Chapter 5

 

I opened my eyes to find the forest awash in light again. At least, I remembered where I was on waking up. But how had I fallen asleep? And for that matter, just how many hours did I sleep? Back on earth, well the other earth, I normally slept for six to eight hours. And if I felt relaxed enough, I could stretch it to fourteen. But I wouldn’t call my current conditions relaxed. Not at all.

My feet and hands were numb to the bone. I couldn’t even feel anything in them anymore. Trying to flex my fingers and toes sent pinpricks of pain all throughout my extremities. It took me close to ten minutes before I could flex them with no pain. Then slowly and carefully, I untied myself and began the long climb down. That brought other different kinds of pain with it, but I bore through.

I stretched a little to remove some of them knots in my muscles and jogged on the spot. The few sunrays that landed on me were warm, invitingly warm. I cut off my warmup routine when I noticed that the river was bathed in divine sunlight. Just what time of day was it? Early morning would have the trees near the river cast their shadows over it. It looked more and more close to mid if not late morning.

I picked up my trusty staff and went to the river. The sun was at an angle in the sky barely peeking over the tree tops. I gave it a late mid-morning score. The reason for the river being sunlit was due to its east-west flow. I approached it and dipped my feet in.

The water was warm. Very warm indeed. I placed my staff aside and began taking a full on shower. I didn’t have any soap or a scrubber, but my nails did just fine as scrubbers. After a few minutes, I walked out feeling fresh as the time I woke up after killing the not-caterpillar. I moved to a place with cleaner water, rinsed my mouth and drank to my fill.

The swimming fish were tempting, especially to my empty stomach, so I decided to try my hand at fishing again. There was plenty of trees and saplings around, getting the right stick for fishing wasn’t hard. Creating the prongs at the fishing end was easy enough. Keeping those prongs open wasn’t. I used the bark from some of the younger saplings to tie in the stick pieces holding the prongs apart. Then went back to the river.

Due to the slow flow of the river, I risked going in knee deep. I stood still with the prongs submerged to help me get a more accurate location of the passing fish in relation to the prongs. That, I had learnt during my previous attempts the day before.

I stood there for minutes before any fish deigned to approach my location. I attacked the first fish to get close enough and missed. But I did glaze it, which was an achievement I hadn’t achieved before. Minutes later, other fish began swimming by. Some were sizable and others small. I prepared to go for a sizable one when I saw a shadow swimming towards my location.

I nearly jumped out of the water in fright before I noticed it was just another fish. A black bodied long streamlined fish with cat whiskers at its mouth. What were they called again? Catfish or mudfish? I had heard lungfish too? All that didn’t matter. All that mattered was the fact that it was the biggest fish I had seen and it was coming my way.

I stared at the fish, then my prong and back to the fish. It might be too big for my prong, I thought. But the course was set, better to try and fail than to not try at all. I knew the smarter saying was to always go for the attainable, but to me, it looked damn attainable enough.

When it arrived, some of the smaller fish swam away from me. It began munching on the mud around my feet, before getting the nerves to try my feet instead. The reminder of how I had arrived into the Realm of Mesily wasn’t welcome, but right then, my stomach took precedent over a past trauma. I might not have known its exact name, but I knew one thing for certain; the head was a no go.

The thing I remembered from my previous life was that the fish had a very sturdy skull. My stick prong would not be able to penetrate it. I wished I had stayed with a pointed spear, that seemed like it would have worked better.

It was around a half arm in length, with its body undulating as it kept on trying to bite me. Some of its attempts were actually quite painful. It switched positions, bringing it in direct line of my thrust range. I counted down from 3, 2, 1, THRUST!

And I hit my mark, right in the middle. But my joy was short-lived. It made a jerk that nearly ripped the stick from my hands. Realizing that the stick was not strong enough to hold it, I quickly made a forward and up motion to prevent the fish from slipping out. The moment it cleared the water’s surface, I hurled it towards the shore. But I heard the stick break.

Knowing it wouldn’t make it, I took off in a run towards where it was headed. It landed with me a few steps out and began swimming back to the river. But the still stuck pieces of prongs made the swim less impactful than it had been before. I wasted no time scooping it up and throwing it farther out of the river. I smiled as I watched it sail to more than ten meters clear of the river bank before I fell into the water myself.

I quickly got up and ran to where the fish had landed. I found it slithering, trying to make its way back to the river. I needed to kill it fast. I looked around for anything I could use to crack its head in. The staff, I remembered. I rushed for it at my bathing site and came back for the fish.

“Bludgeoning Level 2,” I said as I brought the thicker head of the staff down on the fish. My voice had come out a little softer than I was used to.

I missed the head but not the body. Hitting somewhere between the neck and the stomach. If it even had a neck. A few more whacks and I finally got the head smashed in. It still writhed for a while longer. I went back to the river and rinsed myself together with the staff. No point carrying fish brain matter with me. And the fish too, I managed to open wider one of the holes left by the prongs and used the opening to remove all the internals. At the very least, the fish had red blood. It had me convinced that the not-caterpillar had not been edible after all.

Now that I had food, how to cook it became the issue. Eating raw was out of the question. The only time that was allowed was with salt-water residents. Not fresh-water. And the river was most definitely fresh-water. The dampness of the forest meant that starting fire the old hunter-gatherer style was out of the question. It was time to acquire magic.

I carried my fish and my staff back to the tree I had spent the night at. Leaving the staff at the base again, I slowly climbed back up on the tree. The fish made it all the more harder. Back on my branch, I hooked the fish on a small protrusion and called up Clare.

