Poisonous Fox

I knew I had made a mistake.

Relaxing at the top of the cliff, catching my breath, my lackadaisical behavior, all of it, it had all been a mistake. And for one single reason: the ooze creature could climb. I had known it could climb. I had known it. And yet, I had still chosen to rest at the top of the cliff, with my feet dangling, allowing the wind to ruffle my hair and… fur.

I peered over the edge, past my bare and monstrous feet–ignoring that twinge of dysphoria and disgust. Shoving all of that aside, I watched for my obsessive hunter.

It was just coming into view.

About ten feet below me, there was a horizontal spanning shelf that protruded outwards from the face of the cliff. This protrusion obstructed my vision of the cliff below that, and much of the canyon floor.

The gurgling mass of black sludge brought a tendril up and over that protrusion, before slapping the tendril against the cliff, somehow sticking to the solid basalt. Soon, another tendril slapped upwards, then another. The bulk of the ooze climbed up those tendrils, until most of its mass sat above the shelf. Then more tendrils were launched. Ever upwards, ever towards me.

Question raced through my mind: Why was this thing still pursuing me? Why had it not returned to its tar pit? Had it not gorged itself already?

But regardless of my disbelief, the ooze was still pursing, and it had already amply demonstrated its penchant for human flesh.

I felt another twinge of dysphoria, but I smashed it down. I could worry about that later. For now, I should avoid getting eaten.

I scooted back from the edge and stood up, patting myself down. I had my jacket, my tools, my cargo pants and my belt. My knife sat strapped to a thigh. My pants’ pocket had a slight bulge. I took just a second to admire its contents: a golden wristwatch with a crystal face. It could be worth a pretty penny.

If I found a fence.

Or I could keep it as a memento of Nick.

I would probably sell it. I just needed to find civilization first.

Another survey of my surroundings. The sky appeared nearly black from the overcast. Plumes of smoke rose from several points in the distance. Craggy rocks and hillsides pretended to be shattered mountains, and of course, the canyon I had just climbed up from. Sadly, I could see no signs of civilization, no buildings nor roads. It was just me and the ooze and the rock gardens leftover from ancient lava flows.

And I needed to pick a direction to head. All of them looked equally unwelcoming. What did I know? I needed to head away from the ooze: that part was easy. But if I used that as my sole determination, that alone would fail me. What I needed was to figure out where I was, to catch my bearings, to learn the lay of the land, so to speak. What I needed was a vista. This meant I needed height, I needed to climb until I had a better view.

Mind: 14 (+1)

So I set out for one of the nearest broken mountain tops and put my new climbing skills to use.

Over the next hour, I traversed scrambles of shattered rock and climbed uneven cliff sides. The most treacherous were the scrambles resting atop the cliffs, as the scrambles offered little footing, and the cliff offered a deadly fall. As I went, I felt what was becoming a familiar pain. My left arm stung as the tattoo grew. As the lines swirled outwards in a spiral from the central glyph. The physical activity was improving my body, far faster than was natural. Ordinarily, rest and recovery were required. It seemed that this dubious marking helped speed up that process, preternaturally.

But whatever magic the tattoo provided, it failed to fill my bell, or wet my lips. I would need supplies, even if my body was improving.

Body: 18 (+2)

After what felt like too long, I arrived at a local peak.

Down below, I saw the ooze burbling along, chasing after my trail. That creature continued to surpass my expectations. Of note, the ooze’s trail appeared as a slight sheen, almost a slug trail, but oily and black. At least I could tell where it had been.

From the vista, I found no evidence of people, nor of any past civilizations. I saw no ruins, nor highways, nor even litter. So far as I could determine, this desolate waste of a barren nightmare contained solely myself and the ooze.

My stomach rumbled, and my mouth tasted like sand. What could I eat? The rocks grew lichen, and I had seen several unappetizing snails, with thorny shells and a sulphuric scent. There might have been larger animals in the ecosystem, but I had only heard chittering and scraping rocks as I had traveled. I did not know this ecosystem. However, if there was animal life, then there was food, water. Which I needed to find. And badly. I also needed shelter, or would, assuming I could lose the ooze. Even though I had this mysterious magic-seeming effects, I doubted it would grant my survival against the elements. Or perhaps it would. I knew too little about it to make a decision, but I could not rely on that chance alone.

