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"Blissy! We're having breakfas'!" Sophia was happy to see me when she woke up, apparently.
So happy that she jumped on me, waking me from a dead sleep, causing a panic in me so deep that the only response was to freeze and assess. My brain had decided that she was shouting and leaping on me because something was chasing her. My heart was already thundering as I woke, gasping because she'd slammed into my stomach- and it wasn't just my breathing and my heartbeat. I felt an electric current running through my body that I'd never felt before. I could tell without being told, that it was my magic. It was just such a weird feeling, like my skin was crawling with pinpricking lightning. And it wasn't the usual feeling of being frustrated, irritated or... whatever you call it when you're full of static electricity and you can feel it.
It was like cold lightning.
"Okay... breakfast," I said slowly. "Did you get some of the food out to give Mrs. Katz or are we eating her food?"
"I didn't give nothing," she said and then her expression twisted. "Should we give her food?"
"We'll just make dinner," I replied.
We were sleeping in an unoccupied apartment, since ours had a broken door. Everyone was getting reinforced doors as soon as the barricades and gates were taken care of. But we were first on the list, since our door was entirely missing. Thankfully, there were a handful of empty apartments. One or two on every floor.
Sophia hasn't left the apartment, so why does she think we're having breakfast together?
"Sophia, did you leave the apartment?" I asked.
"Nooo!" she denied and sat up, wriggling out of my arms. "Toria sent me a letter that said to come over for breakfas'."
"I see," I replied. "How did she do that?" She likely meant 'message' but perhaps she found a way to send letters without the phones?
"She gave me her old phone that doesn't work- but it works!" she said and took the phone out of her pocket inventory to show me.
The phone was indeed old. It had an entire keyboard on it and looked pink and sparkly. Likely she kept it from when she was fourteen or so. She was sentimental like that. I think she even told me once that she had an old phone for Sophia if I needed one. I'd been keeping Sophia in homeschool, to ensure our parents couldn't try to take her after what they did when I enrolled her in school last year. So I hadn't thought she'd needed one.
"That's good. Here's Blissy's contact," I said and typed it into her new phone's address book.
I was right about the phone only really being good for text messaging- though calls were allowed. Because it seems it even removed the internet. There was a logo, but it just said 'In progress'. I wondered why. If those beings were 'all knowing' or something, being able to gauge the hopes and dreams of people, shouldn't they have a good grasp on how the internet works? And if not, couldn't they just bend reality to make it work how they liked?
"Let's goooo!" she sang in a high pitched tone.
"Sophia, noises," I said in a quiet but stern tone. "Just because the barricades are up, doesn't mean we should make the doggies madder than they are. Somebody could get hurt."
"I' sorry," she said, reverting to a smaller voice. It's something she used to do back when she was living with our parents. Making herself cuter and 'dumber' sounding.
"Don't be sorry, do better," I reminded her. "Sorry is meaningless if you don't change the behavior." As I've found that telling her she didn't need to be sorry had an effect... and not a good one. So getting her to stop saying it for other reasons was my only real recourse at the moment.
"Okay!" she said, bright and sunny again as she unlocked and opened the door herself. It took an extra minute, but it made her feel in control of her surroundings, I'd guess. So I usually allow her to do small things like that.
She used her phone to message Toria that we were at the door, too, instead of knocking. She thought of it all by herself and looked up at me with a very proud expression, so I patted her on the head. Children understand me much more easily than adults. Sophia has always accepted my lack of affections, because it's all she's ever known of me. It's easy to be with children.
"Hey guys!" Toria said as she opened the door. "Iiiiit's breakfast time!" She picked Sophia up and twirled her around, setting her down inside the apartment as she giggled.
I followed, closing the door and locking it behind me.
"Hello, good morning dear," Mrs. Katz smiled brightly and adjusted her shawl as she put a plate on the 'dining' table. It was more of a small square with four chairs. Two of them had been taken from our apartment, I could see.
"Felicity and Max still gone?" I asked.
"Oh yes, after you sent her the message about those people to talk to, I think she said she was going to join one of their groups," Mrs. Katz said. "She said the Parent... well, whatever they were called, they seemed like the group for her, I think."
I checked my inbox. Unfortunately, I had no idea how to get notifications, so if an emergency happened while I was asleep, Grand would be on his own. And he might be fine, but he also may resent me for it.
There was a codex entry instead.
