-------------------------------------------------

---   Sally   ---

-------------------------------------------------

 

 

I gazed at the mysterious apparition cautiously, wondering what exactly would be imprisoned in a place where giant magical serpents with dementia were roaming uncaged.

The ghostly person was cultish and scary, everything about them was hidden beneath the robes and mask and with every movement the sheet of coins rang out like a hundred wind chimes all at once, like a rainfall of nickels.

The ghost took a step towards the bars, inspecting me closely with those inhuman eyes, the fact that I couldn’t pry or gleam any emotions from them worried me, I couldn’t even tell if they were a guy or a girl.

All I knew about this thing was that someone deemed it dangerous enough to lock up in a prison filled of monsters and I know nothing about it.

 

<Using appraisal>

 

[ Just a sheet and a mask.

Nothing to see here! :) ]

 

What?

“ouryay amenay irstfay easeplay” Orion said, interrupting my confusion with his questioning words.

“Your Ri-ight, I must‘ve For-Gotten my Man-Ners.”

“I, am T-H-E God O-f Th-he Moon A-round Here.” The god murmured, their voice sounding distant and echoey, like he was talking to us through a pipe.

“A-and Yours?”

“Orion”

“Ah-nd you, Li-ittle one?” they asked while turning to me, slightly annoying me, what did they expect me to do, I can’t speak

‘Sally’ I sarcastically thought, dismissively turning my head away.

“Sal-ly? A Str-a-nge Na-me, for a Dra-Gon.” The god amusingly said, the clinging of coins ringing out as the god laughed a little. My brain lagged a little when he answered my thoughts, I probably should’ve realised that a GOD would be able to read my thoughts.

“e'sshay ay agond?” Orion blurted out furrowing his brows as he looked at the moon god.

“Ha-ve You Ne-Ver us-ed Ap-praisal On them?” the god asked with a bit of confusion, Orion immediately turning to me and presumably using the skill on me. And by the twitching in his face, I guess he pretty shocked.

Wait, if Orion’s also got the system, does that mean everyone has it?

I’m not special at all… am I?

That hurts.

*Sigh*, I’m just going to have to live with it.

After realising that I’m not some sort of special reincarnated being, I stared up at the mood god, with one very important thing to ask.

‘Why is this dumb system broken?’

“Dumb?” The moon god glowered, staring at me intensely with those flickering flames, the two fiery orbs glowing harshly. They lent in close, the coins clattering angrily as the god stuck their mask closer to me.

“YOU DARE-” They began to rage, but it quickly died out when they stared closely at me for a second, the raging flames in their eyes dying out as they stared at me closely.

“Th-at is str-ange… Wha-t hap-pend to you?” They mused, leaving slightly worried as they lent back, did something horrifying happen to me?

“A Mis-Match Between mi-Ind Ah-nd the Soul bo-dy”

“You A-re We-ird” The god decided, putting all of the blame for the system messing up on me.

‘how is that my fault?’ I complained, the god making a strange autotuned grunt in response.

“Mos-Tly No-t, The Fa-ult lies O-n the Sun Go-ohd.” The annoyed genderless voice spat.

“Bu-t I Ca-hn f-ix it As a Re-ward for com-Ple-ting Th-is Dun-Geon?”

‘that’d be nice, but shouldn’t I get that for free?’

‘It’s not my fault that this sun god stuffed up…’ I angrily thought, why’d I have to give up my reward because a god stuffed up.

“HA, noth-ing Is FREE Li-ittle One. Tha-t’d Be We-Ird.” The god taunted, the suppressed annoyance and anger I’d been bottling for the last few days peeking its ugly face.

‘YOU, You’re the weird one, are you a guy or girl, y-you freak’ I fumed, and as soon as the words were flung around my head the moon god’s fiery eyes flared for a moment, two long trails of silky fire erupting from the eyeholes and stretching up to the ceiling of his prison.

I felt my blood go cold as the flames licked the ceiling, my rationality coming back to me as I realised that I probably shouldn’t have called the god a freak.

