A Cracked Star

[Stella]

 

“So, do you have any clue as to what this is?” I asked Arya.

 

“I saw a glimpse of a memory of hers, but I don't understand why we have this now and not when I first woke up.” She says. “Though, I believe we’re all connected, not some mental thing or family. I think we’re literally the same soul, so if one of us has a change, we all will.”

 

“How are you so sure of that?” I ask.

 

“I’m not, it's just the only way I can think of that would allow me to have both of your memories. Also the fact that where ever we are is currently inside of us.” She says. “You think if I inspect our titles we could get a clue?”

 

“You have the inspect skill?” I ask.

 

Arya nods, “I don’t know how to really use it though.”

 

“Oh it’s simple, just draw some mana into your eyes while thinking of the skill.” I say.

 

“I’ll try it on the titles then.” Arya says, closing her golden eyes to focus. 

 

I take the time to go look at Dawn who's been asleep this entire time. The same white hair with the ends being the same dark purple starry night. Her ears and tail unmoving as she lays here, if it wasn’t for the fact that she also had the gauntlet appear I would have thought she was dead. 

 

Looking at the gauntlet on my own hand, I notice the part that reaches towards the end of my fingers doesn't fully cover them, likely for our claws to still be useful. I can’t tell what this metal is though, it’s very light which I’m glad for, I don’t think it will mess with my archery. 

 

I wonder if it’s mana conductive? I’ve heard the crafters back home talk a lot of the benefits having mana conductive metal can be for armor and artifacts. Anywhere from making it easier to invoke and empower skills, to making items that react to the environment through ambient mana and the type of mana. 

 

I would always end up with a headache listening to their long debates around the metal. What did they call it anyways? Mithral, wait didn’t they call it Truemetal? I think I remember them calling it that. Though it wasn’t the best metal for mana anyways, I think they said Silver was used often in creating enchanted rings or something.

 

What was mithral used for then? It had some reaction with mana but I can’t remember what. I could always ask some of the dwarves back home I guess. Even then, I still don’t know what this thing is made of, how it even formed is also a mystery.

 

“I got it.” I hear Arya call out. 

 

Turning towards her, I see her running over here with her tail wagging behind her expressively. What makes her so excited? We’re not that far from each other that she has to run.

 

“The titles, inspecting them worked.” She says.

 

“W-well what did it say?” I questioned.

 

“Let me show you.” She says, making me confused since showing system screens should be impossible without an identification scroll. 

 

As if to prove to me my thinking is wrong, two system boxes pop up in front of Arya before she motions for it to turn my way.

 

 

My eyes stay on the second title for a while, surprising me as I understand what it means. 

 

“See, see, you can just see my system too!” Arya exclaims. 

 

“You know what the second title means right?” I ask. 

 

“No, what about it?” Arya just tilts her head letting her ears fall to the side, she clearly doesn’t notice what I’m pointing out.

 

“It can only mean one thing.” I point at her and Dawn, “We are the same soul. I’ve known that something was wrong with my soul for as long as I can remember…” 

 

“What, oh, ohhh.” Arya stands there for a bit before starting to laugh hysterically. “HAHAHA, YOU’RE RIGHT!” 

 

She starts to stare at the ground as her ears and tail stop moving. ”You’re right. . . this entire time I’ve been worrying about it so much.” 

 

She slumps to the ground after her small outburst. She doesn’t speak for a while, only letting out small whimpers before I see tears starting to fall. The sight of it leaves me speechless, why is she going through so many mood swings?

 

I try to think of something as I start to pat her head hoping it would calm her down somewhat. What does this make us? Alternate personalities or different people? Actually, I still need to figure out where we are. I have an idea after seeing the result from inspecting our first title. But she never did answer me did she?

 

Do we even count as sisters, I mean, the system seems to see us as individuals? Meaning it wouldn’t be wrong to count us as sisters. Yeah I can work with that I think.

 

“Hey Arya, what do you feel about accepting me as a fellow sister?” I ask with as warm a smile I can make.

 

“You’d accept me?” She says, wiping her nose. “Even after knowing that I have memories of your life?”

 

“I don’t see why not, if we’re going to be together from now on, I’d rather it be with people I can get along with.” I point out.

 

“Yeah that’s not wrong.” She says with a small chuckle. “I think I would like that actually.” 

 

“Alright then, welcome to the family Arya Vamir!” I say, wrapping my arms around her. “Now, where are we?”

 

Arya laughs lightly before responding, “You saw the effect our second title gives right?” I nod my head. “Well I think that’s where we are.”

