Anna

A crowd gathered around Anna dead lizard after Helen’s excited outburst. The first question most people asked was, “Where the fuck are its eyes? Did you gouge them out?”

“Uh, something like that. It attacked me while I was unpacking.” Anna said the first time she was asked. The others were kind enough to parrot her words to any newcomers.

The next topic of discussion was what the fuck the thing was, to which some of the Dwarves supplied the answer.

“It’s a kobold,” provided the mountain dwarf Kalvin, “The little guys are a species that usually prefers to live in mines or caves. Intelligent, but they formed warbands back in my old world. Hunted, or at least tried to hunt, anything in their territory. We’d constantly be at war with the little bastards, any peace was short lived.”

“Should we expect others to come looking for it?” asked Helen.

“Don’t know, I’m not an expert. Could be a loner, could be a scout, for all we know, it’s part of a legion coming to murder us all. No point in speculating.”

Volas jumped in with his own critique at “There is definitely a point in speculating. If it was part of a group, then we have to be ready for it’s fucking friends to come for us. We have to assume the worst and get leave. I don’t think the girl was careful enough not to leave a trail.”

“That’s not a good reason to leave. If Anna left a trail, then our large group would definitely leave one.” Helen argued.

“That makes it simple for us then.” interjected Salar, “We’re leaving, good luck.” Salar walked towards the opposite end of the clearing, several others moved to join him.

“Hold on, we agreed that staying together, at least for the night, would be best.”

“That was until your friend here informed us that there are kobolds. Our circumstances have changed.”

“That’s even more reason to stay! There’s safety-” Anna began defending Helen only to be cut off by Greg.

“It’s alright Anna, they were always looking for a reason to leave. Better a smaller group, than a big one you can’t trust.”

A silence hung over the group as more left the group. Some went on their own, some joined Salar’s group. By the end, the original group was cut down to twenty-seven. Surprisingly, Volas was one of the few who stayed, Anna was sure he would join Salar, but there must have been something keeping the orc here.

“We’ll make do with what we have.” Greg said after waiting a moment to see if any others were packing up. “For now, we finish setting up camp, fortify our position, and decide the watch rotations.” When the camp stared blankly at the would-be leader, he responded, “Just… finish setting up camp. I’ll show you the rest.”

Most of the camp started setting blankets down near trees before they were redirected closer to the river by Volas; something to do with clear lines of sight on one another for safety. Anna herself decided to put down her blanket as a sleeping mat, as the forest air was warm enough. Before she got to work clearing an area, Helen waved her over to a place nearby.

“Thanks,” said Anna, “You and Greg seem to really have a handle on things.”

“Of course, sweetie,” replied Helen as she set down two blankets side by side, “we’ve got work to do. Only way we can see our David is by finding a home.”

“So the system gave you the same quest?”

“Gave all of us the same quest: find a home, if you want your desired reward, blah, blah. To be honest though, a part of me is glad that my little man isn’t here right now. It wouldn’t be safe for him. Greg’s seen enough violence in his life for all of us several times over.”

“So he served in the first world war?”

“Excuse me? First?”

“Yeah, sorry, turns out, Germany had a real knack for taking on the rest of us. There was another ‘Great War’ about 20 years after the first one ended.”

Helen was taken aback for several seconds, then shook her head, “Well, either way, us Canadians have to look out for one another, and yes, Greg served in the army.”

“I’m actually American.”

“Mmhmm, Canadian American, right?”

“Uh, no, like the United States of America, American.”

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“Wait, I thought you were from 2018, didn’t we take over the United States after we burned down their capital building?”

Now it was Anna’s turn to be flabbergasted. “I think we’re from different Earths. Or different times, or something. In my old world, the war of 1812 ended in a draw and the States went on to become one of the greatest military powers on the Earth. We went from one country to another, liberating their oil, their people, their oil, installing and supporting an ethically gray regime, and taking our well earned oil home. We definitely weren’t taken over by Canada.”

“At the end of the day, the same result, although most of the world was already a colony of one country or another. Then the world went even more crazy, we went to war, and now we’re here. Only thing to do is carry on.” Changing the topic, she suggested, “Why don’t you go ahead and rest, I’ll let Greg know that you’re taking the last watch.”

Anna thanked Helen once more and tossed her bag behind her blanket, on the far end from the river. Before sleeping, she decided to try her hand at meditation. Taking a cue from others doing the same thing, she wrapped her blindfold around her eyes and settled into a cross-legged position.