Several Areas have begun to create factions and guilds!
If you want to create a guild, it will only require at least thirty people to agree to join and an agreement on what the name should be.
Guild Benefits include: A shared Guild fund which can be managed by a Guild treasurer and used to buy things that everyone needs! For example, if you find that the water isn't running, you can purchase a well from the Shop and the System will give you the parts needed to construct it for a good cost! You can also rent the equipment to do the digging!
When your guild members increase in rank, so will the Guild. The highest ranking Guilds will get rewards for their ranking and whatever quests and missions they've undertaken and finished!
Guildmaster is a title that can only be held by the highest ranked member. Members are not allowed to fight each other over the position without authorization. Your rank will determine if there needs to be a duel and only then will you be allowed to duel for the position after the System has fully evaluated you. And this will only be necessary if a vote is tied or inconclusive.
"Guilds?" I said aloud. "Factions... like they're considered different."
"Well, Guild is a business thing, right?" Toria said, pausing in taking a bite of her frozen waffles. The syrup drizzled onto the plate as she spoke. "And Faction is a political thing."
"True, but they both essentially mean 'group of people does stuff together'," I replied. "Usually, it's only the tabletop games where they go in-depth on that kind of thing. I was so sure they were doing it like the video games."
"So they're doing it more... realistic?" Toria asked. "Why'd they do it like this instead of any other way?" She jabbed a piece of waffle and shoved it in her mouth.
"I have no idea," I said. "The Familiars were a surprise. They're for 'non-magic' using species, they said. Like us. Meaning that magic is something fundamental to a universe that one cannot use unless they were born there, made from the same stuff."
"That's so odd," Mrs. Katz said. "And why on earth would they not simply find something to inhabit and THEN make a contract with you?" She was pursing her lips.
"Who knows," I replied. "It might be a cultural thing, though the System says they're about at the level of intellect as actual cats and pigs and ravens and such. Smart, but not sapient."
"Maybe that's why?" Toria asks, swallowing her food hurriedly and coughing a bit. "Kuh! Maybe- hack! Ugh. Maybe it's that the system tried to 'herd' them to give us a good head start, but after that, they couldn't control what they did?"
"It's likely it's something similar, but," I cracked my neck. "If that were so, they could've simply given us the ritual beforehand. A bunch of people would've performed them just for fun, so they would've had a good pool of people with familiars by the time the whole world changed. And I'm... confused about some of the wording."
There was a ping, but everyone reacted to the noise, and we all reached for our familiars, so I assumed it was a letter from the System.
Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.
It wasn't.
To all Humans on Earth,
I'm trying to send this to everyone, but I don't know if it'll work. When the System said 'nonmagical humans' I thought all we were going to get were monsters and magic humans. But then it kept making references to... others. So I went out to look. It wasn't advised, because we were holing up somewhere safe from the monsters, but I had to know.
There. Are. ELVES. And ORCS. And humans wearing weird clothes that make me think 'renaissance fantasy noble'.
I probably didn't even see every species out there. But I made it all the way to the library and I found some people trying to sell the books for coin. Not possible, they're owned by the library. They said I could join them, so we're all looking for another way to earn Coin for the communities we're part of. I have to get back soon, maybe if I drop food in front of them, they won't be mad.
Why am I saying all this? Just in case I die, I guess.
The Elves didn't seem hostile, neither did the weird looking humans. But the Orcs didn't seem to know if they SHOULD be Hostile or not. So this is my warning. DO NOT ATTACK A HUMANOID SPECIES WITHOUT REASON.
I saw an Orc take the head off a Warg with a single swing. We are NOT on their level. Do not provoke them. They will DESTROY us. Understand?
Maybe I'll make another announcement once I'm safe, but maybe I'll be too busy. Hopefully this message works.
This is Jackie Bay, signing off.
"Elves... and Orcs," Toria looked pale and ill. "Aren't Orcs the bad guys in games? My brother always talked about 'those damn orcs' on some levels he had to fight."
"Orcs and Ogres and such were thinly veiled racial allegory in the past," I replied. "The 'evil species'. It's very unlikely they're actually just pure evil. And this is reality, not a game. So we shouldn't assume to begin with."
"Oh," she blinked and seemed to come out of her daze from looking at the menu.
Wait...
"Sophia. Why do we have to look at our Familiars to open the Menu?" I asked, gently. I didn't want to make her feel like she was in trouble. I should've asked for more details in the first place.