 

“So how would we want to leave then?” I ask.

 

“I dunno.” She says. “The way I entered was by concentrating on the center of our roots. It was around our heart.” 

 

“Roots?” I say, confused at the terminology. 

 

“Yeah, they seem to originate from around our heart and extend all the way through our body.” She says.

 

“Oh, you mean our mana veins.” I chuckle.

 

“I like calling them roots so I’ll probably stick with that.” Arya replies.

 

“Whatever you say; anyways, you’re saying that if I concentrate on the center of the ‘roots’, I should be able to leave?” I questioned Arya.

 

“Uhhh. . . yes!” She smiles. “Oh, just to let you know, but don’t panic when you go out.”

 

“Why would you say that?” I ask.

 

“Over the last few days there has been a wolf helping me out, and overall has been staying near me through the nights.” She explains. “The wolf has very soft fur, and I was laying against him before I found myself here.”

 

“Okay.” I reply before I locate the core she was talking about. “Let's get through this then.”

 

~~~~~

 

I find myself laying on top of the wolf Arya spoke of. Looking around I realize it is nighttime before I see what I can only assume is a campfire. Poorly made in my opinion but I can see it barely working. The wolf’s head perks up, likely having felt me moving. 

 

I guess my next move should be to actually make a place for us to stay until we’re situated enough that we can leave this place. Come sunrise, which should be soon based on the colors starting to take hold off in the distance, I should start gathering materials to build some makeshift tools.

 

The wolf gets up and walks over to me, slowly pushing its head into my gut before letting out some whimpers and walking off. Seemingly to give the notion that it will be back with food, lining up with what Arya said earlier about it bringing food. 

 

I wonder what it gets out of this, does it see us as a friend, or does it feel we’re part of its pack? It’s a very weird situation no matter how I look at it. I won’t press too much into figuring it out for now since it seems the wolf isn’t going to harm us. I can’t think of a reason why it would if it lets us sleep on him.

 

~~~~~

 

I spend a bit of time lazing around waiting for sunrise, while I can see visibly in the dark it’s still hard without having colors to visualize everything. Dad hasn’t trained me to move around using darkvision in a while.

 

Once it reached sunrise I decided that I should search around for any herbs through the help of the forest. Using my connection to plants through my unique skill, I speak towards the forest with a slight bow. “Spirits of the forest, I would greatly appreciate it if you showed me the way to find some useful herbs.”

 

Shortly after that, the trees and plants move to allow a path for me to press on. Seeing this I know the spirits listened, I thank them before carrying on. “Thank you for the help, if you need me then you only need to notify me.”

 

As I walk through the path they created I notice along the way a plethora of herbs, some I know of that are more common and found throughout many forests. Some herbs are more rare that I have no clue of what they can exactly do. Thankfully with the help of Dryad’s Knowledge, I’m able to tell if a herb is dangerous, whether it be a poison or somehow harmful to someone.

 

I did see a couple herbs I read of in books my mother has, like Ashine leaves or Belramba roots. I grabbed a few leaving most of what I found untouched, I didn’t want to take too much from the forest. This also allowed for me to learn we could bring items into our soul space. It seems to act like a dimensional storage, though I don’t know how I feel about using my soul as a storage space.

 

Anyways, Ashine is pretty interesting, what is known is that it can be used to combat the virus that lycanthropes are known to carry. It boosts the natural resistance a person has if they acquire the virus. It's not guaranteed to stop the virus but it has shown an increase in the number of people not turning. 

 

"What are you doing sister?" Arya says, causing me to flinch from the suddenness at which she appeared. 

 

"Could you not scare me like that?" I frown, turning towards her, my eyes widen when I see her floating beside me. I can somewhat see through her, having a transparent look to her. “Did you know you could do that?” 

 

“Hmm?” She replies, before looking down at herself. “Woaah, I can float!” 

 

“I guess not.” I say, smiling at her antics as she floats around me quickly. “I’ve been looking for any herbs around here.” 

 

“I figured that when I noticed them just appearing in between the beds.” Arya says.

 

“Yeah, I need to figure out how I’m going to store them correctly there.” I replied.

 

Figuring I have enough herbs for now, I start to make our way back towards our original location. 

