Shippo and I spent hours playing hide-and-seek around the boat. There were hardly any legitimate hiding spots on a twenty-foot ship, and I was the only one with natural camouflage, but over the course of three days and a lot of tags it netted us both more than a thousand experience.

>>

Hide and Sneak 1 — 10 XP

Hide and Sneak 2 — 100 XP

Hide and Sneak 3 — Achievement

Are you an assassin? If not, maybe you should consider a career change. Skulking around on a moonless night may not be for everyone, but it looks like it’s for you. You are well on your way to becoming a master of concealment.

(You gain 1,000 XP)

Hide and Sneak 4 — 11% Complete

>>

Achievements above tier three required more of an investment of time than we had to spare, especially as we were doing a lot more than chasing each other around the hold and counting to ten. Shippo had successfully pulverized every mineral, shell, and herb that Esgar had been able to find for me on short notice, earning himself “Grinding Away 3” and his first Heroic level. That presented its own problem.

“Can’t advance,” Shippo said. He was Lawlimi’s companion and therefore had to enter Lawlimi’s adytum when they rested to attain his next level. It was an eventuality I had already considered.

“You can be my companion,” I said, “like Falcor. The system seems to regard me as a player for this purpose.”

“Don’t know.” He shuffled his furred feet.

“I’m sure Lawlimi would approve of your advancement, and you can realign your allegiance whenever we see him again.”

“Doesn’t feel right.”

Though I found it distasteful to manipulate a party member via skill use, this would be for his own good. I reallocated my Concealment ranks back into Persuasion and tried the whole conversation again.

“Feels bad.” Shippo shuffled his furred feet. “You sure he’ll be okay?”

“I’m sure. You can always trust a cephalopod.”

>>

(You have gained a companion.)

>>

Being a companion was different than joining someone’s party. Only NPCs could be companions, and they were afterward restricted to the party of their bonded player. The status generated a hidden monitor that quantified a companion’s relationship with their player, and that score influenced their behavior toward the player and potentially bestowed additional benefits on both of them. The main reason to become a companion, however, was simply to be able to participate in quests and gain experience. NPCs didn’t usually advance unless they were companions or their ADI needed them to do so for story purposes. Otherwise, Mystic Seasons would be a game played primarily by non-player characters, which would be interesting, but subject to complaints from the people who were paying for the experience and therefore funding the whole thing. With that in mind, I scrolled through my menus and removed my own companion status. If Lawlimi was under the sway of Orobos, and as he hadn’t communicated with me since his abduction I felt comfortable presuming that he was, I didn’t want to remain bonded to him. Besides, as I appeared to be able to do everything a human player could, there was no reason to remain a companion.

How many others like me were planted on the server, robots in disguise?

Falcor and I were becoming better partners by the hour. He had also participated in our games of hide-and-seek, though he hadn’t ever grasped the hiding part. It wasn’t that he couldn’t conceal himself. He could and did make full use of varichromatic camouflage far superior to my own. What he didn’t do was stay hidden. Instead, if you crossed his hiding spot, he would take the opportunity to pounce.

“Don’t like this,” Shippo said, once again crushed beneath the bulk of a dragon whose wide mouth was breathing noisily against his ears.

I gave two distinct whistles and Falcor released his captive. In addition to Sit and Stay, he had learned Fetch, Release, and Hold Hostage, among other useful Tricks. It was difficult to gauge intelligence, but I had the impression Falcor understood most of what was said around him on some level, even if he only chose to obey commands that he’d been trained to obey. Around the same time Shippo reached Heroic, I made Mortal 8.

>>

How to Train Your Dragon 3 — Achievement

The bond between man and dragon is like no other. Not merely a mount or a helpful or dangerous pet, your dragon has become a true friend. His goals are your own, but as always, treat him with respect and consideration or suffer the consequences.

(You have gained 1,000 XP)

How to Train Your Dragon 4 — 22% Complete

>>

“Didn’t like that,” Shippo repeated.

“What do you like, Shippo?” As a companion, Shippo would go along with pretty much anything his bonded player wanted, but that didn’t mean he lacked preferences.

“Mechanicals.” The kitsune patted his tool belt, which he hadn’t had an opportunity to use since escaping Eternity. He was a Rank 9 artificer, and with my help, he had been able to cobble together the X-Cannon. There were certainly other uses I could put him to, but we hadn’t brought mechano materials on the boat with us. They were rare outside of the Artificer’s Guild; that organization had a monopoly on gun and watch manufacture. Mechanoborgs themselves were not a normal part of the Mystic Seasons gameplay, but golems existed. It was something to think about in the future.

“Do you like fishing?” I asked.

The water didn’t agree with him, but there were reels available and Shippo was able to use his skill to build a spooling mechanism. Soon we were both settled comfortably on one side of the boat with our lines in the water, waiting for an Achievement while the crew did their jobs around us.

