The robes served as delightful stuffing for my satchel, allowing me to use them as a pillow when we finally settled down for the night’s rest while still keeping them safe from the elements. I was proud of how long I’d been able to walk without getting winded and getting to set my own pace helped; whether through excitement or dogged utility, most folks I spent my time around wanted to get to places faster than I did, and I often found myself running to catch up or leading the pack with a determination to get the trip over with. I enjoyed the scenic route, as a person, and was sad that I’d missed that golden age of teenagedom when you first get a car where you drive just to drive and enjoy the world around you. I hadn’t gotten my license until I was twenty-one, and I spent most of that time either trying in vain to work on the relationship I’d locked myself into, or not going insane from the former by whiling away my hours on the internet.
Red, Wysteria, and I headed straight North through the moor for a while before our grimalkin guide directed us a bit West until we hit a raised dirt road. Tufts of grass grew here and there along it, but it was a flat track between the hills and made of more packed, dry earth that didn’t take to water as well as the loamy soil that comprised most of the area, making for less arduous travel. We never properly stopped for lunch; I munched on the dried rations in my sack as we walked, Red scarfed on his fish flakes, and Wysteria consumed a number of the beetles and slower-moving flying insects that we came upon. When we finally bedded down, I ate a bit more of the bread, meat, and cheese to push back the pangs of hunger. There was the expected yearning for a ‘real meal’, but I’d survived on less in the comfort of my own home hundreds of times before, and I could ignore the plaintive growls of my stomach for the time being, especially since I had a welcome distraction available; the sky had cleared somewhere toward the evening, and dancing fireflies joined the light of the moon in allowing me just enough glow to read the grimoire by.
First and most obvious, I’d gained two intervals of experience, and the number 16 was now glowing gold and shimmered slightly. I assumed that meant I could do something with it, but I was lost on what or how; the book didn’t come with a quill, or pen, or wand with which to manipulate the type. I took a wild guess and tried using my finger to drag the glowing number to my CHA, mostly because I’d always seen myself as a charismatic person and it chagrined me a bit that Red’s was higher than mine, but nothing happened. I tried tapping my CHA, tapping the Xp itself, and even taking a more traditional approach in focusing my thoughts and trying to will the expenditure into being like I had when using the Parting the Veil spell. Nothin’. I also wasn’t any closer to understanding what caused my experience to increase, since I couldn’t think of two major milestones that had taken place between the last time I looked at the book and now. My mana bar was reduced by a quarter, which meant whatever had restored it yesterday hadn’t yet been applied today. I expected it would be full in the morning, one way or another.
I was more interested to read up on my new companion, anyway. Nothing we’d encountered just yet seemed to beg greater skill, so I was content to wait and see where my build needed attention. It was very weird to think of my personal abilities and knowledge as my ‘build’, but not enough to warrant more than a widening of the eyes and a shake of the head. As I hoped, the header on the page for the flying creatures that were chasing Red when I first met him had updated to the perfectly readable ‘OEIVOLANT’, but the rest of it was still a jumble. Wysteria’s species had an entry, however, with a stunning sketch of an amazingly fat, proud amphibian. Terramor toads ate mostly insects and thrived in moist climates, which I had gathered through observation, but I was interested to discover that they had great skill applying a sort of innate magic venom. I loved poison-type abilities in fantasy and video games, ticking my opponent’s health away every turn to help me deplete their life bar before they could do the same to mine, or at least as a way of wasting their time and resources to recover from it. Plus, it was usually depicted in awesome shades of green and purple, and given Wysteria’s stripes I had to imagine it might be similar here. Enthusiastically, I flipped to the Esper Records to find her entry and see if she had any abilities listed. Sure enough, in addition to her own Attributes and Characteristics were two Traits; a Passive one called Toxin Immunity (which did what it said on the tin) as well as the Active Trait, Venomous Vapors. At the cost of a quarter of her max energy, Wysteria could emit a cloud of poison gas within 5’ around her, causing those caught in it who fail a Stamina check to suffer damage over time.
“Oooo~!” I couldn’t help myself to say out loud, though I wasn’t sure what ‘energy’ really meant, in terms of a meter. I hadn’t spent any, myself, despite a day of hiking. Perhaps it was supposed to represent a more strenuous effort. I also remembered that while Wysteria had visible Traits, Red didn’t. The grimalkin entry said they had access to certain kinds of magic, especially illusions, but he had no listed abilities beyond what seemed to be the standard. I was also surprised that I could just read her Traits and their costs, while my own similar entries were still obfuscated. I flipped back and forth between the pages for who-knows-how-long until Red’s voice brought me back to reality.
