Watcher's Test

by Sean Oswald

  “Nothing really. Why?” Mira almost blushed at how fast the words came out of her mouth.

  “Well, my parents are out of town and I’m having a few friends over. So anyway, I didn’t know if you might wanna come hang out.” She was so smitten with him that Mira didn’t notice his nervousness, thinking that he was so smooth.

  The thought of asking her parents about going to a house party at a senior boy’s house with no parents present made Mira’s chest tighten and her throat constrict. “Um… I don’t know if my parents would let me go.” “Freak,” she thought, “Why did I just say that?”

  “It’s all good, girl. I already talked to your friend Jessica. She clued me into how uptight your parents are. We worked it out where Jessica will pick you up. You can tell your parents that you two are going to a movie and maybe dinner or something, and that way you will be able to come over to my house.” Carson’s grin got bigger as he spoke, and he slid his hand over to her arm reassuringly.

  Lying to her parents? Freak, it wasn’t like she had never lied to her parents, but not about anything big. Not about secret parties or anything like that. She knew her parents would never be okay with this, but looking at Carson’s smile, she stopped thinking about anything else and simply gave a soft, “Okay.”

  Carson smiled again and then started to walk off while saying, “Cool, can’t wait to see you tonight. Oh, and I have a pool so you can bring a swimsuit if you want, or if you can’t, we can figure out something.”

  Then as suddenly as he had appeared, he was gone, and Mira’s trembling hands were fumbling to get her cell phone out. She just had to text Jessica about this. The entire bus ride home had been a furious text frenzy as she and Jessica and then her friend Kirsten got in on it too. They worked out a plan for what they would tell their parents, starting with the idea that this would be a group movie night. Parents just loved it when they did group things, right?

  As she got off the bus, Mira was so nervous. Would her mom notice that something was up? Could she get away with this? She just had to. She had to make this work. Thinking about the details and what her first house party might be like, she didn’t even say hi to her mom as she ran into the house and straight up the stairs to her room.

  Flash forward, now she wasn’t at her first house party. She wasn’t even at a stupid movie with Jessica and Kirsten. No, she was somewhere across the universe on another planet. At first, when she appeared in the gray smoky room, she was still screaming the scream that had started when she realized their car was going into that giant silver oval in the middle of the road. Mira didn’t want to believe any of the messages that she was presented with. Eloria? Freak no, she was supposed to be at Carson Taylor’s house, not some nightmare. She was sure she was dreaming. Stuff like this just didn’t really happen, but here she was. She screamed and begged for someone to appear, to tell her that it was just a dream, but no. It didn’t seem to matter how much she cried or pleaded with whatever god or monster was in charge of this place. No one appeared. Eventually, the rational part of her mind took over. She had to stop thinking about Carson’s smile and focus on the problem in front of her. There was no way to tell how long she had been here or how long she had been crying, but she knew she felt exhausted. It wasn’t until she mentally surrendered and decided to try to read and follow the instructions that she started to feel more relaxed. She would just tackle this like a problem. This was something she could do.

  Once she had set her mind to the task she quickly read through the options and clicked off each of the notifications that she got. The first thing she had to do was check out this new body that she was in. She had noticed as soon as she appeared in this gray space or emptiness or whatever it was that she felt different but had been too emotionally worked up to focus on it. Now that she actually started to evaluate her new body, she was actually pretty happy with how it felt. It seemed like she had flawless skin, which was the dusky color of a deep, rich, but natural tan. As she moved around, her body felt fluid and graceful. She went through a set of handsprings, roundoffs, and flips to end up in perfect splits without any difficulty. Her gymnastics coach would have eaten her heart out if she had seen Mira moving like this, and whatever this leather outfit she was dressed in was actually pretty cool, in the biker chick sorta way.

  Content for the moment, Mira started first with the notification she received about transferred skills:

  General Skills

  Running: 3, +30% maximum speed and duration, shouldn’t have quit the basketball team.

  Speak Languages: 2- base: Elven, human, due to your parents’ racial choices.

