A tarot card with a Quill pen in the center, surrounded by Runic Symbols. There are gothic flourishes around the frame and words on the bottom that read: Chapter 2 [https://64.media.tumblr.com/b8206cf9def5cced6949b591ede3d1ee/c23a275e074130f5-49/s640x960/244a0184117718f9b24b05b88ab0386196b35574.pnj]
My body was aching like I’d been hit by a truck. Several times. And then crashed a motorcycle into a Semi.
It was warm, too warm. Like my body was fighting off some kind of illness. Head throbbing, eyes burning…
Fever?
When I blinked open my eyes, I was staring directly up at the ceiling, though I could recall falling on my face…
And then something came into my field of view. A pair of paws stepping on my breasts, and a cat skull staring down at me with red gemstones for eyes.
I assumed immediately that I was dreaming, before my memories started trickling back in.
Because it was my cat. Well, not my cat. A cat skeleton I’d bought and then affixed red resin ‘gemstones’ into the eye sockets. I’d also had the skeleton fit together with 3D printed parts so that the whole thing would be poseable. It was a decoration and shouldn't have been moving.
And it was staring down into my eyes. Like it could SEE me. And it felt like a real cat. There was even a silhouette of the cat’s body around the bones. Dark red like a shadow of blood.
“What… the fuck…?” I muttered.
The cat leapt off me and stared at me from a few steps away, as I slowly turned over and pushed myself upright.
Sophia was sitting against the bed, near me. Her doll was in her hands, but something wasn’t right about it. For one thing, it was gripping her wrists where she was holding it by the waist. And it… it looked like it was looking back at her.
“S-” I coughed and reached up to rub my throat. Wondering… if I screamed while I was passed out…? “Sophia!”
She jolted and put her doll aside, gasping. “Blissy! You have to name the kitty or it’ll go away forever!”
I had no idea what she was talking about. But she was staring at me and looking anxious. Like she’d been just waiting for me to wake up so she could tell me this, thinking it would make perfect sense to me. And of course, it’s of some urgency, so I can't try and puzzle it out with her.
Fuuuuuck.
The cat was still sitting there, looking at me like it was waiting for something. “What… what are you talking about?” I'm all for validating children, but when nothing makes sense, how can you choose what to validate?
“Valykree told me,” she said with all the air of a six-year-old who knew her business. “You’re familli…ler… has to have a name or they go away forever. And you need them for magic!”
“Magic?” I knew I was making a face, and after everything, maybe I shouldn’t have. Maybe I should’ve instantly believed it and went with the program. “What kind of magic?” Problem was, I was very familiar with Magic and I knew 'magic' being involved in something wasn't always necessarily good. Anyone who plays video games will be aware of that.
“You have to naaaame it!” she insisted, her fists bunching up and beginning to pout slightly.
”Alright, Alright!” I turned my head and stared at the cat. And flipped through every name I knew of. But none of them really felt right. I mean, if I was naming this thing forever, whatever it was, I didn’t want to call it ‘Snowball’ or ‘Fred’.
With the weird blood shadow and visible skeleton, that would just be fucking ridiculous.
”You can name it anything you want,” Sophia said, crawling up on the bed and then swinging her legs, feet slapping against it. “Valykree already had a name. So I couldn’t name her, because she already had one."
I sighed and flipped through the more symbolic names I could remember. Norse mythology, Roman and Greek…”Uhhhh. Oh!” it was a good name for a weird skeleton cat and I didn’t feel embarrassed about saying it out loud. “Phobos."
The cat meowed-- a weird echoing noise that I felt like… it rang in my head and not my ears? Then it ran to sit in my lap. I could see its skeleton, but didn’t feel it when I hesitantly reached down to pet it. It purred and curled into a ball in my lap.
“Okay… now, what is going on?” I asked Sophia. “You’re acting like someone explained something to you.”
“It was Valykree!” she said and held up the doll, before placing it on the floor on its feet and releasing it.
It walked. It blinked. It stared at me and tilted its head. But it didn't speak. If a doll was going to be animate, I'd prefer it could talk. Things that could talk, could be negotiated with. It was really starting to freak me out. “Why isn’t it saying anything?”
“They don’t talk out loud,” she said. “Valykree only tells me stuff. She just showed me the letters and read them to me.”
Letters.
