The "Best" RPG Ever-7

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---

Zack breathed a small sigh of relief when he and Nora got back to the town, along with seven of the town guard and a carriage full of things stolen by the goblins. The captain of the guard was with them. She was a human woman, probably shorter than Katherine, but with a kind of energy in her eyes that made it clear it would be unwise to cross her. "Find the rest of your party and meet me in the guardhouse," she said, and Zack nodded. "We'll take care of the ring for Mr. Thron."

"So, uh..who're the other people in the party?" said Nora.

"Katherine and Mika. They look like a catgirl, and a witch with demon wings. They've probably left the healer's place by now, but I'm not sure.."

"No no, I mean..what're they like?"
"Oh, that. Katherine's full of herself, and Mika thinks she's still a kid." He started leading the way toward where the healer was in town, based on the directions of one of the guardsmen, but stopped in town square, seeing the two of them talking about something.

"Hey."
"Oh, hey Zack! How's your foot?" said Katherine.

"It's fine. Thanks for reminding me about that, by the way."
"Well, it's your foot. I wouldn't need reminding if I'd stepped in a campfire."

"I have an ability that defers damage. So if I do something stupid and hurt myself again, remind me before leaving. I'm not sure how you passed up the first opportunity, really."

"Hm..me either, when you put it that way."

"Hey, who's hiding behind you?" said Mika.

"What?" Zack turned halfway around to see the elf half-kneeling in an effort to hide herself behind him. "Oh. This is Nora. Another player, took the Spirit Weaver class. What are you doing?"

"Umm, sorry." She moved to where the others could see her. "I'm just kinda nervous meeting new people. Hi."

Nora tried to wave, but Mika managed to catch her hand and shake it. "Hey. I'm Mika."
"N-nice to meet you.."
"What can you do?" said Katherine.
"Um..I.."
The psion sensed confusion, and clarified. "I mean, what's your class's abilities?"

"Oh! I can commune with elemental spirits or..something like that. I'm supposed to be able to use magic attacks and heal. I have this weird sixth sense for what elements things are made out of..and I can push the elements around, or make more or less of an element, to change..." she trailed off, staring at Mika for a few seconds.

"What?"
"..I can't tell what your wings are made of. Actually, I can barely sense them at all."
Mika tugged at a wing gently to get a look at its tip. "Well, I'm pretty sure they're made of the same stuff as bat wings. I mean, that's what they look like, right?"
"Well...yes, that would make sense, I think, but..they're not. It's like they're not natural or something."

"Hmm..well, I did get them after absorbing a demon soul. So maybe you can't sense demon stuff?"
"That may be it.."

"So do you have any problem with Nora joining our party?" said Zack. He knew, as party leader, he had the last say, but didn't want to let Katherine know about that mechanic until he had to.

"Hmm...nope. She's basically an elemental mage, which seems pretty useful and distinct to me," said Katherine.

Mika added, "Yeah, the more the merrier!"

"Okay. Now, we're supposed to meet with the guard captain for the quest reward and..I don't know, something else she wants to talk about."

With that, Zack started walking away. Katherine and Mika followed him after a second or two; Nora took a moment of confusion before following suit, running the first few steps to catch up.

---

The party of four was seated at a table across from the captain. "Hm..I was told two people accepted this job?"

"The others kind of showed up in the middle and helped us out," said Zack.

She shrugged. "All right. Well, based on the bodies we found, it's lucky they did. This really should've gone to the guardhouse in the first place. Apparently it didn't occur to Mr. Thron that maybe there wasn't already a job up for those goblins because they had left no survivors up till then. At any rate, I would say you've proven yourselves well enough to take on some of the harder jobs. Just be careful."

"We will," said Katherine.

"Anyway, the bag over there has the pay from Mr. Thron, as well as extra from a few other people whose property was returned...and a few things we know to have no owner. We have to hang on to the rest of the unclaimed stuff for a couple of months; after that, if you're still in town, you can just as well have it for all I care."

