There were many ways to wake up. The best was the gentle, gradual transition from sleep to wakefulness, occurring right when your body decided it was time. Other times, waking up involved beating sleep back with a stick, so you could do whatever was required on that given day.
Sometimes, sleep let go of you easily, but lingered for hours in the back of your eyes, whispering that a quick nap couldn’t hurt.
Today, Dyani Farlight discovered a brand new way to wake up.
Silky tendrils, wrapped around her severely burned arm, shocking her awake with a potent mix of pain and fear. Any remnants of sleep were burned away, like a moth diving into a campfire.
When she opened her eyes, she was met with a strange creature.
Dyani had seen plenty of unusual beings, monsters with multiple heads, elementals composed of plants, earth, or bone, even living sacks of acid. Her own mother was an intangible wraith.
This creature was stranger than any of those. In lieu of a face, it had a mask of carved, stone, cream colored with highlights of umber. It was stylized as an open book with the spine and cover facing toward her, set with two eyes that glowed with yellow-white light. Instead of any kind of ordinary body, everything behind the mask was a mass of coiled tendrils. They were such a dark purple, they were nearly black, and each had the glossy sheen of wet ink.
Her burned skin lacked her usual sensitivity, but from what she could feel, they were smooth to the touch.
Dyani’s conscious mind didn’t know how to react, but her instincts did.
She jerked her hand out of the creature’s tendrils, which let her go without a fight, and used her legs to push herself back. Her body protested, tired and aching, but she managed to gain a meter or so of distance before she saw Pikawon, lying unconscious right beside where she’d been, within easy reach of the monster.
Dyani raised a hand, pointing directly at the masked, tangled creature, and activated Feverchill Bloom.
Or, at least she tried to.
The skill slot where that skill had previously resided shrieked in protest, the cracks running through it sending bolts of pain through her spirit.
Grimacing, Dyani confirmed that Crystal Mana Bolt was still intact before activating it. The smallest trickle of mana entered the skill, not even enough to conjure a grain of sand. Taking a moment to feel out her spirit, Dyani realized that, not only was her core completely devoid of mana, she still hadn’t returned Crystal Mana Bolt to its proper state after using it to escape the Evolved False Hydra. In its current configuration, it could do nothing but conjure an expanding, crystal ring around her arm. That was perfect for prying open the mouth of a monster trying to swallow your arm, but not particularly useful as a ranged attack.
That left her with two skills, Mana Jump, a mobility skill, and Thermostat, a passive defense skill against heat and cold, both of which required mana, which she didn’t have. It was an unfamiliar situation. Not being out of mana, she’d drawn herself dry before, usually while experimenting with new skill configurations.
The unfamiliarity came from waking up without mana. Relaxing the body and spirit and not using any mana for an extended period increased the rate of mana regeneration. It was one of the biggest reasons people meditated, and sleep was basically heavy duty meditation.
Waking up without mana was like drinking a gallon of water and still being thirsty.
There were two likely explanations, that she’d been unconscious for a very short time, or that the ambient mana was completely barren. Her body definitely felt that she’d been out for awhile, and when she felt for the ambient mana, it was as rich and plentiful as she could ask for.
It was heavy with decay affinity, which was far from her favorite mana type. It felt distinctly of rust and mold, with the impression of a decomposing corpse that very nearly bridged the gap between her magical and physical senses and became a smell.
But she’d been absorbing and processing decay mana for months without issue, both before and after getting hired as a sewer inspector.
Even as she focused on the surface of her core, where mana was normally absorbed, she couldn’t detect any mana coming in. The mana was there, within reach, but her spirit was just ignoring it.
All these thoughts occurred in a brief span of seconds, during which her hand was still outstretched in her failed attempt at firing her attack skill.
Her heart raced as the tangled monster moved, a dozen of its tendrils reaching out and weaving together into a crude limb. Dyani nearly activated Mana Jump, she’d used that skill so often it was second nature, but switched her attention to moving her body the old fashioned way. She tried to use her arms to rise, but her injured, left arm buckled under her weight.
The tendrils finished weaving themselves together, creating a surprisingly good facsimile of a human arm, though the fingers were all one piece except for the thumb, like it was wearing a mitten.
“Hello! I return your human greeting. Can I have some order?”
“What?!?” Dyani said.
“What?” the creature replied, mask tilting to the side.
