark smudge on my glass is gone. I look again at the leaf Noli’s holding: She was using it to scrub Trenevalt’s blood away. I’m filled with a strange mix of revulsion and relief.

“Thank you,” I sign.

“Of course!” Noli signs. She gestures to my newly Attuned pieces of glass. “Think those’ll help you walk better? They’re kinda big.”

It’s better than my current mismatched legs, and I figure longer legs means faster travel; time is against us.

“Day, time?” I ask Noli. When are we hitting the road?

“It’s nearly dawn,” she signs. “I heard the nightbanes in the distance last night, but I don’t think there’s any about now. Still, we should probably wait another thirty minutes, just to be safe.”

Enough time to Sculpt some of my glass then. At the very least I can make them a little more even for walking, and now that I have eight Attuned pieces, I’ll be able to walk and talk at the same time.

I start to Sculpt the first piece of glass, smoothing it out and even adding a handful of bumpy prongs on one end to give myself more grip. The leg still feels very long, though. Curious, I focus on one end of the glass and try to “Snip” it off from the rest of the length.

And to my surprise, it works. Suddenly I have two pieces of Attuned glass I’m Sculpting.

Neat! This opens more possibilities for me. If I halve each piece of signing glass as well, then I’ll have twice as many to work with—which will go a lot further to replicating the complicated shapes Noli makes.

My Sculpting time limit runs out, and I’m about to cast Sculpt on the other pieces of glass, too, when I hesitate. If I keep chopping everything in half, sooner or later I’ll just have a handful of sand. Not exactly great tools for walking around on.

Hey Echo, I say. Can two pieces of Attuned glass be joined back together again?

[Affirmative,] Echo says. [Attuned items may be joined through Sculpt or Chain spells.]

Hello, there. What’s the Chain spell do?

[Chain: to magically link two or more Attuned items together at specified anchor points.]

And what are anchor points? I ask.

[Anchor points are designated surfaces where objects may be magically bound.]

I feel like this explanation is going in circles. Maybe a demonstration would clear things up.

I hold up one of the pieces of glass. Alright, Echo, let’s Chain this piece here.

I swear I hear her give a disappointed sniff. [To cast Chain, at least two Attuned objects must be targeted.]

Psh, I knew that. Okay, Echo, let’s Chain these two pieces, then. The two I’d originally separated.

[Magic cost: 3 mana,] Echo says. [Proceed?]

Proceed.

[Activating Chain,] Echo confirms. [Designate desired anchor points.]

Might as well start with what’s easy: I focus on the two ends of the glass I’d originally separated. A spot of black begins to form at each of the two points I’d imagined, glowing faintly in the dark. I still can’t quite wrap my head around how something that’s black can produce light, but I suppose that’s just magic for you. The two pieces of glass snap together, like magnets, and then the glow vanishes.

[Chain complete.]

Well that’s underwhelming. It basically just glued them back together, didn’t it? How was that any different from using Sculpt? Except it cost one more point of mana. What a rip off!

It isn’t until I start to move the glass that I feel it—they’re not glued together after all. Cautiously, I pull one piece of glass one way, and pull the other one in a different direction. The pieces both respond independently, bending like a number 7 where they’re still Chained together.

Chain isn’t glue: It’s a joint. A magical joint.

Oh. Oh. This is just what I need!

I wave the glass around excitedly. Echo, can I Chain this to my own body, too?

[Negative,] Echo says. [Only Attuned objects may be Chained.]

Oh well. That’s a little inconvenient, but I can still work with this.

Echo, gimme a Check? I ask, realizing I haven’t done that in a while. If I’m about to do a lot of magic, I need to ration out my mana. Plus, I’m curious if this Chained thing helps my Bonus HP at all.

The words appear in my vision and mind.

[Name: Kanin]

[Species: N/A]

[Class: Wizard]

[Level: 2]

[HP: 6/10]

[Bonus HP: 16]

[Mana: 9/21]

[Void: 29%]

[Role: Homunculus]

Dang, that crack is really hurting my max HP. But at least I’ve got more Bonus HP to help absorb some blows. Seems like my mana is still recovering from last night’s Attunements, so I’ll have to be careful about how I use the rest of these Sculpt and Chains. And Void looks about the same as it was before. That’s… good, probably? Who knows.