Katherine smiled. "Thank you."

"Um..how d'you know something has no owner?" asked Mika.

"It has marks identifying an owner who we know for sure to be dead, and without next of kin anywhere reasonably close."

On their way out, Zack picked up the bag and added it to his inventory, causing it to disappear. Nora and Mika looked somewhat confused by this, but didn't ask.

He paused a short way outside of the door to look aound in the party inventory, and found a bunch of items that had separated themselves out of the bag, the bag itself, and two-thousand-something more gold than had been there before. It was getting close to evening. "Hey, are you guys hungry?" said Katherine.

"Yeah!" said Mika.

Nora said, "Um..I think so."

"How about we go back to the Broken Dragon for the night? Huh, Zack?"
He opened his eyes. "Yeah, sure."

After they had ordered food, Katherine opened up a new conversation. "So, I think we have a pretty good party going here. Everything we need."
"Yeah..if you're okay with having one tank and three people who can't take hits," said Zack.

Katherine grinned at that, causing him to groan internally almost on reflex. "Well, yeah, I mean if you think of it that way then yes, we're in trouble. But you really limit your options when you think of it like that. I mean, yes, you're the only one who can take a bunch of damage, but that doesn't mean you're the only tank."

"..Explain."

"Well, there's more than one kind of tank, you know? Tanking is about drawing enemy fire, not about taking hits. So, while there is the tank that draws enemy attacks, and blocks and soaks up the damage with a wall of defense, there's also another kind of tank. Say..someone who's really agile, able to provoke enemies into attacking them specifically, and also has an uncanny..almost supernatural..ability to predict just how enemy attacks are aimed, and dodge them, or even counter and deal damage at the same time."

"You're talking about yourself, obviously."

"Yep. I've had a good look at the Psion skill tree. There's a low-level passive skill that allows me to predict what move an enemy's gonna make. How well it works depends on the difference between my intelligence and the enemy's, and it can be upgraded to work on even some smarter enemies. With that and the whole cat-race thing giving me good dexterity and reflexes, I should be able to make some real use of that skill, don't you think?"

"I guess. You'll still get unlucky and take damage sometimes, though."
"Yeah, but that's what we have a healer for, right? Anyway, you're not really a pure tank. You're more just a physical fighter. You move a heck of a lot faster than a wall, is what I'm saying, and I seem to remember you being the one who killed the big goblin. I get the feeling whoever designed this game had the idea of making classes highly flexible. They probably put every use they could think of into each class, given its general description."

"Say..speaking of game-mechanicy stuff..what's an average stat for you guys?" said Mika.

"Around nineteen or twenty," said Zack. "Strength and Constitution are around thirty for me."

"Sooo..seventy-six wouldn't be an average score, then?"
"No. Definitely not," said Katherine. "What have you got that in?"
"Oh, Luck. Everything else is under twenty, except for Wit. I guess witch is just a super lucky class or something?"

"Probably. It would explain how you managed to take on a bunch of goblins with such low stats and not get hit once," said Katherine, "even before the two of us showed up."

"W-well, it's not really much of an explanation," said Nora. "I mean..luck is sorta vague, isn't it?"
"Mmh, a little bit," answered the catgirl. "But then, if I describe a situation to you, like 'the little boy bent down to pick up a penny and a bullet sailed right through where his head would've been if he hadn't', you'd say the little boy was lucky, right?"
"I guess so."

"Come to think of it, I don't have any idea how I found my way back to the entrance through all the caves. I was just taking random turns and hoping I wouldn't hit at dead end," said Mika.

"Yeah. Stuff like that."

They took a four-bed room in the inn, and there Zack emptied the contents of the bag from the inventory onto the floor. There were six rings, all faintly glowing in differnt colors, a mace, a pair of knives, and a quiver, with a glowing glyph inscribed on one side, containing a single arrow. "Hmm..these look nice," said Katherine, picking up the knives with her mind and floating them over. "Better made than the goblin knife trash. You want one?" She move the knife over toward Nora just slightly too fast, causing the elf to jump back and nearly fall off the bed.

