The horn fish thrashed around, all confused inside of the spinning water bubble I lifted it out of the river with. It looked a bit like a cross between a cod and a swordfish, with many extra fins along the long snake-like tail. It was longer than me if not quite as large in general, but that didn’t matter once I had it on dry ground. It just flopped around desperately, slowly suffocating, until I dropped a heavy rock on its head.
Fishing while using myself as bait was an interesting experience for me. It took a few tries before I figured out how to prevent the catch from escaping again once I caught it inside one of my shield bubbles. The answer? A fast-spinning vortex in the middle to create enough pull to keep the prey centred.
Once I figured that out, it was a natural next step to throw heavier rocks with the same principles. I annoyingly hadn’t made any progress in sensing earth energy as I could water, so I had to make do with this crutch for now. Maybe ‘traces’ of an affinity simply weren’t enough to do anything with?
Anyways, getting a meal for several days like this big fellow here, was now as easy as waiting near the shore and splashing around a bit until something came to investigate the disturbance. A few spells later, and after quickly cutting it up with my purposely and meticulously sharpened claws, I had had an absolutely delicious feast of succulent salmon-red fish meat.
It hadn’t been quite a full moon yet since I left the volcano behind. So far nothing bad happened. I was steadily improving my magic. Currently, I was working on building up pressure for stuff like water cannons or cutting. It was slow going as always when it came to magic, but I was making steady progress. My profile even said ‘Ambient Energy Manipulation (novice)’ now, when I looked it up under proficiencies. So I had to do something right.
As I had planned, I had only hiked back to the closest river and followed it downstream ever since. There wasn’t much variety in the biosphere, but after my previous expedition, I didn’t really expect much anyways. It probably would start to change a bit again once I arrived at the coast.
There were, however, bigger predators around once more. So I had to take care not to draw too much attention to myself whenever I crossed someone else's territory.
Most of the time the stench alone told me that it was just another newtagator. If I didn’t hear them crashing through the undergrowth in the distance long before I could taste them in the air. But now and then it turned out to be a new kind of large amphibian I hadn’t met before.
They were the biggest animals I’d encountered thus far. Resembling a massively oversized, armoured, beige-grey marbled toad. They had large, deep bluish spine sails with dark purple veins running down their backs. When I spotted the first specimen I initially thought I was looking at a large rock with a new kind of fungus growing on top. Then the rock opened its maw and shot its tongue at a nearby big antler-beetle, dragged it back and crunched down with relish. Then it eyed me. I barely erected my spinning bubble water shield in time to deflect its tongue.
I dubbed those things ‘boulder toads’ and avoided blue mushrooms for quite some time. That maw alone was bigger than me!
I also found a few more of my kin. Mostly males so far though and they largely ignored me. If they acknowledged noticing me at all they soon after just continued on, foraging without giving me a second glance. It did seem like we didn’t eat each other anymore after our metamorphosis, though. That was good to know. Of course, the discovery that I was safe from their attention was also a plus. I just had to stay vigilant if and how much that changed whenever mating season arrived.
The one female I ran into was more alert to my presence, but she didn’t seem to care much for my company after making sure that I was no threat. On the contrary, she took on a pretty aggressive stance when I tried to approach her further.
That didn’t help me with my creeping loneliness at all. Well, for the time being, I was getting by, distracting myself with focusing on learning more magic. An occupied mind doesn’t have time to feel forlorn. Or so I thought.
The frequency of dreams reliving previous me’s life, losing everyone I had held dear one after the other, was steadily increasing. Lately, it got to the point that it was just plain annoying. If I hadn’t dwelled on the topic myself from time to time during my waking hours, I’d suspect a certain someone was messing with me.
Moving on… Fish tasted awesome. I could eat prawns whenever I felt like some. If something tried to attack me I was able to defend myself with magic. Life was good. I was free. And absolutely nothing roasted me alive down here in the swamps. By all standards, this backward presociatal world could have, I was doing fabulous! Cross my heart and all.
After finishing over half of my catch I moved on, leaving the rest for whoever found it first. I doubted that it would stay unclaimed for too long. I’d finish it myself if I hadn’t been absolutely filled to the brim, and taking it with me wasn’t really all that practical.
