Markets and Multiverses

We spent a few minutes simply staring at the illusory ravine, lost in thought. None of us had a great idea for how to immediately kill the strange creature, and directly building a bridge across the ravine felt dangerous as well. Seeing Ella’s worried expression made me feel very worried, because I was starting to wonder if this was an insurmountable problem. If we died only a day or two away from the Silver City, I would feel incredibly frustrated when we returned to the Market. I had all sorts of new and interesting Skills I was excited to try, and I had just gotten a hint about how to further develop my magic system. If I died before getting to see any of my ideas through, I would lose a huge amount of potential progress, which might cause us to die when we tried to buy more lives in the future. And Ella, Anise, Felix’s parents, and Ansie’s parents weren’t connected to the Market. Dying meant saying goodbye to all of them.

I wasn’t ready for that. I had opened up my heart and truly started treating Anise as a friend I cherished as much as Felix and Sallia. I didn’t want to lose her yet. 

In fact, I didn’t want to lose her at all if I could help it. But I knew that some partings were inevitable. I wanted that day to be as far away as possible, though.

“Maybe we could try grabbing a less dangerous creature and forcing it to cross the bridge first?” said Sallia. “If we test the crossing using another animal first, we have a much better idea of figuring out how exactly the black mist works. The biggest problem right now is that we don’t know what the black mist does. It seems to have a way of forcing us to return to it when we try to leave,  but there are a lot of ways it could do that. Seeing it work on another animal could help us.”

Ella seemed to brighten up as she nodded. “That’s a good idea. Let’s do it. Collin, you mentioned seeing a few creatures nearby when we were first investigating the creature. Do you see any now?”

Felix’s father nodded. “There’s one a few minutes in that direction. It looks like a dasher, so if we end up fighting it, it won’t be too hard to deal with.”

“Then let’s go,” said Ella.

When we reached the creature, even from a distance it was obvious that there was something wrong with it. Its eyes had a strange orange tint stuck to some parts of its eye, making it look like it had an eye infection. It also glowed, making it very very noticeable. It didn’t seem particularly responsive to our group, unlike most other creatures we had encountered in the wastes. It simply stared at the empty spot where the ravine was located, as if it were searching for something that it was unable to find.

Ella frowned, before she scanned our group.

“I just noticed it, but everyone but Miria and Sallia also have a little bit of an orange tint to their eyes as well,” she said.

I double checked the rest of our group, and realized that Anise, Felix, and their parents were indeed starting to develop a very light orange color attached to their eyes. It was very subtle right now, but I was pretty sure it hadn’t been there when we arrived near the black fog.

I tried tossing a healing ability at Felix, just to see if it did anything to ‘heal’ the orange color, but the strange orange buildup on his eyes didn’t disappear at all.

“I think the orange color in the dasher’s eyes is related to whatever the black fog is doing,” I said.

“I think so too. Hmm… Sallia, could you subdue the dasher without killing it? I want to get a closer look, and you’re the sturdiest out of all of us,” said Ella.

“Absolutely,” said Sallia, as she raised her sword. She didn’t even bother unsheathing it before sprinting towards the dasher.

The dasher hadn’t reacted to our presence until now, and had mostly seemed focused on the area where the black fog was located. However, as Sallia drew closer, it finally roused itself out of its delirious state and growled at her.

Sallia activated a few second circle spells, immediately boosting her speed by an exceptional amount, and then burned absorption essence and used her attunement to boost her speed even more. A moment later, she completely disappeared from my field of vision, before reappearing right behind the dasher. I heard a loud banging sound.

Then, the dasher flew through the air like a softball for several seconds, before hitting the ground and rolling several times. Sallia flashed a grin at me, and I felt a smile tug at my lips as well.

Even though she wasn’t quite strong enough to defeat Orukthyri on her own, and had some major weaknesses that she hadn’t corrected yet… Sallia was becoming quite the competent fighter. As we went through more lives, got more Stats and Abilities, and grew more experienced, I had no doubt that Sallia would correct all of the issues she was currently experiencing and become someone truly terrifying. In the right circumstances, she was already nightmarishly strong.

“Did you shatter its skull?” Ella asked, and I blinked, before glancing at the creature again. I hadn’t seen where Sallia had hit it, but I suddenly wondered if I should prepare a heal for the dasher.

“It’s still alive,” said Sallia as I glanced at the unconscious creature. “Though it's going to have a massive bruise on its head in a few minutes.”

