Ned began to tire.
He suspected his Vitality had held the day’s exhaustion at bay in the same way it shielded him from harm - temporarily. It was a miracle that he’d managed to stay awake after such a long day, but Ned knew his limits too well to assume he’d found a hidden reserve of strength.
His thoughts drifted back home.
Real estate that saw the sky was scarce. His family could only afford to live underground, sustaining itself via subsistence farming and quarry profits. It was a bitter life where Ned frequently worked himself to sleep. Each time, he’d wake slung over his father’s shoulder, eyes on the knotted back muscles, and feel cold shame in his chest.
The stone that they mined out was sold to developers on the current surface, who would use it to build higher spires and seal the old top floors beneath the earth. With every payday, their status at rock bottom became more and more cemented.
Beast’s voice knocked him from his reverie.
Ned shook his head clear. “Sorry, repeat that?”
Beast huffed. “Question to Ned. Do you need to rest?”
He nodded slowly.
The two of them sat beside the cliff. They’d been walking between the river and cliffside for a long while, but nothing of their environment had changed. His brows drew together.
“Beast, I think we need to start worrying about starvation.”
His companion’s beady eyes locked onto him. “Statement to Ned. This place is a wasteland. We’ve seen no signs of biology but our own and that Wildlife. Please do not make me think about it.”
“No, I think we have a solution. It’s just nasty.”
Beast paused. For just a moment, Ned’s nose twitched at the sense of danger, but he refused to let his discomfort show on his face. He suspected the smell intensified every time Beast used Dip Within Knowledge Pool on him.
The skill confused Ned. It was mind-reading, that much he could tell, but its randomized nature meant he wasn’t sure how much information Beast actually got from a single cast. He wanted to ask, but he didn’t want to pry. Despite only having each other, Ned could tell Beast was more on-edge than he tried to present.
After a short pause, Beast sighed. “You’re right. That’s disgusting, Ned. I’m ashamed to agree it’s necessary.”
Ned nodded quietly.
There was another pulse of danger.
Beast let out a bitter laugh. “So Dip Within Knowledge Pool is unintuitive to other people too. Question to Ned. Do you have telepathy back home?”
He shifted uncomfortably, suddenly aware that despite having nothing to hide, his instinctive reactions were always cowardly. “What, like mind-reading? The stuff of fiction, but...” Ned gestured at the alien river.
Beast nodded with sober eyes. “Yes, I thought so. Telepathy is not the sort of thing that’s easy or feasible to do naturally. Beasts were all born with... let’s call it an Emitter, an intentional vulnerability in the brain’s language formulation center. The Emitter duplicates any signals that pass through there, sending them out as a garbled mess which could only be interpreted by a specialized Receiver.”
Ned immediately understood where this was going. He sucked air through his teeth in an abortive attempt at concealing his gasp. “That’s horrible! With technology like that, every thought you ever had could be monitored and judged by some nebulous authority!”
Beast nodded. “That’s what she did. The Master was a genius by all means, and used it for cruel, effective ends. Again, though, she was upstaged by Earth.”
Here a note of anger crept into Beast’s normally monotone voice. “The reason we had to be created with specialized Emitters is that there’s no way for telepathy to function without information being read from the brain. Some people ‘subvocalize’ - move parts of their throat alongside their train of thought - but it’s not consistent from person-to-person or even fully parsable.”
There was a short pause while Beast steadily exhaled.
“The first Active provided to me by PACES is Dip Within Knowledge Pool. Its function is to ‘gather fifteen words of target entity’s knowledge on a chosen subject’. That, to me, implies PACES has full access to your brain in the first place, and can retrieve its contents without killing you. And let’s not even get into the kind of fine control involved in abruptly instituting a supposed multiversal language. If the administrators at PACES so choose, they can wipe our minds from existence and keep a handy record. Master’s work, utterly outclassed! Rendered irrelevant! All that oppression, pointless!”
Beast’s breathing became heavier and heavier. Ned nearly expected him to shriek in fury, except that kind of vocal exaggeration seemed impossible for Beast.
“Question for Ned,” his voice cracked. “Does any of this make sense?”
Ned paused, scrambling for solutions. Again his eyes desperately searched for a hole to hide in. Again his brow furrowed.
He shut the physical restlessness out. Only his mind was of use at this moment.
“Beast,” he said, and paused because he was still trying to think of a solution.
“Beast, I don’t have answers, but I’ll tell you what worked for me. The moment I woke up on that shore, I thought normal was gone. When we found out about PACES, I realized normal was just overwritten. There’s a distinction there, okay?”
Beast sniffled. “Like what?”