Continuing my journey, I practised my fine control, focus and reach by drawing filigree shapes of water as far over my head as I could manage while moving. At first, I’d got the idea of writing the letters I knew, but after going through Latin and the parts of Greek previous me remembered, I realized that I never would be able to teach them to anyone anyway, because I couldn’t pronounce a single one of them.
So I settled on pictograms. They should be more intuitive in case I ever met someone intelligent enough to communicate with.
I huffed a sigh. The worries of a genius…
Five days later I encountered another scalamander female. She surprisingly seemed to show quite a bit of interest in me. This one was blood red and maybe half the size of the brick coloured one I saw way back at the beginning of my journey. Maybe she wasn’t and I did just grow more than I thought? She still was much bigger than me.
From the moment she noticed me, she seemed transfixed by my practice water patterns that were sparkling in the noon sun whenever I moved them out of the shadows of the foliage. It looked like she didn’t believe her own eyes at first because she was flicking over them with her tongue now and then as if to wipe them. Judging from her inquisitive glances in my direction though, she already seemed to have figured out that I was the source of the magic show. How interesting!
I decided not to avoid her as I did with the last two aunts I had met and slowly moved closer.
With twinkling eyes, she kept staring at the different snowflake shapes I was currently imagining into existence. The process still was an amazing thing to me every time I really stopped to think about it. Once I was certain I had her undivided attention, I changed the pattern into a vertical plane surface.
She hopped back in surprise upon the sudden appearance of her reflection. She didn’t seem to mistake it for another scalamander though. Instead, she just inspected herself like one would use a mirror, now and then looking at me briefly as if she was comparing us with each other.
That was… very unexpected behaviour to say the least. She appeared way more intelligent than I gave anyone of my species credit for.
Had that been true for my siblings and cousins as well? But they always just ignored me! Maybe it was a growing up thing? I hoped so. Otherwise, what would that say about me? Was I so annoying, that they prefered to play dumb over dealing with me? Nah. I was probably just paranoid. I mean… We freaking ate each other.
In any case, the female in front of me definitely wasn’t a dumb animal. Which meant… I was absolutely giving her a name! I was great with names! I only had to come up with something fitting.
Pondering about that, I lost focus for a moment and the mirror splashed to the ground. She hopped back again, letting out a small croaking sound, and then glared at me… accusingly?
I just shrugged. Or tried to. It felt pretty awkward. I hadn’t had a reason to try that particular motion in this life before. I didn’t think it translated into Scalamander very well, since soon after she moved even closer and hopped into a puddle close to my feet, splashing me all over with muddy water.
She huffed repeatedly. Was she laughing at me?
I didn’t know why, but her possibly being amused made me feel all fuzzy inside. Was I delighted? Was it just relief washing over me that I was able to communicate on at least this very basic level? I didn’t quite know. I just knew that I didn’t want to stop feeling that way.
I focused on a new image and soon after a three-dimensional replica of her head hovered in front of me.
She was absolutely elated once she recognized what it was supposed to be and immediately tried putting her own head inside, wearing it like a mask or a helmet.
Now it was my turn to huff… it came natural and really did seem to be our equivalent to laughing.
Next, I moved the water construct around with her still excitedly following it. Then I copied whatever she stood next to at the time for hours on end until I ran out of stuff I hadn’t already covered. I was also getting tired. Mentally. Physically I was still totally fine, lazing around in her clearing for half the day, drawing and sculpting with water.
Still, she seemed to pick up on that and soon enough she… gave me a tour of her home. I guess? At least that was, what it looked like to me.
First, she guided me to a dead, fallen tree she had already pried the scaley bark from. Then she nudged me forward to follow her to another spot where the earth was all dug up and exposed a myriad of tiny insect tunnels. After that came several small ponds and large puddles, all teaming with tasty little snacks.
Lastly, she brought me to an honestly pretty sophisticated burrow. I wasn’t aware that salamanders made something like that. Maybe some did? Or this was another sign that we weren’t really all that closely related to modern amphibians.
