“Have you ever heard of other dimensions?” I asked Old Mo.
Old Mo frowned, and looked at me in confusion. “Other… dimensions?” he asked. “Like in some of the fantasy stories that have grown popular recently? I’ve read at least a few novels and short stories that feature ‘other worlds’ as the setting for the story, although I wouldn’t say I have much familiarity with them beyond that. Why do you ask?”
“Oh, they have a lot of fantasy novels here?” I asked, nearly getting side-tracked.
Anise would probably love science fiction and fantasy stories. It hadn’t occurred to me until now, but a lot of people in this world were literate, and it didn’t seem like paper was that expensive. And if these people were capable of designing prosthetic limbs, they probably had some sort of printing press. I should keep an eye out for them next time I had an excuse to give Anise a gift. Then, with some effort, I turned my mind away from getting Anise gifts and back towards the conversation with Old Mo.
“Yeah, other dimensions. Well… the thing is…” I hesitated for a moment, and then I simply opted to show Old Mo. Since he associated ‘other dimensions’ with ‘fantasy stories,’ he would probably have an easier time accepting my story if he could see it with his own eyes. After the discussion with the soul fragment, I strongly suspected that the Zelyrians had come to this world from another dimension - but clearly, that tidbit of information had never made it to the natives of this world.
I looked around for a moment, and it only took me a few seconds to find a small branch of soggy, snow-covered wood. I tossed it into the air, and then focused on expanding my spatial senses. A moment later, I teleported the branch directly in front of me, as Old Mo’s eyes widened in surprise.
Before he had time to say anything, I used my illusion ability to tap into Old Mo’s eyesight. Then, I painted an illusion of a bar of gold onto the tree branch, before teleporting it in front of Old Mo.
Old Mo reflexively caught the fake gold bar, before his eyes widened in surprise. “It’s still a tree branch?” he said in shock. “But it looks like-” he turned towards me again, and if before he was frowning in surprise, now it looked like he was trying to bore a hole through my head with how intensely he was scrutinizing my face.
I gave him a wink, and then dispelled the illusion of a gold bar, revealing the ordinary wet tree branch underneath. Then, I pointed at a nearby tree, and gave Old Mo a second to catch up. For some reason, I felt like a stage magician for a moment.
Old Mo obligingly looked at the nearby tree, and I then sent an extinguish at it, killing the tree. The tree died… and no visual effects happened.
I blinked, as I realized that even if I instantly killed a tree, just like most other things I’d killed with extinguish, extinguish didn’t do anything to the corpse. The tree was dead, but it wasn’t like its needles were instantly going to instantly turn brown, just like they wouldn’t if I plucked them out by hand. The tree would start to become visually ‘dead’ as time passed, but it would take a while.
I blushed slightly, and then extinguished several leaves instead. This time, the needles turned a bit visibly brown after I attacked them.
“Uhh… Miria?” asked Old Mo. Right now he was looking at me as if I had lost my mind.
“My last ability isn’t very visible,” I said, looking around for an animal I could kill and turn into breakfast tomorrow. Sadly, there weren’t any convenient rabbits or animals nearby.
“All right, look - my final ability is to kill stuff really quickly and efficiently. I killed the tree, and a lot of the leaves, but even though I killed it, it doesn’t just drop dead, since it’s a plant and doesn’t move that much in the first place,” I said, hoping that my cheeks were turning as red as I thought they were. “It’s hard to see, but I promise it’s happening.”
Old Mo went to investigate the tree, and after prodding some of the needles I had extinguished, he nodded.
“I can feel it in the way the texture changed, although it’s hard to notice,” he said. He returned to the campfire a few moments later, and turned towards me again. He looked intrigued now, and it looked like he was waiting for me to explain.
“These are all of my abilities, Old Mo,” I said. “Well, besides a few perception and intelligence enhancements, and the healing that I’ve already shown you. And a few magic items, but those aren’t me doing anything.”
Old Mo sat there for a moment, as if waiting for me to continue, but I decided to give him some time to process everything.
I may have also been enjoying seeing his look of shock, just a little bit. The man hadn’t even seemed shocked when he realized all four of us had abilities, which were supposed to be super rare in this world. Finally seeing Old Mo react to something was a bit gratifying, and it also seemed to alleviate some of the old wounds in his heart he had dug up earlier by distracting him.
Eventually, Old Mo’s brain rebooted.
“How? You should only be able to take one ability potion in your entire lifetime. Drinking a second has no effect. Heck, if you’re unlucky, your FIRST ability potion might not have an effect - while most people get an ability after drinking a potion, there are some people that just can’t have an ability for whatever reason. But I’ve never, ever heard of anyone having two abilities, let alone… however many you just demonstrated. Four? You have four abilities, right? Illusions, teleportation, healing, the death curse thing…” Old Mo’s eyes widened even further. “And sensory enhancements too? How is this possible?”
