“Huh, wasn’t there a river here earlier?”

The creature stands in a flat plane, a deep groove worn through the center but otherwise featureless. Off to the east, the sun peaks over the horizon, illuminating the entirety of the canyon. Night was over, which meant the routines of the day were about to start.

Woken by the sunlight, slimes start piling up under the cliff edge. Years of natural selection have ingrained the behavior of ‘those that exist under the cliff when the sun rises get food’ into the single cell creatures, and a newfound mobility wasn’t going to change that basic action. Left completely alone in the center, the creature waits for something to happen.

Space splits near it, a vertical crack sliding downward and upward from a central point, about a quarter of a meter above the base of the riverbed. Slowly, the rift extends upward and downward, thickening as it does, until it reaches the ground. Just as slowly, it shrinks back into itself, until there was nothing to indicate anything had happened at all. The creature steps to the side of the crack, so much as one could designate a line having ‘sides’.

With far more suddenness, the whole of the rift rips itself apart. At the thickest part, it is about four centimeters thick, and the entirety of it is filled with metal. That silver object jumps out of the crack, like a seal on a gap that was only loosely affixed before the valve allowing for flow is twisted to reveal how the folly of man has lead only to ramshackle repairs and sudden dismay at the hole which is now larger than it was in the first place.

A rectangular sheet of metal goes sliding down the lack-of-river bed, until it catches on a rock and starts rolling instead. With a clanging, it bounces down toward the center of the ravine, slowing down with each collision with the ground. After twelve bounces, an edge strikes a rock at a sharp enough angle to flip the panel, and flip it does. Flying up into the air, it jumps three times its height before clattering down on its side, vibrating in circles.

The creature left next to the crack blinks as the gaping wound in the air slowly begins filling itself in again. That was interesting.

“Anyone in there?” it yells, the void of nothingness absorbing the sound. Nothing most definitely does not respond.

Giving the rent space one last look, the creature walks over to where the panel had spun off to.

“I expected something bigger, to be honest,” it says toward the inanimate metal. Knocking comes from within the three centimeter thick lump, audible now that the object had stopped rattling against the ground.

“That’s probably not good.”

Gripping the corner of the plate with its tail, the creature starts walking back toward the rift, though its momentum stops as soon as it runs out of tail length. It keeps walking for a few seconds, pebbles shifting uselessly beneath its feet, without a single millimeter of progress. Instead, it slips forward and ends up face down on the ground.

“Right, even without accounting for additional mass, that much metal is probably about… three hundred fifty kilograms in this gravity. Gonna have to get that fixed. Where’s a fifty-four when you need one?”

At the top of the canyon, carts started to show up. As refuse slops down into the ravine, and the various slimes begin devouring the dissolvable and inedible material, the creature waves all three of its limbs around to attract attention. It doesn’t bother with yelling, as there was no real way someone could hear it from down where it was standing, but movement tended to draw the human eye. Once someone got it into their head to look toward it, they would most likely notice that there was a distinct lack of water and send someone to investigate, at which point the creature could co-opt them into helping it move a heavy object.

Moving is the worst.

o o o o o o o o o o o o o o

Stabby McStabberton, Smashy McSmasherton, and Shooty McShooterton weren’t named that way. They just filled out their adventuring team paperwork with those names, and kept repeating the same joke to anyone who would listen. Having run out of leads for easy money making opportunities, they were going back to their roots to clear out slimes and harvest semi-functional magical equipment.

At one point, they had collected a lens of truth, presumably at one point coming from a pair of spectacles. It was very useful, but to the detriment of the group itself, having the ability to craft trickery out of phrases that would still be allowable within a zone of truth didn’t make the story any more believable when the props weren’t good enough. If they had managed to game it so the would get a full kobold bounty for every lizard they had slain, they would have been set for years.

Since that didn’t work, or at least it didn’t work with a generic shopkeeper, which they used as a test run before trying on something actually important, there they were down in the pits. It was best to head out at the same time as the trash wagons. Most of the time, adventurers would want to sleep in and relax for the morning, eat breakfast and whatnot. If they got to the loot pile early, they would have first pick of the halfway decent supplies. Considering how kitted out they were for how much effort they put into it, the strategy was apparently working.

“Hold on,” went Shooty, holding an arm out to stop the other two before they could pass him. “There’s someone down there already.”

“Are they a threat?” asks Smashy, putting his hand on the handle of his warhammer.

“Can’t tell. Pass me the circlet of extremely specific knowledge.”

Stabby obliges. As the sneak-thief archetype of the group, and nominally the leader due to fast talk, he was in charge of handling and distribution of all materials. None of them used magic, but magic items? Those were easy. They either worked or they didn’t, and if they didn’t it was probably easy enough to pass them on to someone who thought they could get it working. In a wizard town like this one, there were plenty of marks with funding and way too much free time.