“aitway, i'myay orrysay orfay atwhay everyay eshay aidsay!” Orion calmly interrupted, his body coming inbetween the god and I as he interrupted the god’s rage.

As soon as he did, the god’s rage disappeared, those two flames abruptly returning to their original size as the god let out a chuckle.

“You A-re Righ-t She, ma-DE A Si-mple Mi-Sta-Ke.”

“SHE, Co-uld-n’t know Th-at the sun G-od Sto-le Eve-ry-Thing FROM ME-Ee-eEE, for Ma-King And Shar-ing the PATH. MY BO-OHDY, MY Vo-ICE and BY cOn-se-QUence my SEX.”

“WH-ich In He-er Wo-ords, makes me A free-aa-k.” The god tauntingly drawled, and apparently something Orion said implied that I was a girl. Well he did give me a girly name so he probably thought of me as one.

‘Not my fault that he’s dumb!’ I angrily snapped, catching myself before I thought about anything more dangerous, the whirlwind of emotions in my head barely letting me be cautious around this non-sensical god. The god letting out laugh that sounded like it came through an electrical voice-box that smokers have sometimes.

“A-h, I’m Sa-d to s-Ay this b-ut this A-mus-Ing show Mu-st end n-Ow, f-Or oth-Ther Vi-Si-Tors are on The-ir Way.” The god announced with a clap of their hands, the loud sounds of coins making me uncomfortable as they moved around in their robes.

They tossed something to Orion, the man catching the small item in surprise, I wondered what it could be for a moment before I remembered something much more important.

‘WAIT, what about language, I should be able to speak the language right?’

‘A-And the bond, can you remove that?’

‘Have you fixed my system yet?’

I internally screamed at the moon god, the entity not even bothering to respond to my important questions as they waved a hand, the clitter of coins marking the abrupt moment everything went black.

 

 

 

-------------------------------------------------

---    The moon god    ---

-------------------------------------------------

 

“Ah-nd They-‘re off.” I calmly exclaimed, the small yet perceivable emotions in my voice disappearing the moment the two strange adventurers disappeared, my speech becoming monotone. It was so nice to be myself after they used me to further their goals.

“Now, on-to The next C-Og.” I declared, feeling a little bit excited as a giant pair of doors wavered into existence across the cave, settling between the two sides of the cave filled with tiki torches.

It was an ancient and barbaric piece of wood, the two halves covered in gashes and scrapes, flowing symbols carved into the doors. The doors gave off a majestic vibe of battle and valour, as if a crowd of wounded warriors would step through the doorway at any moment, Vikings ready to drown themselves in mead and songs.

A crack appeared in the wood, one side of the doors slowly swinging open to reveal a group of battered and tired individuals on the other side, the group slowly stepping through.

Some of them were mummering and whispering to each other, but they had an aura of defeat, even though they’d just defeated the final challenge of this dungeon. I could feel them return when the party entered, hearing the cold whisper of things you couldn’t understand, of future and past.

“Wel-Come, My Ex-Pec-Ted visi-Tors, I hope that you A-ll en-Joyed my Dun-geon.” they theatrically announced, earning nothing but glares from the group as they all judgingly stared at my silhouette hiding beneath the floating robe.

“A-part From the re-Wards You-‘ve al-ready got from the Bo-oss, tH-ere Is, One mo-Ore.”

“This kn-Ife, Dest-in-ed To kill a god-ling.” they whispered quietly, but I could hear the ring of truth in those words, that of prophecy. That and a little bit of magic making sure everyone could still hear  them even while they whispered, making the group of humans shiver. They slowly reached under my robe with a non-existent hand and pulled out a small and blunt metal object, holding it between the swathes of cloth. Without my robe, they wouldn’t be able to interact with anything, not even a butter knife, and without my mask, they couldn’t see the children tremble, whisper lies to them or hear their whimpers.

After the sun god stole everything, the pact with them had taken the rest.

“That’s… a butter knife.” A priestly woman muttered, the little object glinting in the firelight as they chucked it through the bars, laughing quietly as the group backed away from where it landed, treating it if it were irradiated.

“What is this?” a young man angrily muttered, pushing through the crowd to pick up the knife , inspecting it closely.

