“Inaria,” Alessi noticed that I was staring up at the ring-covered planet in the sky.

So, this was the moon. I’m on the moon… well, a moon. Maybe a hollow Dyson sphere moon or a doughnut-shaped one if the Chasm existed in linear space and wasn’t some weird space-bending magical bullshit.

“Inaria,” I repeated, arriving at the conclusion that Andross, the world I was on, was most likely an odd-shaped planetoid orbiting a far larger world. The rings on the surface of Inaria that blotted out the night sky didn’t make any sense to me, didn’t look natural. The planet itself looked dead, frozen over. My sharp chimera eyes discerned far-away detail, focused on incredibly distant, enormous, glacier covered continental-divide mountains.

A crack of rumbling thunder resonated from overhead, distracting me from the observation of the phantasmagoric continental rings.

“Thunderbird!” Alessi suddenly screamed, dropping her meat. “Hide!”

I turned my head towards the sound of thunder and saw an enormous, black, crow-like thing coming down towards us from the sky, lightning bouncing between its feathers. With a flash it vanished from the distance and appeared right in front of us with a thunderous detonation and a crackle of electrical discharge. The black crow-like monster was bigger than any bird I had ever seen before.

Up close it didn't even look like a bird. The thing had no beak, only a maw filled with jaggedy, sharp teeth. A single, glowing, eye-like organ peered at me from the innards of a teeth-covered maw. Six jet-black wings unfurled themselves. I froze, overwhelmed by the nightmarish abomination that headed straight for me.

The creature's black, metallic-looking, sparkling talons were aimed straight for my nightwalker-blood covered body. In another moment they would close over me!

A hand grabbed me by the scruff and pulled me back, throwing me into the open hatch. The claws of the flying monstrosity snapped at the empty air. I saw my mom's dark form swinging a fistfull of something at the thunderbird. A cloud of dark powder ignited in the air and the thunderbird made a horrid, ear-splitting noise. A microsecond later I lost sight of the scene, as I plummeted down and collided with the mossy carpet inside of the skull.

My mom moved like the wind. She shoved Belassi and Alessi down the hatch after me, then leapt there herself and slammed the beetle wing shut.

The air became filled with ozone. Metal claws struck against the beetle wing. Mom held the hatch closed with her entire weight, panting.

Another angry screech resounded from above.

I heard a loud crunch overhead as the villainous thunderbird grabbed my nightcrawler. Lighting flashed through the slit in the hatch. The crackle of electricity and booming thunder grew distant.

My mom relaxed. She tied the hatch closed and turned to face me.

"Well?" She asked.

My heart thundered in my chest. I came dangerously close to dying. At least I finally got to eat some meat, so I had that going for me.

"Y-you were right. Leaving the nightcrawler atop of the house really attracted a larger beast." I pushed the words out of me. "W-what was that… powder?"

"A… last resort against predators like it," she replied with a sigh. "Fire fluid collected from the Hublatch dragon sacks by your father, dried and ground into powder. An unnecessary waste. Why didn't you listen to me?"

I folded under her judging look.

"I… wanted to eat meat," I finally said.

"You have a death wish, daughter," she ground out as she shook her head. "Just because you came back from death once doesn't mean you are invincible. Your disobedience… disappoints me. Goodnight."

She shook her head and vanished in the hallway, ignoring my whisper of "I'm sorry".

I noticed that Alessi was trembling.

“Hey, we’re fine. Mom did a great job saving us from that big scary bird,” I said. My words didn’t come out that confident. I was incredibly stupid. If it wasn’t for my mother's speed and that explosive powder I’d be fried bird toast right now.

“S-scary bird,” Alessi uttered with a shaky voice. “It was so… fast. It moves by lightning… I… I didn’t have time to warn you.”

“Yeah, I saw. Well… since that takes care of the cleaning up… let's get some sleep,” I said, not feeling one bit sleepy. Adrenaline was bouncing in my head, sending my body into flight or fight mode.

I buried myself in my furs, trying to relax. I heard Alessi whimpering inside of her alcove.