Nevertheless, I followed her invitation and we slept next to each other in her little hole in the ground. She was snuggling around me, holding onto me like I was her new favourite plushy.
It was cozy.
And I was pretty sure that I would have cried a bit if I only had the proper glands for that.
When I woke up the next morning she was already up and foraging around. It was amazing to see how similar to me she went about doing things. I watched her for a while until I decided that I wanted fish for breakfast again. So I moved towards the river, preparing to play bait once more.
As soon as she noticed me splashing around to get attention from a would-be-predator turned potential-future-meal, she croaked in panic and came rushing over.
She stopped short of the water though and called out to me repeatedly. How did I deserve that much worry after only knowing her for a day? Well, I’d better not get distracted or I would really be in danger here.
I felt something big break through my detection bubble and instantly formed a vortex trap around it. Then I - quite smugly, I had to admit - lifted the ball with my caught prey up into the air and moved over to my new companion.
She was just staring - mouth agape - at the armoured eel flailing around wildly while hovering over my head.
A little while later I was watching her happily tearing into and gorging herself on the meat. Dark blood ran down her face and the front of her body. It contrasted nicely with the black and blood red of her skin.
That’s when I decided to call her Sanguine.
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
From then on she never left my side for long. And when she did, she usually returned with some pretty stones or intricately twisted plants. Then she proceeded to nudge me with them until I copied them with water magic. It took an annoying amount of poking before I figured out what she wanted when she did that for the first time.
But otherwise, Sanguine followed me around like an energetic puppy. Which was awkward because she was so much bigger than me. She had this cute habit of flicking her tongue over one of her eyes whenever she spotted something new or interesting. And of course, she was wagging with her whole body when she was excited about something.
I thought it was a little bit like the wiggling I did all the time back in my spawn pond.
When I decided to move on, towards the sea, she didn’t even hesitate to follow me. Maybe it was me bribing her with delicious food and interesting shiny magic or perhaps she had just been as lonely as me. Or she was simply bored out of her mind? I couldn’t know. She didn’t even look back towards her clearing once when we left together a few days after I met her.
Of course, any kind of proper stealth was a thing of the past from then on. Sure, she was quiet enough, but it really didn’t help when she just darted away through the underbrush whenever she spotted something that caught her interest.
Most of the time it was just food or other shiny bugs. But it could also be a particularly nice view or some rays of light that were breaking through the canopy ‘just so’ and reflected off a tiny waterfall in a beautiful rainbow. Just to name a totally random example, of course. It was a really nice picture though…
Anyways, my time with Sanguine was the happiest I felt in this life. Not just happy with something I did or achieved, but genuinely happy. We couldn’t really converse with one another but having company was absolutely awesome! And if it was important to let the other know something - or sometimes less important in her case - we could still make ourselves understood by mimicking or plain demonstrating.
Of course, she cuddled me every time we slept. I didn’t have any nightmares anymore. Just quiet restful sleep, feeling astonishingly safe.
One rare cloudless night while watching the stars, I wondered idly if Sanguine was somehow special. If all scalamanders - or at least the females - were like her, why did I never encounter groups of them living together? If they were social, why would we let our spawn fight for themselves from the day they were born? And why were the ones I met before so indifferent to me? Was it just her natural inquisitiveness they were lacking? I didn’t find an answer for that question that night and trying to translate it into something my new companion understood was an exercise in futility.
It was not like my water pictograms weren’t any use at all. We had worked out quite a few for daily use. If I wanted to ask her what she’d like to eat, for example, there was one symbol for fish, one for crayfish, one for maggots or worms, one for crunchy bugs, one for juicy bugs, one for… you get the picture.
It was quite fun to occasionally tease her, seeing her wobble around in place, impatiently waiting for the one she wanted to indicate to show up, only to skip over it a few times. Of course, she always noticed what I was doing and complained noisily or with violent hugging.
We travelled together for a bit longer than a full moon. I kept track this time and the moon seemed to need 24 or 25 days to make a full orbit. It was day 31 after I met her, that she spotted something deep blue in the distance on a rock and darted off to investigate.
I realised too late what it was that she was running towards. I called out to her, trying to warn her, but she didn’t listen.