"Um, no thanks, I can't actually use weapons, or my magic doesn't work as well."
"Really? That's pretty bad. I hope your class powers are worth a disadvantage like that. What about you, Mika?"

The witch was prepared for the other knife to come flying toward her face and stop, but she did reflexively move back a bit when it happened. "I think my native weapon is a broom."
"Well, yeah, but you used knives for a little bit during the fight with the goblins. It's not like you can't."
"I think that was more improvised weapons than me actually being good with knives. I'll probably just end up throwing this if I use it..so, y'know, trash goblin knives work better for me."
"So..nobody minds if I take these?" she asked, moving both knives back over to her hands, and getting them by their handles.

"I thought you were happy with your claws," said Zack.

"Well, that was before I realized I could use telekinesis instead of physical attack. Also before I got my shoulder cut up thanks to their sucky range."

"Then I'm sure they'll work fine." Katherine put the knives into her own inventory.

"What about these rings?" said Zack. "Nora, can you see anything about them?"
"Um..sort of. They have extra elements tied in, but I can't make sense of the networks..it's too complicated. You, uh, you might need to have those actually appraised by someone who knows what they're doing."

"Or..I could try them all on and see what happens!" said Mika, reaching for the pile of rings.

"Don't," said Zack, flatly. "For all we know, there's one that spews fire. You wanna explain accidental arson of this inn to the town guard?"

"Hmmmno, that doesn't sound too fun. But I can try them on somewhere safe, right?"
"..Fine. It'll save us some money anyway, if we can figure out what they do without paying someone to tell us."

"What about the quiver?"

"It's probably enchanted somehow or other," said the psion, pulling the arrow out and slowly twirling it around between her fingers. "If it makes new arrows or something, I might be able to throw them around or something..but if I'm using the knives, my concentration's not good enough to do this at the same time. I'm sure we can find arrows if I decide that's a good idea, though, so you might as well figure out what it's worth and then sell it."

Katherine got up and moved over to the bed on one side of the room. "I dunno about you guys, but I'm pretty tired," she said, stretching. "I'm goin' to sleep." She got into the bed still wearing her clothes, figuring they were soft enough to not be too much of a hassle to sleep with.
"Good idea," said Mika, taking the next bed and hopping in.

"..Look away," said Zack.

"Uh.."
"I can't exactly sleep in armor. Look at the other wall."

"Oh! Okay," said Nora, turning around. The other two turned over in bed to face the wall. Zack watched them to make sure before getting to work removing his armor.

"So, um..what kind of clothes do you have on, anyway?" said Nora.

"What do you mean?"
"Well..most armor is put on over clothes..right?"
"Whoever designed the knight's outfit didn't think so," said Zack, now looking down at a woman's body in white undergarments.

"Oh.."

Zack got into bed as quickly as he could, trying to stop thinking about it. "Okay. You can look wherever you want again," he said.

"You know..it's kinda weird," said Nora.

Mika looked over at her. "What is?"

"Well..I've only looked like, um..like this for less than a day. But I don't feel weird in my body unless I start thinking about it. I can move around like I was born looking the way I do now, and it's not even uncomfortable."

"Yeah..now that you mention it, that is pretty weird. But it makes sense too, right? It's like the game is making sure we know the controls."
"I guess so. It's really hard to think of this as a game, though..everything seems pretty real."

"Mhm.." Mika's eyes were closed, and she stopped talking.

Nora closed her own eyes, and found herself feeling exhausted all of a sudden. Before long she too drifted off.

---

Zack found himself standing behind a pillar in a cave. He knew there was a dragon sleeping on the other end of the pillar.

He thought for a second that he felt strange, and looked down at himself. Everything seemed pretty normal, except he was wearing some kind of white armor and holding a pair of swords. And..on closer look, he had a tail. That was different. It moved around on its own, had white fur..didn't he always have a tail? Just like how his ears were always moving around..that was normal, right?

