System Lost: My Own Best Friend

This sucks! I'm freezing cold, soaking wet, sore all over, and I'm stuck in front because Allison has no spine and Violet—

I don't know what her problem is, actually. She's just mopey for no reason, I guess. I've also got a splitting headache from the World Engine spitting out a giant ACCESS DENIED at me for trying to use my own stupid skill. Which means, of course, that it's not "mine" at all.

I'm starting to get a feel for how this world works. Magic is...a thing. It's everywhere, sitting just behind the physical world that we can see and touch. The World Engine keeps calling it "latent entropic potential" which is stupid. Any high energy system will decay into a low energy state over time—that's what entropy is. There's probably something I'm missing or don't understand, because by my understanding, "latent entropic potential" should literally just mean energy.

That doesn't track with the World Engine defining "sapient" as a threshold of entropic potential. What does being able to think have to do with energy? I'm guessing that magic is the answer.

I wish I could see that weird, beautiful dimension of magic again. All the answers in the world are there, I just know it. But I can't touch them without popping my head like a balloon. I need better conduits—ways to...narrow my viewpoint, as much as I hate it. Things like the candles, or the Laser Gecko eyes.

When I first awakened, Allison had stupidly shoved her entire head, metaphorically speaking, into the realm of magic. It was too much—overwhelming. The candle was different, and so are skills. They're little windows into that dimension. Narrow. Controlled.

Too controlled! The skills, anyway. They're like little pre-packaged parcels of magic being threaded through a tiny pinhole. I can learn how to tug harder on that thread, but the World Engine has absolute control over what comes through. My last experiment proved that.

So I need something else. Another pinhole, but one that isn't so controlled. A way to peer into that world of magic without being torn apart by what I see. Sooner rather than later—I need a way to make fire, or at least heat before we freeze to death thanks to Vi dumping freezing cold water all over us.

"Where do our waypoints keep disappearing to?" Violet asks, snapping me out of my thoughts.

I look up and blink. I hadn't really been paying attention to where I was going, just letting muscle memory take over as I walked back home. I'd feel bad about that, but obviously Vi is paying enough attention for the both of us.

"Huh?"

"The candles we've been putting under our signs," she clarifies. "They keep vanishing."

I adjust my glasses and peer at the little etching one of them drew into the wall to help us find our way through the caves. Normally, there'd be a candle lighting it up, but as Vi says, they tend to vanish when left unattended for a while.

"Probably eaten, right?" I suggest. "You already figured that out."

"Eaten?" Vi asks skeptically. "By what? We've only seen a snail do that once, and there aren't nearly enough of them around to account for all of the missing candles."

"Anything. Magic is a big part of the ecology down here."

"How can you be so sure?"

I shrug. "I'm not, but think about it. The worm I dissected doesn't have any organs to make its silk, nor is there any physical mechanism I can think of for the Laser Geckos to generate their heat beams. I bet the Rock Snails are the same—though they're more sneaky about it."

"How so?"

I run my hand along the wall as we come up on the empty stone shell of the first living thing we encountered. It's pitted and scratched in places, in a way that doesn't really line up with regular erosion—not that anything in these tunnels makes much sense.

"Just a hunch, but I think the snails are more economical about the way they use magic," I start to explain. "Because they actually eat rocks. The spears regenerate too fast to be anything but magic—unless they've got an internal magazine or something—but the material for their shells and spears is collected from the environment."

"That...does explain the odd scraping noise we heard from it," Violet muses. "I thought that was their shell dragging along the walls or something."

Not a totally unreasonable assumption, though it doesn't fit at all with the other creatures we've encountered all being ambush predators. With how few living things we've seen, even magical creatures probably need to conserve their energy as much as possible and feed opportunistically.

"Come to think of it," I wonder, "if the things down here eat magic, why hasn't our Labyrinth of Candles been swarmed and picked clean by now?"

"I wouldn't speak too soon," Violet warns. "Look."

Ahead of us, on the path into our humble home, are more of those worms, crawling their way slowly towards the labyrinth.

"Well that doesn't bode well," I grumble. "Think you can take them?"

"Not if they all spit webs like that first one, no," Vi answers. "There must be at least a dozen of them—did they follow us?"

"Either us, or the smell of all that tasty magic. What do we do?"

Violet hesitates for a long time, but I just fiddle with the handle of the knife in our belt while I wait. Fighting's not really my thing, and I'm still a magical novice so it's not like I can just clear the hall with a fireball or something.

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I should probably get off this fire thing—we're underground.

"You said they make silk by magic, right?" Violet finally asks.

"Probably, yeah."

"So the ones that freshly hatched wouldn't be able to spit webs, otherwise they'd have turned us into a cocoon as soon as you unleashed them."

I don't miss the note of accusation in her voice at that last bit, but I ignore it and nod.

"Makes sense, sure."

"Can you...tell which ones are magical enough to spit webs?" she asks nervously.

That's a good question. Obviously I have no idea what the exact threshold is, but I do have a baseline that I can measure against.

"I'll try."

I focus on the worms ahead of me and try to compare them against the worm we just encountered. I feel a bit of pressure in my skull as I draw on the skill's power. It really wants me to actually organize them physically rather than just categorize in my head, but I push my way through it and start shuffling them around in my mind.