“They’re waving at us from the… Where the hell did the river go?”

“What are you talking about it’s in the middle of the… Who the shit stole all the water?”

Stabby interferes before the other two could get too heated. “Doesn’t matter right now. We aren’t getting paid to fix a problem no one knows about, and we’re going down there anyway. Shooty, information. What’s up with the guy.”

“Short, has a tail, four limbs, bipedal. Little help activating this thing?”

“Sure,” Stabby says, poking at the tiara a few times to rapidly reset the connection. This was one of the less obvious magic bits. As far as Stabby could tell, it needed to think that the user already knew what they were looking at, at which point it would supply detailed information about that thing. When that wasn’t the case, he was in the position of needing to make the circlet think that it itself didn’t know what the wearer knew, and trigger a search of the item’s database for something that matched the physical description of whatever the wearer was thinking of. If that happened to be something that it actually did know about, which was probably the case, it would function as intended. Functionally, they were substituting having actual knowledge for good eyesight.

“Looks like it’s coming up as a hengeyokai. Apparently they have historical record of having existed, but aren’t in this entire continental region. Originally they were just classified as normal monsters, like werewolves and kobolds, but as of 318 they have been classified as humanoid shapeshifters instead of monsters, and fall under applicable laws.”

“So he’s a person,” Smashy infers. “Any way he stole the river?”

“Checking,” replies Shooty, “generally tilted toward the rebellion axis, with even odds toward light or dark, can’t wear heavy armor because it doesn’t work with their ability to transform into an animal or human, and affinity for nature themed magic. Yeah, could be a water wizard holding the river hostage.”

“Slime hunting’s on hold boys,” intones Stabby, “we gotta make sure we don’t get magic backstabbed first.”

Caution not being a part of their general strategy, the group of adventurers rush down the remaining path to investigate the mystery of ‘why would anyone be here before dawn’.

“Hey you,” yells Smashy, “what’d you do with all the water?”

“Nothing! Want to lift something heavy?” responds the figure.

“Hell yes,” Smashy says, stepping forward immediately. Stabby grabs him by the back of the shirt, keeping him from blindly walking into the theoretical path of the river. Illusion magic was a thing, and saying that they didn’t do anything with the water just for someone to walk into an illusion of no water was exactly the kind of bullshittery that wizards always pulled.

“No. Bad Smashy. We have to find out what’s up with a person before going to the blind trust portion of the relationship.”

“Oh right.”

“Shooty, put on the monocle of lies, would you?”

“On it.”

Shooty takes the piece of glass and places it over his eye. The thing probably wasn’t originally a monocle, but now that they’d wrapped it in wire and put a chain on it the truth of the matter was clear. It was a lens of magic which made you look dapper while you could see when someone lied.

“Are you trying to set us up for a fall?” asks Stabby bluntly. Just because he was the most charismatic out of this group didn’t mean he was some paragon of fast talkery. This was more along the lines of comparing various amounts of copper when there was gold on the table. Nevertheless, with enough magical assistance base competence was barely even relevant.

“Whaat, of course not. I just need this rectangle flipped over,” the hengeyokai said. “It’s a solid chunk of metal, and there’s no way I’m strong enough to do it on my own.”

Looking toward Shooty, Stabby is reassured that there were no lies in that. Nonverbal communication being an essential part of any kind of reconnaissance work, they had long since come up with a number of symbols for various situations. For example, shaking the head left and right meant ‘no’.

“Alright, what’s in it for us though? That’s some heavy work you’re offering here.”

“I have two things on offer, a block of metal and information.”

“Both of those then.”

“I’m assuming you like money. There’s a door up that path on the other side of the ravine that leads to a hole that wasn’t there two days ago. More information can come after some work.”

Stabby grabs the other two, and turns them around into an inward facing circle. He bends his head down low, and pulls the other heads down to his level.

“Smashy, think you can handle that?”

“Probably. I’m hella stronk.”

“Shooty, got a read on him?”

“He hasn’t lied once. Or the monocle’s not working. One of the two.”

“Great. I’ll get him to lie.”

Turning back, he asks the creature, “Is it true or false when I say ‘This sentence is false’?”

“No.”

Shooty shakes his head.

“Damn. Ok, is the answer to this question 'no'?"

“Nah.”

“Damn it! Ok, how many hairs does a head need before they’re no longer bald?”

“Any individual head exists in a quantum superposition of bald and not bald until the waveform is collapsed by an outside observer, resulting in that particular observer finding the participant to be bald or not bald.”

“Just tell me a lie so we can get a baseline.”

“Why didn’t you just say that’s what you needed? You’re very good at this.”

At that Shooty nods his head at Stabby.

“Fine, Smashy, flip the sheet of metal.”