The hardened ceramic looked like a dumpling someone forgot to pinch at the top. Perfectly round, a little flat at the bottom because the clay was on a rock while she shaped it, with a flared irregular top.

But what mattered was the volume. Cecilia – she was having trouble accepting she now had a name after a flower – put everything inside, including the canoe and the folding cart. It proved the space inside was skewed, as the canoe was five times longer than one of the chained spheres was wide.

Before Cecilia started the arduous task ahead, she ate and shared some of her food with Klatus. The old greenskin alien had no problem chewing even though he had no teeth. Klatus explained to her the overall geography of this place. They were on the furthest island in a chain, one that was the mostly castigated by the raging ocean and the tsunamis.

The shield was a natural feature of the island, as far as they understood it. It broke the tsunamis and kept the brunt of its brutal force from ravaging the other islands.

Travel was a major hazard. Few were brave enough to try and cross to the next island in the chain.

With a full belly, she added the last touch to her ceramic storage item. Cecilia, coping to adapt to her new name, used a ball shard to scratch and saw the top portion of another ball. She traded the remainder of the plastic – yeah, let's say it's some weird plastic for now – sphere with Klatus for his support with the community of inmates living in the island.

What shape that support would have was yet to be decided. She didn't care. Klatus could very well backstab her and go back on his word. Cecilia wasn't so naive as to believe someone she had just met. She wasn't so scarred by previous interactions to be paranoid either. Trust but verify. Pushing those thoughts aside, she kept sawing, swapping shards whenever they dulled on all edges. A pile of plastic shavings gathered on the rock beneath her.

It took her a few hours but they wouldn’t walk during the night anyway. The plastic was tough enough to not even earn a scratch from her claws so the only thing that could cut it was itself. Once the top was off, she wedged it into the hardened ceramic dumpling. Scraping and pressing, she used all her strength to lodge the sphere top firmly in the ceramic. The plastic groaned and creaked but didn't break. Once she was sure even her couldn't pop the ring of plastic out, she screwed the lid back in.

"How are you taking the canoe back out? That lid hole seems smaller than it is wide," Klatus remarked.

Cecilia sighed, her shoulders drooping as she stared at her storage unit. "Damn. Can I get more clay?"

"You can make more clay. So long you give your storage item some attention and love, it will create more clay inside it. I ask you to hand over a portion to the next inmate you find."

She cocked an eyebrow and stared at the green alien's bulging black eyes. "Attention and love?"

"Yes," Klatus' green cheeks blushed for a bit. "There's some ladies that make a living selling clay."

"What's that supposed to mean?" She pressed her lips together and clenched her fists.

He raised two placating hands. "They shaped their clay in the likeness of dolls, with a hollow torso and an opening in the back, between the shoulders. They play with the dolls like young girls, and the dolls make clay."

"I fail to see how that can help me get my canoe out without removing the lid."

"I could get a small lump of clay from them. You can then remove this lid and add hinges and a latch on the other side."

She studied the alien's face. His antennae didn't move or flop around, making her suspect they were antlers. A light went on in her mind as she realized what he wanted.

"And you would get me this small lump of clay in exchange for the favors you owe me, right?"

"I could do that, yes. It would be smaller than what I gave you, though."

She extended a hand, and they shook on it.

Before they left for the settlement, Cecilia threaded the backpack straps through the holes and reattached the buckles. with some foliage inside to cushion the hard ceramic, she only had to worry about a shift in her center of mass.

*

----------------------------------------

*

The (new) Defendant grabbed the mirror and climbed on top of it. The damn magical construct squirmed but didn't bite him. He had guessed that since the Judges had the trouble of tossing him in this chaotic world and the mirror worked for the judges; it wouldn't just kill him.

The mirror cushioned his fall to a point he didn't die upon crashing on the churning steaming waves. It felt like dipping in hot springs, if hot springs were salty and muddy. He flipped the mirror around and steadied himself on top of it. It was buoyant enough to support his weight. Satisfied, he dropped and laid on his chest, looking behind him.

A big wave came and he started paddling. Once it reached him, he stood up at once and started surfing on the mirror. He saw an island ahead. His experiment, his precious apotheosis, was ahead. Even after death, he might still succeed and ascend. He felt empowered by the thought.

It was as if he was back to his prime. Strength coursed through his veins, his muscles stronger, his skin tougher. Puzzled by the source of this new strength, he tried to think he might fail in his quest. Like rats on a sinking ship, the power left him, causing the man to almost let go of the mirror. Using self-hypnosis, he then reinforced his belief in success. It was like fire and lightning ran in his veins, giving him godly powers. Perhaps not real godly powers, but that's how he felt. The discovery made him giddy. He didn't notice the tsunami forming behind him.