“Hey, chief? Last night, you was askin’ me a question before we got side-tracked on the dub-word an’ esper battles an’ stuff. You remember what it was?”
“Yes.” Ordinarily I would forget something as temporary and inconsequential as a query I never fully made twenty-four hours ago, but it and other intriguing ideas I had about this world were running a merry-go-round through my mind at all times. “You said most spellcasters don’t have books like this, right?”
“It’s the first I seen of one bein’ so fancy. Usually, they ain’t meant for use outside the home, an’ even then they’re just, like, a list of spells an’ tips on how to learn an’ practice ‘em, or a place to write down your scrolls to make it easier to copy ‘em later or somethin’.”
“Do you know if either of those things look like this?” I flipped through the pages to my own sparse Spell Index as he clambered up onto my pack to read over my shoulder.
“… one quarter maximum… what? No, I ain’t ever heard of none of this before!”
“All right, well what about these?” I flipped to the more field guide-like entries in the Esper Index, then to he and Wysteria’s details within the Esper Record.
“Whoa, no!” He took a few steps forward, putting some of his weight onto my shoulder with one tiny foot. “This is wild! Did you draw these, chief?”
“No, I didn’t. And check this out…” I turned to my own Personal Record. “All of this information was either in here when I first opened the book, or it was this moving, mystery text like you can see under my Traits that becomes clear when something relevant happens, like when I linked Wysteria. It’s like it’s filling itself in as I go.”
“Yowza,” he breathed, taking a few seconds to absorb everything. “I don’t mean to lay any heavy juju on your shoulders, but this looks like one helluva powerful magic item you got, here.”
“Are there others like it?” It was difficult to keep my curiosity’s appetite from driving me to ask a question every time one popped into my head. It seemed rude, somehow, or at least annoying. But Red acted amenable toward feeding me what knowledge he had, and I was hungry.
“Like this book, specifically? I dunno. I wanna say ‘no’, ‘cuz I never heard of anything like it before, but who knows?” He put a paw to his forehead and pinched his brows together, frustrated he’d gotten ahead of himself. “I keep forgettin’ you’re not from around here. Magic items in general are pretty common. Expensive, as much as any magic-user’s services are, but attainable. But we’re talkin’ an’ icebox that keeps food cold without ice, or a sword that makes you better at fightin’ when you hold it. This is… …” he hopped down from his perch and moved in front of me, turning so that we were face to face and gesticulating with both his hands and tail as he spoke. “OK, so… like, thousands of years ago before the Commonwealth was a thing and Barbavia was still young—”
“Sorry; few things,” I interrupted with an upraised index finger, “what is the Commonwealth? Like, I know what a commonwealth is, but you keep using it like a proper noun. And who is Barbavia?”
“Uh…” he double-blinked, “Barbavia is the continent we’re on. The Commonwealth is the government for the three major countries here; Teren Balt (which is where we are now), Astonia to the North, and Senta to the West.”
“I would’ve thought Senta would be in the center,” I said, because I am very clever and fun at parties.
“It is, but the stuff further West and to the South ain’t in the Commonwealth.” Apparently, Red was not amused by my joke. I wondered if I had stumbled into the Customer’s Constant of suggesting an item must be free if the barcode won’t scan; making a joke that was so obvious it never conceivably could’ve been considered funny. “Anyhow, there’s this story that’s supposed to be from before all that got started about a woman named Promité who traveled down into the depths of the hells themselves and came back up with incredible magic items and used them to make spellcasting available to the masses. It’s exactly the kinda thing most folks would dismiss as a bedtime story for kids, except that one of them relics is an axe hangin’ in the halls of Castle Borngrav, the seat of Astonia; Isondskap, the Rime-Breaker.” That was an incredibly impressive name for anything, and I could just imagine some glowing weapon adorned in runes hanging above an intimidating throne of rough-edged stone. “It’s literally capable of carvin’ up mountains. The first Astonians used it to build their homes right into the rock, an’ you always hear news from up North of someone tryna borrow it to break new land or get an easy start on a fresh silver mine…” he trailed off, having lost the relevant thread of conversation a few examples ago. “What I’m tryna say is, I’m sure it sounds fake for some random esper to tell ya ‘oh man, that book you got might just be one of the most powerful magic items in history’, an’ I ain’t got a list of recorded relics we could compare it to, but there’s a precedent for stuff like that around here, and it sure as hell looks more powerful than a wand of nose hair trimming.”
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“I mean, it does sound a little fake? A little too… coincidentally perfect?” I squinted and made my mouth a line between amused and concerned. “But this whole thing does, this whole world and the circumstances of my arrival.” Not only had our interrupted discussion left my question unanswered, but my status as an alien underexplained. It was my turn to sigh, clear my mind, and go into greater detail. I folded my hands and pointed them at Red. “I told you last night I’m not from this plane.”
