Long, long ago, before any modern invention was even a midnight dream, there existed five siblings. Brother Strength, who pursued power of the body above all else, sister Dexterity, who valued quickness and speed as supreme, sister Wisdom, who praised thoughtful insight and decision making as most important, brother Intelligence, who focused all his efforts into increasing the speed and efficiency of the mind, and sister Charisma, who prized image and influence over others as the principal attribute. For years the siblings lived in harmony despite their differences, until one day after a heated debate about which attribute is superior they decided to prove a winner once and for all. They would hold a competition: the victor would prove which attribute is the best, once and for all.

- Excerpt from “Fables of the Five Siblings”

“What do you mean ‘changed’”? Styx asks Melete.

“Look! It’s orange!” Melete replies, holding up her right arm as evidence.

At first I am unsure of what she is referring to. But after a second of staring, I realize her skill, which used to be a deep red color now is several shades different, an almost burnt orange color instead.

Melete continues, “Now that I’m paying attention, it feels different too...I’m really not sure how to describe it. More powerful, maybe? No, that’s not it. More potent? Pfft, that means the same thing as powerful. More bigger? No, that’s not even grammatically correct…”

As Melete’s rambling continues, I struggle to contain my impulse to revert my right arm back to normal to check the color of my own skill. Growth of the skill? How did it happen? Practice? Using it against enemies? Have I done enough for mine to grow as well?

I concentrate on the feeling in my chest, of the metaphorical ‘third arm’ that appeared with my skill and try to size up it’s relative strength. It feels a bit stronger than it did when it first appeared, but it doesn’t seem to be a qualitative change, just a quantitative one. Is there more that I can do to help it grow?

Distracted by my thoughts, I am surprised when Styx comments, “We should probably move on before those bird monsters come back.” I realize we’ve been standing here for a few minutes, time that could have been much better spent.

In relief, I notice Pallas at least had the presence of mind to stay alert and facing outward, content to ignore Melete’s excited mutterings. I shake myself and get my head back into what’s important. I can check my own right arm later.

“Ok! Let’s get moving people!” Melete, who completely ignored Styx’s words, seems to come back into focus almost instantly, nodding her head and turning her attention back to the surroundings. Styx looks at her bitterly for a second before tightening the straps of her backpack and giving me a nod.

“Let’s make up for some of that lost time -- but stay alert. Next few miles will be a bit faster.” With those words, I turn back to my wheelbarrow, pick up the handles, and break into a slow jog.

Three hours pass, and we’re making great time as we hike along the road. We’ve taken a few breaks since the bird monsters fled, switching out on who is pushing the wheelbarrow each time. Styx is currently leading the way and I’m following on the right side with Pallas and Melete at their normal positions. Melete is clearly the weakest of the four of us, with a strength Number of only thirty-three, so I choose to set our pace based off of how ragged I can hear her breathing become.

“So there’s a giant, raging river, which is impossible to get past, except with a ferry in one section of the river. There’s a boy who’s trying to get to the other side of the river with three things…”

About two hours ago, Styx started to tell riddles for us to pass the time, which has the added bonus of allowing us to train our mental Numbers without distracting us too much from our surroundings.

“...and if he leaves the chicken with the corn, the chicken will eat all of the corn. How can he get all of his supplies across?”

Styx knows a surprising number of tricky riddles, and I’m ashamed to admit that I’ve had to give up on almost all of them. Pallas is usually the one who ends up solving the riddles, while Melete...well, Melete is Melete.

“Ooooh, I know!” Melete yells. “He plucks the chicken and disassembles the ferry to construct mechanical wings, allowing him to fly over the river, no worse for wear!”

Styx sighs deeply. “And how does that allow him to carry across the dog?” she asks, not actually expecting a logical answer.

“On his back, of course!” To Melete’s credit, despite the seemingly distracted nature of her answers and...out of the box...thinking, she continues to focus her eyes outward to the surrounding woods.

It’s during one of the silent moments as Melete and Styx catch their breath from the constant bickering that Pallas speaks up. I expect him to have solved the riddle, as usual, but instead all I hear are three short words.

“Four o’clock. Monster.”

I stiffen and look to the direction he indicated, to our right and a bit behind us. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Melete turning around to also look. “Keep looking out!” I urge. “There may be more. Stop here, group closer together. Get ready to run too.”

As we close our formation together, Pallas, now closer to my side, raises his arm to point into the surrounding forest. “Red eyes, around thirty feet out. I just got a glimpse, so I’m not sure what it is.”

