Second Skin- Fractures

by M Damon Baker

  With that, he passed me a sheathed dagger. Though the sheath was rather plain, the dagger itself was exquisitely crafted—even better than the two he had given me before.

  “I would have made you a more deserving sheath for it, but time was short,” Georl explained.

  “Thank you; I hope I have no need for it, but I fear that will not be the case,” I said.

  Ella then jumped in.

  “I’m afraid my travel gift is not so grand,” she pouted in jest. “I already put some rations in your bag, and since you had no spare clothes, I got you these.”

  She handed me a bundle of three outfits. All were of a finer quality than my original clothes and ranged in color from forest green to an earthy brown and light grey. Perfect for my needs. She pulled me closer and whispered in my ear.

  “Extra under-clothes and a nightdress are already in your bag as well.”

  I thanked her sincerely. I was really going to miss that sweet girl.

  Marli spoke next.

  “I have some parting gifts for you as well, but they are best given in private. So, if you will make your goodbyes, we can get you on your way. Best you leave as soon as possible,” she said bluntly.

  Reluctantly, we did as Marli instructed. Georl, a gentleman as ever, offered a formal bow before making his exit. Ella, on the other hand, crushed me in a bear hug far stronger than I thought her capable of, and her eyes were wet with tears when she finally let me go.

  “Be safe,” her voice cracked before she fled out the door abruptly.

  I watched her go before turning back to face Marli, and there was a curious expression on her face when I did. She seemed on the verge of speaking before apparently changing her mind. Instead, she rose, and then crossed the floor to the front door and locked it, flipping the sign to read ‘closed’ as she did. Then she beckoned me to follow her as she walked to the back of the shop.

  “Come, let me give you a few things for the road,” she said as I walked behind her.

  15

  Once we reached the back of the store, Marli led me past the many shelves and display cases and into to a small seating area in the back. After we settled in, she began talking to me.

  “I have some things for you and I will give them to you now, but after that, we shall speak for a while. I will try and give you as much information as I can to help you avoid these Bloody Hearts and to ease your travels. I think that in the end, the advice will aid you the most.”

  “First, you would not know this, but since you killed Nedd while he was committing a crime, all his possessions are yours by law. I took the liberty of converting some of his things into coin and potions for you. Please, take them.”

  With that, she motioned to a small pile that sat on the table next to her. I picked up the various items up from the small table and placed them in my pouches. It amounted to 35 Silver Marks, 25 Silver Bits, and 18 Coppers, along with the five weak red potions, two red crystals, and one each of the poison and disease-curing potions. I thought it was quite a decent haul.

  “Thank you,” I said to her.

  “Don’t thank me, you killed the bastard,” she harrumphed.

  “Now,” she continued after a slight pause. “We need to fill that empty head of yours if you’re to survive here for very long.”

  And Marli proceeded to do just that.

  Over the next hour, she told me everything she could think of that an ‘ignorant Deathless’ like me would need to know. It reminded me very much of Zander’s little dissertation, minus the geek factor.

  According to Marli, I needed to avoid the larger towns and cities completely since the Bloody Hearts’ presence would be strongest there. And that precaution applied most especially to the city of Hasse. Located at the center of the Kingdom, it served as a hub for nearly all of the gang’s operations. If I entered that city, I was almost certain to be spotted and captured. The medium-sized villages were somewhat less of a risk but still presented far too much danger for me in Marli’s opinion. According to Marli, my best bet was to keep to the small towns like Tula as much as possible, as the gang typically maintained no presence in such tiny towns. Wil’s shop here in Tula was an obvious exception to that rule. Still, she told me, I would stand out. I needed to be discreet, to find an excuse to keep the hood of my cloak up, or perhaps even fashion a disguise of some sort.

  When she was done, I once again picked up my familiar refrain.

  “Marli?”

  “Yes, dear?”

  “Do you know about how we Deathless gain what we call ‘experience’, and then ‘levels?’” I asked her.

  “I have some understanding, yes, although not in great detail.”

  “Well, when you asked me to help your friend, the farmer, that created a quest for me, and when I completed it, I gained some experience,” I explained. “In order for me to gain levels and, therefore, get stronger, I need to get as much experience as I can, but my quest functions have been broken since the Gods erected the barrier.”

  She nodded at me in understanding when I finished speaking.

  “Do you have any idea how I can get more quests?”

  “Well, my dear, it would seem you just have to help people, like you did for me.”

  Duh. I guess that should have been obvious. Even without the quest tab, I simply had to perform jobs and aid people to be rewarded. I felt a little bit stupid.

  “I guess that makes sense,” I replied sheepishly.

  I did have one other pressing issue. Although I doubted that Marli could help me with it, I gave it a shot anyway.

  “You seem to know a lot about the Deathless. Have you ever heard of them experiencing… odd sensations? Like increased sensitivity to colors and sounds,” I left off any reference to touch since I was still feeling a bit awkward with that subject.

  She thought for a moment, then, after a pause, she said, “I had heard that you Deathless did perceive things with an increased sense of clarity. Nothing remarkable, mind you, but a definite sharpness to your senses nonetheless.”

