#Beep

Came that familiar sound and Luke instinctively knew it for the call for attention it was. He turned his attention to the juvenile and their eyes met in a curious stare. A mental tug followed in its wake, as if beckoning him toward the creature and he obliged it, offering an open palm for the floating, hairy tadpole to find purchase in.

It flew in, chin-first, and wriggled for position in the undersized palm space, and when it failed to find the ledge it was seeking, it turned its tail towards him and bounded from the platform.

A tad dramatic aren’t we, thought Luke, bringing a second palm to the first before offering a more spacious landing pad. The creature gave him an assessing look before coming in for a second landing. This time, the space was just right, managing to accommodate the tadpole’s hefty head, with most of Luke’s fingers just grazing the beginnings of a belly.

He slowly cupped a hand to the creature’s side, gently stroking its wet and slimy skin. It sidled a bulbous head to his palm, nudging him familiarly in encouragement. He adjusted the second hand to support the head as it relaxed all its weight into the welcoming cup. His left thumb thumped at its side, catching its attention, and the cute head wiggled in his palms in response, readjusting itself for a clear path before playfully nipping at the finger he’d presented to it.

The bite packed more of a punch than he’d expected, starting off as a slight tingle and ramping the voltage up to a minor jolt. He'd never experienced the spell for himself, but he imagined this is what it would feel like, what others felt when I employed it on them, he chuckled. The feeling passed just as quickly as it started, and a system notification proceeded the final convulsions.

You have successfully bonded a familiar, .

Worth it! thought Luke, referring to the painful nip as his mind registered the notification. Its cute head bobbed up and down as it breathed, and Luke couldn’t help attempting to nudge at it again, with his right thumb this time around. The movements were met with resistance from both his thumb socket and the bulk before its head, so he settled for little rubs on its back.

The juvenile growled in response, the waves rumbling up his arms and all the way down his torso. The vibrations left an uncomfortable tingle at his tail bump, prompting him to shake them off with haste. He shook the little guy loose as a consequence, but a quick reach caught it before it could topple into a freefall.

With the familiar safely in his hands again, he continued his observations, noting every little detail his eyes could catch. Although he’d called it a ‘tadpole’, it seemed a bit too mature to be classified thus, having long, filamented external gills that would look well-placed on a dreadlocked, human head instead.

Moving onto its body, one side was black, whilst the other was white, presenting a symmetry that was only broken by the patterning on the center of its back, which was a roughly checkered sheet of black and white, very reminiscent of a map.

Juvenile Salamander? he guessed, which wouldn’t be farfetched based on its appearance, and the traditional view of dragons as fire-breathing lizards. Regular salamanders weren’t actually wreathed in flames, and the elemental ones that were didn’t actually breathe fire, but he supposed an adjacency to that would suffice.

The best way to determine its characteristics would be to just appraise it and check, so he invoked his appraisal on it immediately. The skill registered a successful invocation, but the details were never displayed. Instead, he was notified any and all information pertaining to his own familiar would be made available via the familiar’s status, which upon reading this, he instinctively knew how to bring it up. With a mental nudge, he brought up the details:

Name

Sex

Race

Level

XP

Female (ZZ-Self)

True Chimeric Axolotl

1

-5

DESCRIPTION

A chimera in more than name, this loyal companion packs quite the byte in every bit of its being.

A true chimera!

A true axolotl?

ATTRIBUTES

Strength

1/∞

(x∞?)

Dexterity

24/∞

(x∞?)

Constitution

6/∞

(x∞?)

Intelligence

24/∞

(x∞?)

Wisdom

0/∞

(x∞?)

RACIAL TRAITS

Lizard of many Phases

1

[----]

Hyper Regen

5

[----]

Bar-o-soap

5

[----]

Spongey

1

[----]

SKILLS

Name

Description

Extra

observe

Observe and note

[---]

repeat

Repeat observations

[---]

show-

[Locked]

Requires: Wisdom > 0

-tell

[Locked]

Requires: Wisdom > 0

MODIFIERS

MOD

SIGN

BIN

CLASS

NOTES

remote

-

0

RANGE

Extends skill effect range

or

|

1

LOGICAL

[---]

repeat

3

11

INTENT

[---]

reverse

E

101

INTENT

[---]

and

8

1000

LOGICAL

[---]

not

X

1010

LOGICAL

[---]

Luke inspected his familiar’s sheet. He noted the peculiar way the attributes were specified, as well as the weird multipliers that stood next to each entry. Whatever ‘X - Infinity - Question Mark’ meant, he would have to table that for now as he was more interested in the racial traits and the description.

Of the little guy’s traits, only ‘Hyper Regeneration’ was self-explanatory and though ‘Spongey’ seemed descriptive enough, it hadn’t affected the water level in the tank so he couldn’t be sure. He could only guess what ‘Bar-O-Soap’ meant but hoped his first thought was wrong. With how slick the entity’s skin was though, he feared he was right on point. The dashes next to each trait meant no description would be forthcoming and thus he would have to discover them in time.

As for the description, it seemed more of a wordplay puzzle than just a description. He felt he could solve this before the trait descriptions, given his tangential interest in lesser salamanders. His focus had been dragons and other greater reptiles, and he would’ve stuck to that had it not been for water dragons.

