I stared at the words in silence.

Doesn't seem to be immediately useful, but boy oh boy. What counts as unconscious, though? If I touch a corpse, would I get its Gimmick? I'm tempted to go back and check, but the monsters and all... wait, have we ever burned the herb thing?

The thought snapped me back into the reality, and instantly the stench hit me, an unholy combination of ammonia, rot and socks worn for a month straight that made my nostrils tingle. I nearly lost my dinner fighting a gag reflex.

Yeah, I can't imagine eating with this going off. If this is a normal precaution against monsters, how the hell doesn't smell settle in everyone's clothes? I certainly didn't notice anything of the sort with either Lyn or that guy. I guess it has to decay quickly or something.

I opened my eyes to see that the bonfire almost burned itself through and Lyn sprawled on the ground.

"Hey, Lyn," I called out to check if she's asleep.

No answer.

Well, easy enough to check how my Gimmick works.

I touched her shoulder, and a bizarre hum filled my head. I backed off and closed my eyes. Another message in red was waiting for me.

Gimmick conceived: Smoke and Mirrors

Create illusionary objects. No more than 3 can exist at the same time, and you're limited to 3 per day. They behave like normal objects, but all interactions with them within a day unroll when you or someone else undo them, or when you die.

I sat still, taking the message in.

Wait, what? That's not... Why did she lie about it?

Deciding to contemplate it after I figure out my own stuff, I concentrated on my identity again.

Gimmick: The Consumer

Parlor Trick: Create an illusionary object. It behaves like a normal object, but it disappears after a day. If it's undone by you or someone else, you die or it disappears naturally, all consequences are unrolled. Limitations on size and complexity apply based on ambient magic flow. n/a n/a

As an immediate question, what counts as an object? Is piece of wood an object? Is something made of wood and something else, like a dagger, an object? I'd have to experiment with the boundaries later. And how do those "limitations on size and complexity" actually work? I really wish they were put in a clearer form. Another thing to try and test.

With that being done, I turned to quietly snoring Lyn again.

So, why did she lie? Granted, I wouldn't babble about something so potentially powerful either, but I wouldn't make a point of telling a wrong version of it to a companion.

My gaze wandered over the clearing. A girl napping, her face turned away from a bonfire which burned through completely at this point, her bow under the nearby tree, the thick miasma in the air. Something was nagging at the back of my mind, and I couldn't figure it out.

Do I wake her up and just ask? No, that would reveal my own thing. The note for my Gimmick specifically said "reveal theirs", so it's probably not something everyone just gets for free.

The sinking feeling of unease was getting stronger. I still couldn't tell what's wrong, and it only riled me up harder.

Okay, let's think through the events of today. I woke up at the beach, met the guy, he knocked me out, we walked for a bit, Lyn shot him in the eye... wait, she said I'm a phaser, how did she know... nah, it's not difficult to infer the origins of a naked guy being escorted with his hands tied.

I questioned myself if I was just engaging in baseless paranoia. Feeling the need to stretch my legs, I stood up and started walking back and forth.

She shot the guy, and then...

Not really looking where I'm going, I almost tripped over a bow. I stared blankly at it, the cogs in my head making a whirl.

She shot him. She carries a bow to shoot things with. If that's the case, where are the fucking arrows?

There were none. I saw the bow, but no ammunition.

Which means she shot that guy with a fake arrow. It can't kill, as the changes made with illusionary objects unravel when desummoned. So she wasn't going to kill him. Did she want to only disable him temporally so she could turn him over to the authorities?

"Dammit, it's always the details, isn't it?" an unfamiliar voice said.

The lights swirled around me, and before I could react to anything, I was knocked senseless.

~~Co~~

As it happened for the most of my days off, I was sitting in front of the monitor alone, procrastinating over my passion projects by the means of watching seasonal shows with a friend.

"This is so boring," he complained over the voice call, "it's been like 4 episodes of nothing but training to punch harder."

"There is some guttural enjoyment to it, though. It's nice to indulge in a fantasy, where every problem is solved by the means of punching harder, something you just get better at as you put the work in. In a world like that, you would need no luck, no creativity, who or what you are wouldn't matter... hold on, we had this conversation already."

"?"

"I... can't discern what you've said. You asked something, right?"

"Afhjios isj ierej."

"Oh."

I tried to squeeze my hands together. They moved, but I felt nothing. I tried to concentrate on who I'm talking to. Nothing came to me.

I'm sleeping.

With that realization the memories flooded in.

I'm not sleeping, I'm unconscious again. I need to come to my senses as quickly as possible. I can illusion together one object, and I need to get through a fight with two... actually, three armed men, since the arrow was likely an illusion.

I channeled all my attention to the single point on the back of my head to feel out the pain in a hope that it'll break me awake.

~~Co~~

Consciousness returned to me for the third time this day, and I was once again naked and tied up, this time tossed over the former cadaver's shoulder. Trying not to make any noise or movements that would alarm the captors, I looked around. We weren't in the clearing, but we were getting through the forest in the same direction, and fast this time.

A person I assumed was the one to KO me was running ahead. Lyn was nowhere to be seen.

"I can't believe I forgot to envision a quiver," the same voice I've heard right before my second nap exclaimed, "and he bought like everything else! People really don't question pretty girls."

She was fake wholecloth? And he undid her so that his companion comes back to life, probably.

"Always the fucking details. Confused the details of the bio, the bitch caught on. Polished backstory tight, but brought a guy to my camp - too convenient, he said. Made sure nothing distracts this moron from eyeing up a cutie - forgot the quiver. Fucking hell. Took his sweet time to grow suspicious too."

Somewhere behind us, there was a low growl. The captors upped the pace even more.

We approached a familiar clearing. Previously dead thug carefully released me on the ground, and both of the captors got to work.

Observing them gathering firewood, making a bonfire and tossing a smeller into it in a span of a minute without exchanging a single word was frightening.

"Will have to bring him the old way, then, and pray to Yar that he doesn't wake up with a Gimmick to wipe my ass out."

His ass? What about his companion? Now that I think of it, he didn't ever address him in any way. Is he also an illusion? Then why did he unmade Lyn just to bring him back alive?

Illusionist took out a small kettle and a bottle of water out of his bag, along with a plant root. The log in a bonfire cracked.

He needed someone to carry me around. Lyn probably wouldn't have been able to lift me, and he couldn't just make up another guy or like a cart or something - he already wasted his three daily illusions:

Lyn A thug guy The fire Lyn produced

So he had to undo Lyn, with everything she's interacted with unrolling to the previous state. With that, I was back on the road with the very much alive thug, because I only went to forest because of Lyn. That's what a swirl of light likely was, me being transported back. All the stuff on the clearing was undone as well, and illusionist himself was probably unrolled to the state before he had to intervene, otherwise he'd prepare the clearing before we arrived. Information seems to be the only thing that doesn't roll back.

The long and short of it is that I only need to incapacitate one guy, if I'm not too far off the base. God, I hope I'm right.

For one guy, I had a plan.

It wasn't a very good plan. It depended on a few unknown factors, but I had to try, as it was my only shot with me being unable to move.

All my will had been channeled to a single concept of a rock hanging in the air a hundred meters above my captors head. After the slowest minute in my entire life the wave of exhaustion rolled over me, and I heard a faint swish getting louder and louder. Illusionist perked up at the sound, but it was too late - a stone the size of my fist crushed his skull.

I saw the familiar swirl of light, and I was at the beach again, naked, but untied.

The good part was that I was alive and free. The bad part was that I was a fucking idiot on his way to become some monster's dinner.