  Rogue Skills

  Balance: 40, +200%, a benefit of gymnastics.

  Stealth: 5, +25% chance, racial trait of Moon Elves.

  Bluff: 10, +50% chance, that practiced teenage indifference actually pays off.

  Melee Skills

  Short Blades: 5, +25% attack rating, +5% damage, racial trait of Moon Elves.

  Mira took stock of all her skills as she thought about the points that she had to spend. She thought knives were icky and didn’t want anything to do with them so that was out, but she was especially attracted to the bluff skill. Getting away with more stuff could only be a good thing. So she put the first of her four points into Bluff.

  Bluff: 11, +55% chance on appropriate skill checks. Tier 2 Bonus: Anyone that you successfully bluff has a -25% chance on future attempts to Sense Motive or otherwise see through your bluffs for 24 hours.

  Okay, that was pretty cool. Now what? She quickly moved past the remaining rogue skills—she didn’t want to be a thief or anything like that—and even faster past the melee options. That really only left her with the mage skills. These sorta games were not her thing, but when she was younger and her dad had been larger than life, she had at least paid attention to him talking about the games. She had thought for a while that she was interested in them, when in fact she had just wanted attention from her dad. When looking at the mage skills, a couple of things caught her eyes, but the first one that she really latched onto was the Charm school of magic, so with the impetuousness only a teen can truly display, she put her second point into Charm.

  Charm Magic: All mind magic has its roots in this school. This is the art of making others see or feel what you want them to. Turn your enemies into your allies and cloud the mind of your foes. Fear and love, they are but tools of a master of Charm Magic. Effect: Determines the highest tier of charm spells available to you as well as increasing the effectiveness of those spells by 5%/level. 3x 1st tier spells gained.

  Daze: Causes target to be distracted and unlikely to attack or take any significant action for the duration. Range: 20’. Duration: 1 minute + 20 seconds/level. If target is attacked Daze automatically broken. Cooldown: 1 minute. Mana: 10.

  Minor Charm Enemy: causes target to act as though they are your best friend. Once effect is ended target will know that you charmed them and will act accordingly. Range: 50+1/level feet. Duration: 10 minutes +1 minute/level. Cooldown: 5 minutes. Mana: 75.

  Blending Camouflage: causes target to blend into the surroundings. -80+2%/level to search checks. +50%+5%/level to stealth. Most effective if target is not moving. Duration: 1 hour. Cooldown: 10 minutes. Mana: 25/target.

  Mira wasn’t really sure how those spells were supposed to work, but they sounded interesting enough. At least interesting enough that she was gonna put another point into a different school of magic. The question was which one. She read a little bit about each of them, but again not really knowing what to expect, she just went with her first gut feeling and chose Evocation.

  Evocation Magic: This is the magic that all other magics wish they could be. There is no subtly, no deceit, what you see is what you get. Raw unfettered power is what evocation magic is at its heart. It is about drawing forth the primal forces of Eloria and unleashing them upon your foes. Many magical snobs have stuck up their nose at the lack of finesse in a fireball. At least they did until they were turned to a
crisp by that same fireball. Effect: Determines the highest tier of evocations spell available to you as well as increases the effectiveness of those spells by 5%/level. 3x 1st tier spells gained.

  Minor Electric Shock: Target takes 11-20 dmg + 1/level. Target must resist or be stunned for one round. Range: 10 feet. Cooldown: 1 minute- 1 sec/level. Mana: 20.

  Flame Fan: Creates a 120’ degree spread of flames 15’+1’/level in length. Deals 12-36 dmg to all targets in area of effect. Cooldown: 1 minute-1 sec/level. Mana: 40.

  Ice Dagger: Creates a small blade of ice which can be projected at target as if caster had mastery level skill in small blades. Creates 2 blades + 1 blade/3 levels. Each blade does 6 physical dmg and 6 cold dmg. Targets taking too much cold damage are subject to the chilled condition. Range: 50’+2’/level. Cooldown: 30 second-1 sec/level. Mana: 25.

