Cali hesitated, eyes glued to the black box. Finally, curiosity won out, and she returned her hand to the tablet. Directing her thoughts towards the expectant box, she replied: Yeah, I’m confused. Care to enlighten me?

Line by line, new text began to appear.

Enlighten you? No, nothing so droll. I won’t be answering your questions. It’s so much more fun if you figure things out yourself.

I will give you a hint. The cøras menu shows four attributes: stamina, health, mana, and defence. Each is affected by the two adjacent elements. Also XP and AP can be assigned to boost your capabilities.

I’m sure you’ll figure out the rest. You love experimenting after all.

As the words stamina, health, mana, and defence appeared in the box, the lightning bolts, hearts, bars, and triangles lit up in turn.

Cali fired a string of curses at the box. As promised, it hadn’t answered any of her questions. In fact, its ‘hint’ had raised questions that she hadn’t even considered. Her mental tirade ended with: well if you’re not going to help, you can leave me be. At which point, the box vanished. Not quite the reaction she’d hoped for.

Ugh, she could deal with these new questions later. Before the cøras surprised her, she had hoped to determine if it was related to the paresthesia. Skimming over her spells, Cali noted that a small symbol accompanied each one, which matched the symbol under her mana. A cost? Was paresthesia a side effect of mana consumption? She’d never spent personal mana before. Prior to the UMC’s magic ban, she’d been too young to learn, and afterwards, the mana sinks limited personal mana to trace amounts. If her Dad hadn’t showed her how to tap into mana sinks, allowing her to perform the impossible feat of casting magic, she’d be as mundane as everyone else.

The hypothesis needed testing to be confirmed, but if paresthesia was a normal side effect of mana consumption, then she could stop worrying that casting formulae was inducing it. Although, based on the symbology, both teleportation and invisibility probably cost more mana than she had. If there really were monsters —and with the cøras’ invitation to slay them, Cali was convinced there were— those would be critical tools for avoiding them. She’d need more mana.

A flash from the menu drew her eye. A second triangular segment had appeared in the hexagon next to MP. Unlike the first triangular segment, it was flashing. Additionally, a new black box had materialized next to the menu.

Confirm Expenditure of XP

Yes. No.

Damn it, she was still touching the menu! It must have responded to her last thought. Aside from the flashing triangle, nothing had changed. Either the menu didn’t show the effects of an expenditure until she confirmed it, or the expenditure would have no effect.

Cali declined the box’s offer, and sequentially thought about increasing health, stamina and defence. In each case, a flashing triangle appeared, but nothing else changed. There was no helping it then; Cali assigned the XP to mana and confirmed her choice.

The symbol for mana gained an additional bar, and a third arrow materialized in the circle below. What that meant numerically, Cali wasn’t sure. For some stupid reason, mana was expressed in esoteric symbols. Seriously, the foundation of magic was numerical equations, why was the ancients’ cøras menu pictographic? It wasn’t as if the iconography was intuitive. Did the position of the bars matter, or just the number of full and partial bars? It was impossible to tell by looking. Just another thing she’d need to determine by experimentation. Recalling the box’s final jibe, Cali grimaced. Maybe the ancients were a bunch of sadists.

The menu informed her that she still AP to assign, which she guessed might affect the elements. After all, the box claimed that the elements on either side of an attribute affected it, implying they could be changed.

So, which element should she choose? She probably still didn’t have sufficient mana to teleport —although that was still just a guess based on iconography— which made choosing an element adjacent to mana tempting. But, she’d burned through a lot of stamina today. If she was going to be traipsing through the jungle to find kith settlements, or fheadhain ruins, stamina would be crucial. And unfortunately, none of the elements would affect both. Based on her current usage, stamina and health was the better combination than stamina and defence.

Cali selected the green element, and an arm of the nearby star started flashing. She confirmed her choice with the pop-up and...

Shouts rang out, breaking Cali’s concentration —the cøras menu vanished. Visions of the celebration’s pandemonium flashed through her mind. The crowd had been getting heated when the wardens escorted her away; were outraged spreiban coming for her? Striding to the door, Cali opened it a crack and peered through. The walkway was devoid of spreiban, besides that, all she could make out was the colourful house across the way. And yet, the shouting continued to increase in intensity.

With a sigh, Cali pushed the door open, and stepped outside. Information was the key to making good decisions, and worst case scenario, she had plenty of tools to make herself scarce.

The first thing she noticed was the cloying, acrid odour, akin to a rotting orange. The second, panicked shouting and its source, a familiar cluster of spear-wielding spreiban. The wardens were 10 metres down the causeway and seemed to be using their spears to keep something at bay.

Cali caught a glimpse of something beyond them. Something that slithered along the walkway, a mass of vibrant-orange and pitch-black scales, and enormous, sinuous coils. She watched in horror as it rose, towering over the wardens; in its jaws, a limp spreiban body dripped viscous, purple fluid. With uncanny speed, the serpent threw its head back and the body disappeared down its gullet.

