A weapon is not something that has to be made by a smith or a professional. With my brawn, it probably wasn't something I would swing much, or cut with, and even stabbing would probably be weak in comparison to your average monster. A weapon was something designed to apply as much force as possible in a controlled fashion to a controlled area to damage an opponent. A trap could be a weapon, sure, and I intended to thoroughly explore that option soon, but I didn't need a sword, bow, or gun to have a useable weapon.

The pieces of a more than useful weapon, even at my size, were staring me in the face. Back on Earth, I was used to being one of the big guys, with true force at my ready command if needed, and a debit card away from a civilized weapon to multiply that force with ease. Here I was small, weak, and fragile, and I'd best remember and fight like that. I was nearly maimed by an oversized rodent, so brute melee was not the way to ensure my future survival.

I saved my best project for last, using things and a thick pouch of leather to form a sling. I was rather proud of having braided the outer leather of the ‘pocket’ into two thick strands and then weaving those with the thongs and some yarn to make a long, somewhat attractive-looking sling. I was finally armed, and with a ranged weapon!

There was an entire riverbed full of ammunition nearby, and finally wearing my sopping armor and wielding my mighty weapon, I crept out of my hide to gather some stones and set my trap.

The [observe] skill provided some interesting information about my new weapon, which I wrapped around my left wrist loosely to keep it out of my way but ready for action. I would need to take some time to train and get used to it again, but that should not be too difficult.

Well-crafted crude sling

This well-crafted sling was created out of inferior materials but shows a craftsman's touch. When used with skill, it can hurl pebbles or ammunition with dangerous speed at a target.

Value- Moderate

Weight- .5 lbs

This sling is designed to be used by tiny or small creatures

When I was a scout, I had played with a homemade sling and gotten quite good at it, even accidentally pegging a bat outside of a cave our troop was spelunking when I had chosen to stay outside.

My innate claustrophobia had overcome the wonder of discovery along with another scout when we had learned that the first part of the cave involved scooting under a rock that was so low to the muddy ground that I would barely be able to breathe for nearly thirty feet. Being an oversized boy had its disadvantages, and one of those disadvantages was psychological and involved being compressed by tons of rocks.

I was playing around, whipping sharp little cave pebbles out with the cheap shoestring and merit badge blank I had turned into an improvised weapon, and saw a flicking through the darkness. I had no expectations of hitting it but sent a pebble flying that impacted the bat and sent it tumbling to the ground. I knew I should have felt guilty, but had pressed it down and just stared at it before my sort-of-friend Robert had joined me, whispering "Cool".

Most movies show the hero spinning a sling around for a while before letting go of the end and ending Goliath's reign by knocking off his helmet, but slings were much faster. You spun the rock around your head in sort of a half-circle, using your arm, shoulder, and upper body to gain momentum, and as it spun around forward you dragged your arm and upper body downwards as quickly as you can and send the stone shooting off at the top of the parabola. done right, even a guy with meager strength can send a quarter-pound stone or hunk of metal flying with nearly the force of an old-fashioned bullet.

Of course, the bow had won out over the sling because it had greater range and a sharp head could dig a lot deeper into flesh and through armor, but the Phonecian slingers had been a force to be reckoned with in the old world. A good slinger could whip out a bullet a second. Christian Kobold for the win! I might not have been terrifically faith-inspired, but the old testament lesson was proving quite useful under the circumstances.

I was still hungry, but the sun was climbing and my hiding place was fairly efficient, so I collected the other hide, rolled it up, and climbed wetly back into the brambles. My armor should dry while I slept, and even though it probably wasn’t going to be a very good sleep, I could start moving again in the evening and look for someone to deliver my squishy gift to.

I woke when I heard loud snuffling at the bush. Something was sniffing at my hiding place, but they didn’t seem to be particularly aggressive about it. I couldn’t see through the leaves, but I imagined it was something like a bear hoping for a few leftover berries that the birds hadn’t raided yet. I stayed perfectly still and was as silent as I could be, and eventually whatever it was moved away. The sun was up high, but for the moment adrenaline and nervousness assured me that I wasn’t getting any more sleep.

I looked down at my armor, which now was surprisingly snug and comfortable, and only a little damp at the edges. [observe]

Well-crafted crude Leather Lorica (small)

This Lorica-style armor was crafted out of poor quality materials but shows a craftsman’s hand at finishing. It is still unsealed, and should not be gotten wet until it can be sealed.