“How do I see the letters?” I asked as I cracked my shoulders and neck.
What the fuck am I even doing? Crossed my mind. Nothing seemed real. But if I was hallucinating or having some kind of coma dream, then there was nothing I could do. However, if I was simply awake and shit was happening, then I had to do what I could to protect Sophia.
There was no harm in treating it like it was real. I just wished, if it were really a hallucination, that it could’ve allowed me to call my Cousin and hand over my Sister before I got committed. She was set to go there anyway, but social services was obsessed with reunification, even in cases of abuse…
“Just hold your Famillyler and look at them in the eyes and the ‘menu’ opens,” she said.
Well, I have nothing to lose. I’ll just look a little ridiculous if it doesn’t work. It's not that I can't observe how things work for myself, or that I don't believe Sophia... but sometimes children make things up in their mind and you won't know until you check the closet, whether or not a man is really in there. And so you check.
So I reached down and situated… Phobos… so that I could look into its eyes with my hands holding it still.
A few seconds passed with nothing happening.
Where the hell is the menu-
And then it was like an overlay was placed directly over my eyeballs. Augmented reality isn't this pervasive. I could barely see shapes on the other side of it. It went transparent when I thought about that, and then back to normal when I flinched at the weird instant effect.
There was something glowing and pulsing. It was all in the same red as my Familiar’s silhouette. The icons were in black, but they glowed and pulsed yellow-orange if they wanted attention, I guessed.
An envelope? I looked at the icon and it instantly opened an… inbox.
The ‘letter’ opened itself and I was treated to an indescribable sensation. My spine tingled, my skin shivered and my stomach flipped.
(This letter has been translated into mortal terms for better understanding.)
Congratulations, Mortals!
We, Those Above, Beyond and In-Between are thrilled to inform you that we finally granted your wish. You’ve been screaming into our ears for millennia on every world you exist, and it’s been quite difficult to sleep.
So we decided to grant this wish so that you might get a bit quieter. We used everything every Mortal wanted to determine the optimal creation. Some of you come from worlds abundant in magic, some from worlds with only technology. In some worlds, the only magic that exists is alchemy and in others the only advanced technology was the telephone. So finding a happy medium was both easy and difficult. You're all so picky, hahaha.
We decided to intermix you as equally as possible across all sixteen parallel worlds that are closest to us in space-time. And then we created the system, as it was a fine idea. Three worlds had conceived of some form of it for use in these situations and the rest had some other lower form of the idea already.
It was basically universal!
This system will enable you to use magic, learn swordsmanship or anything else we have discerned your hearts desire. Your familiar will allow you to work magic through them if you had no magic in your universe, so that your puny mortal bodies are not overloaded by the power. Perhaps in a few generations, not even the entirely nonmagical humans will need Familiars! Some of you can just use magic naturally and will not require familiars and can access the system independently!
The System will watch over you and facilitate your gradual growth!
Now, since everyone has what they’ve always wanted, PLEASE only pray to us in the manner that is approved by the system. Unauthorized praying will cause status effects. If you do it enough times, it will even curse you.
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We’ll be going to sleep now. Goodbye, Mortals!
I just kind of sat there and stared at it for a while before looking away from Phobos and petting it as it began squirming around for attention in my lap. It really acted like a cat.
Those above, beyond and in-between? I wondered what the fuck that meant. It didn’t say ‘gods’ so it couldn’t be that kind of situation. Gods would always announce themselves AS gods, wouldn't they? It’s easier to get people to understand the concept.
And it said ‘mortals’ but it spoke like we were just connected somehow, not like they’d created us. Like they could manipulate the worlds, but not like they were responsible for them.
Praying. Approved methods for praying. Essentially, praying to something that is not a god is not allowed, unless you do it in a specific way?
But humans never knew if the gods were real or not and just prayed to every one they believed in. Maybe half those gods were or weren’t real. Maybe some of them died or went away. Maybe when they did, the other beings kept hearing the prayers because they weren’t actually going anywhere?
I’d come to the conclusion that there were no gods, myself, when I was about twenty-two. Big point of contention between me and mom.
And if that were the case… yeah. They’d said we’d been praying to them for ‘Millenia’.
Essentially… there’s a baby crying somewhere nearby. It’s not YOUR baby, but there don’t appear to be any parents. And although the baby appears to be potty trained, well kept and uninjured with an ample supply of bottles it can reach and eat and seems perfectly capable of doing so… it keeps crying.
