Shine-Catch blinked her eyes open to see a huge, rubbery grey-pink thing looming over her. Its huge wet nostrils flexed and snorted, seeing she was awake before she could close her eyes again and pretend to still be out cold. A huge slab of a tongue descended and wiped across her cheek, making her gasp and scramble backwards on her ass across the ground.

Gods! There was so much grass here. The soil was soft and dark, crumbling into damp clumps under her fingertips.

All around her a green sea, and small prey animals staring curiously down. Lizards, burrowing owls, a wiry gray fox. The enormous blubbery creature that was still watching her. It snorted impatiently as she lifted up her hand. Carved across her palm were thin pink bands of scar tissue where the rope had ripped away her skin. Healed.

She was alive.

“You.” She said, staring up at the creature. Not only did it stare back, but she had the odd sense it could understand Goblin-Tongue. “Are a very big dog. I am sorry your fur all fell out and made you fat and bald, but you need to stop looking at me like that. It’s creepy.”

In response, it lifted up a stubby tree-trunk leg and kicked a wave of water into her face. She gasped, spluttered, and burst out in delighted laughter. Water.

More than she’d ever seen. As cold as winter but without the bitterness, a sweet, refreshing cold. As the big fat-bald dog stared and snorted, she climbed to her feet, her jaw falling open at the sight of the lake before her. Then she began to dance, smashing her feet down into rocky pools and laughing in absolute bliss at the feel of the world around her.

The air tasted alive. It was heavy with little drops of mist that collected on her tongue and her skin. The earth was rich like soft pillowy bedding.

She pushed deeper, deeper, wading in till her shoulders submerged, feeling her way down the shelfs of rock below with her feet. Her hair drifted up around her head as she went down to her ears, and taking a last swallow of air, dived below.

The world went quiet except for a deep murmuring whisper, and she could see a light shining below. She walked towards it - and something shifted. A patch of rock started to move, crawling on dozens of legs to intercept her path.

She immediately retreated, scrambling up with a gasp and lying back on the shore.

A small blunt-nosed reptile stared up at her from a patch of mossy crust on the water’s surface. It breathed, and the sacks on either side of its arrowhead face inflated. Its mouth snapped open and it hiccuped.

“Oh don’t you make fun of me.” Her fingers trawled through the water and flicked it a spray towards the lizard, which vanished below.

This was a miracle but- something bitter tugged at her soul. She had been pushed from the roc’s back. Was she meant to fall? Meant to land here in paradise, and live?

At the center of the pond was a faceless goddess, holding a green stone. At her feet, on the little island that supported her, sat a long-faced and weary looking man. When she looked at him she tasted sand, and felt her skin wither and crack under a sun that knew no mercy. There was a smell of dry sand and cordite smoke around him and she knew she saw a ghost.

The fact that he walked across the water, his feet sinking into the beautiful, sparkling mist that surrounded the lake’s center, only proved that point.

“Little shaman, can you hear me?” The ghost asked.

She nodded, slowly. This was the first time she’d heard a ghost speak. Or even seen one without the drums filling her head.

“Good, good. I-” He knelt down. This close she could see the way he wasn’t real. The way the bits of him she wasn’t looking at started to blur, like he was a blotch of color that had to put conscious effort into looking like an old geezer. “I need you to look after this place for me.”

Honestly, if she was a ghost, she’d have chosen to look way better. Scary-like.

She guessed she would be a ghost someday.

“Does that mean it’s mine now? If it was yours, and you’re dead, and I’m looking after it, that’s like it’s mine, yah? I got some good shinies that way. S’called ‘inheritance’.” She explained happily, pronouncing the word slowly so his oversized, waterlogged humie brains would have time to think about it. It was a big word. “It’s nice here.” She added.

Not because he needed telling - it was so nice, how could anyone miss how nice this was - but because the thought kept filling up her mind and needing to be said. This was a good place.

“No, no. It’s not that kind of place, I’m afraid. It owns its own self. Actually, uh, you’d better mind your mouth around here. You remind me of my daughter, and that’s not always such a good thing.”

“Yer daughter’s a goblin?” She grinned, and made her ears wiggle up and down so the bone rings in them bounced about. Goblin talent. Famously among the seven goblin secrets, which no outsider could ever learn.

“A loud-mouth know-it-all miss-never-wrong.” The smile that crossed his face was so happy it hurt. The kind of smile you got when you needed to be either terribly happy or terribly sad.

“Where is she?” Bad question. His smile dimmed and slowly faded from his bearded face. She’d learned about bad questions when she’d tried to help the healers, and kept asking how it hurt.

That and sticking her fingers in wounds to see how they squished about.

“Far away. Past the salt. In the great shelled city. You know the way?”

She nodded, and then, realizing this wasn’t a time to lie, shook her head.

Reaching out, he touched her arm. For a second her skin stung with cold and then the sensation faded as his ghostly finger trailed through the flesh, leaving a faint pattern where the green of her skin was lighter than the rest. A map.

She now understood why people complained so much about her poking around them. “Hey!”

“That’s the way. Remember it when you need to find help. This place, it needs someone to watch over it. To keep it safe.” He drew back. He was doing that fading away thing ghosts did. With every second, there was less of him.

“And why’d I do that!?” She demanded, scrambling up onto her feet. Damn nosy, pokey ghost, making maps in her skin and demanding favors.

“Oh, I don't know. This place saved your life just now. That might be worth something. But you know, I've got a wild idea you just don't have much better to do with your life.” He had an infuriatingly calm smile. “Oh, and you might want to look again at that necklace…”

She screwed up her face, holding back some absolutely choice curses Shit-Gob had taught her. “Mmmaybe. I don't make any promises.” And then she cast her arms up, and gave in. “I’ll do it, damn you, stupid ghost. I’ll do it.”

He was already gone, receded into the mists. She sighed and kicked the water in frustration.

When she was sure he was double-gone, and not watching, she checked the necklace. Her eyes lit up. It was shining. Not with borrowed sunlight, but its own light, a deep ripple of inner color that flowed beneath the stone and rose up in brief spots that pressed to the surface. The runes were full of a steady gold.

It was speaking to her. The way the drums spoke to her, reaching past her mind and telling her limbs what to do.

Sighing and squaring up, Shiny jumped. The wind erupted into a fury around her. Not making the horrible, grating scream of the wind under the roc’s wings, but a clear ringing note. It flowed around her in a stream.

She pivoted cleanly in the air and did a perfect backflip, landing in a swirl of wind that bent the grass low before her glory. If her eyes were wide before, they were trying to escape her face now.

“Fucking meaty cockwhistles.” She uncorked Shit-Gob’s favorite just for the occasion.

Windrunner

[ Bronze ]

Passive, Wind-Attuned

Mana Cost

0.1 Per Second

Attunement

lv. 0 (0%)

Compatibility

78%

Created by an ancient corps of messengers by adapting more combat focused skills, Windrunner allows for a flexible combination of speed and agility. While active, your movements are (10%) faster, you weigh (50%) less without reduced momentum, and you can control yourself in the air by bending wind currents.

Ancient users of this skill were said to be able to pluck arrows out of the air, and see the world through the wind around them.