“Can it still walk properly?” Felix asked. “If we can’t get it to walk across the bridge, we might not learn much. If you gave it a concussion…”

“Have some confidence in me, Felix!” said Sallia. “I hit it exactly hard enough to knock it out without killing it or crippling it!” She flashed a grin at Felix, and Felix sighed, before nodding.

Ella’s eye twitched. “That’s… good enough, I suppose. Anyway.” Ella carefully ripped off a piece of the sleeve of her shirt, before she used it as a makeshift glove. Then, she forced the unconscious dasher to open its eyes, before carefully looking at the creature. 

“Interesting,” she said. “Anise, could you come over here for a moment?”

Anise quickly ran up to Ella, and Ella looked at Anise’s eyes as well.

Ella sighed. “I can definitely confirm that the strange orange coloration from this creature’s eyes is also present in Anise’s eyes. I don’t know what the orange color means, but I doubt it’s good news. Sallia, Miria, could you come over here? I want to give your eyes a more careful inspection.”

We both quickly moved over to Ella, and she spent a few minutes looking at our eyes as well. “There actually a very small amount of orange coloration in your eyes, but it’s very, very minor. You two also failed to escape the area, hmm… Since you two have really strong bodies, and the rest of us seem to have more of the orange color in our eyes, it seems like having a strong body helps you resist the orange coloration, whatever that is. But I don’t think it’s a perfect defense.” Ella trailed off as she stared into space, as if losing herself in thought.

Then, she seemed to perk up. “Well, we still have time before it gets critical, I think. The fact that this color is building up in the creature’s eyes makes me think that a big part of the fog’s ability is related to vision.” She grinned, and a lot of the worry and frustration that had been building up seemed to flow away from her body. “Miria, can you make that strange whirlpool of water again? The one that seems to mess with people’s minds?”

I immediately created a whirlpool of madness-inducing water using my absorption rune.

Then, I saw a little patch of black fog appear in the corner of my eye. I accidentally lost control of my whirlpool of water in surprise, causing the rune ability to collapse.

“I saw the fog for a bit. Even though I don’t have any spells enhancing my eyesight, I still saw something.”

“I saw a little more clearly too. Fantastic,” said Ella. She grinned. “So whatever the black fog is doing to our mind, it’s susceptible to disruption if we distract ourselves with something else first. Alternatively, we might need to specifically disrupt our vision. It’s hard to say whether it’s tied to the mental effects of your whirlpool or the visual effect. But either way, we can do something with this.” She turned towards me. “Do you think you can turn the whirlpool into bubbles, build a bridge, and then maintain the bubbles at the edges of our vision while we cross? I will help with the bridge. If you can do it, we’ll test it with the dasher and see how it goes.”

I thought about it for a moment, before I nodded. “I can do it.”

The two of us got to work. Felix’s father and mother pointed out where the black fog and ravine was located, and I used that information to build a bridge from our side of the ravine to the other side, one chunk of stone at a time. At the same time, Ella started to help me out, stabilizing each chunk of the bridge and ensuring I didn’t leave any holes or other problems behind.

After that, we quickly woke the dasher up by shaking it around, and then I immediately distracted it with my whirlpool of madness-inducing water. I quickly formed a screen of bubbles, surrounding both sides of the bridge, meticulously blocking off the sightline the dasher had with the black fog. Since the black fog’s ability was vision related, totally cutting it off didn’t seem like a bad idea.

As more and more bubbles of madness water filled my own vision, I felt the illusion of ordinary ground in front of us start to peel away, revealing the ravine filled with sinister black fog that lay in front of us. I shivered.

Even with my ridiculously sturdy body, there was no way I would survive the drop. And that wasn’t including the fact that the black fog would probably dissolve me or something horrific once I made contact with it.

“Well? Go on?” said Sallia, nudging the dasher.

Now that the creature could see the fog-filled ravine, it seemed very nervous. However, its willpower wasn’t that great, and since I had concentrated most of the bubbles directly in front of it, it was inevitably drawn forward as it tried to become one with the water I had created.

We watched in anticipation as the creature stepped forward. Occasionally, it started to veer towards one side of the bridge or the other, but as long as I was careful about where I placed the bubbles, I managed to keep it on the bridge.

When the dasher was two thirds of the way across the bridge, the black fog finally reacted. The mist transformed into a hollow-looking pair of human eyes, before it glared at the dasher.

The dasher’s eyes widened, and it snapped out of the daze my bubbles and the black mist had put it under.

It started running for its life.