So you walk in, assuming it just needs a rattle. You give it the rattle and say ‘there, now, stop your crying’ and walk away again.
You put a noise-canceling device in the rattle so that even if it cries, you don’t hear it. So even if the baby smacks itself in the face with the rattle and screams, you won’t hear it unless they break the rattle, at which point, you’ll come with a different toy. Which is better than before as this way, you go long periods without hearing any screaming at all.
That’s essentially what the Above, Beyond and In-Between had done to ‘mortals’. They’d given us a rattle to keep us occupied and created a funnel for the noise so they didn’t HAVE to deal with it if they didn’t WANT to.
I took a deep breath. “So, some kind of Eldritch Entities got together and fucked up all the worlds, because we were being too loud?” I muttered to myself.
“Blissy, Blissy!” Sophia got off the bed and picked up Valykree, rushing out into the kitchen. “Watch, watch what I can do!”
I had to get up and follow her. But my body was so heavy and every inch of it twinged with pain as I slowly pushed myself onto my feet.
Sophia was standing in the doorway with an anxious face when I finally managed it. “Hurts, Blissy?”
It’s something she’s said since she was two.
“No,” I said. “It just aches. The familiar apparently isn’t supposed to stay in the body long… so I guess it just made my body very tired.”
“Valykree said so,” she replied and hugged the doll tighter. “She said that they need vessels because… um…” she thought on it for a long moment before triumphantly stating. “Cause we have no magic and our bodies are too weak!”
There wasn’t anything about that in the letter I’d read.
“Come on!” Sophia started jumping up and down and repeating herself.
At least her 'familiar' didn’t fuck up her body too badly, I thought as I slowly slogged my way into the kitchen area behind her.
She grabbed the box of treats I give her for completing our alphabet and number exercises and takes one out. Showing it to me. “Now watch!”
Sophia shoves the treat into her pocket, but… it doesn’t go in her pocket. Her pocket doesn’t bulge... and it should. Even as fluffy and soft as the treat is, it should most absolutely have enough mass to bulge in a six-year-old's pocket.
“What?” I stare at the pocket in question. “Where did it go?”
“It’s the inveltory!” she said. “You put stuff in and it fits there and you can get it out by saying the name. Treat!” she said and reached into her pocket, then frowned. “It’s not coming out!”
“That’s because it’s not called ‘Treat’, it’s called a ‘Snowball’,” I replied.
“Right, Snowball!” she said. And then took the treat from her pocket. “See! I got it!”
Inventory, magic familiars…
I was starting to have a sneaking suspicion what the Eldritch Beings meant when they said ‘the System’ and I didn’t like it one bit.
Gaming systems might seem fun to most people, but when it’s real life, it means you have to fit certain criteria or you can never move on. Meet a certain level, have a certain herb, find a certain enemy and kill it. And if you can’t, there’s usually some kind of bad outcome or you just don’t get what you need.
What would we do for food? Were we not allowed to pick or plant or anything unless we had the requisite skillset? And even if not, would that mean that without the skill, the food was disgusting or small in number? And what about things like childbirth? Do you need to have levels in that as well? Do doctors need to get a whole new set of ‘skills’ that they’re unable to use reliably until they figure out how it works? Will it no longer let us use our old abilities?
I walked over and took the Snowball from Sophia. “Is there any way you know of, to see the Inventory?”
“It’s in the familyler,” she said.
So I put the Snowball in my pocket. It disappeared as predicted and I turned around to find Phobos on the counter. Just like a real cat, it was staring at me, eerily. I sighed internally and stepped over to stare it in the eyes and think ‘menu’ and then when it opened, ‘inventory’. I’d figured out it worked based off of thoughts and intentions from earlier.
Like that implant they were working on, to help paralyzed people interact with their computers.
For a moment, I paused. If there’s an implant in my brain, I’m killing those Eldritch ‘gods’ before they can even think to be annoyed at my existence.
Then I look at the actual display window. There are four slots, and a note up above with an x at the far right corner.
Pockets only have four slots! And that’s for all the pockets you’re wearing, unless there’s more than four, in which case you get a bonus slot! Get a backpack or trunk if you want more storage!