The mirror did, though. At the right time, it bucked like a wild stallion and tossed the Defendant into the air, letting him crash into the flaming tsunami. And then get squeezed between the wave and the blue shield.

Pressure pushed man and mirror up. As the latter moved past the former, two strong hands grabbed the edges and switched positions. They climbed up and up, until the water lost all momentum and let gravity take it back down. Flames licked the shield and then died, bereft of fuel.

The shield deactivated and they both fell down. The man tilted the mirror and let it take the shock of hitting a small pond.

A horse whinnied, startled. It was drinking water far away from a puddle of red that spread on the other side of the pond. After it decided the waters were cursed, the horse ran away.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

*

----------------------------------------

*

Cecilia stopped at the top of a ridge, staring at the ramshackle thatched roof cottages spread across the valley below. The only saving grace keeping dragons from burning these residences were the fact they were covered in mud and thoroughly drenched. Like herself and Klatus, given that it never stopped raining for a whole minute at a time.

She even wondered why the whole place wasn't flooding. All that water had to go somewhere, right? Was the ground that absorbent? Was something else going on in this world? Was the water just vanishing after hitting solid land? Well, not all of it if her squelching mud-covered boots were any clue. And they were brand-new.

"Welcome to our humble village," Klatus said with a whiff of pride. "It might not be much, but it's ours. Here, we are free."

She bit back the acrid answer she had at the tip of her tongue. It wouldn't do to aggravate these inmates. For all she knew, half of the people living down there could be Demigods. She just smiled and nodded.

"Let's go. I'm eager to introduce you." He urged her forward.

Cecilia thought it was strange that he was being so friendly. "Klatus, what's your crime?"

He stopped and turned to stare at her. Dropping his smile, he sighed. "Genocide. I destroyed a planet with one billion sentient inhabitants."

Startled, she jumped away from him. Cecilia didn't detect any duplicity in his words, only regret. But if he could destroy...

"It was an accident. How could I know the array at the bottom of a Dungeon was a doomsday device?" He threw his hands to the air and grumbled.

"Manslaughter, then?" Cecilia extended an olive branch. Metaphorically speaking. She didn't have an actual olive branch.

"Not that it matters for those Judges. They do whatever they want. All of us here, we're clowns for their entertainment."

"I know."

"What about you?"

"Atavism and violating God's commandments."

"Which one of them?"

"A few." She shrugged and clamped her mouth shut.

Klatus thankfully didn't push. He studied her animal features. "Atavism, eh? Don't see how it warrant a vacation here, of all places."

"I don't claim to know the Judges' will."

"Anyone who does, is either a fool or a liar."

"I hope I'm neither."

He grinned. She grinned. He laughed. She made a single giggle out of empathy. He chortled. She raised an eyebrow.

"You aren't. Come, follow me."

*

----------------------------------------

*

"Are you really going to follow me?" The latest Defendant asked the mirror. The floating mirror that was following him for the last two miles.

The mirror floated in place, bobbing ever so slightly.

"I feel like talking to my reflection," he grumbled and kept walking.

Another tsunami approached the island and the blue shield flared to life, covering the whole place in a massive blue bubble. The rain was cut off and moments later, the last drops hit the ground, a not-so-rare but very welcome stint of dryness. The wind halted.

Squinting, the Defendant saw smoke rising in columns far to the northeast. "A settlement."

He committed to memory the landmarks he could see under the purple and orange lights of the fire licking at the shield and set a course. Then the shield died down and the incessant rain once again castigated the island.

*

----------------------------------------

*

With Klatus' help, Cecilia traded the sphere shards, and then the cut-off sphere for more dimensional clay and a crude map of the island. The map was important because it depicted the best way to hike around the island and accumulate the most miles possible. Turned out you couldn't walk back and forth and earn miles more than once. Nor you could walk too close to where you've already went. There was an optimal distance between passes and if you didn't follow it, you'd waste land.

Cecilia equated that to lifting the fog in a 4X game map. As the scouts moved, they would create lines of cleared map in the dark. But in the 4X game you wanted to spread them as far as possible without leaving gaps. Here, it was the opposite.

Once she touched the map, Klatus hooted and jumped. Cecilia stared at him as she'd seen a bearded alien with green skin.

"How many did you get for the girl's orientation?" The mapmaker asked.