 

~~~~~

 

A week has passed now and there is still no sign of Dawn waking up yet. Arya threw out a few ideas on why that could be the case, the most likely one being that she isn’t used to our new body. 

 

“Her world didn’t have any demi or non-human races, they didn’t even have magic.” She exclaims.

 

“How do they go about their life then? Magic has many uses even if I don’t use it often.” I point out.

 

“That’s because they are scientifically progressive. Learning more about the world and how things work.” She says.

 

“So how is that any different from using magic?” I ask.

 

“They don’t do it through mana or making spells to do their stuff. And it’s not even because they didn’t want to but because they can’t.” She says as she floats upside down. “They didn’t have mana to influence the world around them. Some of the memories I’ve seen showed Dawn in a classroom learning about history or other topics.” 

 

“That’s interesting, okay now enough of that, we keep getting off tracked.” I say.

 

“Sorry.” Arya says, her tail betraying her lie there. 

 

We’ve been trying to get used to our magic, I noticed early on that it was harder for me to control how much mana we use. Often using too much or too little with the few spells I know using fire. Arya tried to help out as much as she could with Dawn's memories, but they didn’t prove helpful all the time. We did learn a few things but they only gave a brief insight into possible attacks or uses in the future.

 

Ice and earth magic haven’t gone far either, we’ve managed to create large spears, if you can even call them that. But it’s possible to control them in the air and launch them towards a target. Messing with the terrain around is also easy. I didn’t let us do it in large amounts though as I don’t want to mess with the forest too much.

 

Our experiments with space magic haven’t been effective so far. It’s very hard to picture what I’m doing as I never thought of space as something that could be controlled. But it’s weird because I’ve had the feeling that I can see these lines, as if they are what ties space together.

 

When I try to control those lines, I can feel them resist my grasp. Arya had the idea that we could pull them apart but when we attempted it, I had the feeling something very bad would happen if we went through with it.

 

My senses feel improved, giving the same feeling whenever I use space magic. Somehow, Arya figured out how to use our space affinity in a way that we can spread our senses around us. Whenever we empower them with our space affinity we can capture everything around us for a short range. 

 

The range can actually go further but as we are currently, it starts to overload our minds with information and causes the spell to break. We had it happen once and it’s a sensation I never want to feel again. It felt like someone was taking nails and slamming them into our mind. The headache that came with it was also the worst. 

 

A few of the tests actually caused us to pass out from how much stress we put on ourselves. The only issue we have with the spell now is maintaining the flow of mana, making sure that we don't put too much into it causing the spell to overcharge. 

 

~~~~~

 

It's been six weeks since we've woken up, the wolf that accompanied us left at some point, probably back to its pack if it has one. I think we’ll see it again, it’s just a matter of when I think. 

 

Today we decided to take a break from our magic in favor of going on a hunt. I can feel myself in the mood for a good hunt now. For some reason my emotions are getting harder to control when I think of activities I’d find fun. For now we're just sitting in a tree with a few spears made of ice.

 

"How many do you think we'll catch today?" Arya asked, clearly growing impatient.

 

"Probably one or two, they run at any source of sound." I said. "We could catch more but I don't want to use attacks and traps that would harm the skin on them. Remember our waterskin?"

 

"Yeah. . . that elk did a good job on it last week." 

 

"Still don't know how it got latched around its antlers with how big they were. Damn thing wouldn't go down even when it had multiple wounds from our spears." 

 

"A mystery for another time, look, the boars are almost here"

 

Sure enough, we see the herd of boars in the distance coming our way now. 

 

"There's about six or seven of them. We should be able to catch a few.” I say. “Maybe if someone didn’t tear so much of our clothing up we wouldn’t need to catch more than one.”

 

Prepping the spears, the boars slowly got closer towards the area we put the bait, then their actions seemed to come to a halt. 

 

"That's strange. They shouldn't have been able to hear us." 

 

Throwing the spear at the boar leading the rest of them, I aim for right behind its front leg. However the boar seemed to have seen something as it started to panic, making me miss my spear throw. 

 

"Damn!" I jump out of the tree after grabbing a spear that’s embedded into the side of the tree to chase after the other boar. 

 

"At this rate the boars are going to outrun us, we need to do something Arya." 

 

"Let's switch then, we can try 'that' if we want to catch them"

 

"Are you sure? The backlash from it might not be worth the boars."

 

"Do you not need the leather anymore? What about our food? I know there are other large animals nearby but you told me yourself the forest has been acting weird recently." 

 

"Arya, the food isn't worth it if we damage ourselves again!" I yelled back. "Besides, we can go a day or two eating fruits and nuts. It's fine-"

 

I stop talking as I hear some small whimpers from behind me. Sounding familiar, I turn around to see the source of the sound. It’s the wolf that had stayed with Arya and I for a while after we woke up. It has a few areas of its fur missing, likely from wounds it received recently.