Currently provides medium-light armor

Value- Moderate

Weight: 12 lbs

Due to custom crafting and careful design, this does not negatively affect agility skills.

I guess that was good? I would have to ask Mnemosyne.

Yes, that is very good.

What the heck? I quickly dropped down into my soulspace.

After looking around, I noticed that she was in the crook of a tree over the small patch of crick that was flowing through my diorama. The water just started at one end, flowed, and then disappeared at the edge like it was cut off by a razor.

She had one leg tucked up against her chin, the other one dangling off of the bent tree over the water, and was watching the little minnows and crayfish flit around the slightly deeper pool. This was not unusual, since half the kids in the neighborhood sat in exactly that spot on the almost benchlike branch that was so often used that the path worked its way right up to where you can walk across the trunk and flop down.

“You can just send stuff to me via the boxes?” I asked her curiously, hopping up to sit on the second most popular branch, only that way because it required two steps of climbing. She was a charming sight, but that outfit was probably uncomfortable in any position that involved relaxation. He would have to get it changed as soon as he was able to.

Mnemosyne nodded, “Yes, but I absorb essence a lot more slowly than you do, and doing so without a state change in your soulspace costs me energy. Not a lot, but enough that I wouldn’t want to have a conversation in mindstates. Not unless you were constantly skilling up or something at the same time so I could use the shed energy from your state changes to fuel it instead of my own.”

I nodded, “Yeah, I noticed that you seemed to be happy sending me messages every time I observed something. So when I do that, I shed some kind of energy you can use?”

She nodded, “Yep. Mortals shed a lot of it. But until we set up your rank structure, I cannot see when you change or what you change to unless you come down here and observe it yourself. Which is something I would like to deal with while you let your body relax enough to sleep. I have identified what we need to find, if you would just imagine yourself following me I can show you what I mean.”

She hopped off of the tree and the edge of the platform and I imagined myself following her. It was interesting because whatever gravity I had felt seemed to be irrelevant when I did so. I guess the gravity was just as illusory as everything else, but I still missed it. We went lower along my orb, and when I looked up at the platform from the underside I could see through it like it was just misty, not solid like on its top side.

She stopped at a random section of my zone near the central orb and motioned at the orb itself. “Try to look closely at what is going on between that little drifting flare of color and your core,” she mentioned, pointing from one to another.

I looked closely, and could just barely make out a thin line of color, almost completely transparent, stretching from the threads in my core out to the blob and then back to the messy core. It was a light, ethereal blue blended with shimmery white, but now that I noticed, several other whisps seemed to be connected similarly.

“The colorless strand is quintessence. Until we can get you some kind of auramancy skill, you really cannot see how it loops through your body and is the basis of your first channel. The light blue is a hint of information-carrying essence, as well as that little bit of illusion it uses to display in your mind.” She said, waving her hand along its length.

“What are the other strands?” I asked, moving forward to peer more closely at it. I moved my hand, and the strand seemed to twitch, and I realized that I could sort of… push it around or make it lengthen or shorten just by intending to do so.

She seemed to look happy at my poking around. “Those are abilities, like observe, that naturally draw off of your core. Notice how they are just colored but are not blended with the whitish quintessence? That’s because they are not being manipulated by mana, they can use whatever stigma of essence that they require. Mana is the term we use for quintessence that is used specifically to power and manipulate aspected essence, which is also often referred to as elemental.”

“I have been trying to figure out the best way to display this stuff, and when I queried the word ‘display’, it came up with a very, very interesting definition that might be exactly what we are looking for. Go ahead and [observe] the observe skill?

I nodded, looking at the little drifting color blot, and [observed].

Observe verb- Apprentice, mediocre

(unknown)

This magical verb allows you to note and interpret the various essence strengths of an object or energy and gain information on its quality, strengths, and simple abilities. Grow or evolve this verb to gain more insight.

“You have really been using it a lot, and it has grown in ability. The apprentice rank means it is strong enough to manipulate and link directly with quintessence, which means we can use it for more than just its basic use. Kind of like leatherworking, where novice ranks mean that you know how to work, cut, and piece together basic leather stuff, but apprentice helps you figure out how to alter the leather, strengthen it, and color and add other materials to make it stronger or behave differently.” she explained.

