FH 48

The transparent screen before me was one that only I could see. I could, if I wanted, share it with my sister or my family, or my classmates. System Screens were kind of personal, since they revealed almost everything about you. Mine said the following.

Name: Alexander Metanoia

Age: 8

Race: #REDACTED#

Level: 5

Class: Unlocks at level 10

Traits: #################, Kaleidoscope Kinetics (Nascent), Progenitor of Peril (Emerging)

Abilities: None

Mommy and Momma both disliked talking about some things. Momma said the race entry was because the System didn’t know what to call Lilith and I, but Mommy said it didn’t matter what our race was, we should just go by our names. Neither of them took any kind of pride in their own race, dismissing inquiries into their race with a smile and a lighthearted “who knows?” when asked what their race was. Momma had three eyes, which humans normally don’t, and she could shapeshift. Mommy had metal wings of chains and a halo, which made her stick out just like Momma and Lilith and me.

Everyone else at the Academy had an actual race in their system menu, unlike Lilith and me. We both had an obscured trait, but the number of characters for our blocked-out traits was different. When I counted the spaces mine covered seventeen, and hers had twenty-one spaces. Without a hint of even a single letter, how many characters were spaces (if any), or even what language it might be in, I had no way to discover either of our hidden traits. Lilith couldn’t figure it out either, and she grew cross whenever I brought it up to her. She didn’t like mysteries.

Even our attributes were higher than most of the kids our age. Derrick, who was also 8, had five’s across the board, and six in agility, and he was faster than the others. We promised our mothers we would hold back and try to fit in, but it wasn’t always easy. Uncle Arkaziel being the headmaster of the school did keep us on our toes though.

Strength: 12

Agility: 21

Vitality: 14

Intellect: 13

Will: 39

All of our attributes were significantly higher than our classmates, and for whatever reason, our Will alone exceeded the other kids entire attribute score. Lilith’s highest attribute matched mine, with Will, while her second highest was Intellect. While we left other kids in the dust, we were both numerically equivalent, although in different ways. She had a higher strength; I had a higher Vitality. I was faster, she was stronger. Neither of us had managed to unlock an Ability yet. According to the older kids at school, you would unlock your first Ability when you raised a Trait to Proficient, gained a class, or read a tome.

We had to rely on our classmates, teachers, and others from Winona to understand the system. Momma hated talking about the System. She would stare at you with all three eyes until you got uncomfortable enough to leave her alone, then mutter about Libby being boring to talk about. Mommy would laugh and say she had no idea, her powers weren’t derived from the System that everyone else had. Almost everyone else, that is. Uncle Arkaziel and Aunt Bobbi didn’t have access to the System either, and the older kids who had unlocked Visual Identification Abilities said that Arkaziel just showed as Arkaziel with lots of question marks to them.

When I cornered him and tried to find out why, he managed to distract me with ice cream and candy after making a big show about not understanding the System. He agreed with me that it seemed odd that the school’s headmaster didn’t know anything about the system, but he had the job to watch over me and Lilith, and that he was a nuclear deterrent (whatever that was). He couldn’t or wouldn’t explain nuclear. When big monsters attacked the town, uncle Arkaziel obliterated them with a single attack. The people of Winona loved him and gifted him things frequently. He’d built a Vault beneath his manor to throw all the gifts people gave him into, and when I was really good he let me go down and pick out a present.

The sixth and seventh day of the week were free days, and today was a seven day. Lilith, Derrick, Aisha, and I were exploring the rocky stream bed a bit out of town. Uncle Arkaziel had set himself up in a wooden chair, and fished from the river, while Aunt Bobbi focused on making a small campfire to cook lunch on.

“Don’t go more than a kilometer away, okay?” Bobbi had chided us, but Lilith and I couldn’t figure out why she decided on that far. Both of the adults could teleport, so did it really matter how far away we got? Maybe it was just a control thing, a lot of what adults said to us seemed to be more about control than having a logical reason behind it.

All of which is a long way to explain how we ended up down stream, peering into a cavern on the river bank that hadn’t been there a few weeks ago.

Lilith glared at me, and I held my hands up innocently.

“That cave looks awfully perilous, brother.”

“I think you mean it looks interesting, or maybe even providential?”

“What’s providential mean?” Derrick asked with a confused look.

“It means fortunate, or miraculous.” Aisha answered eagerly, keen to show off that she too knew big words like Alexander and Lilith.

“Let’s vote, should we go inside?” Lilith looked each of us in the eyes while she asked the question.

This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

“Yes!!” Derrick chimed and picked up a stick to swing around. Small vortexes of wind formed around his hand, and he created a wind blade that could kill actual monsters.

“I’m not afraid,” Aisha answered a little too quickly, but she seemed more confident once she picked up a handful of rocks and infused them with light.

“You know it,” I answered Lilith. I didn’t pick anything up, and neither did my sister.

“Alright, let’s see what we’ve got in the cave. Maybe there’ll be treasure.”

New Quest: Find the source of magic inside the cave. Difficulty Level: 5.

Accept: Yes | No

I heard the pleasant feminine voice of the System in my mind. Mommy called the system Libby, but I’d never gotten it to answer me no matter what name I called it, even rude ones.

“” Yes”” all four of us said without hesitation.