I ran after her, attempting to catch up and shield her of what I was sure was about to happen. But she was larger than me and could move faster.
I shot water after her, but my reach was way too short.
I didn’t know how much she really felt in the end.
I only saw the enormous boulder toad open its maw, lashing its tongue out, snatching her up and munching down with a crunching sound of finality.
That was it. She was gone in an instant.
I wish I could say that I raged and slew the fiend in just revenge with all my magic prowess.
But I didn’t.
I shot a few rocks at it, but they didn’t bother it one bit. And all of my water spells must have felt like a wonderful shower to the hated monstrosity.
I knew it was too late to save Sanguine anyway. It was just so frustrating to not be able to do anything at all about it. In the end, I was exhausted and had to retreat or else risk to share her fate. Why did I have to pick such a stupid name for her? Did I curse her with it?
Sleep did not come easy that night. I’d gotten so used to sleeping with her curled around me that I felt naked and exposed now. I couldn’t believe she was gone. I mean, I knew on an intellectual level but…
Once again, I really wished I was able to cry.
When I finally fell asleep, I found myself in some kind of overgrown grotto. I knew I was dreaming because the details of the scene changed frequently and I was walking on just my two hind legs. I still was a scalamander, but I felt quite a bit more… humanoid. Not sure, what to make of this - I would have expected another nightmare, honestly - I carefully looked around.
“Hey there Sweetie. Did you miss me?” The voice like sugar came from behind me.
I spun around, taking in the bespectacled librarian that had appeared there, resting on a picnic blanket. She patiently watched me. Waiting for me to answer her.
“What are you doing here?” I was surprised by my own voice. Not by having a voice in the first place - well… that too - but I sounded like a little girl. I guess I was a little girl, but I never really felt like one until now.
“Is that a way to greet me, young lady?” she asked sternly. ”I must say, I’m a bit disappointed.” Memory didn’t seem to mind how I sounded at all. Really, why did she have to show up now?
“I take it, you read my message?” I asked sheepishly.
She raised one eyebrow. “Of course I did. Since you belong to me, all your system connections run through my account,” she said in a tone that suggested that she was stating the blatantly obvious. “So nobody can mess with you without also messing with me. We wouldn’t want you getting ‘lost in the cloud’ because another Player didn’t like you, would we?”
I hadn’t known that was an option. But it was not like she had ever explained it all to me. So I just shook my head slowly. I could ask her to give me a crash course, but I doubted that she was here for that at the moment.
“So? Why did you wait so long before showing up?” I asked instead.
She smiled. “I just wanted to give you the opportunity to calm down a bit. It wasn’t really all that long, was it? Just a few months or so? A little time out. It is a bad habit to immediately jump when your four-legged friend begs for your attention, you know?” She smirked.
“That… That is…” I was struck speechless. Was she making fun of me or was she genuinely trying to train me like a dog?
“It’s also not exactly cheap to send this dream,” she continued. “It was always possible that you’d try again on your own, just to find some resemblance of company. There are other kinds of spirits you could have practised with first, you know?”
I swallowed. Hard. I had found company. She was still with me this very morning. I felt like something large was stuck in my throat. Memory noticed of course.
“But then you had to find that delightful little bundle of Curiosity. It really is a bit of a shame what happened to her.” She hesitated for a moment, switching her tone from lecture to concern. “I was pretty worried about your mental health, so I quit waiting and paid for a dream visit. I expect you to reimburse me later for that, just so you know, my sweet.”
She was worried? After sending me to play with lava? I admit I may have snapped a bit at this point.
“I… It was really hard, you know?!” I shouted. “I had no idea, how to do your stupid task and… I nearly died! Twice! And then I thought everything might be okay from now on, but then she… she…” I couldn’t finish the sentence. I just broke down and bawled my eyes out.
Memory’s expression turned soft. “Now, now. Come here and let me take a look at you.” She patted the blanket next to her. “Everything will be alright, Sweetie. No matter what’ll happen, you’ll come back to me. Always.”
Sniffling and rubbing my eyes, I went over to her and plopped down by her lap. She was so big. Now I really felt like the little girl I sounded like.