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Mana is the bigger issue. After all those Attunements last night, and now another Sculpt and Chain, I’m quickly running dry. Okay, If I Sculpt all three of the remaining legs at once, I’ll get a mana discount and it will only cost me 5. Then I’ll have 4 mana left for one last Chain. To do the last two Chains, I’ll have to wait an hour for my mana to passively recover. Annoying, but doable.

I get to work Sculpting the other three legs, smoothing out and breaking them all in two, and then chaining one of them back together again.

“It’s fascinating watching you work,” Noli signs, and I nearly jump out of my skin (or glass, as the case may be). I was so focused on my magic, I hadn’t realized she was watching. “I saw a metalworker once who was skilled in the arcane. It was a lot like this. He could bend the molten metal in half with just his mind, then run it through his forge. Made a whole sword without any tools. But what you’re doing is something else.”

I mean, I’m only level 2 and hardly the size of a teacup. I doubt any of this is that amazing. Concentration broken, I nearly drop one of the limbs as I’m Sculpting it, but catch it just in time. Metal sounds a whole hell of a lot more useful than glass, that’s for sure. At least it wouldn’t break when you dropped it.

“Maybe it’s rude to say this, but I’m glad you’re stuck with me, Kanin,” Noli suddenly blurts. “I mean, I’m not glad you’re stuck in that body, and I’m definitely not glad I’m stuck in this body—not that there’s anything wrong with your body, of course—but I’m just trying to say, I’m glad I have your help.”

My help? I haven’t done shit since I got here, if you exclude some soapy plates and a half-swept floor. What do I even have to offer, apart from comic relief?

“I mean, I wouldn’t even have known about the time limit on our spell without you,” Noli continues. Oh, well, I guess there’s that. “And if you hadn’t gotten caught up in all this, and I’d have been by myself in the Between, it would probably be me stuck in that glass vial instead.”

Oh. Well. Congrats on dodging that bullet.

[Spell complete. Remaining Mana: 1.]

I flex one of my newly crafted limbs, bending the elbows—or are those knees?—rather pleased with myself. I have two stiff legs and two bendy legs to work with for now. Time to practice walking on them.

Like usual, I collect the four limbs around my body, wide end pointed toward myself. I use the four contact points to press inward and leverage myself up—and immediately slip and fall on my face.

Ow. But hey, no fall damage, so I’ve got that going for me, which is nice.

I go slower this time, focusing on both the contact points and the joints as I edge myself to my feet. Whew! I’m up. I stand there for a moment, testing each of my newly articulated legs. Okay. I think I—

“Wow! That’s amazing!” Noli skitters around me. “You’re really getting the hang of this thing, aren’t you?”

Well I’m trying to! But it’s way harder to control two moving parts per leg than it is to focus on just the four stilts I’d been using before. And Noli certainly isn’t helping that concentration.

Like some kind of drunk toddler, I do a couple stumbling laps around our shelter as Noli cheers me on with distracting levels of enthusiasm. Eventually, my impatience outpaces my desire to practice.

“When go?” I sign.

Noli checks the sky. “I think it’s probably safe to start now. Are you ready?”

Still need to save up another 5 mana for the last two Chains, but I’d rather not wait around for that. “Yes.”

Noli stretches out her limbs. “Then let’s get to it!”

I follow her out of the shelter, cringing as I brush against some leaves and dew drips down my surface, leaving streaks in my vision. Noli seems back to her normal bubbly self again—or maybe that’s just how she copes with all of this. I guess I can’t judge either way, and I don’t have much brain power to spend thinking about it. We’ve a long way to travel, and I just learned how to walk.

While I silently focus on placing one foot in front of the other, Noli resorts to her typical ramblings. “I’m hoping this road will lead to a main one before long,” she signs. “That wizard wasn’t doing so hot even before he—well, he wasn’t doing great to begin with, so I doubt he’d be able to walk very far on his own. Either he magicked all his food up, or he bought it from a nearby marketplace. I suppose summoning his food is possible, given his skillset. In which case, we’d be well and truly stuffed.” She pauses a beat. “But I’m sure it’ll be fine!”

Noli may be treating this with an abundance of optimism, but perhaps it’s best not to think too hard about the reality that we might already be too far from anyone to make a difference.

“Time?” I ask, managing to keep my focus on my legs while also operating the signing shards. Doing both at once feels like trying to juggle Jell-O.

“Time?” Noli repeats. Then she reaches out to correct a few of my angles. “You mean how long we’ve got before we find the village?”

“Yes.” Thank god she can make sense of my broken English. Signs? What language is this, anyway?