A quest could be enough to get me to level six! Level ten, and the class unlock, were the stuff of dreams and legends. We all wanted the power that came with being level ten. If you were lucky, your first ability would be an active one instead of a passive one. Derrick and Aisha both had Abilities already, thanks to their parents buying them a Wind and Light Tome respectively. We begged for Tomes to use, but our mothers said we just needed to wait. Neither Lilith or I were keen on waiting, and no matter how much we begged Uncle Arkaziel or Aunt Bobbi, they wouldn’t buy us one either, despite the fact that they were super rich. Uncle Ark had conspiratorially told me there was no way he’d risk angering ‘Blue’, or Mommy, so I could cast fireball a few years sooner.

Lilith tried to explain how even a year would be a large percentage of our current lives, which would be a long time to wait, but he laughed us off and told us he’d spent three hundred years in an egg, and to quit whining. Worst of all, he didn’t even explain why he’d been inside of an egg to begin with!

Aisha’s rock lights provided enough brightness that even if the cave went deep, we would be fine. Well, Derrick and Aisha would be fine. Lilith and I could see in the dark, something ordinary humans couldn’t do. Our perfect vision in day or night was very unusual, at least according to Nedrey, the racoon who lived in the tree outside my bedroom window at Uncle Arkaziel’s.

Derrick coughed a few times, drawing everyone out of their plans and day dreams.

“What order do we go in?” He asked, flexing his sword.

“Alexander and Derrick will be our vanguard, Aisha and I will bring up the rearguard,” Lilith said imperiously. She always seemed to have a not (totally) unfounded confidence in her plans.

No one argued. I wanted too. I was fast, not strong, but Lilith was strong but not fast, and she could protect Aisha, our only ranged damage dealer, better than I could. At least I think that’s what she thought, but who knew? She might be trying to get me hurt so I wouldn’t steal her dessert tonight.

“Let’s do this!” Derrick’s voice cracked he was so excited, but I didn’t make fun of him.

The large opening in the earthen banks of the river were half rock, and very hard. Whatever made the cavern must have been bigger than us by at least four times. Derrick and I separated, putting about two meters between us as we strode bravely into the earthen warren. The ground sloped downward slightly at first, but the decline rapidly increased. We wandered deeper into the cave, oohing and aahing at the pretty rocks along the way. I threw a few of them into my inventory, if I polished them they’d make a great gift for mommy.

“Stop,” I held up a hand. The cavern started to curve, and I could hear the soft clack of feet against the hard earth. Not humanoid. I could almost see them, despite the bend in the cavern. Long, segmented shells. Pincers. Antenna. Eight legs, not counting the pincers.

“Monsters. I think giant crayfish. Can your sword pierce them?” I asked Derrick in a whisper.

“Oh yeah, definitely,” Derrick assured me instantly. I was not reassured, but if he said so….

“There’s two around the bend, the one to the right side is closer to us. You three kill it, and I’ll distract the second one.”

“You’re sure there aren’t any more?” Lilith asked while making weird, prolonged eye-contact with me. The shine of her pink eyes was noticeable even with Aisha’s glowing rocks.

“I don’t hear or sense any more…” I said with a shrug. What did she want from me? It was not like I had any Abilities to work with here.

“Alright, on three,” Lilith agreed. A branch appeared in her hand. It was a thick, twisted piece of wood. I knew it came from one of the Adamant Oak trees that momma planted on the high ground around the Spire.

“One, two, three!” Lilith counted, and I ran forward. Derrick didn’t stand a chance of keeping up with me once I moved. I made it around the bend and got visual on two giant crayfish before he’d taken three steps. These things were reddish-brown, with a hard exterior, and sharp looking pincers that could do a lot of damage to anything caught between them. It couldn’t catch me, though! I jumped up and landed on its head, ran down its back, and hopped behind it.

I didn’t have enough force or weight behind my jump to do any damage to the thing, but I sure pissed it off. It clacked and chittered at me, but I hopped out of its reach and led it further down the bend. A glowing rock hit the second crayfish in the face before it could follow me.

“Heee-yah!” Derrick shouted as he leap attacked the surprised beast, his wind-blade crashed down with a sickening sound of a thousand fingernails against one of the black boards in the school, until the windblade rebounded off the chitin and the crayfish knocked Derrick aside.

I looped back towards them, the second crayfish following me. It seemed to be close to enraging, its anger vibrated off it in waves.

Lilith stepped in and hit their crayfish in the head with her club, and it sounded like someone hit a melon with a sledgehammer. Bits of the dead monster flew everywhere.

“Finish this one off, Aisha! I’ll check on Derrick,” I shouted to Aisha, while Lilith turned to face the crayfish chasing me, a dark promise of destruction without mercy filled her eyes. Poor bastard!

“You okay, buddy?” I poked at Derrick, prepared to pull one of mommy’s healing items out if need be.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m good,” Derrick muttered from the ground, but his face screwed up, and he squirmed to get his head against the ground more firmly.

“There’s something big coming!” Derrick whispered in fear, and I felt a little tickle of dread rising in my stomach at the powerful aura of the approaching monster. It felt strong and perilous.

SMASH.

Or maybe it was just my sense of danger from Lilith and Aisha obliterating the other crayfish, as Derrick and I were pelted by bits of monster.

“Thanks, sis,” I said sincerely. Her smirk assured Derrick and I knew our place, and even Aisha looked particularly pleased at the effectiveness born of enchanting Lilith’s tree branch with Light magic.

The on-coming surge of powerful magic drew closer.

“Poop,” Aisha declared. She was the first to see the shadow red glow of a pincer larger than us round the bend.