Mind: 15 (+1)

In the distance I could still see the plumes of smoke. There were several on the horizon, in different directions. Without a better direction, and with a possibility that a civilization was creating the smoke, I selected the nearest plume and set out once more.

I kept to the ridgelines as I traveled, maintaining an even elevation as much as I could in order to reduce the strain on my tired muscles. I slipped and misstepped a few times, at first, until I learned to keep my footing on the uneven ground. Sometimes, I traveled on the top of the ridge, admiring the bleakness of the terrain, enjoying the wind ruffling my fur–hair. Sometimes, I traveled on the hillside, watching for loose pieces of slate that would slide out from under me, practicing my balance.

Body: 20 (+2)

All that time while traveling, I began to think about tools. A good thief knows their tools, just like any other crafts-master. I might not remember much, but I did know that much. And since I had arrived wherever I was, I had been given a few new tools, along with some extra, even if it all was unwanted and foreign and why could my body not be normal?!

I cleared my head, or tried to. I tried to remember what I had been thinking about. Right. Tools. One of those tools had a lot of potential, but it was going to take practice before I could slot it into my repertoire. So I got to practicing.

“Illusion.”

I had spoken with the intention to wrap myself in invisibility. And yet, little more than nothing happened. A bit of a haze enveloped me, but otherwise, nothing. I could still make use of an obscuring aura; I held the haze in place for as long as I could. I counted off fifteen seconds before I ran out of energy.

Immediately after the spell broke, I tried again.

“Illusion.”

But this time, nothing happened, except a slight headache and a general feeling of weakness. This caused me to pause and consider that I had perhaps some nature of forced cooldown period. However, the duration failed to be obvious.

Mind: 16 (+1)

Spirit: 16 (+1)

I waited a minute and tried again.

“Illusion.”

This time, while I saw the haze envelope me, I held my hand out before my face to better examine it. I could still see my hand, but there was a bit of opaqueness in the air immediately surrounding my skin. Around a bit over fifteen seconds later, the spell ended. But this time, I felt the burn on my left forearm.

Spirit: 17 (+1)

I rolled back my sleeve to check, and found that several of my Blessings had increased. Including Spirit. While unsure of what caused each of these types to increase, I felt especially confused by Spirit.

Body made sense in its own way. Exercise and strain the body, increase the relevant statistics.

Mind almost made sense: exercise the brain and increase the statistic. Although this one felt somewhat insulting, judging by what the tattoo considered to be heavy thinking versus not thinking at all. And then there were other irregularities, on top of that. Once it had increased when I had just been listening to sounds and trying to hone in on the chittering I could hear occasionally beneath rocks.

But Spirit… what even was that?

I grew curious how the increased Spirit would affect my spell; I repeated the same exact experiment again. The difference was subtle, easily mistaken, and without a stopwatch, my observations were prone to error. But it felt like the spell had lasted longer. I continued repeating the same experiment,, over and over again as I walked. I drove my energy pool to empty each time, waited a minute, and tried again.

Soon, I felt that burn on my left forearm once more.

Mind: 17 (+1)

Spirit: 18 (+1)

I had gained another point to both Spirit and Mind. I had been rewarded for my efforts. This could prove addicting. But first and foremost, I needed to master my tools, I needed to understand my Illusions and their capacity.

Originally, my spell lasted fifteen-ish seconds before exhaustion. But now, it lasted longer, at least seventeen seconds, maybe more. But the problem was, I had gained points to both Mind and Spirit, which prevented mapping an exact correlation between the statistics and the spell’s effects. But a correlation did seem to be there. An increase to those points led to an increase to my Illusions. Either in duration or in ease of creation.

My next series of experiments was to figure out how long my cooldown period was. This was the time period after my Illusion exhausted itself. A period where I was unable to re-create the Illusion.