"One...two have as much magic as the last one or more," I say, pointing to each of them with the knife's blade. Now that I look, they might be slightly larger, too. "No promises that the rest can't spit webs, but those two definitely can."

"Can you point each one out in order of most to least magical?"

"Yeah, duh, that's literally all my stupid class does."

I point out each one in turn, starting from the two most magical and working my way down. There's not much of a pattern to it, except that the most magical ones are slightly closer to the back, maybe because the others got ahead of them while they were busy eating.

With the order carefully memorized, I draw my knife in a reversed grip and take a deep breath to prepare myself.

"Can you get one of them alive?" Maggie asks. "I want to try studying how these monsters actually use magic."

I pause, frowning. "I'm not catching you a pet, Magdalena."

"I like how you use my full name when you want to sound serious," she teases. "But really—they're cute and all, but the reason I want one is because they're the least dangerous things we've met, and I'm not going to get another chance. They won't be babies forever."

That sends a shiver down my spine. One of these things almost killed us as a newborn and they're the least dangerous monsters? At least the geckos are fairly docile to us.

"I'll see what I can do," I offer. "No promises."

"Thanks V!" she responds cheerfully.

Her playful tone grates on my nerves, and I'm almost certain she's doing it on purpose. This is serious, and once again she's happy to make demands while Allie and I do all the work.

I shake my head and put it out of my mind. I need to focus right now, and she does have a point. Keeping one of the monsters alive might help us to learn more about this place. As long as it's not a threat—but we can deal with that part later.

I take a breath and mark my first target. These monsters are invading my home, my territory, and I'm defending that. I feel a surge of strength filling my body as my skill acknowledges that commitment.

[Retaliation]

Increased Power and Resilience when fighting to defend someone or something.

I lunge forward and stab the first worm center mass, then quickly flick the creature away. The other worms react immediately, twisting to face me with their lamprey maws. I throw myself to the side and keep my hands apart as two of them spit at me. The one I was expecting misses me, but the other takes me by surprise and catches me in the side.

The webs themselves are harmless, but my cloak catches on it, sticking awkwardly to my side and limiting mobility. I mentally berate myself for leaving it on, but focus on the fight in front of me.

With my free hand, I pin the body of my next target and swiftly chop off its head, wincing at the sound of the blade grating against stone. Another web strikes me from behind, but the cloak catches it—maybe wearing it was better after all. I whirl around and stab the offending worm, once more flicking it away to bleed out at a safe distance from me.

By now, the other worms have started swarming me. They're slow, but I had to wade right into the middle of them to get at the spitters. One latches painfully onto my ankle, but rather than bend down to tear it off immediately, I retreat back a few steps to get away from the rest, watching warily for any more web attacks.

Mercifully, none come as the remaining creatures writhe awkwardly towards me. I reach down and grunt in pain as I tear the worm off my foot, then stab it once in the head.

My leg is bleeding now—quite a lot, actually—but with the main threats dealt with, the rest of the worms are too slow and awkward to pose much of a threat. I set about methodically stabbing each one, and even have the luxury to take my time to avoid any more damage to the knife. It's the only weapon I have, and I need to take better care of it. It's already been through a lot.

Maggie interrupts me as I hold the last worm down. "Wait! Leave this one alive!"

I frown, glancing down at my bleeding ankle. "They're plenty dangerous without their webs, Maggie."

"Well pull out its teeth or something!" she insists. "I need that specimen!"

I grimace at the circular maw with its rows of sharp, jagged teeth. No wonder I'm bleeding so much.

"That's not an option," I declare. "I'm killing it."

I raise the knife to finish the little monstrosity off.

"Hold on!" Allison interrupts, and I pause. "I trust Mags on this one, Vi. If she needs her...gross wormy thing to study, then let's just handle it carefully, okay?"

"Allie," I groan with an exasperated huff. "It's too dangerous."

"Come on," she pleads. "They're really slow and awkward, and this one can't even spit webs."

"Yet," I insist. "It can't spit webs, yet. And again, it can still bite us. We have no way to contain it."

"Let me study it now and I'll kill it when I'm done," Maggie suggests. "It's not ideal. I'd rather keep it around for a bit, but something is better than nothing."

I sigh and pick up the worm near its neck so that it can't twist around to bite me. It feels disgusting. It's not slimy, per se, but it's weirdly slippery and I can feel it undulating in my hand as it tries to escape. I have to keep adjusting my grip to avoid dropping it.

"This is stupid. We need to treat our ankle first."

"We can drop it far away while I bandage my foot," Allison offers. "It's...really slow, and the map room is big enough that I'll be able to keep an eye on it."

I want to argue, but it's two against one and we're still bleeding. "Fine."

I shudder at the feeling of the worm in my hand and grimace down at the thing, holding it at arm's length.

"Ew! Gross! You didn't tell me it was so..."

My words fail me, so I hurriedly limp off towards the map room so that I can drop the dang thing. I'm halfway there before I realize that I'm Allison again, and Vi just dropped me in front.

"Oh, come on!" I protest. "How come everyone but me can do that?"