"Cause they like it when you look at them," she said. "They get happy and their eyes glow."
"But can we open the menu without looking at them?" I asked.
We didn't look at them when using the menu. We couldn't even see them. It would be nonsensical to have that be any kind of mechanism.
"Sure, I do all the time!" she says easily. "Watch!"
She turns away from Valykree on the floor next to her and opens her inventory to remove her phone. I hadn't even thought about it before, but she'd not needed to even glance at Valykree to get it earlier.
"I'm very annoyed with myself for not noticing this earlier," I sighed.
Phobos jumped up on the table and sat in front of me.
"Phobos? What's wrong?"
He pawed at the plate's edge and then tapped his paw near his mouth.
"Oh. You need to be fed. We should all feed our familiars... I have no idea how you'd feed a Ring and a Locket..." I said slowly. "Let me check, I have a codex entry. I forgot to read it."
Feeding Your Familiar!
Feeding: A single spell's worth of mana can feed your Familiar for two days! Just fill a glass marble from the shop with as much mana as you can. It won't let you overfill it. Then give it to your familiar. If your familiar does not have a mouth of any kind, then simply hold it and focus mana into it. Your Familiar will not take more than it needs to be sated. Of course, this does mean that it will take a LOT if you haven't fed it in days.
Healing: Familiars will heal their vessels naturally over time. It's faster if you give them Mana, but their vessels are not their 'bodies'. Breaking the vessel does not break the Familiar. It merely weakens them and makes them incapable of carrying out their emergency function.
Purpose: The Familiar will hold onto the magical power your body cannot handle. And in an emergency, if you throw a few extra marbles to the familiar, they'll be able to grow and change shape in order to spirit you away from the battlefield! Or, if your familiar is in a form that doesn't allow for movement, you can transfer them into a different vessel. You can't change their name though.
"So we can move it to some other vessel?" Mrs. Katz mused. "How do we do that?"
No codex entry... probably means it's simple. "Hang on. Toria, come back to your place and let's experiment."
"Yes! I just want my locket back to normalllll," she got up and followed me as I left the table. Both of our breakfasts were only half-eaten, but we'd finish them later. That's what microwaves were for.
"Did you get all the stuff left over in your apartment?" Toria asked as we took the few steps to her door.
"I sold most everything before we left, but yes, the remaining things of Sophia's and our other clothes and such..."
"Great," she said and unlocked the door. When she stepped in, an orange furball came running at the door. "Poggers! There you are! He wouldn't come out from under the sofa, yesterday.
"You can put him in storage," I said and walked past her to sit on the sofa.
"What?" she wrinkled her nose as she rubbed her cheek on poggers' head. "Storage?"
"There's apparently a 'pet slot' you can buy. You can put your pet into it and as long as you take them out every day to feed them, they'll mostly be fine. So if you think it's an unsafe area, you can just put him in the slot."
"Ugh, that sounds awful," she said, making a face. "Like putting him in a cupboard."
I shrugged. "Anyway, go pick another vessel for your Familiar, and make sure it's something with legs of some kind."
"Well, I have a favorite chair..." she said and grinned when I simply stared at her. "I know. Something that means something to me, but it can move around and eat things. Uhhhh. Well, we're not using Poggers. Apparently only dead things or things that are objects can become familiars, but still. Wanted to make that clear."
I wouldn't have suggested it, but she thinks I'm ghoulish, I supposed. I didn't feel like correcting the misconception, honestly.
"Oh!" she put Poggers down and rushed into the bedroom. "One second!" Her hood bouncing off of her head as she skips.
She and I, Sophia and Mrs. Katz... we were all still wearing our equipment. But how do we maintain it?
Ping!
Maintenance for Equipment!
If your equipment has become dirty or damaged, simply pay the Equipment repair fee! Laundering is only 1 coin. Repair depends upon how extensive the damage is. Your equipment will be sent to those with classes specifically suited to repair and laundering. Like Servant Classes! Just like Chefs will cook the food you eat and carpenters and upholsterers and metalworkers will make all the furniture you purchase. They are also in charge of repairing your sold items for resale!
I opened my Menu by focusing on the mental image of Phobos and it's ludicrously easy. I feel even dumber for not noticing before. But... it was a good way to associate the menu with your familiar in your mind, anyway. It helped to make the connection. Maybe I'm just in denial and making up excuses for why it wasn't stupid.