To measure this, I would run my Illusion out, exhausting its full duration. Then, I would time it. Not until how long I could cast the Illusion again. Oh no, because I could cast again, after the short bout of fatigue ended. As soon as five seconds later, I could cast. But the problem was that those immediate re-casts had a far shorter duration than a regular casting. So clearly they were not the same, and I needed to understand this mechanic.

So after each Illusion exhaustion, I would wait. I started at a minute. Casted Illusion once more, timed it, and found the duration unaffected. Which was good, it meant that my Illusions reset in a minute or less. But… but it might be less than that minute, and I needed to know the minimum amount of time I would need to wait after exhausting an Illusion before I could recast a full Illusion.

On the next exhaustion, I only waited fifty seconds, and found there to be no detrimental effect to the Illusion’s duration. Then I did the same, but with forty seconds, and I found the same. It was not until I reached around twenty seconds that I began to feel a difference. At ten seconds, my Illusion’s duration reduced to ten seconds. At five seconds, I could maintain my Illusion for five seconds. At one, for one. At zero, a headache.

Trying to recast my Illusion immediately after exhausting an Illusion, akin to smashing a button, left me with a physical headache. And not because my ‘Mind’ was improving. Though it did.

Mind: 18 (+1)

Spirit: 20 (+2)

One of the other benefits to the experimentation: I had a better understanding of the process governing my most potent tool. What I thought of as my cooldown was not actually a cooldown. Instead, it was my energy pool refilling. Furthermore, my energy pool refilled as fast as it spent. It was one to one, which was… odd. Then again, all of this was strange and odd.

But back to my tools.

I could make myself a blur, which I mentally slotted as [Blur]. It was not a hard spell, but it made it easier for me to cast that particular Illusion, just by thinking of it as one.

Of course, one spell was not enough. I needed more patterns. I went on to brainstorming others. Illusion just had so much versatility. If I had this power back in the day… I actually failed to remember exactly what I had done, or how I would have used it, but I was certain I would have. It would have been useful.

I needed more. More spells. More Illusions.

So while I continued walking along the ridgeline, approaching a broken peak in the distance, and the orange glow beyond that, I tried creating other objects, like a flame. I had made one earlier against the ooze, but now that I had time, I wanted to learn as much as I could. I made a ball of fire about the size of a fist, and I sent it out as far as I could. Moving it required a force of will, and I felt a headache begin to form at the base of my skull, a building pressure.

Mind: 19 (+1)

Spirit: 21 (+1)

But the technique worked, if lazily. The [Flame] pattern was created, if sluggishly. I was able to create a flame in my hand and move it, playfully raising it up and down, making it dance and spin and circle me in the air, until my ‘energy’ ran out.

I repeated it again and again, moving it faster and faster, increasing the potency of the spell, sharpening my mind. Idly, I wondered how far I could send it away from me. I sent it out and forward. It expired before I hit a range limitation. [Flame] still was too slow. I kept practicing until the flame moved about a yard a second.

Mind: 20 (+1)

Spirit: 22 (+1)

I found a limit at around ten yards, where the flame could move no further. It felt as though it were restrained by a taut leash connecting back to me.

During my trials, I felt that familiar ache on my left arm. I had never enjoyed the pain from getting tattoos, at least I thought so. But now, now that it marked progress? I was growing to enjoy the pain.

During this time, I made another mistake.

I had lost myself in practice, in thought. I had zoned out. I had failed to pay attention to potential threats.

Of course, I only realized this when I heard a laugh.

It was not a nice laugh. It was closer to a shrill bark, a chuckling, high pitched, yipping cackle. And it sounded like it was coming from more than one place. There were several of them. They were close. I should have heard them approach! How did they find me? Where were they? My ears swiveled to find them.

Blessings: Rank (1/9)

Body: 20 (+4)

Mind: 20 (+7)

Spirit: 22 (+7)

Talents:

Athleticism (1/9)

Climbing (1/9)

Closed

Closed (1/9)

Closed (1/9)

Spells:

Illusion (1/9)

Closed (0/9)

Closed (0/9)

Gifts:

Obsession (2/9)

Closed (0/9)

Closed (0/9)