Chapter 106

Riley didn't remember falling asleep.

Her eyes fluttered open as the competing feelings of warm and cold, along with soft and hard, echoed distantly through her conscious mind.

Riley's head and front legs were resting across Tobias's lap, with the rest of her flopped on the stone. Her left hind paw was compressed and tingling, competing with soreness and bleariness from the day before.

Tobias, meanwhile, was resting against a pillar, his head tilted back with his mouth open, breathing quietly. Both his plate and her bowl had the remnants of an, at best, half-eaten meal. The light streaming down from the crystal spire seemed warm and old, heralding that they had indeed slept all day within the ethereally quiet space, with its thick stones and heavy wooden doors insulating them from sound, ensuring their peace.

Riley looked longingly at the bedrolls set side by side. "So much for that idea." She projected without thinking, her voice traveling like a mental poke.

Tobias's mouth snapped closed as his head righted with the opening of his eyes. He blinked groggily before stretching out his back, inspiring a series of pops.

"I don't remember falling asleep."

"It's gotta be the potions," Riley surmised, pausing to face groom, "Just like healing potions fix the damage, but you still get the scar, the rest of the stuff charges you up but doesn't spare you the fatigue. It all catches up with you."

Tobias looked at her with surprise. "That was remarkably intuitive."

Riley scoffed. "I'm not stupid, and I have experience, thank you very much."

"Some people never put that together. I wonder if Cid did with the way he pushed us. No, he knew; he just likes inflicting pain," Tobias concluded.

"Oh yeah, Cid's a sadist, but he has a purpose. I wonder how he's doing?" She wondered.

"Probably going out of his mind at Ranger Central. Maybe I can get Sabine to send a message on our behalf when we get back?" Tobias took on a thoughtful expression as Riley pressed up against his midsection.

"Good idea, and good morning..." Her words trailed off within her mind as she yawned again, "Five more minutes?"

Tobias shook his head. "No, we cannot tarry. That lynchpin monster is still about. There's still work to be done."

Riley moaned dramatically, pulling herself up with slow, torturous action. "Fine! You know you're getting as bad as he is."

Tobias grinned. "Don't you want to be friends?"

The hare shuddered, moving over to her food bowl nibbling at some of the greens.

"We have fresh," Tobias reminded.

"This is fine. Waste not, want not," she replied with her mouth full.

Tobias chuckled. "I've some Rok Eggs. I love having an inventory space. It's quite the useful power."

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With a wave of his left hand, a frying pan appeared, and with his right, two blue eggs were in his palm.

"Are there dimensional sorcerers? Like Kinetics, Elementals, all of that, or is it a secondary power?" Riley asked, finishing what she started last night.

"Most of them end up in logistics, which makes sense. It's not exactly a combat affinity," Tobias explained.

"Until someone stores a boulder and conjures it above somebody's head," Riley replied.

That stopped him in his tracks for a moment as the eggs hovered above the frying pan. "Fair point."

Cracking the shells, he stowed them away instead of leaving garbage.

Summoning his power, he held his hand over one of the flagstones, which, a moment later, began to glow orange with heat and fire. Holding the pan over it, the radiant heat inspired the eggs to sizzle and pop. "A little butter, a little salt."

He grinned as Riley scoffed. "You're so hopelessly spoiled."

Tobias placed a free hand over his chest. "I'm just getting my silver's worth."

"That fancy map was a silver. Your alchemy kit was a silver. Trust me, you got your money's worth the first day," Riley concluded, finishing the remains of her dinner before sitting up proudly.

"Bargains are hard to find," he agreed as he eyed his eggs suspiciously, poking a yolk with a finger. "Perfect." He smiled and set it down, pulling a fork from his inventory, and began to eat out of the pan.

"And they say I'm the animal." Riley watched as Tobias devoured his breakfast with a special kind of eagerness.

"I burned a lot of energy yesterday," He said defensively, while his eyes took on a far-off look, his chewing slowing down.

"What's this?" He muttered absently.

"You have defeated Zombie x 105, you have defeated Imp Soldier... Level up? What's a level up?"

"Firebolt... 2-7, Flame wall 2-7, Flaming Sword 2-7... I... I got stronger?" His eyes boggled as they fell upon Riley.

"Oh yeah, I've got some prompt notifications too," Riley said absently.

"It wasn't just you talking colloquially. You have a sense of your progression. You have a direct confirmation of your growth..." Tobias's words dripped with reverence and awe.

"Well, yeah, doesn't everyone get stronger? They don't need a prompt to know that." Riley replied.

"Perhaps, but not everyone is like you or comes from a place where information just floats in front of them like this. There's knowing, and then there's knowing, you know? It might be hard for you to understand," Tobias gestured with his right hand holding a fork.

"I didn't have my interface till I came here. It's part of my new life, I get it, but, I mean, everyone gets better with practice." Riley felt puzzled as she looked up at the prompts in the corner of her vision. There was no memory, outside of video games, of having a status screen. Still, every bit of her way of being in this world felt natural, enough so that she ignored it and... took it for granted that it was there.

"Well, it is cool and all, but when it's every day." She concluded, talking to herself. "I need to get caught up myself. Thanks for that." Riley said, pulling at her own prompts.

"Learn to check your status screen, noob!" Tobias shouted with a bemused chuckle.

"I didn't level," she replied a moment later, feeling a strange disappointment, "Mana Vampire is holding me back."

"You hardly use it," Tobias observed clinically.

"It scares me. It's already at 60% of the way to 2-8, and I've only used it twice. It takes as much as it gives. I'm a herbivore, dammit! I don't like feeling like a predator," she explained, feeling a rising panic.

"You saved us with that; you drained the bangle and dropped the wards. I doubt the fight would have gone that easily without it. We all eat something, Riley. You eat plants and magic energy. I eat Rok eggs and damn near anything else cooked and in front of me. The place you come from, they don't see things like we see them here. Life is a balance, and it's a cycle. Everything lives off of something else's life. Everything pays a death at the end of its run. It is the way of things, both fair and not, because nothing is all good or all bad; those extremes would be a horror," Tobias pet her ears back soothingly.

"You say that, but I did eat someone's soul and got a level boost out of it," Riley said, condemning herself.

"Who is to say you did? You consumed the energy of the soul, perhaps, or the magic surrounding it, but the actual spark of being?"

He shrugged, "You didn't get any memories, any other aspect of their being, did you?"

"Well, no," Riley admitted.

"You have your powers, and you use them for the right reasons. There's no sense in taking on more trouble than you already have. I don't think you're some world-ending creature." Tobias concluded.

"That's the thing, I think some small part of me is," Riley replied, swallowing hard.