  So that seemed really cool too. Now, she just had one last point to spend. Something her dad had taught her when teaching her self-defense stuck in her mind. He had told her that if she was having to defend herself, it would probably be against a man who was bigger and stronger than she was and that muscle wasn’t going to be how she would prevail. He told her to focus on speed and surprise. So, with that in mind, she decided to put the last point into Quicken Spell.

  Quicken Spell: Enables the caster to reduce the cast time of the next spell.

  Normally, cast times for spells are as follows: Tier 1: 3 seconds, Tier 2: 5 seconds, Tier 3: 9 seconds, Tier 4: 15 seconds, Tier 5: 25 seconds, Tier 6: 40 seconds, Tier 7: 60 seconds.

  This ability allows you to reduce the cast time of the next spell by 1 sec/level. Cost: 10 mana + 10% of the spell’s mana cost/second reduced. May reduce by less than maximum. A spell reduced to zero seconds is nearly instantaneous.

  Once she’d made all of her choices, Mira got to view her character sheet:

  Name: Miranda Nelson

  Race: Human/Moon Elf

  Age: 15

  Level: 1

  Movement:40

  Alignment:

  Factions:

  Guild:

  Stats

  Core Attributes

  Regen Rates:

  STRENGTH: 5

  Health: 60

  1.4/hour

  DEXTERITY: 12

  Mana: 150

  120/hour

  AGILITY: 18

  Stamina: 2.5

  2/hour

  CONSTITUTION: 6

  Fury: 3

  .6/hour

  ENDURANCE: 10

  Teamwork: 4.5

  1.5/hour

  INTELLIGENCE: 16

  Bravery: 1.5

  .5/hour

  WISDOM: 8

  Faith: 2.4

  .8/hour

  CHARISMA: 16

  Base Defense: 5

  LUCK: 0

  Base Attack: 10

  Total XP: 80

  Unspent Stat Points:0

  Unspent CP: 0

  XP to Next: 100

  Mira didn’t really know what all of this meant, but she did know that she was being royally screwed over. She didn’t want to be here at all, but there wasn’t really anything to do about it. Her mind was brought back to the present when she heard her dad say, “Well, this could be a problem.”

  After walking the longest quarter-mile of their lives, the Nelson family finally reached the river. It was rather wide, at least at this point, perhaps the size of the Mississippi River, a good mile across and the water was moving slowly. It appeared that the land started to slope downward to the east, and from what they could tell, there were rapids in the river as it descended into a valley of sorts. Closer observation suggested that the river split at some point a few miles down and seemed more indicative of a river delta which might feed into whatever passed for an ocean or another large body of water on Eloria. Looking at the water and the rapids downstream forced both Dave and Emily to simultaneously decide that it would be too dangerous to try to swim across the river. They were pleased to see that the water appeared clear and clean, but Emily pointed out that they had no idea what sort of microorganisms might live in the water and that it wouldn’t be safe to drink without boiling it first. Dave was able to find a long stick and determine that the area at the edge of the river was only a couple of feet deep and filled with long grasses of some kind. If nothing else, they would be able to use the water for bathing, and if they could get a fire going, they would be able to get a steady supply of drinkable water. Further out in the water, Jackson saw fish jumping so they knew that once they could figure out how to catch the fish that they would at least have a steady supply of food. Mira even laughed a bit inside her head knowing how much her brother hated eating fish.

  Everyone dropped their packs and Emily set to organizing a campsite. They had agreed on camping a good thirty feet from the water to avoid any water snakes or other predators. For that matter, they didn’t even know if this river might have some Elorian version of alligators or crocodiles, which, after comparing the boar to earth pigs, could be rather terrifying. Sara dropped her backpack and since she was the only one that wasn’t assigned a task for setting up the camp, she wandered down to the edge of the water and was throwing small pebbles into the water as little children often do. A child’s world, at least a child born to a middle-class family in the midwestern United States, is a safe world. Sara simply didn’t have the instincts to look for danger. It wasn’t something that life had drilled into her as it might have into a child born into a less secure environment, and Eloria would definitely qualify as a less secure environment.