“This isn’t what was promised…” he glowered, and left me, the moon god wondering if everyone is this disrespectful to gods now days. Oh how I wished to turn him into a rodent of some kind, then get an eagle to swoop down and eat him.

“Yo-ou were-Not first, so I-it do-esn’t be-long to you” they happily explained, even I took great pleasure in watching the child’s face squirm, how I wanted to tear into him with words, telling him of how he’d die.

But the pact between me and them didn’t allow me to speak out of line, I couldn’t deviate from my script and had to speak their lines for them. But they showed me how this play goes, and I can’t ruin it for the sake of tormenting this child.

“Elio wait!” another voice intervened, ruining my fun as the priestly girl ran out of the crowd and towards the whiney child.

“What is it Becky?” Elio scowled.

“Who was the first group to come through?” the pious girl named Becky asked, she at least seemed to have some manners. Though they have told me about her, I know what she’ll do in the future. No sane god would want a kin-killer as a priest.

“A Ma-hn with a bow a-And his Pet Dra-ake.” They deliberately misled and lied, letting me relish the scene of the group of adventurers going into a frenzy of talking, shouting to each other in confusion as Elio’s face went red with rage.

“So, it was him?” the cleric named Elio spat, as they shrugged in response, the coins on my robe jingling as I watched the room descend into chaos.

“CALM DOWN!” the Becky girl shouted, the loud chattering getting reduced to mummering as the priest breathed heavily.

“WE DON’T KNOW IF IT WAS ORION, AND IF IT WAS, WHY?” the next round of shouting from Becky finally capturing everyone’s attention.

“He might’ve just fallen down here, and this was the only way out or some other circumstance we. just. don’t. understand.” Becky calmly explained, Elio was still angry but quickly calming down as soon as the priest began working her magic.

“just… innocent until proven guilty, right?” Becky asked Elio, the boy nodding along to her words and making it hard for me to keep to their script. Knowing about the future made moments like this much too funny.

With an abrupt wave of their hand, they shifted the party of adolescents out of the cave, leaving us to be in silence once more and me to work on my magnus opus.

And when they left, for now, I could return to my painting, wishing I could still smile when I saw the murals that I’d made.

Fate had told me of many things, my only company in this lonely cave was them, and they told me of drunken dragons eating dwarves, the bones of the last giants littering the broken remains of the Yggdrasil, and of a certain sun god meeting a fitting end. A fact that both me and them relished, the one who’d lied to us, scorned us, he’d die by his own machinations.

It was lonely down here though, my paintings could only keep the mindless boredom at bay for so long, even with them for company, I still got very bored. With a gentle tug I took off my mask and threw off my robe, returning to the formless state that was me. In a way I’d come to enjoy my punishment a little, the fact I was nothing, yet everything, it’d become a part of me.

Without a body I’d been reduced to dust in the breeze, the shimmering of moonlight on a lake or the whisper of gentle winds through ancient caves.

I was truly a god now…

But what did being a god mean if I couldn’t get the one thing I truly wanted above everything else, even revenge. What is a god without their freedom?

What is the point of being the moon, if I couldn’t witness the magical moments of a still summers night, the light of the pale white moon illuminating the land.

What is a god if they can’t embody their meaning.

But we knew that we’d soon be free, fate has decreed it to be so.

And nothing shall defy the wrath of fate.

 

 

 

-------------------------------------------------

---   Sally   ---

-------------------------------------------------

 

‘yo-ur path ha-s be-en op-ened, find yo-ur fate’

I felt my consciousness return as I heard the whispers of the moon god in my ear, as if they was standing right behind me, my eyes flying open as I whipped my head around looking for the god, but I couldn’t see a trace of the freak.

I took a moment to examine my surroundings, finding myself sitting on a carpet of bark and brown leaves, the bright sun shining overhead as I studied my surroundings dumbfoundedly, seeing massive and ancient trees towering around me. The floor of the forest was covered in small fauna, bushes and ferns everywhere, big smooth stones covered in moss were littered around occasionally, breaking up the imposing lines of trees.