“Well, one means that everything we know is gone. The other means,” - his mind caught onto a hook and pulled - “that life’s like a tunnel, you know? We haven’t been fully separated from the place we were, we’ve just fallen into a massive cavern and have to find our way back. We’re in a new place, with new resources, and if we build high enough I’m sure we’ll find the place we fell from. We’ll get home, Beast. It’s an exchange system. There’s trade involved. We just need enough resources to buy our ladder.”
Beast looked at him. He flicked his wings disdainfully
“Ned, you’re absurd. Your metaphor is effective, but you think like a caveman. Not to mention your problem-solving consists of hitting things with rocks, even yourself.”
Ned grinned. “Ned no get big word. Ned hit you with big rock. It work last time!”
Beast’s batlike wings folded down. “Thank you for the levity. It’s getting chilly out. Huddle me for warmth.”
Ned laughed. “I don’t think I could do that.”
“It’s a survival situation. I prefer my caveman bodyguard alive.”
Beast ignored Ned’s amused protests and settled onto his lap.
Ned’s jovial expression melted into seriousness as he looked out at the waves.
“Ned, go to sleep. I’ll keep watch.”
“Okay,” he said, and immediately passed out.
----------------------------------------
Ned’s eyes shot open. He glanced down at Beast, who was sliding off his lap and dispersing into the shadows.
Ned had worried that upgrades would increase a skill’s Mana cost, but since adding a new feature to Lizard Sheds Tail didn’t increase its initial cost, he was less cautious about it. With a flick of his mind, he upgraded his only active skill.
-- [Active] Lizard Sheds Tail [1]
If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.
● Consumes 2 Mana.
● Painlessly shed a part of your body without losing Vitality. This part may be no larger than your hand. [+]
● You may consume 3 Mana to fire the part as a projectile. Its power will be equivalent to that of 3 punches. [+]
When its price remained the same, he pumped another point into the second feature.
● Painlessly shed a part of your body without losing Vitality. This part may be no larger than your forearm.
Ned looked at his barely usable right hand. Instead of the thumb he had first shed, there was a stump of pale flesh. He wiggled it. Ned wanted to let it regrow fully to see if that was how Hydric Immortality progressed. He’d do that before he shed his whole arm.
Smoke began to billow from below the ground. Unlike the first Wildlife, this rift did not form from empty space, but merely escaped into it like ash from a caldera.
Ned gripped a stone as a makeshift weapon before he remembered the third function of Lizard Sheds Tail. Of course, to use it, he needed Mana. He pulled up his parameters, and saw both Vitality and Mana had refilled during his rest. He upped their Quality while he had the chance.
PARAMETER LIST
-- Mana
● 7.1 / 7.5 Quantity
● 0 Density
● 1.2 Quality
-- Vitality
● 8.9 / 10 Quantity
● 0 Density
● 1.8 Quality
Ned still wasn’t sure what governed his regeneration, but surely a higher maximum would be a boon even through a fight.
The awful smell folded onto itself. His eyes widened.
“It’s through,” he whispered.
The ground responded. A bone-white spike scythed up through the pebbles and towards his traitorous mouth.
Ned tried to jump away, but he was already backed against the cliff. The blade of bone shot towards his chin. In a desperate bid, he shed it.
His jaw dropped onto the blade.
The spine impaled it like a kebab. Once its tip passed through his missing mouth into open air, it stopped. Then, in a single vicious motion, it yanked back into the ground.
From beneath the stones came the sound of gums smacking on bone.
Ned didn’t dare to move or speak. Again, he found himself thinking that superhuman Vitality was nothing against that kind of predator.
From the shadows, Beast met his eyes with a horrified, mesmerized stare - like a deer in headlights. He realized his face was frozen in much the same expression.
He needed a plan. There had to be something that could damage the Wildlife. Automatically, his brain went to Lizard Sheds Tail. God damnit. He should’ve saved up and increased its actual damage!
No, he could work with this. He had to.
His mind retraced Beast’s rapid movements earlier in the night. But he didn’t dare attempt to communicate. Not only that, could he really justify using Beast as a decoy? The guy was in as much shit as he was.
Beast’s wide stare locked onto Ned. Sure, there was no conventional way to talk. But Ned realized there was another asset he was neglecting.
The sounds beneath the stone changed to a strained slurping, like a straw sucking in air.
Ned pushed a single line of his Status towards Beast. The third line of Lizard Sheds Tail. It represented their only chance to kill the Wildlife.
He felt a familiar pulse of danger.
He saw Beast nod slightly.
That was all it took. From the earth emerged a still-bloody spike with a withered chin upon it like a neck-ruffle. It shot towards Beast. He backpedaled desperately, four legs clicking against the ground.
The spike paused, as if stunned by its miss. Not yet. I still can't reach it.
It resubmerged, disturbing the shallow ground. Beast turned on a dime, legs desperately kicking him away, as another bone spur split the air beside him. Moonlight glinted off the blade’s side as it again vanished into the soil.