We stand in silence for a minute, which stretches into two, which stretches into three, the tension building all the while. I want to at least see what we are dealing with before we make a decision, but as time goes on I’m worried that we may not have that luxury. I’m starting to doubt Pallas even saw anything when I notice some of the leaves of a bush rustle faintly and make out an outline through the foliage.

“Haha!!” I laugh, once again confident. I recognize that silhouette, even if I’ve only ever seen it twice before. “No worries guys. Remember those dog monsters I told you about? Well now you’ll get to meet one firsthand!”

They don’t immediately share my relief. “The same dog monsters which you almost died to? Twice?” Styx clarifies.

“Ah, don’t worry. I was alone then, and much, much weaker than I am now. If I was still by myself and if Pallas wasn’t able to see it so early, I would be worried. But prepared and grouped up as we are now? It doesn’t stand a chance!”

We stay in formation waiting for the dog monster to attack, weapons at the ready. And true to expectations it eventually does.

Prepared as we are, the dog monster doesn’t stand a chance. Within thirty seconds from its initial charge it is laying on its back as Pallas raises the shovel above his head to deliver the finishing blow.

This momentary distraction was all the second dog monster needed, pouncing at Pallas’ ankle and sinking its teeth deep into his calf.

With a grunt of pain, Pallas goes to the ground, the second monster still clinging tightly. The first struggles to its feet, bleeding from an earlier knife gash inflicted by Melete, and makes a wobbly jump towards Pallas’ now much more accessible throat.

Only Styx’s quick actions save us from tragedy. Her thrown knife doesn’t do much damage to the lunging dog monster, but does cause it to flinch back in surprise from the projectile. Styx’s follow up tackle completely distracts the monster from the downed Pallas.

As Melete rushes to help Pallas against the second dog monster whose teeth are still wedged into his leg, I finally get my wits back after the initial surprise and move to help the now weaponless Styx. As she and the dog monster wrestle back and forth on the ground, I go to my knees, struggling to figure out how to help. I finally get one hand on the dog monster’s ear, wedging it’s face into the ground under my full weight as Styx holds down the rest of the body. For a second, the dog monster is immobile, and I take full advantage, bringing the spade down in a vicious slice across its muzzle. I follow the first attack with a stab to the eye as it’s whimpering stops and the monster grows still.

I feel the Numbers on my palm reforming, but ignore the rush as I look over to where Pallas and Melete have also slowed down their movement, having also defeated their foe. The entire fight didn’t last more than a minute, but I am gasping for breath and left wondering how it went sideways so quickly.

I help Styx up, and quickly look her up and down to make sure she’s alright. She does the same to me before we make eye contact for a second and turn to rush over to check on Pallas and Melete, running over and kneeling in the dirt next to them.

Melete seems to be completely fine, and Pallas’ only injuries are the four puncture holes in his calf. Despite the pain he must be in, his face is stoic as he looks curiously down at his leg. Melete runs over to the supplies to get some of the water, and Styx tears strips off of some of the extra cloth we packed. Luckily, we were able to find plenty of sheets and curtains in the second cabin, and I made sure to bring above and beyond what we may ever need.

Realizing that there’s nothing else I can do for the moment, and remembering the danger we may still be in, I stand back up and look to the surrounding woods. Internally, I resolve to never be caught by surprise by a monster again.

Thirty minutes pass, and I’m still looking outward as the three others rest and snack together. Pallas had finally attempted to stand again and found the wound to not be as serious as it first looked from the blood. While he is noticeably limping, he claims it won’t slow him down a ton, and he’ll still be able to run if needed.

I’m not sure if he is just putting on a brave face for the rest of us, but I decide to trust his assessment for now. I’ll be keeping a close eye on him for the rest of tonight and tomorrow though.

I clench my fists in frustration. That injury is my fault. I’m the one leading our small group. If I hadn’t been so confident in our victory at the sight of the dog monster, so cocky after recognizing a challenge I’d already beaten, we could’ve stayed aware. We would have seen the second dog monster coming, and could have dealt with it as easily as we dealt with the first.

And the worst part is that none of them even seem to be angry at me! They trusted me to lead, and here I am, tripping over basically the first hurdle.

I hear steps behind me as someone approaches, and feel a hand on my shoulder.

“It’s not your fault, you know.” Styx says, in a low voice. “Well, no more than the rest of us, at least -- we were all equally distracted.”

Am I really that transparent? Apparently so, since she seems to notice the question on my face, “You’ve been muttering out loud for the past five minutes.” Oh.