  “Oh,” I said, as I slumped back into my chair. That didn’t nearly describe my experience.

  Marli picked up on my disappointment immediately.

  “What is it dear? What exactly is happening to you?”

  I explained my transition to this world, leaving out a few details. I told her about the anomaly that occurred during my crossing and how it was the result of passing through the powerful magics as they coalesced to form the barrier. I told her of my intense perception of colors and sounds, and how, especially when I concentrated on them, they would sometimes overwhelm me.

  “You say your sensitivity is there all the time but increases greatly when you focus on particular things?” Marli tried to clarify.

  “Yes. Yes, that sounds right,” I answered.

  “I think, as you probably already suspect, that this is yet another consequence of encountering the Gods’ magic when you came to this world,” Marli said after a moment. “I believe, but mind you I can’t be certain, that it will diminish over time as you grow more accustomed to experiencing these extreme sensations.

  “Practice. Practice your focusing when you can—when it is safe to do so. I would venture to say that you will eventually adapt to it and you will no longer be so overcome by the experience.”

  “So, you believe that through repeated exposure I can build an immunity of sorts?” I inquired.

  “I couldn’t have said it any better myself.” Marli smiled.

  “Now that it seems I’ve answered all your questions, I have one final gift for you before you go,” she added.

  With that Marli motioned for me to come closer to her.

  When I was near enough, she reached out her hands and placed one on each side of my head. She closed her eyes and seemed to concentrate for a moment, and as she did so, I felt an odd sensation in my mind. Before I could react, she had finished and sat back down in her chair.

  Ding!

  “What... what was t
hat?

  “I’ve just imparted you with the Herbalism skill, dear,” Marli said calmly. “I hope that it serves you well on your journeys.”

  Wow, that was an incredible gift. Every skill would help as I tried to get stronger in this world, and something like Herbalism would definitely come in handy.

  “I can’t thank you enough, Marli. That was very generous of you,” I offered her in appreciation.

  Even I knew that buying a skill was not an inexpensive thing. She had probably gifted me with knowledge that would have cost me almost every coin I had, if not more.

  Marli simply waved me off.

  “Think nothing of it. Now, be on your way. You need to get out of here quickly if you want a good head start on those hoodlums.”

  She was right, so I thanked her yet again and then I made my way out the door and into the street. Once I was outside, I immediately began to lay my little trail of crumbs.

  Since I already had everything I thought I needed for the road and more, I headed out of town at a brisk walk. While I made my way towards the road that led to Holly and then to Morada beyond, I noticed several townsfolk making note of my departure. Some were likely only curious, but I was certain that a few also sought to have information to sell to the Bloody Hearts when they inevitably arrived in town. It was disappointing, but then again, not wholly unexpected.

  Since I actually wanted to be seen, I decided to keep to the road and forgo the opportunity to work on my Stealth for a while. I did practice my Perception and Tracking as much as possible, but not as constantly as I had done before. Instead, I tried to follow Marli’s advice and brought my Perception in and out of focus in an effort to desensitize myself to the effects of the transition. One short trip would probably not resolve the issue for me, but hopefully, it would diminish the effect, or at least let me know if I was on the right track.

  Even after doing this for a couple of hours, I was still being overwhelmed when I focused on my Perception, but I did notice that the time it was taking for me to recover had reduced noticeably. Finally, there was some good news—I had a potential solution to at least one of my problems.

  My sense of relief was palpable. Before I left town, I realized that I had far too many loose ends in need of tying up, and being pursued across the Kingdom by the Bloody Hearts would be more than enough for me to deal with over the coming days and weeks. I doubted my chances of surviving very long if I was forced to constantly deal with my own personal demons at the same time. I had resolved to take some time on this leg of my journey to try and come to some kind of peace with my inner conflicts. I knew that I likely had a full day’s head start on my pursuers, a luxury I may not have again anytime soon. So, taking the progress I had achieved in resolving my hypersensitivity as an omen, I decided that right then was as good a time as any to have a much-needed discussion with myself.

  I struck off from the road and made my way far enough into the dense forest to avoid being observed by any passers-by. Once I was there, I found a likely spot and settled down to try and sort myself out. My new life was a tangle of unresolved issue and conflicts, many of which were hopelessly intertwined with each other. I needed to clear at least some of them up before they distracted me to the point of getting me killed.

  My hyper-sensory issues were a huge potential problem and concerned me greatly. However, it seemed like I had just found the potential solution for it. It might take some time, but it looked like I could put that problem in the ‘resolved’ column.

  That left my core issue—one with multiple aspects, but one root cause: I was conflicted with my very self. The most obvious symptom was physical. Living my whole life in one body, I was having difficulty finding myself suddenly walking around in another. The fact that it was a beautiful female body only made the sudden switch all the more awkward and difficult.

  Another part was psychological. The changes I had undergone were clearly not just limited to my physical body as my mind, emotions, and even my thought process were all starkly different now. I could remember how I used to think and act, but now I found myself acting and thinking almost completely different in so many ways. It was bad enough that my body had been replaced—how was I going to deal with something that was taking over my mind as well?