With each disturbing bombardment, the shallow ground covering their foe vanished in a spray of pebbles. It was something like a tumescent clam, a lumpy coral shell full of deep dark holes. Again the straw-spike shot towards Beast. A desperate sensation pushed its way into Ned’s mind.
-- Moisture
● 2.3 / 8.8 Quantity
● 0 Density
● 1.0 Quality
For a moment, Ned wondered why the max Quantity was so damn high. Then he realized what the actual numbers represented.
Corans were the only things on his planet known to sweat. This allowed them to avoid overheating while performing strenuous, long-term activity. Beast, on the other hand, was a shaggy thing. Even if he couldn’t suffer from dehydration, he would burn up his Moisture by continuously moving at such speed. Once that buffer was gone, he would collapse like an overworked pack animal, unable to do anything but pant.
The spike shot towards Beast. He stumbled aside.
Ned tried to yell in fury. It was impossible without a lower jaw.
His throat rumbled, though, and the half-buried Wildlife rattled in response. Of course! It was echolocation. That was how the thing reacted to the smallest of vibrations - like a whisper, perhaps, or a nod!
The spike lunged towards his throat.
Ned had known it was coming even before it rattled, his limbs already pushing him away even as he tried to scream. The Wildlife lanced into the cliff beside him just as he kicked off of it.
Despite the tiny distance, he was only a quarter of the way there when the spear retracted, and halfway when it re-entered the shell.
Resolute, Ned stopped in his tracks and veered his arm to the side, tossing the stone along his path.
The Wildlife rattled in glee, its vicious spine shattering the projectile. He watched it crack and split apart, and then he was off like a rocket, closing the remaining distance. The Wildlife began to pull back into its shell. Ned still wasn’t going to make it in time with his lost momentum.
Ned fearlessly pushed his right arm out, and fired his middle finger like a bullet.
It cracked the shell, spilling black ichor over the pit. The Wildlife rattled desperately, trying to escape its own wounds. Its spine flicked back, and then towards Beast, but its aim was off. Ned had always noted Beast’s great breath control - here and now, it proved essential. Beast lay utterly still, not daring to move, as the spine howled through the air right above him. It began to pull itself back into its shell...
...and then deflated like a balloon, ceasing to be.
NOTICE
-- Ned Locke rewarded with Level Progress.
Ned landed on his ass, unable to effectively sigh in relief without a jaw.
----------------------------------------
It was still night, and they were on the move again.
Ned's half-missing face came with no real ill effects. Though at first he was worried about blood loss, a glance at his reflection in the river left him with entirely different existential terrors.
It was as if someone had taken a large ice-cream scoop to his face, or distorted it until it became concave. The affected area was impossibly smooth and covered in clean new skin.
He shuddered.
Of course, he was still grinding his parameters. Every time his Vitality neared full, he’d smack his forearm until it hit half. Every time his mana neared full, he’d use Lizard Sheds Tail on a flake of his arm.
His thumb, at this point, was nearly regrown.
Ned wondered how Hydric Immortality knew what to regenerate him into. He was tempted to dismiss it as nebulous PACES fuckery, but unlike Beast, he thought PACES was telling the truth about only being an interface for ‘extraphysics’. Physics implied rules. Weird ones, to be sure, but rules nonetheless. He needed to know how Extraphysics worked if he wanted to exploit them, and while PACES knew more than he did, it didn’t know everything if it was using telemetry.
Somewhere in his mind, there was a click. Ned knew what it meant only because he’d been expecting it.
-- [Passive] Hydric Immortality [1]
● Cannot age from the moment you acquire this skill.
● Your body fully regrows over 23 standard hours. [+]
He allowed himself a pause as he upgraded Hydric Immortality. Only 22 standard hours for regrowth!
Now that he thought about it, how long was a standard hour? He’d refilled his parameters many times and killed two Wildlife in the 23-odd hours he’d lived in this world.
This night was taking too long.
Ned couldn’t speak with his missing jaw, but he poked Beast a couple times and pointed up at the moon.
There was a pause. Ned felt the telltale sign of Beast reading his mind.
“Statement to Ned. It’s possible that this planet is larger than our originals, or rotates slower, or we were placed far from its equator. Any number of these could be true. The only guarantee from PACES was that it would be a world that sustains our life... but this is another universe. That condition could arise in places where it wouldn’t in our old world.”
Ned tilted his head.
Beast huffed. “Here’s a reductive and impossible example. In a world where gravity is twice as strong, a planet half the size of our own would sustain our life. Such a universe would not support us in general, though.”
Ned chewed on that thought and decided it didn’t matter much.
“Statement to Ned,” Beast said, and then went silent for a time.
Ned kept trudging along. Beast would speak when he was ready.
...
“I’m hungry.”