“Right,” he nodded.
“I don’t think you’ve got the full scope of how different our worlds are. Like, it’s mind-blowing we can even understand each other, that we speak the same language.”
“Well, I learned Ruben pretty young, and it is the trade language of Barbavia an’ well beyond, as I understand it—”
“No, I mean… where I come from it’s not called ‘Ruben’, it’s called English. There is no ‘Ruben’, not as a language, anyhow, and most territories have their own native tongues. There’s so many common concepts that are the same, even idioms and accents, but otherwise—OK, so, the Esperwild and this plane overlap, right? You said even the geography is pretty similar, right? They’re sorta like two villages on either side of the same river.”
“Sure,” he had folded his arms over his chest as he listened, shrugging and nodding his head as he thought. “It’s more complex than that, obviously, but… yeah, more or less.”
“Obviously. The difference between my plane and either of the ones here is that… well, a lot, really. We don’t have magic, for example. We’re familiar with the concept of it, but it’s all treated as fiction, except for… like, seemingly-miraculous, one-time feats in excess of what a person can usually do, and some incredibly impressive sleight of hand tricks.” I knew some of Criss Angel’s stunts were complete artifice, but I was young enough when he got popular that it still held mystique for me. “A lot of stuff you guys seem to accomplish through spells, we accomplish through technology. Advanced machines that can be sophisticated enough to simulate thought, and even a globe-spanning network of information datacenters that most of the population can access from their phones.”
“Okay… ?” Red nodded, processing the information. He didn’t seem confused, but his feline lips pursed, and his eyes narrowed as he tried to parse everything. “So… you’re sayin’ only machines can do magic in your world?”
“No, it’s more like… like the Artifact for Transfabricating Money I used at the inn. We have a similar device, but instead of working with magic it works with…” Truth be told, I didn’t know how an automatic teller worked, exactly. ‘Computers’, obviously, but it was hard to translate to someone who had never (I assumed) seen or used one. “… it’s all really complex and over my head, honestly. I was nowhere near as able to manipulate sophisticated technology at home as I am able to use magic here, and I don’t even understand how I’m doing that.”
“The relic, I’d guess. Promité brought magic to the people, an’ if that’s somethin’ she brought up with her it’d make sense if it was sort of a teaching tool or somethin’.”
“Right! So, the stories about magic in our world are really popular, and there are a lot of them. Some of those stories are about people who suddenly find themselves transported from our world and into in an alternate fantasy world. They suddenly have to adapt to a different culture, and often learn to become powerful warriors or capable spellcasters, or what-have-you. Recently there’s been this surge in fiction where the stories are integrated with the mechanics from roleplaying games—ah, hell. I don’t suppose you have those here?”
“We have games, Glenn,” Red said flatly. As brief and stripped-down as my sentences were, I was throwing a lot of information at him that had to sound extremely disconnected from his perspective, so I was ready to forgive his irritated tone.
“Of course. Well, not only do people tell stories about fantasy worlds with magic, but they play games about them. They make rules so you can measure a character’s strength, skill with a weapon, what spells they can cast—”
“Sounds kinda like one of the more complicated wargames. With the expensive little miniature pieces that got a whole list o’ rules on which ones can do which moves an’ how far they can go in a turn, et cetera, et cetera.”
“Yes!” I pointed with both index fingers. It wasn’t an exact comparison, but it was a hell of a lot closer than I expected to get. “So, not only do they tell the dramatic story, but some of them pay heed to a mechanical layer as a way to convey the main character’s growth and breed familiarity with the reader.”
“That sounds needlessly complicated,” he frowned. “Are stories so hard to grasp in your world that they need an extra layer of relatability?”
“No, it’s… I guess people find it fun?” Admittedly, I had never fully endeared myself to the concept, but I knew a few people who had, namely my best friend. “If you appreciate the art of building a capable character it can be like its own additional factor of enjoyment, like trying to race the main character of a detective book you’re reading to put together the clues and solve the mystery. You also get to think ‘oh, that’s not how I would’ve done that,’ or ‘what happens if they put these points here?’ and concept your own ‘what if’ scenario about how the story might be different if you were the one building the character.”
“If you say so,” Red shrugged. “It just sounds like a story with extra steps to me.”
“Okay, fair, but that’s not the point. The point is—” I grabbed the book and opened it again to my Personal Record, “—these are roleplaying game rules. It’s not a system I’m familiar with, but I know RPG rules when I see them, and that’s what these are. I was dislocated from my world after getting hit by a truck and wound up in a one with magic, and the first thing I find is a book that seems to be full of stats about me. This is, like, the foundation for so many stories in this genre. It’ll take some figuring out, but I think I can manipulate the numbers in here to make myself stronger, or faster, or more perceptive--”
“Wait, wait, wait… you’re sayin’ that Barbavia is a place in a story from your world?”
