Rose sat with her head in her hands, reflecting on the morning just past. After the incident with that man? Creature? Honestly Rose thought he looked kind of like an orc from the games she used to play, obviously not very strong yet if whatever she did back there actually killed it. Anyway things happened pretty fast after that, no time to wonder about the boxes in her vision and what that might mean so she had pushed them away and pulled Emily home. What would normally have been a 15 to 20 minute walk home turned into an hour of hiding and sneaking, hoping not to be seen.
Past people turning into all manner of mythical beasts or creatures. Some turned into things she thought she recognised, things like goblins and kobolds, basic beginner stuff. She even saw something that looked like a troll wander past the end of one road, dragging what looked to be a telephone pole along behind it. She had watched as a large cat got much bigger and became a sleek black panther, it dashed to the nearest shadow and seemingly melted into it. Emily was looking around half confused, half awed by the incredible creatures everywhere. Rose wanted to protect her from the gruesome scenes of these creatures victims, smears of blood and flesh left on the path all that remains of those helpess people. All Rose could do was get her daughter home and hope for a solution to appear.
Even though it was barely past noon when they got home, Emily went straight to bed and collapsed fast asleep. Rose was happy she had decided to stay in her old family home, as on the way back they had seen a few modern buildings in their town beginning to rust and fall apart, as if years of decomposition and weather had beaten down to erase these metal monstrosities of buildings. Their little house was fine, apart from no power, or running water... Thankfully Rose loved her garden and had a little vegetable and herb plot that would help. The little well at the bottom of the garden still worked so water was ok. The whole world had changed in an instant, Rose just didn't know what to do now.
Then the blinking icon caught her eye. She thought to herself " No way is that what I think it is, that only happens in stories. " so like any good human does with unfamiliar things, she tried to poke it. And nothing happened. She spent around 5 minutes waving her arms around like an idiot before getting frustrated and thinking " Just open or go away or something, just stop flashing. " And it did. It became a screen in front of her showing what looked to be a character sheet from an old rpg
Name: Rose Conehey Level: 1 Health Essense Main attributes: Exp: 0/200 100 50/140 Strength 7 Intelligence 14 Wisdom 10 Dexterity 9 Constitution 6 Charisma 11 Luck 15 Skills: None Abilities None Affinities Fire: novice 1% Blessings: Gaia's blessing: - Your devotion to your child has led to Gaia awakening your fire affinity.
Thinking back to her gaming days, Rose thought her stats were alright, she wouldn't be carrying much weight with those low score in strength and constitution and from the descriptions she read her health was pretty standard. However high intelligence gave her a higher essence pool, but that appeared to be mostly empty. Maybe whatever she did earlier used some.Her luck score pleased her, she had always felt she was fairly lucky but to have it in numbers in front of her was nice.
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No skills or abilities yet but hopefully that would change, this new world would need new skills to survive in. The fire affinity was pretty cool and went with her families bright ginger hair, she thought that this new affinity may be what helped her produce that heatwave to save Emily and herself. Bit odd that no skill was gained but she guessed that would come with practise maybe?
Now this Gaia's blessing was interesting, who was Gaia and why did she help her? From the back of her mind she remembers something about Gaia being the world's mother in mythology. Could that be why she recived the blessing? Because she was trying to save her child at the time?
At that moment a noise from outside interrupted her thoughts, checking first that Emily was still asleep Rose headed downstairs to see what was going on. Pulling back the curtains slightly she could see an elderly man in a wheelchair having some kind of fit. A middle age woman was stood next to him holding a young child begging for the man who must have been her father to wake up and say something. The young lad pushing the wheelchair looked shell shocked and scared. Off to one side Rose could see what looked to be a goblin creeping closer, getting ready to attack.
She was about to run out and try and save them when the old man suddenly stood up and yelled, no words just a primal rage that this thing had threatened his family. As he yelled a huge slab of stone rose from the earth and slammed back crushing the gobin beneath it. As soon as this happened the old man collapsed back into his wheelchair unconscious and the family resumed panicking over him.
Opening her front door Rose called out to the family, " Quick, come in here, the streets aren't safe anymore. " The woman and son looked at each other before grabbing the old man and young child and rushing up her garden path to get into the house.