Towards the end of the bridge, it stumbled for a few moments, and seemed to hit one of its legs on the bridge. It limped for a moment, before it desperately leapt to the other side of the bridge and kept running, dragging its bruised leg behind it. It didn’t stop as it fled into the distance.

The black eyes turned towards us, and I felt very uneasy. However, the black eyes didn’t do anything else: they simply stared at us for a few moments, before they receded back into the mist.

I felt uneasy.

Was it waiting for us? Had it given up on us?

What was it doing?

Sitting around and waiting wasn’t a good plan, since the strange orange coloration on our eyes would start to build up if we spent a long time here. I suspected that once our eyes became orange enough, we would die, even though I hadn’t confirmed this yet. However, crossing while a possibly sapient creature us and planned the best time to attack also seemed like a bad idea. 

Ella glanced at the black fog and shuddered, before she sighed. “Let’s wait for a bit. Miria and I could use a day or so to recuperate our shaping essence. Let’s set up camp and hope it forgets about us.”

Then, she leaned closer to me, and began whispering. “In one hour, run as fast as you can. We don’t have great options here, so pray that we all make it to the other side. Don’t assume a running position or anything else beforehand. Just go. I don’t know if that creature ‘sees ‘in the same way we do, or speaks our language, but make sure to give it as few hints as possible.”

I nodded. 

This felt dangerous.

Very dangerous.

But waiting too long meant certain death, and the creature was already aware of us. I doubted it would become any less aware of us if we waited a day.

I went through the motions of setting up my tent, relaxing a bit, and preparing to rest. If the creature was able to understand what we were doing, perhaps it would let its guard down once it saw us setting up tents? We were only a day or two away from Silver City now. If we could make it past this obstacle and didn’t run into anything else, we might not need our tents anymore. Losing them would suck, but it wouldn’t be the end of the world. Dying would be much worse.

We spent about an hour ‘sleeping,’ but I felt uneasy the whole time. As if something were watching us.

Waiting.

Still, an hour later, all of us dashed out of our tents and started sprinting for our lives. We didn’t have time to grab our tents, although my backpack meant we could still carry our food and water easily.

We ran.

As I pushed past each step on my bridge, I watched our surroundings anxiously, waiting for the eyes to reappear.

And a third of the way across the bridge, the black, foggy eyes reappeared in the middle of the ravine.

Watching us.

I felt a stab of horror in my mind and froze up, as I felt something brush against my skin. It felt like a cold, clammy caress, worming its way inside of my skin, and looking deeper and deeper into my bones. Suddenly, I felt cold in my legs, like I had been dunked into a pool of icy water. I heard someone gasp and wheeze nearby, and I heard Felix yelp in pain.

A piercing headache brought me back to my senses, and I realized that Ella had hit me with her attunement to get me moving again. My legs still felt like they were made of ice instead of flesh, but I could think clearly again.

I realized things were bad, and immediately slammed a bunch of my alteration essence into my mind-altering water bubbles. In a fit of inspiration, I cranked up the power of their mind-altering abilities as much as I could, and tried to make them focus explicitly on the creature.

And it worked. The creature’s attention was drawn away from us.

But something was wrong with my legs. I could barely move them.

“Help! Legs won’t move!” I yelled.

Sallia immediately doubled back and grabbed me by the shoulders, before dragging me forward.

While the creature was distracted, we managed to get to the other side of the bridge. As we touched ground on the other side of the ravine, I felt something change, and the feeling of being watched vanished. However, we didn’t stop. Sallia carried me for several extra meters, as we ran to get away from the strange chasm filled with black fog. 

After we got a little further away from the ravine, we finally slowed down.

I breathed a sigh of relief.

Nobody had died during our flight across the bridge.

However, a spike of pain in my legs made me look down.

The skin of my legs, especially the exposed bits of leg between the hem of my dress and my {Sturdy Boots} was slightly gray. It looked… wrong.

At the same time, I heard Felix’s father start coughing.

“Something is wrong with-” Felix’s father started coughing. “My lungs. They’re cold. They hurt.” He gasped.

Felix also started to clutch at one of his eyes. He wasn’t moaning in pain the same way his father was, but I could clearly tell that something was wrong.

Ella’s left arm looked distinctly gray now. She was gritting her teeth and refusing to make a sound, but I could tell she was in pain.

Anise’s mouth and nose looked gray. She was the most panicked of the group, and was continuously prodding at her mouth and nose. Her eyes and lips were scrunched up, and I got the distinct impression that she was trying not to cry from pain.

Something was horribly wrong with our bodies.

 

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