“No,” I reconsidered quickly, tilting my head to lean into the thought. “Well, not that I know of. It’s not like I have absolute knowledge of every work of fiction… but it’s certainly not one I’ve ever read, other than the basic similarities to fantasy fiction in general. Other than getting these ideas off my chest, what I’m trying to say is that I’m even more willing to believe what you say, that this book might be a powerful magic item, because this situation already reminds me of a type of story from my world and miraculously being in possession of an ancient relic from a legendary figure is in keeping with their typical dramatic conventions.”
“I mean…” both of Red’s paws covered his eyes, massaging the muscles around them, “are you sayin’ you think we’re in some kinda controlled narrative right now? A story ain’t got no branches; it’s one-way. Are you tryin’ to spout some deterministic nonsense about narrative implications at me right now? ‘Cuz I ain’t exactly a fan of thinkin’ some weirdo with a number fetish from another dimension is in charge of taking the decisions I make outta my hands—”
“No! No no no. Quite the opposite. These sorts of stories are based on roleplaying games, right? The stories from roleplaying games pivot around stuff like the luck of the dice, the whims of the players and the D-- … the storyteller. There are tropes, uh… truisms. Stereotypical occurrences which are hallmarks of what you might expect in any given game. Like… Murphy’s Law. The toast doesn’t actually always fall jam-side down, but it does enough that everyone knows it happens, and when you drop your toast, you come to expect it.”
“We call that the Jam Rule. Very good shorthand for reasonable pessimism in other, non-toast-related situations.”
“It’s the same where I’m from. Me being here, how I got here, waking up with a magic book of unprecedented power and the raw ability to cast spells, immediately being thrust into saving someone from danger… it seems to imply whatever situation I’m in has enough parallels to that fiction that I should probably assume that it is. And maybe it’s not! But when the toast starts to fall you mentally prepare to clean up jam.”
“I’ll be honest, chief, you’re kinda doin’ my head in,” he said after a long pause.
“Sorry.” I felt a little sheepish, word-vomiting so many foreign concepts on him like that and letting my sense of adventure ramp up the tone and volume of my voice.
“It’s all right. Just… lemme make sure I got this straight. The world you come from ain’t got magic, but it’s got similar stuff done with complex machines. An’ you got stories about magic that go pretty much the same as the last two days we been through, includin’ having a magic book that lets you upgrade your skills like you was some kinda unit in a tabletop wargame. But not close enough that you ever heard of a grimalkin named Red or a place called Barbavia. But you think I might be onto somethin’ thinkin’ that book’s an ancient, powerful relic on account’a that sorta things happen in those sorts of stories?”
“It’s more complex than that, obviously,” I parroted to him, “but… yeah, more or less.”
“An’ this ain’t some ploy to try an’ convince me some kinda powerful force pre-wrote my actions as a part of their grand plan, or their stupid story?”
“It is not. I also don’t care for the concept of determinism.” Thinking it was better to be clear, I added, “absolute worst-case scenario, some kind of powerful force is reacting to the things we do of our own free will to make our lives interesting, but that’s more self-important than I’m willing to ascribe to.”
“All right. I believe you. As much as I believe anything,” he nodded a few times, looking out around the makeshift camp we’d established. The darkness had grown a bit thicker as we talked, the moon having disappeared behind a clutch of trees. “You’re gonna need a lot more of my help than I thought… an’ I’m with ya on keepin’ this whole ‘from another plane, magic book fulla game numbers’ business just between us.”
“Well, and Wysteria,” I gestured to the toad a few feet away and half-buried in soft earth. She was unmoving, but alert, starlight making her eyes shine softly in the dark.
“Wysteria counts as ‘us’,” Red agreed. “Close your book and get some sleep, chief. We got a lot to talk about in the morning, an’ I need time to organize my thoughts, so I’ll take the first watch an’ keep an eye out for any trouble.”
“I appreciate that,” I nodded, settling back against my pack. Questions tried to blossom in my mind again, starting with practical ones like ‘what kind of trouble?’ and ‘how would we handle it?’ before flowing into deeper intrigue and idle curiosities about the world of the Commonwealth and everything around it. My eyes were heavy enough, however, that closing them and exhaling was all I needed to start me off on the track to Slumbertown. “Goodnight, Red,” I said, dreamily.
“Night, Glenn.”
A rumbling creak came from Wysteria, and before I knew it, I was unconscious.