  So it was, that when a frog the size of pit bull and twice as wide, jumped out of the water straight at her that all she could do was scream. In less than the time that it took for the first notes of the scream to leave her mouth, her amphibious attacker had latched onto her arm as if it was trying to swallow her whole. Mira was the closest to Sara, caught up in her task of gathering the long grasses at the edge of the water for whatever project her mother had planned. Upon hearing the scream of terror and looking up to see a far too large frog attempting to make a snack of her sister’s arm, her mind immediately processed the danger Sara was in. While the frog didn’t seem anywhere near as intimidating as the huge boar had been, it was certainly large enough to cause serious harm to an eight-year-old girl. Worse, the concern that crossed Mira’s mind was that the beast might try to drag Sara under the water where they would be hard-pressed to aid her. To Mira’s credit, in that moment all thoughts of her own plight left her mind, and in what felt like a practiced reaction, she reached out her hand and spoke a pair of magical words. For the first time in her life, she felt the power of magic swell within her and then burst out of the palm of her hand in the form of three blades of opaque blue ice in the shape of throwing knives spinning end over end with uncanny precision. One of the blades struck the obviously armored back of the frog and shattered with no visible effect other than a twelve-inch circle of white frosty residue at the point of impact. Fortunately, the other two blades both sunk deeply into the right hind leg of the frog to devastating effect. The skin around the back legs immediately began to shrivel as it was exposed to the extreme cold of the magical attack, and Mira was greeted with a quick notification letting her know the specific outcome of the spell.

  1 - Physical Damage: 2, Ice Damage: 2

  2 - Physical Damage: 6, Ice Damage: 13

  3 - Physical Damage: 6, Ice Damage: 13

  Total: 42 damage.

  Frog suffers from chilled condition.

  The attack was enough to make it lose its hold on Sara’s arm, and the chilled effect resulted in a reduction to its attack, damage, and movement abilities. This left it completely open to Jackson who had come running the few feet required to close the gap. As he ran, he had taken the mace off his back and stepping into it like a golf swing, he launched the head of his mace under the mouth of the frog. As the flanges along the metal head of the mace met the much softer underside of the massive frog, it was frog flesh that gave wa
y and the frog was flipped head over heels to land on its back. (12) Jets of green blood started to ooze out as the beast struggled vainly upon its armored back, trying to escape.

  Dave and Emily were running forward but not before Jackson was able to raise his mace and bring it down again and again in rapid succession against the soft unprotected flesh of the frog’s underside. Nothing but a gory mess remained of the frog upon its armored back as Jackson vented all the fear and anger that the past few hours had produced in him. His arms kept bringing the mace up and down, again and again, forcing himself mindlessly past the fatigue that was setting into his arms until his father came up softly behind him and placed his hands upon his son’s arms. In that moment, the anger fled Jackson and he was just a thirteen-year-old who crashed into his father’s chest and started to cry. Meanwhile, Emily had raced forward with her enhanced speed and bent forward mid-stride to scoop up Sara into her arms, and Mira stepped forward, trying to edge in to kiss her little sister.

  Once hugs and kisses had been administered, the nurse in Emily took over and she started inspecting Sara, asking how she felt. It was soon obvious that while her arm was not broken, it was going to be covered in bruises, and even more concerning, the amphibian’s saliva seemed to have an acidic effect and was continuing to slowly eat away at Sara’s skin and her health alike. Emily took charge and called for Dave to bring water to wash away the acid while at the same time casting her Minor Healing spell. The spell immediately reduced the swelling, closed up the wounds, and removed all the discoloration of the bruising but did nothing to remove the acid saliva. Dave arrived with water and a blanket pulled out of his backpack. With those, Emily was able to quickly rinse off the offending agent and dry the arm afterward. A second Minor Healing closed up the wounds that had started to reopen under the acid and Sara seemed to be fully recovered.