He shook his head. There wasn't any time to worry about that now. He had a dragon to dispose of..right? He moved carefully to get a look around the pillar. There was a statue of a dragon there; it was highly detailed, painted red across the scales, but clearly made of stone and unmoving. Hadn't he heard it breathing a moment before? He stepped out to get a closer look.

There was treasure around the dragon, gold and gems of all sorts, and even underneath it. But he picked up a piece of gold and rubbed it slightly; it turned out to be a painted stone. The gems were the same, not clear and not sparkling like a real gem. He gently touched the dragon statue. It was cold, unmoving, and made of stone, as it had appeared to be. But it was definitely real before..right?

He had a feeling that someone was watching him, but couldn't quite place it. He looked around, his eyes picking up all sorts of detail in the dark, but couldn't find anyone. He walked up to the dragon statue's head and found something real there for once. It was a black, oval-shaped gem set into the stone-dragon's forehead. He couldn't quite identify what made it seem so real. It shone in the slight torchlight from..torches..? He looked up, and found some torches hanging from the wall of the cave. He hadn't looked up before, but somehow it didn't seem right for there to be any torches present in this cave.

"I wouldn't pick that up if I were you," said a woman's voice, causing Zack to jump and look around rapidly. He eventually identified the source of the voice, a black cat sitting a few feet away on the opposite side of the dragon's head. It definitely hadn't been there before. It didn't look right. There was something..wrong..with it.

"..Who are you?" he asked. He wanted to ask 'what are you'? It didn't look right, and it wasn't a cat.

"It's black. So it's probably bad news. I wonder what this dragon represents?"

"What are you talking about? Who are you?" The cat's voice and appearance was making Zack feel very nervous. He wanted it to leave.

"Well okay then. I thought this would be fun, but I know when I'm not welcome," said the cat, before abruptly disappearing, like a jump cut in a movie.

Zack didn't feel much better, somehow. He felt like something was wrong with his body again. It was something in the pit of his stomach, his chest...

He looked down at the gem in the dragon's forehead. It was glowing somehow, despite being black. He felt a shift between his legs, and a push out from his hips. He looked down farther, to his hips, and saw that his pants had turned to a skirt and a pair of leggings. "Wha.." his voice sounded wrong. Its pitch was too high. The ground pulled closer to him as he became shorter, and then his chest suddenly burst out, becoming a pair of breasts.

His hair grew out then, the back coming all the way to the back of his hips, white strands finding their way into his field of vision. "This isn't..right," he said, a woman's voice echoing on the walls of the cave. He could feel little, almost unidentifiable changes coming to his arms, and legs, and face. A mirror appeared between him and the dragon's head, and he saw a woman standing in it.

---

"Aah!" Zack sat up, sweating, in his bed. He looked around. The others were still asleep; he hadn't yelled all that loud, it seemed.

Okay..I'm really sorry about that. Katherine's voice in his head. She had mentioned learning to do that before. I was trying to help, but I guess it wasn't going to matter whether you touched it or not.

He wanted to answer, but she was on the other side of the room. Instead he audibly sighed, laying back down and trying to go back to sleep.

He found himself slowly curling up under the covers. It was strange how comfortable it felt..much better than maneuvering his tail out of the way to lie mostly on his back. And then he went back to sleep.

The "Best" RPG Ever-6

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---

Mika thought that the catgirl was closing her eyes to mask a look of pain or keep herself still while the healer bandaged her shoulder, but after a while she opened them, and they glowed slightly. Got it!

The witch jerked back slightly in her seat. That had definitely sounded like Katherine's voice, but her mouth wasn't moving. "..Got what?"

Finally figured out how to apply skill points. So I can do this now!

"..Talk in people's heads? I guess it does come with the territory."

Yeah, but it didn't come as a basic class ability. Thankfully, those boss goblins were worth a ton of SP. So now I can do telekinesis, too. The skill tree's all weird for that ability, though. Just three skills: Learn telekineses, improve concentration, and improve size. Both with apparently unlimited levels.

