I didn’t wander too far into the valley before stopping again. Hidden by waist-high grass lay a wide, clear pond encompassed by a muddy shore. Already the town behind me was the size of a postcard, a red wood mirage in the distance.
To my north was a distant range of mountains. With no other visible points of interest, I’d decided to walk there, hoping something better might catch my eye before I arrived. For now, that was fresh water.
I’d decided the direction was north because I assumed the Sun still set in the west. But, if this world wasn’t Earth, then that star might be a complete stranger to me. I studied it briefly in the reflection of the water, but decided I had no idea how to differentiate stars. I still felt its heat and shaded my eyes against its mid-morning light. We may have been strangers, but our relationship was not strange.
I took the rest to drink from the pond, scooping up water in my bucket. With a bit more time and calm, I flipped through the two books again. Their language was still nonsense to me. If the gods had created this world, then had they created this language too? Maybe somewhere on my skill tree, there was a node that let me understand the symbols.
“Oh!”
I examined my skill tree again. I’d never decided between those twelve options and still had the one SP remaining. If another monster, or person, appeared, I’d want every tool in reach.
First Ignition - The beginning of the divine creation of Flame!
Extinguish - To quiet the roar of mighty Flame!
Rain Forward - The beginning of the divine creation of Water!
Dehydration - To drain the essence of pure Water!
Living Forge - The beginning of the divine creation of Metal!
Corrosion - To undo the integrity of strong Metal!
Minor Hill - The beginning of the divine creation of Earth!
Erosion - To break down sturdy Earth!
Servant Branch - The beginning of the divine creation of Wood!
Wither - To poison regal Wood!
Brimming Cauldron - The beginning of the divine creation of Life!
Necrosis - To destroy Life!
With so little information and no examples of these powers in action, I didn’t have much context to make my decision. I would have to apply some guesswork. The skills each followed a pattern of creation and destruction. Since nothing called to me immediately, I whittled down my choices.
Aside from Necrosis, all of the destruction skills seemed too specific to be useful. To be able to destroy fire wouldn’t be much help unless I was only facing threats that wielded fire and the same went for the other four skills like it.
I tried to imagine situations where the other skills would actually come in handy. The most immediate need would be for some kind of self defense. I didn’t want to be alone and unarmed if more clay monsters found me. To that end, conjuring some inclement weather didn’t sound very useful. Neither did creating a hill or a branch.
In video game terms, creating life could be incredibly versatile. Perhaps I would summon a minion or follower that would help me. I dismissed that theory. The spell could just as easily make someone pregnant and I had enough headaches already.
That only left First Ignition, Living Forge and Necrosis. I rocked my head from side to side, weighing each choice.
My internal debate was broken up by a closing noise from the tall grass towards the mountain range. I whipped around to find the noise’s source. It nearly ran me down. I slipped from its path, diving into the mud.
A boy burst from the grass and towards the water.
“Yes!” he shouted, shoving his head into the pond.
“Felipe!” Another voice behind the boy shouted. I stood to meet them. A teenage boy pushed his way through the grass. He studied me for a moment, made some kind of decision and looked past me. “Felipe!”
“Rambunctious Felipe!”
A voice boomed. I almost fell to the mud again and the boy in the water scrambled back towards the grass. There, in the center of the pond, the water bubbled and rose, until the surface of the pond had been entirely subsumed by white foam. The edges of the water receded, towering into a formidable mass of water.
“You have earned my favor!” The loud voice repeated. It seemed to come from the morphing pond. Every time it seemed to settle on a humanoid shape, the water would shift again, moving and dancing like a fountain. Its continuous falling and reforming and floating and swaying made it difficult to watch.
The thing had no point on which I could focus. The older boy pulled the younger one, Felipe, from the strange shape.
“It might be a monster,” I warned them both.
“How dare you?!” The shifting water shouted. Its dance approached me, but not directly, swaying and zigging and zagging across the muddy oasis until it reached my face. “I am a god of motion, Tho Ki’ki’ken!” It laughed as it introduced itself. The voice was booming and heavy, like I heard it coming from auditorium speakers only inches from me.
“Don’t make me repeat myself, rambunctious Felipe! Not that any man can make Tho Ki’ki’ken speak or move as they like!” The shifting water laughed. I tried not to dwell on how that could be possible. I would have to fall out of the habit of not getting stuck on the wrong questions. “You have earned my attention by finding my domain!”
“Didn’t I find it too?” I asked.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
The god, if that’s what it was, danced about its muddy territory. It groaned like a roar, and I covered my ears.
“You’d do well not to address a god out of turn! Yes I saw you drink of my essence. It was a pitiful display! I’ve danced with corpses possessed of more spirit! You are out of rhythm with this world and have earned only my disinterest! Pray that is all you should receive!”
I drank his essence? That was just another question I’d have to dismiss.
“What say you, rambunctious Felipe? You and your companion have earned an audience with Tho Ki’ki’ken. You will, of course, accept!”
Felipe and his companion couldn’t close their mouths. Felipe looked to be a young teenager. His hair dripped with water, or the god’s essence, whichever, but retained dark curls. His skin was brown and he was short. Even back on his feet, the boy could only just look over the grasses of the valley.
His companion, the older boy, was smooth-faced and thick-browed. His nose was snub and straight. His eyes were slight and suspicious of the god, of me, of perhaps everything they saw. His dark hair was a translucent buzz on his head. The older boy kept his arm around Felipe like a brother, but the two couldn’t look less alike.