"Not telling."

"Can either of you tell me what is going on?" Cecilia demanded, a bit irked.

"Helping a newcomer with the tutorial nets the helper ten percent of their walked miles."

Cecilia willed her display to show. it was not unlike calling up the Status Window in a System World. The numbers had only increased. Doing some mental math, she found no miles were deducted from her total.

"No, the newcomers don't lose anything." The map trader explained as if he could read her thoughts. "Earning miles is important because you get one special ability for every thousand miles you walk."

"Do I get to pick the ability?" He shook his head. "Random?" She gasped. Those were the worst.

"No. it's related to the activities you performed the most while doing the rounds. Usually, the first one people gain is [Hiking]. Which is good but also crap. Reduces stamina and slightly increases walking speed."

"But not running or any other movement speed," she guessed. The mapmaker grinned. "So, it's like Experience."

"Did you ever been to a System world?"

Cecilia nodded. "Though I didn't obtain a Personal Core."

"That's too bad."

"The Judges would've stripped you of it anyway," Klatus whined.

The mapmaker laughed, "Happened to him."

"Yikes. My sentiments."

"Appreciated, lass."

Cecilia stared at the map. "Wait, if this island gives less than two hundred miles, where does people get the remainder?"

"This is the fourth largest island in a long chain of islands. But the first three don't even deserve being called islands. They are more like mini continents."

"How far to the closest island?"

The dome thrummed to life. They waited while the tsunami crashed over the island, washing above the dome despite being almost the height of a tall mountain. The flames danced over the dome, and then it vanished as abruptly as it appeared.

Cecilia squinted and saw a silver shine when the light caught something falling at the right angle. She shuddered and decided to ignore what it could be.

"Come, let's go to my thatched roof cottage."

"House, you mean."

Klatus studied her with his huge beady black eyes. "Anything the matter?"

"Calling your house a thatched roof cottage brings bad luck."

"Why?"

"Don't tempt the memes."

*

----------------------------------------

*

Klatus' thatched roof cottage did as good of a job at keeping the rain outside as Cecilia hoped. She didn't. It didn't. And they remained friends despite that.

Prying the lid loose from her dumpling-shaped storage item was almost as bad as drilling holes in the "plastic". But she did it. With a little help from Klatus, who claimed he couldn't touch the clay, she managed to add hinges and a movable latch to the item, allowing her to take her canoe out while having a convenient lid to it.

Getting an item out was as simple as sticking party of your body inside and willing for the item to come to your hand. Or finger, in Klatus' case.

"Do you have any plans for that last sphere?" Klatus asked.

"Yes. Though I'll hang onto it for a while. I bet people will pay dearly for it once they realize its value."

"That's smart." He stood up from his flimsy chair. "I'm going to cook dinner. It's Mystery Monster Meat Stew today."

The sadness in his voice let her understand. "Isn't it mystery monster meat stew every day?"

"Touché!" He pointed finger guns at her.

They were finishing their bowls of questionable stew when someone knocked at the door. "Coming!" Klatus shouted. "Who could it be at this time of the night?" He grumbled.

The door opened. A kid ran into the house like a cannonball of joy. He (Cecilia assumed it was a boy) stumbled and crashed onto the young woman (as far as appearances were concerned). The kid seemed human enough.

"Sorry, miss!" The kid grinned.

Cecilia studied him. Covered in mud, drenched by the rain, stringy hair, and a goofy smile missing one of the front incisors. She could see the permanent teeth growing behind the hole in the gums.

"Can I touch your ears?" He asked.

Cecilia glared.

"Is it a no?" He raised a hand slowly.

Cecilia glare intensified. It became a wolfish scowl.

"It is a no, you blasted kid!" Klatus berated. "Why did you enter my house all drenched in water?"

Cecilia stared at the symphonic orchestra of overflowing buckets everywhere. A few of them were off-key and the cacophony of droplets were driving her crazy.

"I got my first tutorial! I earned fifty miles!"

Cecilia assumed it was a lot. Almost as much as Klatus earned, which meant the kid had escorted someone who fell from the sky just like her.

"Where is the person now?" Klatus asked.

"Behind you!" The kid pointed.

Cecilia tracked the kid's finger to the only door in the thatched roof cottage. Oops, jinxed again. She could care less for this pile of mud and soggy straw, though.

She recognized the person standing by the door, with a mirror (which was poignantly ignored) hovering behind him.

She stood up and dumped the kid on the pillow she was sitting on.

"Dad?"