“In your world, you have displays of various types that you know how to use, maybe you can use that knowledge to build a display, of sorts, to organize all of this,” she motioned at the drifting mists surrounding my core, “in a way you can use. The big rule of thumb is, you can manipulate the shape of the various sorts of essence moving through and over a skill to add functions, and I’d like you to try and do that.”

I nodded and started messing with the essence moving through [observe]. I could push it around, pull it, overlap it, and change how it lay, and every once in a while it started to create something new, but after a subjective hour of poking and prodding at it I finally spat in grumbling disgust. It seemed to resist forming into anything useful, and whatever I was doing wasn’t working.

“Can’t you just show me how to do whatever it is you want?” I turned to ask her, noticing that she was watching the fish again from the tree.

“Yes, I could.” she nodded, “But that wouldn’t help you in the slightest. Everyone uses mana differently unless they have a band. The band does all of the displaying and sets up patterns to use essence, and makes you pay for it too, but without it, you wind up knowing almost nothing. The only thing I can really tell you is that you need to visualize and WILL what you want, and that some people strengthen that with talents, like a dancer might use body movements to help it form the shape they want, an artist might use brush strokes or sketches, a singer or speaker might use words, and someone good with their hands might use hand motions or even tools. It is very specific to you and how you see the world.”

I nodded and tried again. I considered myself skilled in martial arts, so first I fell into a sort of kata with martial motions. That seemed to help a little, the mana stream formed into interesting patterns as I worked, but it wasn’t really something I could visualize into non-martial arts. To me, it was a source of exercise and combat, not a way of transferring information or creating things. It certainly made it easier for me to think, as I was a very tactile sort of guy and thought better while working my body, but it wasn’t the core of my thoughts, just a relaxing outlet.

Hmm. I was a working man. I knew some coding, but it wasn’t really my thing. But working with my hands, fixing machines, figuring out errors in ship systems, and creating patches, both physical and occasionally in electronic data, was what I was good at.

I started moving the blobs, imagining them in little boxes, creating an image of organization I was familiar with. It sort of resembled an old school character sheet from the pen-and-paper games I grew up with, but I was able to compact it along the edge of my little Diorama, creating a sort of three-dimensional sheet, that, when looked at from a certain angle, flattened out into a 2d display that I could look at more easily, almost like an integrated circuit board with all the wiring on one side and the easily-accessible switches on the other.

I should be able to make changes from wherever I was, whether down here in my soulspace or up in the real world, simply by willing them, I hoped, but when I needed to look at things in a simplified manner I could look at this.

Building the construct was simple, at first, but when I tried to finally activate it, like a spreadsheet, and start adding skills to it, It collapsed and I had to start over. I realized what I had done wrong almost instantly… I had the information from [observe] fleshing out the sheet, running from that quintessence and knotting it carefully into the structure, but the observe drew its own quintessence through the link. I found that by concentrating and willing it, I could draw another thin line of that blueish stuff, the same stuff that powered the illusionary display part of [observe], through and connect it to the structure.

Voila! My own display that I could call up in the real world! Unpopulated, but it felt like I had just written my own 3d imaging spreadsheet! The free, colorless mist that was running through my soulspace was almost instantly sucked into the soul display, filling it out and making it ready to hold the skill clusters in a more organized and useful fashion. I suddenly felt incredibly weak, like I had just given blood three times in a row and then run a marathon afterward.

Mnemosyne clapped her hands gleefully, and almost sang, “Oh, that is beautiful! And perfect! You can do so much with that. The last new display I saw was like a giant flat chalkboard, and all of the lines and skills and essence cords were displayed as crossing over and under each other with little loops and it was incredibly hard to decipher, even for him! With this you don’t need to show any of the crossings, it’s just all there with depth!"

Mnemosyne glanced at me and then put her hand over her mouth. “Oh no!” she exclaimed, apparently noting that I felt and looked utterly drained. “Initializing the space pulled out almost all of your free mana. You need to leave here and get some real sleep, give it a chance to recharge, you have none left and just being here drains a small amount, and you are draining out your health to stay! Please go!”

I nodded to her slowly, deciding that I appreciated her concern for my well-being, and drifted back into the real world and into a deep, exhausted sleep.