"..So how did--?" Mika paused, noticing an increasingly concerned look on the healer's face. He'd been looking at her wings funny before, too. "Psion," she said, hoping they were less disliked than people trying to become archdemons, and the healer paused for a second before nodding like he understood.

Katherine, understanding the intent of the incomplete question, answered: You can sort of see a status screen when you close your eyes. It has inventory, stats, and a skill tree with a number over it. You kind of have to think about adding points to a skill..but you have to be really certain you want to, I think. Sort of a replacement for an 'are you sure' dialog.

Mika nodded. Then she paused a second, a finger to her lower lip.

What?

"..Wasn't Zack standing half inside of a fire pit at one point?"

The catgirl blinked. "...Yeah, you're right. But she was acting like she was just fine when we left.."

"Maybe she forgot?"
"I don't think I could easily forget my foot being in fire. And even if I did, it would sure be happy to remind me."

---

Zack noticed about halfway down the tunnel to the treasure room, carrying a toch taken from the goblins' fire, that one of his feet was hurting. Which was odd, considering how much he'd walked since coming into this world without any kind of soreness. But on closer inspection, the pain was a kind of dull burning pain. It was also getting worse with nearly every step.

It was getting hard to stay on his feet by the time he got to the chamber, and he all but collapsed onto the cave floor before working to get his shoe and the weird long black sock off and see what the problem was. He found out that the problem was that his foot actually was burned, almost all over. "What the..? How did I not notice that before?!" He remembered now, jumping into the goblins' fire to get in the way of the big one. Why did he do that? Why didn't that instantly backfire instead of taking so long to start hurting?

On a hunch, he took a deep breath and closed his eyes to look around in the status screen. On closer inspection, the skill tree for a knight was divided into three parts: Dark, Bright, and Gray. Apparently, Dark abilities only worked in Dark form, Bright only in Bright form, and Gray in both forms. Worse yet, there were separate skill points for each form: Dark and Bright skill points, which could both be spent on Gray, but had to be spent on the opposite side of the skill tree.

Zack growled slightly at the unneccessary complexity of it, but then took another look. There was a passive skill he had in the Dark part of the tree called "Defer Injury". Which explained why he hadn't felt much of anything until now. And..the Gray skill tree had as its very first skill, and the one required to learn any others, the ability to switch forms at will. Above that there seemed to be a minor healing spell.

As much as his foot was starting to hurt, Zack immediately went for both, and then tried using the spell. The palms of his hands glowed with a soft white light, so he pointed them at the offending foot. It felt nice, like something cool being placed on the burn, and even looked slightly better by the end..but only slightly. He wasn't going to be able to stand on that just yet. He listened for any movement outside of the cave, and then sighed, using the spell again.

His magic and magic regeneration were both really low, and by the time he'd spent the former he was barely able to stand up, and then still with some pain. He sighed and knelt back down, hoping that the town guard or whoever would show up before a thief or monster did.

---

Norrin found himself face down on the floor. He opened his eyes and pulled himself up with an arm, leaned on the other elbow and looked around the white room, and at the pedastal in the center. He adjusted his glasses, which had apparently remained even though his chair had apprently not been allowed. He flopped forward and crawled closer to the pedastal, lifting himself up with one arm and glaring at the text box. "Ugh..what is this?"

"..Must be..that game. Seems like..I think, maybe, a disclaimer..would've been good."

He crawled forward toward the pedastal. "'Best RPG Ever!...Warning: ...Not for the..walking..impaired.'" He stopped, panting, when he was about there, and then awkwardly manuevered himself into a sitting position, having to work around the stiff cast on his right leg. "So..I just pick a class..? But, I have a broken leg...maybe it'll cancel the game if I wait here long enough.

"..I might as well read the descriptions..maybe there's something I can play with a broken leg. Um..probably not a knight, though, no.." He swept his hand over, moving on to another option, reading it carefully and assessing whether or not it sounded like something he'd enjoy doing without being able to walk.