Felipe looked up at the older boy. I saw the little girl looking at me blankly the same way. They’d both wanted answers. This time I stayed quiet.
“If he wanted to hurt us, he could have just done that,” the older boy said. “It’s okay.”
“A wise, if stationary soul,” the god commented.
“I accept,” Felipe said.
“Why, of course!” Tho Ki’ki’ken reformed the top part of his body into an aqueous horn and from it trumpeted a low, loud sound. “Show yourself in motion, rambunctious Felipe!”
The two boys scrambled to their feet. What had that signal summoned? Was this just some intricate ceremony? A rustling from the tall grass proved otherwise.
“Xing!” the little boy shouted.
“Stay behind me!” the older boy, Xing, ordered. He tightened his fist around Felipe’s tunic, perhaps ready to throw him to safety, or just to keep him from doing something stupid. Did they have any powers? Any weapons?
I opened my menu in a hurry.
“Do not contain his motion!” Tho Ki’ki’ken ordered. His body moved like a river through the air, finding Xing and drowning him in water. The god carried the boy off in a bubble. It resisted Wing’s every effort to break free. Felipe could only look between the prison and the grass, wondering if he or his friend would die first.
I hurried through my menus, careful not to let them dismiss entirely as I peeked around for what monster approached. I was too late.
Later, I could more closely observe the monster to look like a boar. It trailed seven swishing tails as thick as braided rope. The beast was squat, only reaching about a meter off of the ground, but moved so fast. Thin plates of metal grew out of its nose to armor its face. All I saw in the moment were long tusks, almost as long as the monster’s body. They aimed to butcher Felipe.
I leveled up the wrong skill.
“Minor Hill!”
I didn’t wait for the menu to disappear. I didn’t even know if shouting the skill’s name would cast it, only praying my incantation would interrupt this tragedy. My guess was right. The distance between the monster and boy closed in a hurry. Before it had entirely vanished, I aimed my spell beneath Felipe’s feet.
Plates of earth crashed into one another. In their embrace, rock and stone rose before my eyes. My adrenaline competed with a thrilling rush of power through my face and arm. The monster’s charge pressed on. Its tusks shattered against solid earth. Ivory fragments sank into the muddy shores. The monster’s charge had shaken my creation. Felipe desperately clung to its peak.
The boar couldn’t recover from the loss of its tusks, growling sadly and shaking its head. I didn’t pity the monster.
“I can drop down!” Felipe said. “I’ll drop down and kill it!”
“Don’t move!” I ordered him. I quickly learned why Xing felt it important to keep a hand on the kid. He ignored my words and let go of the cliff. His shoulder bounced off the pig’s rump and they both tumbled into the soft mud. I rushed to their collision, but Felipe looked okay, if a bit out of breath.
I examined the remains of the tusks, finding the pointed end piece. It had broken into a fragment half the size of my forearm and fit comfortably in my hand. The monster looked like it may recover its senses shortly.
I would not give it the chance.
Like the clay humanoid, the boar monster sang its death rattle before disappearing with a burst. Thankfully, its only remains were teeth, tails and tusks. No goopy cleanup would be required. Below the tusk that had pierced its chest was more Materia, thin crystals.
“Splendid!” the god announced. It released Xing with an unceremonious descent into the mud. He spat up more of the watery essence, choking for breath.
The god swam up my cliff to look down at us all.
“And that was from the one without spirit! You both showed excellent motion!”
I didn’t know how to respond, so I inspected Xing instead. He pushed me off, asking about Felipe instead. I had to let him suck down several full breaths before I let him go. He checked out the younger boy, trying to mix a scolding with gratitude that he was still in one piece.
“That’s what you call an audience?” I shouted up the hill.
Really, even that word was too generous for what my skill had conjured. From the ground, I’d summoned a curved cliff face leading up to a limited plateau. It could only have been fifteen feet tall, and with just the large god’s humanoid form, the flat surface on top looked crowded. The three of us might have been able to fit on its peak if we crowded one another.
“Don’t anger him,” Xing whispered to me. “How many more of those things you wanna fight?”
I cursed myself for not realizing an obvious point like that. Using one skill had made me careless. If the god’s mood turned. I didn’t think we’d be able to survive.
“An audience with death! With life! With motion!” Tho Ki’ki’ken explained cheerfully. “Only in peril can a soul be revealed. That’s why we created the monsters for this game!”
“The gods created the monsters?” I asked. It was very hard to sound curious, and not seething in white-hot rage.
The god laughed. “The gods create everything! Sometimes I forget how much you do not know! But, ignorance is a virtue of humanity!” He laughed again. It felt as though he was complimenting a seal for bouncing a ball on its nose.
I shifted between the opportunity to interview a god and my urge to spit at its feet. The latter instinct overpowered me.
I took a spell I decided was useless. I massaged my temple. Was my whole class in this game going to be about creating distinct geography? One unfortunate encounter with a pig and a god had undermined my entire game plan.
Player: Levi Denton
Lv. 3
Jing: 13/13
Qi: 3/5
Shen: 1/1
Star Sign: Monoceros
Inbox
Skills - 1 SP Pending
Inventory
A new skill point! And my Jing had been raised. I could also tell that this Minor Hill skill cost two of my Qi. I would have to find out how to recover that. Before I could more deeply consider any of that, the god embraced Felipe, bringing him down to us.
“Now, rambunctious Felipe, you have earned a boon from me.” The boy looked to Xing. Both of them got scared all over again. “And you as well, joyless one,” it pointed a finger of water at me. “Tell me what boon you request of a god!”