Most people have a fear of the unknown. Heck, I do too. It's a rational fear, I think, as you cant prepare or even comprehend what it is you don't know. But beyond that fear, human curiosity drives us to discover and harness what we don't know, and once we've mastered these unknowns, we move on to the next, despite our fear. It's a beautiful thing, and I think that our insatiable curiosity overcoming our fear of the unknown is part of what makes us human.

So anyways, here I am wiggling these glorified pool noodles around trying to figure out what just happened. To recap, I used these noodle things to defend against an attack from an incoming tree, but, instead of simply deflecting the attack, I was flung away at high speed. I threw up the noodles behind me as a shield so I didn't break my back against a tree, and I was flung back once more. I then warped myself to a safer location, and I kept flying. It wasn't until I got some friction by dragging the noodles on the ground did I slow down and eventually fall. 

Now that I've thought about it for a moment, I've noticed 2 particularly noteworthy things about this incident.

• Air resistance seemed to have taken the day off. I'm not too familiar with this sort of thing, but surely I'd need propulsion to maintain my speed, right? Yet, I kept flying at the same speed, despite not having any propulsion whatsoever.
• Gravity was being weird. It wasn't completely negated, because if it was, I'd have just flown off into... do they have space here? They probably do, if there are stars and the moon... Whatever. The point is I maintained my height until I slowed down, then gravity resumed as normal. 

So, yeah, that was weird. I can only assume this happened because of my magic, that being 'dark magic', but I'm having a hard time figuring out what the heck this has to do with darkness. I mean, obviously there's the color of the noodles, but that's it, as far as I can tell. I was expecting, I dunno, necromancy or the powers of decay or just casting darkness or something. I mean, maybe those are still on the table, but... This, well, this wasn't what I was expecting.

Wait a minute, I've seen something similar to this before. When I first arrived in this world, and I warped S into the sky. Yeah, he threw some sand on the ground and used some sort of magic to make it bend and break his fall, allowing him to survive an ordinarily lethal fall without so much as a scratch.

Well, I guess it's not that similar, but it does involve gravity not working as intended. It's not much, but it's a start. 

"Hey, S" I start "Remember that thing where you used sand to break your fall a few days ago?"

"Yeah, why?" He asks in response.

"Well, how did you do it?" 

"Well, I can manipulate earth, or rather sand. I just changed the properties of the stuff I threw down a bit to break my fall." 

"So there's no, like, gravity manipulation or anything?" 

"No, nothing like that." 

Well, looks like we're back to square 1. Honestly, I don't think I'm gonna get much further with my current level of understanding of dark magic, or magic as a whole. It'll just have to be something to keep in mind, for now. 

"Well, despite... whatever that was, we got what we came for, right?" S says, bringing me back to reality.

"Yeah, I'll bring us back to town." I say, opening up the holes here and near town.

"Right."  

We made our way back to the guild hall and received our bounty. Nice, that's 30 gold to each of us. There's nothing in particular I want to buy right now, but a little financial security is good.  We also looked around at the other jobs on offer, but S was unable to find anything interesting, much to his disappointment. It's been, at most, like, 10 minutes since we left the first time, so I'm not really sure what he was expecting. We walked out of the guild hall directionless.

"Well, we have time to kill but not much to do..." S says as we wander town aimlessly.

"Well... what is there to do around here?" I ask.

"Maybe... uh... we could... see... a play? Or... music... or..." He paused, deep in thought for a moment. "I dunno. Normally if I'm bored I just move to the next town over and see what's goin on over there, but we got your sickles comin up soon..." 

"You never just kill time in between jobs?"

"Well, sometimes I play a practical joke if I can think of one, and I make sure to train every now and then, too." 

"You train a lot? Is fighting, like, your hobby?" 

"Well, sort of. Mostly I just go from place to place looking for something to do, and that something happens to be fighting more often than not. Whether it be random highway bandits, a mad beast, or something odd for a job, fighting happens a lot." 

"So you look for fights?" 

"Admittedly, that is the case a lot of the time. The way I see it, if I'm gonna fight a lot, I may as enjoy it and get good at it." 

"Do have a place to return? Like, when you're done wandering between places."

For a moment, just a brief moment, he had a dreadful look on his face. A very pained look. In the next, it was gone. "Nah, not really. If I had to pick a place, I guess it'd be here. I always end up back in this place sooner or later. Though, even here, I rarely stay long." 

As much as I would like to inquire about what brought upon that face he made earlier, but... I think it best not to. I don't think it's my place to ask. 

"So, what's your goal, anyways? Like, why do you wander?" I ask.

"As I said earlier, just looking for something to do. I try to find interesting places, meet interesting people, and see interesting things. I plan to do that until... I think of something better to do."

"That sounds tiring, but... seems fun, as well."

"Yeah, it certainly is. I never see the same places or people for long, so it's rarely ever boring." 

Never the same people for long, huh... I wonder how lo-

Breaking my thoughts, S continues. "Well, usually I don't see the same people for long, but it's hard for me to look away from you, for some reason. I look forward to having you on my travels, naturally." He spoke this as naturally as he breathed.

I can't help but chuckle. It's like he read my mind. Looks like he's already included me in his future travel plans, too... I almost feel stupid for ever assuming otherwise. 

"I see. I look forward to traveling with you, too." 

"What're you all smiles about?" He says, a little confused. 

..."nothing."