Due to their classification as amphibians, he’d chosen to learn as much as he could with the knowledge of lesser amphibians serving as a foundation. Surprisingly, axolotls had proven more interesting than their greater cousins, displaying traits that bordered on broken. Though they lacked the potent and creative offensive capabilities that some amphibians displayed, they more than made up for that in their mysterious regeneration and adaptable nature.

Although his familiar was already living up to his knowledge through its stats sheet, Luke was worried about its natural habitat. Even though they were amphibians, they barely left the water and couldn’t survive long outside of it. He hoped that whatever else the ‘chimeric’ part meant, it would also allow the cute fellow to survive for extended periods out of the water.

As if on cue to his thoughts, the little fellow wiggled up one of his arms and as it did, it gave Luke the answers to questions he’d been thinking about. Its gills flattened to its side and melded into the skin as its features slimmed down to resemble a full-grown lesser salamander.

As he stared at it, it stared elsewhere, seemingly preoccupied by the firefly moving around in the cave. The familiar continued to climb and as it did, its form toned down even more to resemble a short snake with short pairs of clawed legs. When the stubby snake reached his shoulder, it leapt into the air to catch the blinking firefly, managing the feat in one bite and an immediate gulp.

Luke instinctively shot his hands out to catch it, but it hovered a bit longer than expected. It circled in the air, failing at half the attempt to completely defy gravity, and instead managing to decrease the rate at which it descended towards the welcoming hands below it.

As it landed, it relaxed its form into his palms whilst managing to maintain its grasp on its catch. Its belly expanded and contracted rapidly as it huffed from its exertions and as its breath steadied, its body regressed to the salamander-like form. Luke had an idea what would happen if it were to contact actual water, and to confirm, he retrieved a small bucket and a huge container of water from his inventory.

Filling it with water first, he dipped his familiar in next and in a matter of seconds, it had morphed into a more juvenile state. It lost the limbs but gained more in the way of gill filaments, their extension, and the glow around them giving it the overall appearance of a wide-mouthed cannonball with spinach leaves for ears.

As soon as his familiar finished morphing, a string of notifications tugged at his mind for attention and he allowed them to play, pleasantly surprised at their content.

has discovered 2 phases! attempted to unlock a mystery. Attempt failed! Incomplete Mystery has been added to ’s description.

+--------------+

|Familial Alert|

+--------------+-----------+

|“You shyte what you byte?”|

+---------------+----------+

|Class: Addendum|

+---------------+-+

|Type: Descriptive|

+-----------------+----------+

|Source: Mystery (Incomplete)|

+----------------------------+

+--------------+

|Familial Alert|

+-------------++

|Class: Update|

+-------------+-----+

|Type: Racial Traits|

+-------+-----------+

|Updates|

+-------+-------------+---+

|Lizard of many phases| +2|

+-------+---+---------+---+

|Spongey| +1|

+-------+---+

Luke chuckled at the choice of colorful words in the descriptive addendum. He’d really gotten a lot from that string of notifications, the most notable being the 2-for-1 on racial traits and his first mystery. The +2 on -Lizard of many phases- was more than he would’ve expected from a single interaction with his familiar; and from how things had played out, he surmised that this was the trait related to the ‘chimera’ part of his familiar’s name. Amazing as they were, he was sure the features they'd discovered so far were but the tip of the iceberg. Already having ideas on exploits for those phases, he couldn’t wait to actualize them and hopefully discover even more.

Though he welcomed the smaller adjustment on the second trait with just as much appreciation, numbers-wise, he couldn’t help but wish for more in the way of knowledge. That not forthcoming, he was left to guesses, and he guessed ‘Spongey’ was the trait related to the addendum, and that the addendum’s mystery would benefit from understanding how exactly it worked.

This would be a useless conjecture were the converse not likely to be true; solving the mystery would in turn brings dividends in the trait. Bad spelling aside, he could infer a relation to eating and all the other stuff that happened after. A grimace at the thought of experimenting with poop and urates forestalled the chuckle that had come naturally at the thought of the little guy eating his way to the mystery’s solution. Either way, he’d make it his sworn doody to solve it, whatever the requirements.

◆◆◆

Name your familiar, YES/NO?

It was an obvious ‘yes’ for him, but what he’d name her, he didn’t have the slightest idea. He would’ve had better luck with swampy, boy names, but now that he knew the little guy was a girl, he’d have to consider that in his name choice. Or do I, he muttered under his breath, earning him a glare from the wee lass, who seemed privy to his thoughts now.

“Hmm… How about Swampy Locks?” he thought out loud, earning him a bop’ing glare. “Dread-Lotl,” he tried again, but instead of a glare, the bop was accompanied by a wet smack to the face, as the familiar leapt to express its opinion.

It seemed the wee lass had inherited the Gob Smackers habit, albeit lacking the effect the other dragonoid's had carried. That being said, he’d at least learnt a few things with regards to his familiar, starting with the meanings of the sounds it’d been making. Beep and Bop, which were positive and negative respectively.

He extended his familiar the courtesy to pick its own name, and it responded with the string that had woken him from his slumber, #Beep-Bop-Beep-Beep.

1-0-1-1.

With his answer in binary, he made the calculation and came up with the name he thought confusing on its own, but apt for the translation.

… 8 + 0 + 2 + 1 …

You have named your familiar, .