“What?” Pikawon mumbled, rubbing his head in pain before he opened his eyes, saw the tangled mass of…whatever this thing was, and received the same burst of panicked wakefulness that Dyani had experienced a moment ago.
“By all the saints!” he swore, “What is that?” He scrambled backward with enviable grace. Two working arms and a point in speed lent his movements considerably more agility than Dyani had displayed.
“All of them? That must be a lot. What’s a saint?” the creature asked. A single tendril reached up from the mass, like a raised hand in a classroom.
“I don’t know,” Dyani said, answering Pikawon’s question, though the creature’s raised tendril drooped, in response.
“I’m so sorry. That must be hard,” the creature said. It turned its mask to Pikawon. “You shouldn’t hoard knowledge. It isn’t nice.”
Dyani was getting more and more confused, but less and less afraid. Whatever this thing was, it was no monster. She’d never heard of a monster who could talk, and even if they did exist, this creature hadn’t done anything overtly threatening, except…
“Why were you touching me?” Dyani finally managed to stand, using only her good arm. The mask swiveled to face her.
“I was examining your arm. It’s all different colors and textures than the rest of you. I thought it might be important. Are you broken?”
She noticed for the first time that, while the creature’s mask didn’t have a mouth, its melodious, androgynous voice came out unmuffled, a curiosity.
“She’s not broken,” Pikawon snarled, stepping between them and raising his claws. The creature just cranned its mask to the side to keep an uninterrupted view of Dyani.
While its eyes were nothing but flat yellow, without pupil, iris, or sclera, it was clearly focusing intently on her arm.
She looking down at the mottled browns, blacks, and reds covering her lower arm
“I mean, I’m not, not broken.”
“Not…not?” With each ‘not’, the creature’s mask rotated one hundred and eighty degrees, flipping it upside down, then back right side up. “A double negative. How interesting.”
The same single tendril that had raised itself like a hand earlier twisted itself into a series of complex knots. At least she thought it was the same one, they were all identical and in constant motion.
Dyani reached out to touch one of the closest tendrils.
“Dyani!” Pikawon scolded.
“Pikawon!” she replied, in the exact same tone.
“Curious Seeker of the Hidden!”
The pair of humans looked at the creature. Its body wiggled in what might have been a shrug.
“Curious Seeker…what?” Pikawon asked, finally lowering his clawed hands to a less aggressive position.
“Are we not sharing our names? I didn’t recognize the words, so I just assumed. If we’re just shouting gibberish, I can do that too.”
“Your name is…?
“Curious Seeker of the Hidden.” The creature’s tendrils arched out in unison, inflating the size of its body. One of Pikawon’s hands twitched, wary of an attack, but none came.
“That’s a long name,” Dyani said, curiously. She moved around Pikawon to get closer to the creature, to his obvious dissatisfaction.
“Dyani, we have no idea what this thing is,” he hissed.
“If it wanted to hurt us, it could’ve done that while we were unconscious,” she whispered back, before addressing Curious Seeker of the Hidden, “Do you have a nickname?”
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“A nick-name? No, my name is Curious Seeker of the Hidden, not Nick.”
Dyani shook her head and smiled.
“No, I mean a shorter name, something easier to use in regular conversation.”
Vibrations passed through Curious Seeker of the Hidden’s various tendrils, emitting a contemplative hum. That continued for around ten seconds, then they answered.
“I have only been granted a single name, upon my ascension.”
“More and more questions,” Pikawon sighed, rubbing his forehead, “My head was already hurting before.”
Dyani’s was too, most likely from her low mana. She needed to ask Pikawon about his own mana, to see if her lack of mana regeneration was due to their location, or a personal issue.
“Can we just call you Curious?”
This time, the humming fluctuated up and down in intensity, and lasted twice as long.
“Curious Seeker of the Hidden. Curious…Seeker of the….hmmmm. Cuuuuuri….Curioussssssseekerofthehidden.” The humming continued in the background as the creature struggled with the concept.
Dyani and Pikawon exchanged looks, hers amused, his exasperated.
“You like hidden things, right?” Dyani asked. They nodded.
“Just think of it as hiding part of your name. You don’t have to use the nickname all the time, just when it’s easier, and with people who already know the entire thing.” The creature’s humming subsided to a low buzz, then cut off.
“Curious, just Curious. Ah ha! Yes, I can be Curious. Curious is me. I am Curious.” Curious seemed oddly ecstatic at finally wrapping their head around nicknames.