...

"..So how does playing a Construct work..? Would I get..would I get a cybernetic leg or something? I mean..yeah, it'd be nice if it wasn't broken anymore, but..that's kind of..drastic."

...

"Draconian..sounds more like..a race than a class to me. Or is that like, a dragon rider or something? It says they have incredible strength..and..a breath weapon? Maybe it means, like, some kind of flamethrower that breathes fire for you? Hm.."

...

"..Hm..." Norrin had to pause at seeing just a swirl of colored lights seemingly encased in an invisible sphere floating above the pedestal. It seemed so unusual next to all of the classes that had a weapon for a representative.

"Spirit Weaver: One in tune with the elemental spirits of nature, able to call upon them to bring harmony or chaos as desired. A versatile class capable of destruction and healing in equal measure, but severely lacking in physical prowess. Armor and weaponry are barriers between the Spirit Weaver and the world of nature, weakening both the connection and the powers that come with it."

"Actually..this might work. I mean..a Spirit Weaver can heal. So maybe I could just fix my own leg? I think I've been in here a few hours..and it hasn't booted me out, so this is probably the only way..."

He took a deep breath, raised himself up as much as he could manage, and tried to grab onto the swirling mass of colors. There was a surprising solidness to it; he easily grabbed hold, but couldn't get it to come out from above the pedestal at first. It felt like he was trying to pull a loop of cord out of knot. When he pulled, the lights moved around more rapidly, as if panicking.

The text box above said "Would you like to play a Spirit Weaver? (Pull for yes, release for no)". So he pulled as hard as he could, until suddenly the feeling of a solid piece of rope dissipated, and as he fell onto his back the lights all exploded outward, leaving behind colorful trails as they all flew out from the little sphere and then turned their trajectories all toward him, flying straight into him. He blocked reflexively, but didn't feel anything when they hit him; they seemed to visibly go into his skin, and not through it.

The trails of light faded off, and the pedestal lowered, turning to ring of bright light. The text box said "Step into the summoning circle to begin your journey."

Norrin looked at the message for a few seconds, incredulous. "..S..step in? I can't--! Huh?"

He paused at a weird feeling in his right leg, directly under the cast. The feeling was followed by a mild tingling and itching, and the sensation of the leg falling down just a bit, through the space where the cast had been between it and the floor.

He sat up, looking at his leg. It wasn't in a cast anymore. It looked kind of thin, but that was to be expected. He scratched at it, noticing that, somewhat less expectedly, it seemed a lot smoother than he remembered; there was a lot less hair there. He tested the leg, moving it slightly, and then slowly stood up, surprised that he had the strength in it to do that. Normally rehabilitation was needed to be able to stand without crutches..right?

A motion drew his eyes upward, and there he saw what looked like a big mass of wide ribbon, some of it white and some of it black. While he watched, the white parts darkened and turned black, and it started to untangle itself in midair. He had to stop watching when he noticed that his skin was starting to itch and tingle again..but this time, it was everywhere but his right leg.

"Huhm..?" He looked down to see the hair seemingly pulling in from his arms and legs, the complexion of his skin turning slightly paler, and stranger still, his arms and legs clearly getting thinner. His hands and feet even seemed to be getting a little smaller, his fingers in particularly becoming thinner.

Then, all of a sudden, his shirt tore apart in the middle, just in front of his stomach. The cloth seemed to fold its way out, up and down toward his shoulders and hips. He could see now that his stomach was very flat and smooth in the front, and also very thin; its skin, too, had much the same complexion and lack of hair as his arms and legs. Then he felt an odd stretching of his ears, like the tips were being pulled out to either side by invisible hands, and then an outward push from his hips, like they had been confined by a tight belt and he was just now taking it off.