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“I haven’t actually drank an ability potion - although I suspect I would get nothing out of doing so. Instead, my story stretches back to long before I was born. I don’t know very much about my original lifetime, but I’m fairly certain I was an ordinary girl before I died…”
I started quietly narrating my story, to the best of my memory. I narrated my first trip to the Market, the utterly ruined landscape that looked like a playground of the gods after having been smashed by a giant, and the strange abilities, and items we had found there.
Then, I narrated meeting Sallia, and then Felix, and our escape from the skeletal mages in the Market and into our first lives. I talked about the islands, our time in the world of the black sun, our encounter with Anise, and finally, our births here. I didn’t go over every single detail - after all, I had fifty years of memories, and going through every single detail would take far too long. But I went over everything I thought was important, and in enough detail that Old Mo could understand what made the four of us so… odd.
Old Mo was a very good listener. He didn’t interrupt me a single time, even though I could tell he was struggling to wrap his head around some parts of my story. Especially the living galaxy that had wiped us out last time - when I mentioned how my body parts had come to life and ripped themselves out of my collapsing corpse, Old Mo suppressed a shudder of horror.
“That living universe… is there anything like it here?”
“Thank god, no,” I said, shivering. Just remembering how weak and helpless I had been when that thing had killed us all was enough to send a shudder down my spine again. “As far as I can tell, this world is pretty low-power. Nothing that can melt a continent or rip apart an island with its tentacles or teeth, or anything like that. There aren’t even real monsters in this world.”
“Unless you count humans,” said Old Mo, grimacing. I winced.
“You know, I’m surprised you believed me so quickly,” I said.
“Everything just lines up, kid.” Old Mo paused. “Perhaps not really a kid. You’re… what, sixty years old in total? That’s almost as old as me,” he said with a chuckle. “But honestly, it just makes a lot of sense. You’ve already shown me, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that you can use an absolutely impossible number of abilities. Way beyond what anyone should ever logically be able to use. You act way too mature for your age, and you don’t really talk the way a normal six year old does.”
“I don’t?”
“Miria…” Old Mo gave me a look that reminded me of a disappointed parent. “Acting isn’t your strong suit. I would never have imagined a story quite like the one you told me without more information - too much just lies outside of my understanding of the world. But, uhh… you’re not very good at lying.”
I resisted the urge to pout.
How rude! I was an excellent pretend six year old!
Then, Old Mo gently ruffled my hair.
“Well… I’m glad you were willing to trust me with this information, Miria,” he said. He looked at the stars again, before he smiled. “So you’re saying that Mary is still out there somewhere, in the greater multiverse?” I hesitated.
“Probably. Like, I said, I also saw a few souls get destroyed by the ocean of souls, and I’m pretty sure it’s linked to them not having enough Achievement to defend themselves after they died. But it doesn’t seem to happen often.”
Old Mo sighed and nodded. “I don’t know if I can be entirely happy with that knowledge - there a few religions that talk about afterlives in… in this world. I wondered if she was waiting for me in one of them, on some days..” Old Mo sighed. “But I’m still glad that she’s probably out there somewhere. Hopefully her life now is better than the one she had here.”
Old Mo turned back towards me, away from the stars. “As for you, we should talk a bit more about the magic system of this world - specifically, ability potions. If you don’t want other people to catch on to the fact that something is wrong, you should memorize what healing abilities are known to exist, and then try to visually copy one of them. I didn’t say anything, because I figured you might have just drank a variant potion at first, but there are no healing ability potions that require contact with water to work. There are, however, a few that require contact with blood to work. Most alchemists today think that the healing ability somehow duplicates the drop of blood, changes the blood type, and then uses it to transfuse blood into the injured person. Using pure water instead isn’t unbelievable, but it’s definitely not an ability I’ve heard of. And as you’ve already noted, using more than one ability should be impossible - so make sure to keep distributing your set of ‘abilities’ among your allies if you don’t want anyone to realize something is wrong. But overall… with that information, we can do a lot to help you set up when we get to the next city. Felix wants a spot at an alchemy or medical academy, and Anise wants room to study Zelyrian magic, right?” Old Mo chuckled. “I kind of thought their goals might change as they grew older, but… it sounds like their goals were set long before they were even born. I’ll see what I can do to help you four get situated.”
“So nothing is different between us?” I asked, feeling a bit hopeful. I liked the way things were with Old Mo right now. I didn’t want things to change.
Old Mo tousled my hair again.
“Maybe I’m just a bit too attached to the fact that you look like a six year old, or the fact that out of four lifetimes you’ve still somehow never lived very long…but you still seem like a kid to me. Nothing will change between us.”
Old Mo grinned at me, and I knew everything was going to be all right.
We kept talking long past the time we were supposed to wake up someone else for another watch, so long that even my friends, who had been having a conversation of their own about the stuff they had learned from the hologram, eventually fell asleep.
I woke up the next day far more tired than usual, and wasted a lot of extra essence healing myself to get rid of the fatigue. But it was worth it, because I knew that Old Mo was there for me.