“Well, Curious,” Pikawon said, eliciting a happy hum at his use of the nickname, “I don’t suppose you could tell us where we are?”
“A good question. You are in a hollowed out stump.”
Pikawon rolled his eyes.
Dyani looked around, truly examining her surroundings for the first time. The were, indeed, in a hollowed out stump, though the tree it had come from must’ve been massive. She and Pikawon could lay down end to end in the open space and still not touch the sides.
There was little of interest within the stump that appeared native, a bit of moss, lichen, or mold, and some bits of dissolving wood that had peeled off the sides. On top of all that was an array of flesh, blood, bone, and white scales that looked very familiar, along with the occasional worked stone and piece of unrotted wood.
Before Pikawon made a sarcastic quip or asked another question, Dynani asked her own.
“Where’s the sewage?”
There was less material here than she’d seen get sucked into the collapsing mana node, the hydra’s corpse alone should’ve filled a quarter of this stump, even if it was torn to bits. But there was absolutely none of the sewage she had seen get consumed. She was grateful for that, as it saved her from the stubborn stench and possible illness she would’ve contracted from lying unconscious in it for hours, but she still wanted to know what had happened to it.
“The sludge?” Curious asked, and upon receiving a node, continued, “Absorbed by the domain. Whatever it was, it must’ve had a strong decay affinity.”
“The domain, is that where we are?” Pikawon asked. Dyani remembered her mother mentioning that the mana node led to some kind of spiritual realms, called domains, but she hadn’t had time to explain anything in depth.
“A domain,” Curious corrected, “The decay subdomain to be specific.”
Pikawon opened his mouth to ask a follow up question, but Curious beat him to it.
“Subdomain of what, you ask? The sprawling wonder of the life domain, situated directly between healing and death. And the life domain resides within the complete fundament.”
Pikawon frowned, whether at being cut off again or at their situation, Dyani didn’t know.
“Couldn’t have been the sunshine and rainbow domain, could it?” he muttered, before answering his own question, “I guess not. A decay mana node leads to the decay subdomain. At least it makes a sort of sense. So this is the fundament, the spiritual realm? What does that make you, a spirit?”
“Yes. And you are from the physical world, so that makes you-” Curious looked at Dyani. “-a human-” They looked at Pikawon. “-and a mostly human?”
Dyani worried he might start something. She knew his talent’s alterations to his body, his claws, pointed teeth, pointed ears, and his altered internal organs, were a sore subject.
“Human enough,” Pikawon said, “Are there any other spirits around we should know about.”
“No,” Curious said.
Pikawon and Dyani exchanged looks of relief.
“But there is a pack of formless hunting you too. Should be here any minute.”
***
Dyani cut down another formless with her Mercurial Halberd.
* Mercurial Halberd:
* Level: 4
* Condition: Pristine
* Description: A halberd forged of quick cast silver with the ability to shift from its general form to specialized forms which enhance and enlarge its component weapons. The weapon may be repaired by shifting to an alternate form, with a mana cost from the user proportional to the level of damage. Shifting forms when undamaged costs no mana.
* Attributes:
* Soulbound (Any Attribute) (Unbound)
* Shifting Form:
* Halberd
* Spear
* Poleaxe
* Scythe
Wielding a polearm with one good hand and one burned to the point that it was nearly useless was difficult, but her opponents weren’t up to Dyani’s usual standard.
The formless were evershifting, multicolored blobs, composed of something between slime and smoke, with the properties of both fluid and gas. They were relatively easy to break apart, and didn’t actively fight or resist. All they did was try to get close to the humans.
But there were dozens of them, and it took less than a minute for each to reform after it was slashed apart.
Pikawon had used Sundering Claw on the first few to approach, but had switched to simple clashes, punches, and kicks.
* Sundering Claw (Unique)
* (Transformed from Slash)
* Type: Attack, Melee
* Affinity: Beast/Blade
* Range: Self
* Cost: Low Mana
* Effect: Concentrates cutting energy around any part of the user’s body that is naturally sharp.
“How’s your mana?” Dyani shouted.
“Nearly empty. Are you regenerating anything?”
“No. I was really hoping that was just a me-problem.”
“Very interesting,” Curious said, lazily batting away a couple of formless, “Thank you for the knowledge.” They were obviously much less concerned with the formless, as their mask was looking between the two of them, rather than the incoming tide.