I glanced around and found Orion to be sitting next to me, looking around with an assessing gaze at the forest before standing up confidently.

“Where am I?” He declared monotonally, sounding confident as he declared his absolute lack of knowledge of where we were.

But more importantly, I could now understand what he was saying!

I wouldn’t be as helpless as an English tourist in the depths of Mongolia, I could now at least understand what people wanted with me and assault them if they called me Orion’s pet.

But on that note, did that scam-y freak of a god fix my system, is that why I can understand Orion now?

SYSTEEEM!!!

 

 

Cool, my skills look interesting, and it shows my stats too!

But what exactly do they mean?

 

[Strength: The raw force behind your movements and the power of your blows. The theoretical maximum that you can achieve with your current body, the hardest you can hit, lift or push.]

[Dexterity: The amount you can twist and move your body and the control you have over those movements. It represents the finest movement you can make with claws to the wildest acrobatics you can perform without injuring yourself.]

[Constitution: The toughness of your body, how strong your bones are to the hardness of your scales. Constitution dictates how impervious you are to poisons, sickness and other conditions, including how much punishment you can take before you succumb to death, this is shown by the ‘health’ value.]

[Intelligence: The heights of your raw knowledge and the ability of your problem solving. It dictates the complexity of your magic and your general cleverness, the depth of your studies and how well you can apply that knowledge.]

[Wisdom: Your understanding of yourself and others, of your own soul and the nature of the world. It consists of your insights into the world and the underlying meaning to it all. It’s the other side of coin when compared to intelligence, it represents your understanding of the emotional nature of the world, magic and yourself.

This affects the kinds of magic that you can use and sense, and the flow of different essences that can be stored within your soul.]

[Charisma: The allure you extrude, the appeal others see when they look at you and hear your words. It’s your beauty and the attractiveness of your body to others, while this is often considered romantic in nature, it actually is just how much you attract and influence the positive attention of others.

An important stat for those who rely on the strengths of others. Clerics, priests, warlocks, druids and many others rely on this statistic to borrow the powers of greater beings. Leaders rely on it too, to gather followers and gain their loyalty.]

[Soul: A measure of the volume of your soul and the quality of it. It’s the source of your magic and dictates the potency of it, your soul gathers the magic and essence of the world and stores it in the form of ‘mana’ which is shown by the ‘MP’ value.

The soul is the rawest form of you and is immutable, it contains the bases of your character and being, things like gender, character and potential. It’s shaped by the container it’s put in, which is also poorly summarised by your other stats. Your soul is a thing of complexity and vibrancy that can’t be described with mere numbers, but a measure of its simplest parts is shown by the ‘soul’ stat.]

 

I read through all of descriptions carefully, making sure not to miss any important details. I was happy with the fact that my soul was high, it sounded important given the description, but why was my charisma my second highest stat?

Oh right, the necklace.

Though I’m really not built for fighting, less than ten for both my strength and constitution.

Is ten bad or kind of average? What is average in this world?

And my wisdom was low too, that I didn’t get…

I understand myself pretty well, and nature, it grows and stuff? What else is there to know about it?

But my thoughts stopped when I took a moment to look up and around at the world around me, realising I never took the time to proper admire the brand-new world that existed outside that miserable cave.

I took in a deep breath and soaked in the open air of the surface world, looking up to see patches of a blue sky through the green roof of the forest. I admired the clouds drifting above, dyed orange and a verdant red by the slowly setting sun, the first day I’d spent on the surface was about to end.

It felt magical, the moment stealing away all of the incessant background noise and stopping the never-ending internal monologue. Leaving me to close my eyes and just enjoy the simple feeling of fresh spring air blowing over and inbetween the ridges of my scales, the smell of fresh dirt and vibrant plants.

The coarseness of the rough dirt beneath my paws and the strange sensation of letting my tail slowly move over the ground, admiring the strange sensation of feeling plants rub against my appendage.

I opened my eyes again, feeling content for the first time in a long time, reminded again how much I love my new form, it was so... Lithe, elegant and it made me feel whole, like a suit tailored to fit perfectly, at least compared to the oversized hand-me-downs from before.