I frowned, I could feel it contorting my face. “Annoying… but useful, maybe. Sophia, go get your backpack and bring my duffel from the under the bed spot I showed you.”
“Okay!” she ran off to get them and I hit the x on the corner of the notice. The entire note disappeared and the inventory was all I could see.
Snowball
Not very nutritious, but will stave off starvation in a pinch. Might inspire feelings of happiness from a rush of serotonin in the brain due to the high levels of sugar.
What? That’s it?
Usually in games, certain foods gave bonuses. Some just gave hunger relief or something. But this just basically said ‘this is unhealthy but it’s food I guess’ and… nothing else.
I glanced at the stove but then shook my head. No telling when the electricity would go off, if it was even on now… We didn't usually need the lights during the day, because the windows let in so much light in the living area, kitchen and bedroom. I’d check to see if the lights were on later. And I could see if ‘home cooked’ meals were different then. For now we had to pack.
“I got it!” she walked back into the kitchen, dragging my duffel behind her. With her own bright purple backpack on.
I opened it while it was still on her and frowned. “There was stuff in there, get it all out, if it’s in the inventory.”
“Okay!” she said and stared into her Doll’s eyes.
A moment later, a bunch of shit was belched from her backpack and onto the floor. Pencil case, coloring books and workbook homework.
“...try to take it out without it falling to the floor, next time. One at a time if you have to,” I said with a sigh. “Anyway, give me your backpack and I’ll put your clothes in it.”
“Are we going away?” she asked as she paused in the act of taking off the backpack.
“We’re going on vacation,” I said. “Until we figure out how to make the house safe from monsters. We’ll go somewhere with stronger doors and walls.”
“Okay…” she took off her backpack and handed it to me with a sullen expression.
She liked our apartment. It was a special place she could always go and visit when mom was being mean or dad wasn’t helping with her letters and numbers. She could always just call me and I would bring her over.
Even after she started living here she didn’t like leaving the place, except for school.
“Just for a while,” I said as I speed-walked into my room and opened her dresser drawers. But they were… empty… “Fuck. Sophia, these dresser drawers have an inventory, too! You’ll have to take out the clothes one by one and put them on the bed for me so I can pick out the ones you should put in your backpack!”
She clomped in and began the process, apparently able to access the inventory by just staring at the dresser and then began pulling things out of the drawers, like they came from nowhere.
That might be more secure, but it’s annoying as fuck. Guardians should be able to handle their kids’ inventory. Do the Eldritch beings think we’re all the same level of incapable and ignorant? That there didn’t need to be special considerations for kids?
Mostly in these stories the protagonists WERE kids, treated like adults, so it made sense nobody thought about the practical side… but it was annoying nonetheless.
I went back into the kitchen and looked at the inventory for my duffel bag. There were eighteen slots. And a message.
Duffel bags have eighteen slots! Two more than backpacks! If you need boxes for stacking, please ask your Familiar!
Boxes… for stacking…? And it seemed like there were tutorial messages, but only when you discovered something. That was one of the most annoying aspects of a lot of games. Why did they use something universally hated?
“Hey Phobos,” I stood up and stared at him as his tail flicked around him on the counter. “Does the inventory not stack without those Boxes?”
He mewed and the Menu opened.
The message thing was glowing again. But so was a section entitled ‘Codex’, so I looked at that first.
It had only one entry.
Box Stacking:
When using the inventory, items don’t stack. You must put all of the same item in one box, if you want multiple of that item to fit in one slot. Otherwise, those items take up a slot on their own.
“Okay… give me eighteen boxes, then?” I asked.
They appeared out of Phobos’ mouth. Like he was literally puking them up. But it was like watching a snake eat a huge ostrich egg in reverse, so it didn't seem Phobos was struggling or anything, just... like it had an unhingeable jaw...
One big stack of nested boxes, then two, then three.
I began pulling them apart, and at the end I had… eighteen cardboard boxes. The long, skinny ones that weren’t that tall? I could maybe fit four normal-sized cans of food in each one if I laid them down on their sides and stacked them two on top, two on bottom.
The number one thing was probably going to be my special nutrition mixes. They were in case we couldn’t eat anything but ramen and rice and other cheap shit. They had all the vitamins and fiber. It was a cheap brand, but it ensured we didn't get malnutrition symptoms or scurvy, so it was pretty damned essential.