>>

Lazy River Fisherman 1 — 10 XP

Lazy River Fisherman 2 — 100 XP

>>

It was a nice break from the more strenuous training exercises, but I couldn’t afford to spend a fifteen-hour day relaxing my way to Lazy River Fisherman 3. We had a messy meal. Shippo and I were both comfortable having our catch raw, and Falcor ate everything we didn’t. Then I began the real project. Crafting an addition to my body required ingredients that represented all eight elements. A new Soul Trap wasn’t necessary, as I was already in one. This would be a classic golem with a few modifications to the life-granting ritual. If we’d had the parts, then Shippo could have helped me fabricate a mechano body, but I was going to have to make do with a mixture of mostly clay and sand. The earth component formed the majority of the structure, and we had seawater aplenty. Crystal and Wood components had already been helpfully prepped by my foxy companion’s diligent grinding, and for Air, I used a seagull.

Catching the seagull took over an hour after I carefully lured it to the roof of the cabin with delicious fish guts for bait. I waited in utter stillness, my skin blending both color and texture against the mottled, water-warped wood. It took me three tries, but seagulls are stupid and they kept coming back down after I spooked the first two. It wasn’t a Phoenix feather, but I had earned it. And somehow this was the one thing that didn’t ping an achievement of some kind.

Metal was accounted for by a few coins, and Flesh called for the tip of one of my less useful arms. I had Shippo chop it for me with Karcharoth’s Tooth, and I nictitated hard, but there wasn’t any real pain. Though Eternity had caused the players who entered it to experience real pain, my lack of a body at the time had saved me from that unpleasantness. There were two more ingredients, but they needed to wait until I had finished sculpting the body. The whole process began on our third day of travel, and Shippo advanced while we rested that night. When he woke, he had sprouted a third tail. It was electric blue.

“Is that significant?” I asked.

“Want to fly,” Shippo said.

From morning to night on the fourth day, I sculpted my golem. My many arms and my hands were, if anything, better suited to the task than the human equivalents, a mere pair, would have been. Our supplies and the time frame limited the scope of my creation, which was three feet from neck stump to toes and plainly humanoid. The world was designed to be taken advantage of by people shaped like humans, so that shape was the natural choice as opposed to just making myself a bigger squid or a snake or a quadruped. I had been pumping my Dexterity, and it was at seven, technically Celestial range, and the task of coordinating my limbs for that sake of crafting had become a joy.

>>

Monuments and Memories 1 — Achievement

The art and craft of sculpture is not for the dilettante, it is a work to which one can devote their life. You have just begun your first project. Will it be a monument for the ages, or merely a memory?

(You have gained 10 XP)

>>

Minutes turned into hours as the mechanics of the game made it easy to maintain a pleasant state of flow while engaged in any monotonous task.

>>

Monuments and Memories 2 — 100 XP

>>

In Mystic Seasons, anyone could be an artist. It has been argued that you can’t program creativity, but apart from being patently untrue, the claim is also irrelevant. The majority of artists are not creative in the least—they merely imitate a reference while varying on a theme, and any “style” they possess is a measure of their inability to reproduce the subject faithfully in a new medium. When a player invested in Crafting skills, the system modified their display to allow for greater ease in reproduction. Whether they were copying a famous painting or drawing a perfect circle or other geometric patterns, the game acted as an adaptive tool for doing so. As I sculpted a body, the system continually provided me with suggestions and guidelines for potential shapes compared against a selection of example anatomies, like a highly advanced form of paint by numbers.

>>

Monuments and Memories 3 — Achievement

Many hours and many failed attempts have led you to the completion of your first serious sculpture. It isn’t a masterpiece, but it is the beginning of your course of mastery. The road is long, but you have proven your determination to walk it.

(You have gained 1,000 XP)

Monuments and Memories 4 — 11% Complete

(Wa Lim Li has enough experience to advance in level.)

>>

I washed the clay off my hands and my tools in ocean water. It was well into the night when I finished, and I was both physically and mentally exhausted by the effort.

>>

(Fatigue 3: 30% penalty to mana regeneration. 25% penalty to total Spirit. 20% reduction to movement speed.)

>>

“It’s ugly,” Shippo said of my creation.

“It’s only going to get uglier,” I said.

We rested in preparation for the ritual on the fifth day, and I entered my adytum.

>>

Wa Lim Li — Park Tree Squid

Mortal Level 9

Affinities: Nadir — Fire — Yellow

Statistics —

Strength: 3

Dexterity: 8

Constitution: 4

Intelligence: 6

Ego: 3

Presence: 1

Appearance: 1

Body: 2,440

Spirit: 1,660

Experience: 5,553

Skills —

Athletics: 4

Acrobatics: 3

Concealment: 9

Craft (All): 9

Handle Animal: 9

Persuasion: 0

Weapon Proficiency: Small Blades

Combat Maneuvers —

Combat Expertise (9): Temporarily increase evasion at the cost of Spirit. Your Spirit drains at a rate of 1% per second, while you receive a 45% bonus to Evasion.