The shop interface opened and looked like most of the tabs they have for laundering are people offering different types of services. Some of them offer to dry clean, some can hammer out dents and others can just disinfect and then make it smell clean. It made sense that some Classes had to be mundane, but it was odd... it was like they had a full rpg class dedicated to the practice. Because when I looked at the time for laundering and repair, it said one hour. For every single option. Which meant there was a skill they used or a special machine only that class had access to, because I looked and nothing like an instant repair/washing machine was for sale.
"Found it!" Toria came back into the room and instantly rushed to sit next to me, a very old toy in her hands. Or perhaps I should call it a sculpture.
It was a well-detailed and painted horse. Its fur a sort of reddish-brown with a black mane.
"It's my Blood Bay!" she said in excitement. "It'll be able to move and I can ride it in an emergency!"
"It's a good choice," I said. "I'd rather Sophia put her Familiar into Sir Pokey, but she'll likely refuse." A horse is much better than a plush toy for escape. But I'd likely be sending Phobos to pick her up and run, anyway, if things went badly.
"Maybe I can talk her into it, later. She can just move them back and forth, apparently," she said.
"There must be a cost, though," I replied.
She bit her lip. "Oh yeah... and how do I even do it?"
"I'd assume you call its name," I said.
She thought about that and said, "Jeremy!"
But nothing happened.
"Jeremy IS who you were thinking about when you thought you were dying, yes?" I asked. "There isn't a partner you haven't told us about?"
"No!" she said with indignance. If I had anybody that important to me they would've already met Jeremy and Sophia. "Uhhh... oh!" She nods to herself. "That's what the problem is. When I was thinking I was having a heart attack or something, I was prayin'. About Jeremy. But I think I actually said something to Saint Jerome... patron of abandoned and orphaned children."
The horse in her hand glowed with... clear light? It was like it sparkled, but there was no color.
And then it moved. It leapt from her hands and onto the floor, cantering around, lifting its head and neighing. We could hear it, but again, it didn't feel like it was making the noise out loud.
"Some kind of telepathic communication?" I muttered. "But they can broadcast?"
"You could hear it too?" she asked. "I hear when Phobos mews at you, I never thought it was like... in our heads."
"It sounds like a mental echo. Like what I think a cat or horse should sound like," I decided. "It's possible they're making actual noise, it just didn't feel like it to me."
She picked up her locket and sighed in relief. "Thank you god for your mercy in restoring my favorite thing in the whole world," she said as she held it tightly. "The eye is gone, it's just like it was." Her eyes misted. "It almost felt like I was losing everything. Having something back is... great, actually. Wait, I've been calling you by the wrong name all this time and you still answered me!?"
I hummed. Phobos had remained with Sophia, which he usually did, if I wasn't going far. But I had a thought.
"Ask Jerome if he can pass through walls or go under the door," I muttered.
"What? Oh man, I didn't even think to test that kind of thing. Jerome! Can you walk through walls or go through tiny holes or somethin'?" she was fidgeting now. Her guilty face affixed in place.
It likely doesn't care about its name. It's a method to bind it to us or something...
"No." It responded so simply, it sounded somewhat rude, actually.
"Oh well," she said. "Let's go and show Sophia. And tell Mrs. Katz how to do it."
By the time we returned to Katz's apartment, though, it was unnecessary.
"Blissy, look!" Sophia was cradling what looked like a living Ceramic cat.
"It just came to me," Mrs. Katz said as we closed the door behind us. "I have so many statues of cats. Some small, some big. I thought, if he's this small, I can just tote him around in my pocket! And he'll always be so adorable."
It was a kitten ceramic sculpture and was kitten-sized. So she absolutely could tote it around in her pocket. He appeared to be some kind of gray breed. With green eyes... and a blue gem-studded collar?
"I had a ceramic made of a kitten I fostered when he was very young," Katz explained. "He died of a type of illness they didn't have treatment for back then. He was so lovely. That collar is actually much prettier than the one he used to wear, which just had blue rhinestones on it. I splurged a little on his likeness."
My phone vibrated and I checked to see a message from Grand.
Hey, Lila? There's a whole bunch of people not voting. What am I supposed to do to get the vote over with?
Not voting? Taking too long, he means. I would've thought that would be over by now.