Stretching my wings made me feel like happily flying away without a care in the world, moving my feet made me want to jump into a bush or something. Actually, that might just be the whole ‘infant’ thing influencing me.

But eventually I had to get up, waltzing over to where Orion was, realising that in the time I’d spent enjoying life, he’d set up a camp and made a little unlit fireplace with a medium sized rodent lying next to it. When did he catch that?

Probably while I was stuck in my own head I realised while I slowly walked over to the unlit fireplace, feeling hungry as I looked at the dead rodent.

“Could I get Sally to light this?” Orion muttered to himself, clearly not expecting me to understand the pondering he accidentally let slip. While feeling a bit cheeky I sat next to the fire, Orion glancing at me in confusion as I spat out a little flame that landed in the pit filled with wood, the pile immediately bursting into flames.

Orion jumped back as the small explosion of flames almost scorched him, making me aware of how much more power a level seven <spark> has compared to the level one version.

“Can you… understand me?” Orion asked slowly, and I just casually nodded, leaving no doubt about the fact that I could.

“And… what exactly are you?”

Orion’s next question leaving me confused, what’d he mean? I’m clearly a dragon, so I just shrugged.

“Hmm… I’m asking about what the moon god said, they talked like you were… something else put inside a baby dragon?” Orion slowly articulated and I just eagerly nodded in response, realising that this might finally be my chance to tell him how stupid he is.

“ARHH-” I tried to speak, but all that come out was something like a screech. Am I going to learn how to talk again? Dammit.

“I’m going to guess that you can’t talk, right?”

*Nod, nod*

“So… are you, possessing this body, did you and a dragon got body swapped, reincarnated-”

*Nod-nod-nod*

“A reincarnated… animal, dragon, human-”

*nodnodnod*

“So, you, a human, died somehow, reincarnated into that cave as my group and I were raiding it, then got kicked off the edge where you eventually found me, and pulled the dagger out?” Orion neatly summarised.

*NOD*

After Orion finally realised what had happened he let out a long sigh, sitting down on the ground beside me and slumped heavily, like he’d just realised something horrible.

I crept a bit closer to him, poking him on his arm to get his attention, wondering what he’d realised that’d managed to get him to show emotion for once.

“Uhm, so you were a… some woman before… dying, right?” Orion tentatively asked, and leaving me a bit confused as to how to respond to the half-true statement. Women, definitely not, I couldn’t have ever been a woman even if I tried. But I was a human.

*nod-shake*

“yes to human, no to woman. what’s a human not-a-woman?”

“Oh, a man…”

“Ah”

“oh, ah, uh-huh” Orion started mumbling to himself, wondering if I broke him. Is it really that important of revelation that I wasn’t a woman?

I mean I can get why he might be confused but wasn’t this a bit of an over-reaction?

I poked him again, breaking him out of his shock, the man taking a few seconds to look at me, deep in thought as his face scrunched up like constipated gargoyle.

“You already had a name before I renamed you, right? Should I still call you Sally?”

*nod*

“Sally’s fine?” Orion asked with a bit of confusion and let out a bit of a sigh in response. It’s not like I can tell him my old name, I can’t speak and whenever I try and think of my old name, ‘Sally’-

That happens, so Sally works for now and in all honestly, I liked the name, I more hated the whole getting mind controlled into it overwriting my original one.

And that reminds me of another important thing, the stupid bond messing with my head. But I can’t get rid of it, my side of the system says nothing about the breaking of it and I can’t ask Orion about it. So, I have to wait until he brings it up, which he hasn’t done yet.  

“Hungry?” Orion quietly asked as he took out a hunting knife, cutting into the rodent-thing and slicing it up easily creating some neat slices of thin meat from its fatty flesh. I watched him silently as he expertly went to work and leaving me wondering what he did before to get this good at dissecting wild animals.

Though it did leave me wondering you he was, all I really knew about him was his name, that he got stabbed and pushed off the same cliff I was.

So, nothing really.

But I stopped thinking about it when Orion passed me a pile of rodent sashimi, which tasted soooo much better than a dirty cave rat.