Distraction (9): Whenever you attempt a “Feint” or a “Taunt,” you receive a 90% bonus to this maneuver.

Sneak Attack (9): Whenever you successfully attack an opponent who is not aware of you or who has the Distracted condition, you receive a 45% bonus to base damage and a 45% increased likelihood of an attack modifier.

Affinities

Nadir —

Handed (2): Two of your arms end in hands with opposable thumbs.

Chameleon (2): Your skin is varichromatic; it can adapt to your environment for the purpose of camouflage. 20% bonus to concealment against visual perception.

Vocal Folds (5): You have a functional voice and can communicate in an approximation of human speech without penalty to skill uses that rely on verbal communication. You can effectively mimic any natural animal sound.

Fire —

Heat Resistant (9): Your skin is naturally nonflammable. 60% resistance to heat damage.

Yog Yellow —

Glory (9): Enemies below your level have a 50% penalty to resist negative morale effects. You and your allies have a 50% bonus to resist negative morale effects.

>>

My skills were flexible. I could modify them whenever I had the freedom to pause and concentrate. Everything else was geared toward survivability. My Celestial rank Dexterity, combined with fully ranked Combat Expertise, would make me extremely difficult to pin down once I had a set of legs to help me dodge. Even without legs I was acrobatic enough to do a kind of cartwheel on my arms, not that there was ever a reason to do so aside from a delightful proof of concept.

Sneak Attack was the natural pairing to Distraction, which I had decided to keep because it was a good thinking man’s Combat Maneuver in its own right. It was also the only hope I had of dealing significant damage in battle. Karcharoth’s Tooth was an excellent weapon, but I was still Mortal and I didn’t know what kind of challenges awaited us in Nihon. Neither my Heat Resistance nor Glory had proved useful thus far, but passive abilities are like insurance—you don’t need them until you do, and then you really need them.

Shippo and I greeted the day with another meal of raw fish and a few halfhearted attempts at flight. He climbed onto the cabin and hopped off a few times.

“Are you sure that’s how it works?” I asked.

“No,” he said, “I’m practicing.”

“It did appear as if you were falling more gracefully than before.”

“Thanks.”

The final steps in the creation of my golem were each uniquely inconvenient. I needed to fire the clay on a boat without a kiln. Shippo was able to help by constructing a kind of open coffin kiln on the deck out of barrel staves and lining it with unused clay and sand. While he was engineering an oven I used the last of my ingredients to brew a sleeping potion. It wasn’t nearly as powerful as I would have liked, but a soporific was my only hope of ensuring Falcor’s cooperation. I needed some of his blood.

Dragon blood was a famous reagent of nearly universal application, absolutely necessary for any alchemical operation involving the creation of living matter. Fortunately, I didn’t require more than an ounce, so I was well supplied, but the newfound trust and understanding between my animal companion and I could be shaken if he didn’t understand what I was doing.

He took the potion with a little ale and we went on a walk around and around the deck until he grew visibly sleepy. Back down in the hold, I explained the entire situation to him, displaying the vial and the knife I would use and looking for signs of comprehension. Falcor blinked lazily at me and watched as I nicked his ankle, but didn’t protest. I thanked him

profusely and bandaged the area more than it called for, then brought the vial of precious liquid back up to the deck.

Shippo was nearly ready, and minutes later we had a fire. The crew didn’t complain. One of them roasted halibut over the flame on a spit while we waited for the golem to cure. The unpleasant part hadn’t come yet.

A small spike upthrust from the neck of the golem in place of a head. It was only about two inches in length, but that was a lot to stab yourself with. The fire, which had been hot but short-lived, was burning down to coals. My golem was still oven temperature, but I barely felt it as I crawled to the top of the coffin and positioned myself over the spike. “Okay,” I said.

“Okay,” Shippo agreed.

“Go.” I slammed myself down on the spike where my arms met the bottom of the back of my hood. Thanks to game mechanics, what I felt was more like being poked with a stick than being Vladamired, and Shippo poured the little vial of dragon’s blood into my beak on cue. It had a sweet, smoky taste, and a prompt appeared.

>>

[Quest Update — Stuffy Doll]

You have successfully crafted an addition to your Soul Trap. Do you wish to continue?

Reward — Augmentation

>>

I accepted, subsequently experiencing a visceral relaxation followed by a vibration that began in my mantle and expanded to include my arms, then traveled paths that had not previously existed down into my new body. The sensation came and went in successively smaller waves. The body I had created out of clay had become my body in every way that mattered. It could feel, it could move, and my Nadir abilities extended to it exactly as they had the body that was now my head, so I hadn’t lost the use of my camouflaging skin.

I sat up abruptly. “Is that a kraken?”