First, she wanted to refill her man, being in a fighting condition was paramount in case something were to happen. Focusing her senses in the same way she had during the crash course, Anna searched for signs of her mana and stamina cores. What she found were two nearly imperceptible pulls of energy coming from her heart. Is that shit actually in my heart? That can’t be healthy.

Anna did her best to ignore the strangeness of her new reality. Instead, she tried to imagine a rush of energy entering the gems and was rewarded with a massive drain on her soul. Pain wracked her chest and she was once again forced to cut her connection to her internal energy.

Afraid, she tried to access the menu for answers.

System Alert:

Your soul has been critically damaged!

Until damage has been repaired, you will experience sharp backlashes in any attempt to draw from your spiritual energy.

Normal recovery will take: 150:42:30

She knew her behavior in the ‘stream’ had been self-destructive and six days of penance felt more than justifiable in order to help her husband. Small price all things considered. The real concern was the fact that she couldn’t refill her mana and stamina reserves while her soul was damaged. She had lost the majority of her mana in the fight against the kobold, but only about a fifth of stamina.

In her mind, she thought of the life energy that suffused her soul and the image of her intact soul as she had perceived it in the crash course. The image that appeared however, was less than ideal. All around her spirit, empty voids had sucked away the life energy. At the edges of each void, there were shifting tendrils that grew at a snail's pace towards the center. How did I do this before?

Anna grabbed a tendril with her mind, and felt the promised pain. At least I can grab it.

This time, she focused on trying to feel the energy in the air around her as she once had. Rather than the waiting wave of energy, there were wisps that floated around her soul. Move the energy in, simple right?

Mimicking her previous attempt at absorbing energy, she tried forcing open pores around her soul to suck the wisps in. The method came with a sickening feeling of taking sand and rubbing it as far into open wounds as possible. Nope, that’s definitely not it. What’s different now?

Curious, and determined to get an answer, she opened one small hole to allow in a controlled amount of energy and found that the sandiness became more manageable, although she wasn’t able to fully absorb the energy. She realized the problem after her life energy ejected the newcomer.

The energy during the crash course had all been life energy, no foreign energy existed at all. The aura around her now, however, felt like hundreds of different types, and she couldn't make out which was useful.

Well, I’m supposed to be a forest shaman right? So think like a plant. Be the plant!

Anna visualized a membrane surrounding her soul, like the cell walls of plants. The membrane stood as a barrier to the outside world as she opened pores into her soul once again.

This time, no energy entered and the barrier held. Next, she started the arduous process of sorting and categorizing the wisps of energy around her. Each wisp was made up of several types of energies, and when she was able to differentiate one in the amalgamation, she let it slip through the membrane.

Through trial and error, she started to find life energy faster. Sure, she couldn’t tell what the other energies were at all, but she certainly could find the aura signature of life energy when she focused.

As her comfort grew, so did the speed at which she let in energy. Eventually, she was able to let the membrane just do its thing with simple instructions.

I came, I saw, I learned osmosis.

System Alert:

New passive skill gained!

Energy Osmosis - Journeyman I

Karma increased by 1!

System Alert:

Taking the first step.

Dharma fulfilled, Karma increased by 5!

Anna checked the timer on her recovery.

Normal recovery will take: 148:20:30

Over two hours had passed since she started meditating, but the fruits of her labor were sweet indeed. Every second, her timer went down by ten seconds. If that keeps up, I should be healed… Fuck math. 6 seconds is now 1 minute, so 6 times 60 minutes is an hour. Wait, I could have just moved the decimal over one place, 3,600 seconds in one hour just becomes 360 seconds. I have 148 hours so, no, fuck that number, too big. It’s gotta be way less. Let’s just go with that.

Oh wait, move the decimal, 148 hours is like 6.1 days. Move the decimal and I get 0.61 days or just over 14 hours. I can live with that.

Anna ended her mediation session at that point, smugly noticing that she continued to absorb life energy. Laying down, she finally slept of her own accord for the first time in two days.

The other people meditating had not noticed the swirl of energy that surrounded the young woman. For them, energy absorption just became easier, and that’s all that mattered.

For the creatures of the forest, things had suddenly taken an inauspicious turn. Their home had started shedding energy. The trees grew centimeters taller, the undergrowth became thicker, and the water current ran slightly faster. The horror of the last time this had happened was etched deeply in the minds of their elders.