I had three cans, but I opened the cans and upended them into the boxes, as the cans themselves were huge and it wouldn’t fit that way. They came in their own individually wrapped packets, for a single bottle of water.
The whole amount barely fit into the box. It had no flaps for the top so I just kneeled down and set it inside my duffel, after which it just disappeared like a fog enveloped it. In the inventory was the box as a whole item.
Box of Nutrient Powder:
These packets can give energy and good health when one is missing out on nutrients in their meals.
Okay, so that also had no special effects…
I filled each box with whatever I could get my hands on. Two boxes filled with eight packages of Ramen each, two others filled with twelve bags of rice each. They were small 'boil-in-bag' rice baggies. Long, but half-empty, so I could just pin the bottom bags under the top bags and then continue layering. Thank god. Rice was one of our staples now and a great way to ensure your condiments weren't too overwhelming in the dish you were eating.
Which was a godsend when you were feeding a picky six-year-old...
That left thirteen boxes. And I quickly figured out after checking the inventory, that there was no indication that things went bad.
And then my realization created another codex entry. Because apparently just wondering about something was the trigger mechanism. Not even asking a direct question.
Storage Conditions:
The Inventory will keep each food item in its optimal conditions. It will last much longer than if you’d simply refrigerated it. If it becomes close to the time in which it would rot, the Inventory will give you a notification through your Familiar.
So I took the canned food out and I started opening it up and putting the contents into ziploc bags. A lot more could fit in each individual box, that way. I managed to fit multiple cans of food in one massive ziploc and I was able to layer at least five in the box before I felt like any more wouldn’t fit without teetering on top. And I learned something through experimentation. One ziploc had red beans, the other had black. But they both went in the same box without issue. So as long as they were of the same TYPE...
The ziploc actually took a lot more beans than I thought it would. We only had eight cans of red beans and six cans of black beans, so the bags weren't even half-filled. But luckily peanut butter also counted as a legume that had been prepared, I guess? So I was able to melt the huge tub we had into the gallon ziploc and put that in the box with the beans as well.
I had to use a funnel and put the ziplock into a tall glass to keep it upright, considering I was doing it all myself. I didn't know if my body was still aching from the familiar, or if I was just getting a workout.
The Inventory took them all. One after the other. No issues. Even when I put two different kinds of fruit in the same box. A ziploc of canned pineapple and the other of pears. Then a few cans of fried apples for pies. Everything went in the same box, just to test it... and there was no problem, apparently. I didn't have enough to fill the bags, but it was a hefty amount anyway, as it was everything we had in the cabinets for when things got lean and we wanted a treat.
“I did iiiiit!” Sophia called from the bedroom.
I went to look through it and tossed away any socks we couldn’t find the partner for. Any clothes that would be too snaggy, easily damaged…
“Alright, now ask your Familiar for your Boxes,” I said. “However many slots you have in your backpack inventory.”
She hummed and held up Valykree, looking into her eyes. “How many boxes do I need, Valykree?”
She let go of the familiar when it wriggled for freedom and it fell to the bed in a superhero pose, before promptly puking up the boxes. One stack this time.
Eight boxes. So children’s Backpacks had less slots than adult backpacks.
I packed her clothing in each box. Shirts, Pants, Underwear, Socks. And then I even added in some of mine, because it wouldn’t fill the whole box. Once we were done, we had almost all of her clothes packed, but a good week's worth of mine, as well.
And we still had eight slots in our pockets, altogether.
“Pick out the toys you absolutely cannot live without for the vacation,” I said and walked distractedly back into the kitchen.
I could hear her shuffling around in her toy box. And I stared at the cabinets with a thought. Did Salt count as ‘salt’… or as a ‘condiment’ or ‘spice’?
So I tried. And I was able to box up every single spice in the rack as well as the Ketchup, Mustard and Ranch in one box. And I just had to think I wanted it to go in my pocket, and it did. I didn’t even have to shove it in there.
Ridiculous amounts of storage. I wondered what the limits on amount of storage per person was. But I had more important stuff to figure out.
I could hear the screaming again, further away, but coming closer. People were running down the street again. And those things… were chasing them. The window had the perfect view of it, but I only glanced out to make sure they were indeed still there before moving away and heading back to Phobos.
“What do I need to defend myself?” I asked.