‘I want that [Mana Manipulation] Skill.’

I had considered talking out loud since my throat seemed to have soothed out, a little too much if you asked me. But I had gotten used to the sub-vocalization, and I didn’t want to be talking to myself all alone in the middle of the forest.

‘Okay.’

‘Wait! What exactly does it do?’

‘The Skill helps you to access the Mana within yourself and form it into something that expresses your intentions when you let it out of you.’

It was more or less what I had been thinking, so I let the other questions of how exactly one was supposed to form it go for the time being. First, I needed to get it. If I couldn’t make it work, then I would ask those questions. And many others.

‘Okay. Give it.’

‘Are you sure you want to acquire the Skill [Mana Manipulation]?’

‘Yes,’ I replied and waited.

And nothing, apart from Clare’s confirmation that I had acquired the Skill. I thought I would feel a change in me, an awareness of the mystics. But all I got was the cool breeze on my naked body. Clothes, Hartie. Clothes.

Focus. The Skill is called [Mana Manipulation] not [Mana Sense]. [Mana Sense]? That brought me out of my thoughts. ‘Clare, why isn’t there a Skill called [Mana Sense]?’

‘There is.’

‘And I do not have access to it.’ I concluded.

‘There are many more General Skills. Some will become available to you as you Level up.’

‘And others will not. In the topic of Levelling up, how… forget it. Fire first. How do I make fire, if I cannot even sense the Mana in me?’

‘You do not need [Mana Sense] to sense the Mana within you. With the Skill [Mana Manipulation], you should be able to sense it. Try to concentrate your intention for fire to a point in you and then direct it out of your body. The most preferred direction is through the hands.’

I tried to do what Clare was saying, I really did. For minutes I kept picturing flames. From small candle-flames to the roaring infernos of a burning forest, but I felt nothing. I gave up then. I just want a fire, a small one will do. As that thought went through my mind, I felt a tug. Barely there, but still something weird. I tried picturing it again, but to no avail. What had been different then? I asked myself. I had been picturing all kinds of fire and getting nothing in return, and the moment I whine about wanting one is when it starts to respond. Was I supposed to beg? I didn’t think so. The want? No. What was so different between picturing something and wanting it?

Then I remembered. I was in a magical realm, if I want something bad enough and I have the Mana for it, then I might be able to bring it to being. I changed gears, and focused on that want. The notion that my mind was powerful enough to turn dreams into reality.

And I felt it again. I latched on it, and focused hard enough to form a coherent fire in me. I started to feel warm inside. And it was getting warmer steadily. Faster still. No one told me I could burn myself. I knew letting go was not an option. Call it a sixth, seventh… hell, call it the nth sense if you will. But I knew that would be bad news for me. I directed that energy to my hands and pointed them away from me concentrating as far as I could think. I didn’t want it anywhere near me. And let go.

A mote of fire quickly coalesced at a point between my outstretched hands, and streaked away for a few meters before disappearing into thin air. I was left flabbergasted. That was it? All that energy I had felt inside had amounted to nothing more than a streak of light? I felt cheated.

‘What was that? Where did all that energy I felt inside go?’ I asked Clare.

‘You wanted to ignite something. When the [Fire Bolt] didn’t find anything to ignite, it dissipated.’

‘Is that the name of the Skill I just used?’

‘Yes.’

‘I have to direct it at something that can catch fire for it to show its effects? Like wood?’

‘Yes.’

I finally had the means to start a fire. I also had the fish and my hungry stomach. All that was left was the fuel needed to create a fire that would cook the fish for me to put in my hungry stomach. I quickly took my fish and climbed down. I hanged it on top of my staff and began looking for dry wood to use as fuel for my fire.

It took a while, but I managed to gather a sizable pile of reasonably dry wood by the base of the tree. I arranged a third of it into a conical pile and repeated the whole process again. I decided to only try a small amount of energy or was it Mana, first. A mote of fire streaked fast to the pile and blossomed into a human-head sized ball of flame on contact with the pile. I watched in glee as the wood caught fire properly and started crackling as it fully dried out and burned.

I picked my fish, skewed it through with a wet stick I had picked up while gathering the wood and held it over the fire. After a minute, an aroma that had my mouth watering and stomach grumbling, wafted through to my nose. I resisted the urge to just dive in then and there. Slowly turning the fish as the black skin sizzled up and some of the water and oils dropped into the flame below, making it jump higher on occasions.

After what felt like forever, I climbed back up my tree with the reasonably roasted fish. I didn’t want to have a confrontation with any predators drawn by the smell of my tasty fish. I tried picking a piece but it was too hot to the touch. I decided to explore some more of my information as I waited for it to cool down.

‘Clare, explain to me the General Skills.’

‘You already know about [Mana Manipulation]. Next, [Identify]. The Skill allows you access to information about yourself and other things in the Realm of Mesily. The higher its Level, the more information it can discern. The Level of the thing you are [Identify]ing also determines how much you see.

‘The [Regeneration] Skills are essential if you choose a lifestyle that is injury-prone, labor-intensive and or Mana-demanding. Without them, if your Resource and Regeneration Attributes are equal, it would take twenty-four hours to fully recover from zero or near zero Status. That only applies if no other impairments are in effect.

‘[Language Proficiency] is needed for you to communicate with other people. The higher its Level, the more different languages you can comprehend and communicate. And the faster you can learn a new language.’

‘If I don’t pick [Language Proficiency]?’

You will not be able to understand anyone.

‘Like anyone at all?’

Yes.

Fuck. That would suck. Or not.