“Uh, you alright?” I asked.

“N-no,” she replied. “C-can’t sleep. Scared.”

“Me too,” I admitted. “Alright, climb over to my bed.”

Both of us fit with ease into my larger alcove.

“T-thank you,” she whispered. “For everything. For accepting. For understanding. For making my mom smile. For taking us to… your hunt. Even though we almost died… it was fun."

I nodded and glanced at Belassi. She was sitting on the couch, ignoring us.

“Do you know any songs?” Alessi asked. “My mom… used to sing to me… before her mind broke.”

“I can’t exactly sing like other chimeras,” I explained. “I can’t even say my own name right.”

“Ah… the Still Forest took it away,” Alessi commented with an understanding look. “I’ll teach you… how to sing properly, later. Don’t worry.”

“Thanks,” I smiled at her. “I do know other songs…”

“Uh?” She blinked.

“Songs from beyond the stars,” I whispered conspiratorially. “From beyond the Still Forest and the veil of death. Would you like to hear one?”

She nodded.

“Oi u lisi

Da oi u lisi

Da na gorici

Tam zozulia

Da ta i zozuliya

Da kuido zvilaa”

As I softly hummed and then sang the Ukrainian folk song about a cuckoo bird in a forest and her nest, Alessi relaxed and curled into me. I knew the “U Lisi” song by heart. It was Pavel’s favorite. I had sung it to him before my ill-fated trip to Chernobyl, accompanied by his guitar beneath the stars of the now impossibly distant Milky Way.

The song didn’t come out perfect, since my new mouth muscles were used to speaking as a Chimera. I had woven it together with chimera noises that my mouth could produce, approximate to the lyrics I knew once. To the ears of a person from Earth the song would likely sound a bit alien and ethereal, but Alessi didn’t seem to mind. When I was done, my eyes filled with tears. I once again remembered that I would never see Pavel again… would never talk to any of my friends or fly on my Dnepr across the winding roads of the Caucasus Mountains.

“Strange… beautiful… It doesn’t sound like anything I heard before,” Alessi whispered, her own eyes glittering with tears. “My ancestors have no memory of this song or anything like it. You really were there… in the Still Forest and somewhere beyond it.”

“Yeah,” I said, hugging her.

“My dad… I hope he found a new happy life, made it beyond the Still Forest,” the little chimera uttered with a sniff.

I hugged her harder as a response. I knew exactly how Alessi felt. I had lost both of my parents when I was only five to a car accident and my grandfather, a retired Soviet computer engineer and virologist, took me in and raised me in his cottage in Eastern Ukraine.

“I haven’t cried once… since the day he died,” Alessi continued. “I had to stay strong for my mom and had to take care of her. I was so alone for so long… relying on the chorus of my ancestors.”

“You won’t have to be alone anymore,” I said. “We have each other now.”

“Thank you for accepting me into your family,” she whispered.

“I’ll do more than that,” I added. “I can teach you the songs and… the language of my tribe and others.”

“Huh?” She looked at me confused.

“Ukrainian, Russian, English.” I said, listing the languages I knew. “I’m the only chimera carrier of… words from beyond the stars, beyond the Still Forest. We can use them to talk to each other… in secret. Make our bond stronger!”

“I… I’d like that,” she whispered with a soft smile.

“I can teach you so much,” I added, thinking back of all of the things my grandfather had taught me when I was young.

Toolmaking, forging, mathematics, history, chemistry. There was so much that I knew, so much that I could show my new sister to uplift her mind! As long as I could uplift one chimera out of the shackles of tradition, then there was a chance to improve the lives of the entire tribe.

As I excitedly rolled my brain through various topics of interest, Alessi’s breath slowed. Her body stopped trembling. She was asleep.

I wiped my tears and suddenly realized that I was at peace. I found someone that I could trust. Someone that wouldn't hate me for who I was, because she was as broken as me, albeit in a different way. She was someone with whom I could share parts of myself that I kept locked away for seven long months.

I glanced at Belassi. She too was asleep, curled up on the couch carved from dragon-bone. I wondered if I had managed to fix her just a little.