I don’t reply, and she continues. “And we’re all new to this. This is going to happen. We WILL make mistakes.” She walks around my side to stand directly in front of me, staring at my face until I reluctantly look into her eyes. “But we will learn from them. We will stick together. We will not abandon each other.” At this, I see anger burn in her eyes, her jaw clenched as her voice rises in pitch. But that anger is not directed towards me, and she quickly deflates.

“Besides, check it out.” She holds out her left palm for me to look at, the Number forty clearly displayed on her palm. I raise my eyebrow in confusion. She clarifies, “It was only thirty-five before the fight.”

I am still confused for a second until realization strikes me. She never killed anything in that fight. “Really? But how?!” I exclaim, grabbing her hand to look closer, as if the Number itself may hold the secrets to how it increased.

She smiles, happy to have finally gotten more of a reaction out of me, but I am too focused on the mystery to care.

“We were talking,” taking her hand back, she gestures to Pallas and Melete, “and figure it can only be because I helped. With the fight I mean. I never killed anything, but I helped kill the two monsters -- especially the first.”

“Pallas’ Number increased as well, despite not killing anything either. But by six instead of five. Where my Number increased by four overall.” Melete interjects, she and Pallas having stood up and walked over to join our conversation. I look to Pallas, and he shrugs, clearly not having any better explanation than Styx’s hypothesis.

I glance down to my left palm, and see a fifty-two there. So I gained five as well -- very strange. Maybe it was based on contribution to the fight? Or was it split evenly, with some bonus for getting the killing blow?

I look up and see the others all smiling, clearly pleased to see me distracted out of my funk. I sigh in defeat, and let go of my self-recrimination. There’s a fine line between having guilt which motivates change, and having a pity party. And I had been starting to wrap the presents and light the candles on the cake. It’s time to move on. Not forget. Not ignore my mistakes. But to learn from them, to grow from them, and be better.

“Let’s get going again, if you’re ready Pallas. Let’s try to get at least one more mile in before stopping for the night” I state out loud, and begin to move to pick up our supplies. Melete and Pallas come to help me, while Styx takes up the lookout position, keeping an eye on everything around us. As we finish loading up, I look over to her to see a self-satisfied grin on her face. And as much as it pains me to admit, I can’t help but grin in response.

It’s the middle of the night, and I’m lying under my blanket with Pallas and Styx sleeping on either side of me a few feet away. They seem to have been able to adjust to sleeping on the ground without issue -- at least Styx has, based on her snoring. Pallas is as quiet sleeping as he is when awake, so I have to assume he is asleep by the fact I haven’t seen him shift in an hour.

I just finished my lookout shift a few minutes ago, waking up Melete when I roughly judged enough time had passed. It’s tough to figure out how long each shift is exactly, as none of us wear watches, and the only phone with any battery left -- Styx’s -- is on it’s last ten percent. We’re just lucky her parents are old fashioned and only got her a flip phone with longer battery life. The other two smartphones ran out of battery days ago, even when we only tried to check for service sporadically.

While on my lookout shift, I took the chance to check my skill tattoo, and noticed that while the color isn’t as dramatically shifted as Melete’s, there’s a noticable difference between the red hue from a few days ago and the current orange color. I’m assuming the changing color correlates to an increase in power of the skill, but I’m still not sure how to keep increasing the power. For now, I guess I’ll just have to keep practicing.

I look at the tattoo on my arm and cringe, remembering the trust and faith my friends have in me, despite my failures. And yet I’ve been keeping this secret from them. For no valid reason, I’ve been hiding something that may be important to our situation.

The the self-recrimination and anger I felt towards myself earlier suddenly resurfaces, and I ball my hands into fists and punch the ground. I need to be better. I need to deserve the trust they’ve given me.

I resolve to tell them tomorrow about my skill, the first chance I get -- no more excuses or hiding.

My course of action set, I relax slightly. There’s nothing I can do about it tonight, so I might as well go to sleep -- tomorrow will undoubtedly be another long, hard day.

Just as I’m settling in under my cover a bit further, I hear a sudden exclamation from where Melete is keeping watch.

“Substantial! That’s the word! My skill feels more substantial!” I crack my eyes open a slit and look over to where she’s standing next to the fire. She has an extremely self-satisfied grin on her face.

She looks around to share her discovery with the rest of us, only to see that we’re all under the covers and presumably asleep, and I see a small frown start to form. For a second, she looks as if she’s considering waking us up to tell us what she’s just figured out, but finally shakes her head and looks back out into the woods instead.

Sighing in relief, I roll over, and fall asleep.

S: 88 (+1)

D: 39 (+1)

W: 47 (+1)

I: 38 (+2)

C: 51

52

Skills: Adjust:Self