“Wouldn’t mind some knowledge of our own, Curious,” Pikawon said, “Like how do we actually kill these things.”
“Kill?” The formless are not living, so there is no way to kill them. Though some might consider them to have been pre-killed through unlife. Or do you wish to give them life, then take it away?” The spirit hummed in consideration.
“Alright,” Pikawon said with a longsuffering tone, “How do we make them stop coming for us then?”
“That is a very different question,” Curious said, “Are all humans bad at questions?” They said it in much the same way a child might tell you they don’t like your face, with complete honesty and without a hint of guile.
Dyani was tired, a bit scared, and trying very hard to not think about how they’d left Nymin behind, but she did her best to push aside the resulting brew of fear and anger. Curious Seeker of the Hidden wasn’t being helpful as she’d like, but it was clearly coming from a place of confusion and well...curiocity.
I wouldn’t be right to jump down their proverbial throat over what amounted to an extreme cultural difference.
Dyani also very much didn’t want to offend them and be left all alone in this place. An unreliable guide was better than no guide at all.
She dissipated two more formless, and slashed through another half formed blob for good measure while she formulated the best question.
“Curious, what’s the fastest and easiest way for us to be safe from these formless right now?”
Curious quivered, humming once again as they considered her request. When they didn’t answer, Dyani realized her mistake. Whatever else the spirit was, they were literal, and would likely spend all the time they needed to come up with the absolute fastest and easiest escape plan, even if it took them a few hours, during which time Dyani and Pikawon might very well get smothered.
“The best method that you can come up with in the next 10 seconds.”
“Oh, that’s easy,” Curious said, their humming coming to an abrupt halt, “Veil your spirits.”
“That’s it?” Dyani said. While she was questioning the answer, Pikawon was trying it out.
The intact formless around him stopped their constant climb up his side of the massive stump, reoriented on Dyani, and went for her. She slashed the closest blobs to buy herself the time she needed, and put up her own veil.
It was both more and less difficult than usual. On one hand, veils were are all about reducing the traces of mana than leaked out of the spirit, and she had nearly no mana to leak. On the other, her spirit still felt cracked and sore from the fight with the Evolved False Hydra. It didn’t want to respond to her demands, and even when it did, energy leaked out of those tiny cracks.
She only managed a passable veil once Pikawon came over to hold back the formless so she could fully focus. The formless in the distance stopped their advance, some wandering off, others dissolving into multicolored mist, while the nearest creatures advanced more slowly.
Something tapped Dyani’s shoulder and she flinched, but it was only one of Curious’s tendrils, which they withdrew once they had her attention.
“Your veil is incomplete.”
“I know,” Dyani said, “Give me a second.” She looked up to the sky, which immediately distracted her when realized it looked nothing like it did back home. It wasn’t day-blue, night-black, or any color of dusk or dawn. There were no clouds, sun, or stars.
A faint silvery mist filled the air, fine as spider silk, but beyond that was a patchwork of different colors in irregular shapes, like the different countries on a map. When she looked to the side, instead of the horizon, the earth curved upward, reaching towards the sky until it became it.
Dyani knew from school that the world was a sphere, just one so big you couldn’t tell from looking around. This world was similarly round, but they were standing on the inside surface. The ‘sky’ she was staring at was no sky at all. In fact, if she walked far enough while Pikawon stayed here, she could eventually look up and see him waving down at her, at least she could’ve if she had a few dozen points in perception.
It reminded her a bit of the egg-shaped chamber where they’d fought the node guardian so recently, but infinitely more vast, and instead of a sickly black and green mana node, the center of this sphere held a ball of twinkling light. Its light was colder than the sun’s, more silver than gold, with thin lines of light that trailed away from it to touch various points around the inside-out world. None of those lines were close enough for her to get a good look at what they were.
“Your veil is not improving. When I said it was incomplete, that was not a compliment. I apologize for the confusion.”
That brought Dyani crashing back to earth. She gasped, hand pressed to her chest as she fought for breath. More than Curious, the weird mana, or the formless blobs, looking up had convinced her heart of what her head already knew.
This was an entirely new world, with foreign mana, unknown monsters, and danger that was certain in its existence but uncertain in form. That was admittedly terrifying, but she was also certain there would be more wondrous sights. Sights like the sky made of land, a heap of epic adventures, and possibly at least one new friend.
Wary as she was, she couldn’t keep a faint smile off her face.