The house was safe, quiet. It was time for me to sleep too… but my mind refused to shut down. I knew exactly what to do.

“System. Level me up,” I whispered.

[Level up to LV: 2!]

The system sang. The words drowned in colorful, shimmering dancing sparks that turned to blinding stars that filled my entire vision. Impossible, celestial music filled my ears, as if every star that was blotting out my sight was singing to me.

The unearthly song resonated across my entire body, twisting, warping, winding itself into every fiber of my being. Every single nerve in my body ignited with indescribable pleasure and pain. I felt the reach of glacial frost and the all-consuming, blinding inferno of the sun. I shuddered, curled inward, gasped, lost in overwhelming sensations.

When I came to, I was once again standing in the middle of Chernobyl’s fourth reactor control room. I took a step forward and my stats flashed on the wall, numbers woven from burning lights of nixie tube lamps and letters embossed on metal plaques.

Name:

Juni Tokimorimïtuti

Age:

7 months

Species & Subtype:

Chimera spawn

Level:

2

Experience:

2/450

Health:

2/2

Stamina:

2/2

Mana:

2/2

Mana regen:

2 m/hr

Strength:

0

Agility:

0

Dexterity:

5

Vitality:

0

Charisma:

0

Magic:

0

Luck:

0

Intelligence:

0

Wisdom:

0

Investiture points:

10

Ten whole points to spend! Wooo!

But where to put them?

This time, I decided not to spend them all on one stat. Instead, I chose to put one point into each line and study the result.

I grabbed at the thick, metal dial next to the [Strength] label and carefully turned it.

Strength: 1 Investiture points: 9

Staring down at myself, I noted that I wasn’t looking like a chimera child. I was more of a mixture between my human soul and a chimera one. I didn’t have skin and was more akin to an approximation of a human woven from thousands of shimmering threads.

The five dexterity threads I've made earlier were clearly visible to me once again.

As I turned the dial, a single, new, red-colored thread ignited from the core of my being. It grew from the center of my chest, bloomed and spread out like a tree. It slowly blossomed, following the approximate shape of my bones.

Huh.

So… this was some kind of a thread that reinforced… bones? Making my bones less… breakable? Neat, but also, hard to test. I focused on the tree, seeing if I could move it around like the Dexterity thread.

I could! After what seemed like an age of mental struggle, I was able to move the Strength-tree out of my bones. I knew exactly what shape I could reshape it into to make a shield.

A triangle was a base shape in a “Michell structure”, a lattice structure that minimized weight and optimized performance. My grandfather taught me that there were strong biological structures such as diatoms, leaves, insect wings, etc, that were Michell structures.

He also taught me the precise mathematical formulae behind Michell structures. It was thanks to him that I knew that the same triangular lattice-work geometry that made thin beetle wings strong was also effectively used by the Japanese to make their skyscrapers earthquake-proof.

I slowly moved the entirety of the red thread tree into my right arm. Once it was there, I folded and unfolded it until I shaped it into a polygon-like tree. As I worked, the thread became more malleable. My goal was to use it to construct a rigid, triangular grid structure akin to the armadillo’s osteoderm body armor.

As I did, I wondered if I grew enough of these Michell-trees inside of myself, I could become… indestructible. I mentally drooled at the prospect of having armored everything. I had no idea how tough this [Strength] thread was. Maybe it would tear from a single poke? I would have to test it in the real world when I woke up.

I meticulously waved what I now labeled as the [Michell Shield] inside of my right arm, slowly assembling hexagonal lattice-work around the very edge of my skin above the extensor carpi ulnaris muscle.

Theoretically, if a creature like the nightcrawler attacked me with a sharp claw, I could use my arm to redirect the sword-like blow karate-kid style and maybe… not get my arm sliced in half.

That was the theory anyway, I had no idea how practice would go or what my arm would even look like when I woke up.

When I was done, I slapped the Michell structure with my left arm. The red thread flashed, repelling the slap of my left arm.

Yay! Go magic arm shield!