“But it hurt so much! And I couldn’t breathe! And there was fire everywhere!” I cried.
“Shhhh” She hugged me tightly and patted my head. Stroking me from my forehead to the crest of my neck frill.
“So, why did you think it was a good idea to discontinue my Quest, hmm? I told you that I won’t be mad if you fail, but I expect you to at least try,” she whispered to me in her cooing voice.
“I did try!” I protested a bit whiny but didn’t get far before she interrupted me.
“Once. And then you gave up immediately. Just so you know, my sweet, I’d let you spend the next 100 lifetimes as a scalamander if that is, what it takes for you to take my tasks seriously.”
I turned my head to look up at her with wide eyes. She was still petting me.
“Oh, don’t give me that look now.” She chuckled. “I know perfectly well that you already suspected as much. But if you do good, I’ll give you a break and let you choose from a few alternatives for the next round. How does that sound?” she asked me as if telling me a secret.
“Can I have pie?” I asked hopefully.
She laughed. A genuinely amused laugh. “We’ll see about that.” She was stroking my back now. “You’re pretty cute in this form, you know?”
Then she hugged me tighter. It reminded me of Sanguine clinging to me at night. That brought the tears back. I just relaxed into her embrace and let her hold me.
“How long can you stay?” I asked after a while.
“As long as the dream lasts, Sweetie,” she answered distractedly. “It shouldn’t be much longer. You were very exhausted though.”
I considered for a moment, what I should ask her if time was short. “Do you really expect me to mate with the living lava?”
She giggled and stopped caressing me. Then she broke out into guffawing laughter. “Heavens no! They only have to be near your eggs for them to soak up the Energy. What did you think, how you got your affinity for water?”
I didn’t know how to answer that and just looked down in embarrassment.
“Naughty girl!” She chuckled. “You do know that there isn’t any ‘carnal union’ involved in the mating habits of your current species, right? I mean… what would you even put in there? No! Don’t answer that. It’ll be much more amusing to watch you try.” She hugged me tight again and giggled a bit more, resting her chin on my head.
I was about ready to die from shame. I had not thought about that! Okay?! I really hadn’t! I just assumed. Argh… stupid memories of previous me. I blame them! It wasn’t my fault!
After I calmed down a bit, I tried again.
“So… I’ll go back to the volcano, get to know the spirits a bit and then somehow let one stay close to my eggs without them dying. That would do it?”
Memory nodded. “That should do it. Don’t forget that I’ll give you another task once you’re done with that.” She smirked like she was preparing a hilarious prank.
“And you wouldn’t tell me what that task will be, by any chance?” I asked, a bit uneasy now.
“Nope! It’ll be way more fun to see your face when you read it.” Her smirk turned into a mischievous grin.
I groaned a sigh.
“What is the purpose of this Quest anyways? I don’t buy that you only want to keep my species from dying out.”
She just grinned harder in response.
“So you won’t tell me?” I tried one more time.
She merely shook her head slowly, looking down at me, stroking the side of my face with the back of her hand.
“You’re going to wake up soon. It is time to go.”
“I think I'll miss you.” I was surprised by my own words, but I knew they were true nonetheless.
She hugged me tight again, soothingly whispering into my ear. “Oh Sweetie, I know. Remember, whatever happens, it will be alright.”
Then she pushed me away a bit so she could meet my eyes. “I won’t pay for another dream though. It will already take you a few lifetimes to pay me back for this one.” She winked at me.
I was about to respond when the dream suddenly unravelled. Gone was the ever-changing grotto. I found myself alone in a makeshift debris burrow, feeling a bit warmer than I maybe should have.
It had started to rain again while I slept and the water energy seeped into me, making me feel more alive.
Sanguine was still gone.
I couldn’t change that.
What did Memory call her? ‘Delightful little bundle of Curiosity’? I sighed.
I would miss Her too.
Well, it seemed like I had a long hike back to a certain flame-spitting mountain before me. There would be enough time to mourn on the road. How I wish there were roads…
And maybe there was a pie waiting somewhere in the not so far off future?
A girl could only dream.