Then, as if noticing her staring, its slitted yellow eyes locked with hers. It had found larger, meatier prey. All at once, the serpent barrelled towards her. Its motion was heralded by the crackling sound of spears snapping like dry twigs, as it plowed through the guards. Cali’s stomach did a somersault. There was no time for a formulae. At the last moment, she threw herself out of the way and massive serpentine fangs imbedded themselves in the door. Holy fuck. Cali sprinted towards the wardens, who had began to right themselves. Behind her, she heard the serpents’ jaws snap shut and the splintering of wood. Doubt gnawed at her. Could the spreiban hold off the serpent? If they couldn’t, that meant revealing ‘ancient’ magic to more spreiban and...

Out of the corner of her eye, Cali caught a flicker of orange scales. The tail! It caught her across the chest. Ribs cracked, and all the air was expelled from her lungs. Cali soared through the air like a rag-doll, until her shoulder collided with a building. Fireworks of pain exploded across her back. While blinking away tears, she heard the click of scales against wood. When her vision cleared, two slitted yellow eyes bore down on her.

She wasn’t going to die like this. Calling a formulae to mind, Cali willed her body to start tracing it. But her left arm hung by her side, limp and useless.

The snake reared back.

She’d need a miracle to survive. A miracle! Cali’s right hand fished in her pouch, closing around the diamond stoppered vial. She just needed time.

The snake lunged.

Cali threw herself to the side; pain blossomed anew as ribs struck wood. Face-down on the platform, the vibrations tore through her body as the serpent collided with the building. Wood shattered on impact. Wooden shrapnel, like tiny lances, imbedded itself in her good shoulder. Cali screamed from the pain, but didn’t loose her hold on the vial. Desperate fingers worked on the diamond stopper. Why had she sealed it so damn tight?

As the serpent’s breath enveloped her, the air grew thick with the fetid aroma of half-digested meat, and that awful rotten citrus smell.

Blood trickled down her arm. Sweaty fingers slipped against the diamond stopper.

Inexplicably, the smell faded, and then it was gone. Turning her head, she caught a glimpse of spreiban hauling on ropes, and the massive serpentine coils inexorably shifting towards them. Impossible as it seemed, the diminutive spreiban were dragging the serpent away.

In a blur of movement, a spreiban raced out from amidst the wardens. Cali watched as e leapt from the ground and disappeared into the serpent’s maw.

The platform shook as the serpent collapsed. Cali gasped; the sharp intake of breath stung. They’d actually beat it. Her fingers fell away from the diamond stopper. She wouldn’t be needing a miracle today.

Within moments, a blood-soaked spreiban was standing over her. Cali recognized em immediately, Head Warden Aia. The spreiban offered her a hand. “Can ya move?”

Cali nodded, and took the proffered hand, wincing as the spreiban pulled her to a sitting position. The heady combination of odiferous serpent blood and Cali’s own nearly made her wretch. Cali’s stomach heaved unpleasantly as she suppressed the urge; next, her ribs chimed in to offer their complaints at the motion.

Aia’s visage was worried, eyes sympathetic. “Looks like ya took the worst of that. Let’s get ya patched up.” Aia led her through the obliterated doors, back into the large building e’d escorted her to prior. Within, Cali was led into a side room, which, in her haste to examine the cøras, she hadn’t explored. The room contained a low table where a stack of cloths had been set and several stools. Next to the cloths was a pail of water, and a small wooden jar.

“Fen asked me to prepare these for the wound e inflicted upon ya.” Aia handed Cali the topmost cloth from the pile. The fabric was thick and soft against her skin. “I dunno know a thing about patching up kith, but if you need an extra set of hands, I’ll do what I can. Otherwise I’ll be away.”

Cali eyed the blood-covered spreiban, opened her mouth to reject the offer for hygiene reasons, then shut it again. Considering the state of her left shoulder, bandaging herself up would be difficult. “Actually, I could use a hand. But, could you wash up first?”

In response, Aia grinned. “Ai, I can do that. You’re not gonna drop dead on me if I go get cleaned up?”

Cali shook her head and Aia departed, whistling.

She wasn’t about to bleed out, but the pain was excruciating. It took a couple minutes to slow her racing heart and focus, before Cali could dissociate her consciousness and peer beyond the veil. When she did, the sensations of her body became muted and dull. The relief was immediate. As a secondary benefit, before her was the cøras menu she’d been forced to abandon earlier, showing the results of her AP expenditure.

The number of hearts had increased, although with the beating the snake had given her, she was no healthier than before. Additionally, one of the lightning bolts had acquired a circle, which she hoped meant her stamina had increased. The number of arrows beside each attributes icon had also increased, whatever that meant. Aside from that, she’d burned through all her defence, and also lost an arrow there. Evidently, the encounter with that snake had used defence. The loss of an arrow, also implied there might downsides to each element. The box definitely hadn’t mentioned that. Cali invented a few more curses for it.

Worryingly, she’d burned through all of her luck. In anticipation of a successful heist, Vale had acquired a fortunography meter, so they’d be able to exploit her prize. Before the heist she’d had 80Ф; ie. 80 percent of what an ordinary UMC citizen started their life with. Which meant, between the heist, the fall and surviving Fen’s attack, she’d burned a lot of luck. Casting her mind back, the cøras definitely hadn’t showed zero last time. She must have lost the remainder in the encounter with the snake.