  I thought about how uncontrolled my emotions had gotten the night before. It wasn’t that such a response was unwarranted… After all, I had just been through an extremely traumatic event. Objectively, I knew it had been a completely normal response. It was just that the overly emotional response was so out of character for the man I had always been. Thinking of that night reminded me of how I had also reacted to Ella later that same evening. While she had been standing before me almost completely naked, I had only thought to genuinely admire the beauty of her figure. As a man, the sight of her shapely body would have absolutely triggered a sense of desire in me… Yet it hadn’t. Oddly, the brief moment that my mind had turned to more passionate thoughts had actually been while she was fully clothed. I was struck by the strangeness of it.

  My own body was gone. How should I deal with being forced into this strange body? Not only that, but my thoughts were clearly no longer the same either. How was I going to preserve what little I had left of myself? I wondered for some time how I could reconcile the differences, and I couldn’t come up with a solution.

  Then, abruptly, it hit me. The situation was only confounding to me because I had been looking at it from the completely wrong perspective. Or, more accurately, from the wrong person’s perspective.

  With a sudden sense of clarity, I realized that my mind was not trapped in a strange body. That wasn’t the issue at all. The truth of it was that I was in my real body and this was my real mind. There was no conflict—I was just haunted by the fractured memories of a dead man.

  The profoundness of the revelation was stunning. The person I had been thinking of as ‘me’ no longer existed. That person, his body, and the mind inside it was probably lying dead inside an IR capsule on another Earth. The anomaly hadn’t merely performed alterations on me, it had actually created an entirely new person. There was no ‘conflict,’ as I had been thinking of it. My confusion was only because I retained the memories of another person—a dead man. I had only accepted those memories as my own because they had seemed so real, so vivid.

  I wasn’t someone else trapped in Dreya’s body, suffering under the influence of a strange mind. I was a new, distinct person. And just as this new body was mine, and not simply borrowed, this new mind was also my own. The reason I no longer thought like the man I had always been was now absurdly obvious. I wasn’t that man… He didn’t even exist anymore.

  The unexpected realizations startled me. Knowing that the person I thought I was didn’t actually exist was jarring. Yet, I couldn’t find fault with what I had discovered.

  Accepting the demise of the dead man was strangely liberating, almost a comfort to me. He had struggled for years to overcome his anguish and find a new purpose for his life. Truthfully, he had been on a slow, yet inevitable death spiral, wasting away while he waited for death. I was glad to finally realize that I was not that pitiful person. With a sudden sense of conviction, I slowly said the words to myself.

  I am Dreya.

  Not the digital Dreya that had been created in some game. Not that puppet, and not some other person trapped in a strange body—I was a new soul. Different and distinct from both my namesake and the dead man who had created her.

  I may remember something of the dead man’s life, but he was gone, and if I was to have any sort of real life in this world, he needed to stay that way. I could not allow his thoughts to keep whining away inside my head about what he had lost or who he had once been.

  Because ultimately, I wasn’t him, and this was neither his body nor his mind. This was my body and my mind, and I needed him to stay the fuck out of it.

  Because I am Dreya.

  The absolute firmness of my conviction both surprised and comforted me, and a str
ange sensation came over me as I thought the words in my mind. I could only describe it as a sense of ‘rightness,’ a feeling that I had stumbled onto a profound truth. Accepting who I was rather than trying to fight it or fix it had brought me peace. I had not truly expected to find such a complete resolution to my troubles when I set off from the road. The best I had hoped for was to broker some sort of internal truce between my warring factions. I took a moment and searched myself for any shred of doubt over my self-proclamation, but I found none.

  Although my internal conflict may have been resolved, I certainly had my apprehensions about a great number of other issues. The path ahead of me was full of unknowns, and even though I had just declared myself a new entity that was finally free of the dead man’s influence, I really didn’t know a lot about myself. My future would not only be one of discovering a new world, but also of finding out exactly what kind of person this new Dreya was. I was both anxious and excited by the opportunities, and several things occurred to me about the person I now knew myself to be.

  I was a grown woman but with no experience being one. Most importantly, I had never considered my gender as a risk factor in life. The previous night brought forth the shocking reality that I could not afford to think that way any longer. I could debate the rightness or wrongness of it all I wanted, but in this world, the strong preyed on those they thought of as weak, and they usually got away with it. I needed to account for that in the future.

  Also, I clearly was attracted to women. It was just... different. More nuanced. I had no idea how that would be viewed in this world, but that was a problem to be dealt with at a later date—a much later date. My plate was full enough dealing with the Bloody Hearts. I certainly wouldn’t be adding any messy romantic issues to my list of concerns any time soon.

  Then there were my emotions. They were far more powerful than I could easily manage. Dealing with them would be difficult territory for me. Hopefully, I could keep things under some level of control until it was safe to let them flow. If I could manage that, then I just might be alright. But then I reconsidered the issue for another moment.