“I don’t really know,” she admits. “If he didn’t use magic, then I’d guess he’s within a day’s walk of some city. The same distance might take us three or four days. And it might not be a very big city, mind—I mean, we can always hope so!—but any form of town will be a good starting point to get help or even find a telepad.”

Wasn’t a telepad how…

“Although I guess a telepad’s what got me into this situation in the first place,” she continues, reading my mind. “Still, couldn’t hurt to try if it might get me home quicker. I mean, I guess it couldn’t hurt more than it already has. Although, if it sends me Between again…”

Where the predator might be waiting. Yeah, I’d be hesitant to use a telepad, too. Although if it really will take days to reach civilization, then we’ll only have two weeks, tops, to find someone who can help us. And depending on how long that takes, we might not have much of a choice than to try for a telepad.

One of the extremely few benefits our bodies have to offer is that we don’t need to rest. We walk throughout the day, chatting (mostly Noli) and practicing signs (mostly me) as we go. I finish Chaining the last two legs on the way, leveling the spell up to 2 and gaining the now typical 10% mana discount. I also get Sculpt up to level 4, earning a 30% discount, when Noli has me split a couple more of my signing shards into smaller pieces. Now I’m able to cluster them together in a larger variety of shapes and come closer to approximating actual hands. They’re smaller, less useful as tools—but I guess I’ve got plenty more glass I still need to Attune that can serve as backup legs if I need them.

It’s when I’m in the midst of working out the correct movement for “Travel” that I miss a step. One of my glass legs slips up the side of my vial, and before I even have a chance to react and try to catch myself with the other three, I crash into the dirt, a jarring clink ringing out as I strike a rock.

[1 point of Fall damage sustained,] Echo says.

“Kanin!” Noli hurries over. “Are you alright?”

“Okay,” I weakly sign, still somewhat stunned from the fall. I’m more shaken by the suddenness of it than the damage. My attention had just slipped. I’d stopped thinking about the shards that were keeping me walking, too focused on the signs. This multitasking is bordering on dangerous. What if I’d been higher up? Or landed on my cracked side?

I Check my health: [5/11]. So much for my signing glass protecting me. Last time a level up healed me: What does a guy need to do to get another level up around here?

Actually, I know someone who can help with that.

Echo are there any stats on, like, leveling up? I wonder.

[Affirmative,] Echo says. [EXP needed to level up: 6/23]

Oh, well that’s nice. I could have used that info before now. What causes increases in EXP? I ask

[Various experiences contribute toward an increase in leveling, including utilizing your Attack, HP, and Mana.]

So… doing damage, taking damage, and using spells?

[Affirmative.]

Well it’s nice to know I don’t just have to kill cockroaches to level up. And as much as I’d love to level up from continued Fall damage, it sounds like working on my glass is the best way to go about it.

But sheesh, all this magic I’ve been doing recently and I only got 6 EXP out of it. Looks like that’s about a quarter of the way to leveling up again. If it means avoiding fights or taking damage, however, I’ll just have to deal with it.

I start to pick myself back up, glass limbs slipping against my surface, struggling for grip, when I stop. There’s a better way to do this—a safer way. In fact, I’d been using it in Trenevalt’s house most days (through no choice of my own). That stand had kept me pretty secure. If I’d been able to make the legs on that thing move, it would have been the perfect way to get around. I don’t have a stand out here to use, but making one is within the realm of possibilities. Honestly, I should have thought of this when I originally figured out what Chaining could do.

I call a medium piece of Attuned glass from my inventory, considering it.

“What’s up?” Noli asks, watching as I start to Sculpt the glass. “What are you making?”

A better way to walk, ideally. One where I won’t have to worry about keeping my limbs pinched up against my side, because they’ll be Chained in place instead.

I finish Sculpting the glass into a loop, slightly smaller around than I am wide. Next I Chain the four legs to the glass circlet, spreading them out equally around it. And finally…

I set the loop down onto the ground, then roll myself onto it. Ordering the legs to straighten up, the circlet lifts me into the air, where I’m now riding comfortably atop my walking creation.

“Oh!” Noli signs, clapping two of her limbs together. “Great idea. Do you think that will help us go faster?”

I hope so. Already, focusing on controlling fewer shards at once has eased a tension in my mind. There will be no more dropping myself, now.

I mean, that’s the plan, anyway.

If I’m lucky.

But I’ll be the first to admit that Lady Luck seems to have taken issue with my existence.