Replenishing it was crucial. The way things were going, if she went to sleep luckless there was a good chance she wouldn’t be waking up. At least replenishing it would be simple; her vial contained more luck than one person could use in a lifetime. The issue was, if there was a sudden increase in the concentration of luck around Llyr, the UMC could use that to track her down. Although, maybe the luck would counteract that? Luck was hard to predict. The safest option was to keep her use judicious. As fortune would have it, the cøras menu measured luck, which would make it easy to know exactly how much she was allocating.

Cali retrieved the diamond-stoppered vial from her pouch. Wedging it between her knees, she tugged the cap free. Of course, now it came off easily. When she removed the top, she could see aerosolized luck disperse from the vial and bleed into the surroundings. Fortune always flowed from places with high concentrations to low, so she’d have to act fast to avoid creating a beacon of luck for the UMC to follow. With her right hand, she poured a droplet of luck onto the exposed flesh of her wrist.

When the golden droplet of concentrated luck struck her skin, it made an audible sizzle. And not for the second time that day, Cali stifled a scream. Luck raced through her veins like molten lava, pain spreading to every corner of her body before subsiding. The intensity was unreal, cutting straight through her dulled senses. Shock caused her to jolt, her ribs twinged angrily, and the vial slipped through sweaty fingers. It fell to the floor, and landed miraculously on its bottom, without tipping over or spilling a single drop.

Panting, Cali retrieved the vial and replaced its diamond stopper. Her fingers were shaking, and her limbs were clammy with sweat. Vial re-sealed, Cali placed a hand on the menu and... her jaw dropped. It read, 1.34 MФ. Mega Phillium, holy fuck! None of the literature had mentioned that concentrated luck could hurt so damn much. Why the fuck had she tried to use it undiluted? Hand still shaking, she slipped the vial back into her pouch. If a single droplet had caused her luck to skyrocket, she could only imagine how much had bled out into her surroundings. Calm, she needed to stay calm, on the scale of a universe it would be a drop in the bucket. Still, the UMC would be looking for any sign of increased luck, she’d have to hope it was under the detection threshold. And going forward, the vial would stay sealed, barring emergencies.

As the adrenaline wore off, and her heart stopped racing Cali noticed a black box had materialized beside the menu.

Oh my, that was quite the experiment wasn’t it?

You sure do make things exciting.

There was something in the tone that made Cali feel like she was being mocked. She was about to begin another angry tirade, when she heard footsteps behind her. Aia had returned.

The spreiban wore clean, simple, earthen-coloured clothes. The blood and gore that had covered em was absent. “Let’s get ya patched up.”

Self-conscious, Cali dropped her hand from the menu like it was hot. “Thanks,” she said and began directing em in the removal of fragments of wood from her shoulder. The shrapnel had pierced right through her jacket.

Once the wooden shrapnel had been removed, careful fingers pulled away the strip of tank top she’d used as an impromptu bandage around he neck, and placed the discarded fabric on the table. Cali noted that it was spotless, her earlier cleansing spell having removed all the dried blood and sweat from the cloth. Next, Aia took the top cloth from the pile, dipped it in the bucket of water, and began cleaning the cut, hands moving with practiced gentleness. “You’re quite good at this,” Cali said, and then grimaced at the lameness of her remark.

To es credit, Aia laughed. “I suppose so, I tend to the rest of the wardens when they get injured. Salve?” She asked, gesturing to the wooden jar on the table.

Cali picked it up, and, one-handed, removed the lid. She took a trepidatious sniff. It smelled of bitter herbs, and animal fat. Given the differences in their physiology, it was hard to say if any of the herbs would be toxic to her. Cali returned the jar to the table. “No, I’m not sure if it’ll work for me.”

Aia laughed again. “True enough, you’re all squishy and pink. Can’t say anyone’s tried salve on a kith before.

Out of the corner of her eye, Cali spotted a new black box which read:

Good call. Would have been a shame to lose you to toxic salve.

Warn me next time, Cali thought back, but there was no response from the box. The treatment continued as Aia took a cloth from the table, unfolded it into a long strip, and re-bandaged Cali’s neck. Afterward e fashioned a simple sling from a second strip of cloth, and, after Cali slipped out of her jacket, washed and bandaged the lacerations from the shrapnel. At last, satisfied with es handiwork, Aia stepped back. “I shall leave you now. Sleep well, Cali, we shall return in the morning to bring you to the primeval ones.”

“Until tomorrow then,” Cali said.

After Aia left, it occurred to her she’d missed a prime opportunity to ask questions during the treatment. And, with everything she’d learned today, it felt like her list of questions about Llyr was growing longer by the minute. Like, how common were horrifying monsters like the serpent? Oh well, Cali could mourn the missed opportunity later. Right now, her priority was to figure out what questions to prioritize tomorrow. Fen had promised that the primeval ones would answer her questions, but she doubted they’d answer the entire bevy waiting to burst from her head.

Making herself as comfortable as possible in the nest of blankets, Cali chipped down her list of questions to the essentials as the light faded. At last, satisfied, she drifted off to sleep.