The dramatic changes to Norrin's clothes continued, with the leggings of his shorts getting vertical cuts down the middle of each leg, the middle section seemingly unfolding out into a piede of white cloth hanging down to between his knees, and the rest of the cloth, including that gained from his shirt, turning into long strips of blue material across the sides and back at about the same length. His shirt's sleeves tore apart, leaving now only a couple of deep blue straps tightly held on either side of his chest, part of the back, and the collar intact, and then all of the extra cloth from his shirt formed some kind of cape hanging from the collar made of light-blue strips of cloth like those hanging from the sides of his hips.

With all of that excitement, Norrin only just now noticed his hair, which now hung down to his shoulders on the sides and was a deep blue color. He turned to get a closer look at it, and could feel a much greater weight of hair from his back swishing around in response..just before it was suddenly pulled up and bunched up, something wrapping around the upper part of his head and tying a the back hair together.

"Wha.." He had to pause in the middle of an astonished question at the sound of his voice, much higher in pitch than he remembered it being..and kind of girlish, really. Norrin blinked, realizing something, just before feeling a mild tingling between his legs that quickly faded off. "I..I-I'm..?" Norrin pulled his legs close together and felt around, and found something quite definitely missing from between her legs. Her cheeks felt hot, and there was a strange sensation from the pit of her stomach for a few seconds before her attention was drawn sharply back to the black ribbons hanging in the air.

All at once they advanced on her. She tried to block them instinctively, with her arms, but they just wrapped themsleves around her wrists..or rather, some of them did; the rest quickly made their way to her legs and wrapped around those as well. Before she had time to react to that, the front of her chest started to feel like her hips had before, and she could feel the material across the sides of it giving way to two bumps quickly ballooning their way out into a pair of full-size breasts, which bounced very slightly at the end of their growth.

Norrin paused for a moment, somewhat in awe of what had just happened. But her attention was drawn away from that yet again, and toward a strange sense she had of being..connected to something. It was in the air, and the ground, and around her, and in her, too. It wasn't all one thing, but a bunch of separate things all bound up together in knots. It felt like she could pull and push at that..fabric, almost, and make things change.

She tried a small push forward, and the air in the little white room developed a slight breeze from her back for a second. "Hm.." Without another word, she stepped into the ring of light, curious what new surprises this game would have in store.

---

Zack jumped at a girl's voice suddenly echoing around through the caves. "Hello? Is anyone there..?"

"I'm over here," he answered, "who are you?"
"Um..over where?"

"Just follow my voice, and look for the light."

"But it's echoing all over..oh, wait."

Zack waited for a few seconds before asking, "Wait for what?"
"Shh."

He remained quiet, and before long his ears turned forward to pick up the clicking of a pair of shoes walking closer. Then he could see by the torch's light a tall, thin woman with elf ears wearing clothes even less useful-looking than his own. Her eyes were closed, and she stopped just short of stepping on him before opening them. "Oh! Sorry." She stepped back a bit. "Um.."

"So, who're you?" said Zack.

"Oh, uh, my name's um..Nora," she said, kneeling over. "What happened to your foot?"
"I stepped in a fire. Please don't ask."
"Um..maybe..maybe I can make it better. But I'm not sure, I mean, uh..what's your name?"
"Zack."

"But you're—"
"Please shut up. You can fix my foot?"
"I..think so. It has too much fire, not enough water. Maybe I can untangle the fire out and the rest would balance out naturally..."

She had her hands up to the injured foot already, about to do something. "Hold it. What are you talking about?"

"Oh, uh..I'm not entirely sure," she said.

"Great." There was a pause of a few seconds, before Zack sighed again. "Well, you probably can't make it much worse. Go ahead."

Nora made a pulling motion, and Zack winced at a sudden, sharp pain at one small spot. "Oh! Sorry," she said, noticing his expression, and let go, which put the pain in his foot back to how it was before. "So..don't just pull on the knot," she muttered, before moving her hands around in a much more intricate motion, as if untying something. His foot tingled slightly, but didn't hurt any worse.

"So, Nora. Where'd you come from?" said Zack.

"Uh..that's kind of..hard to explain."
"Are you a player?"
"I'm not sure.."
"If you don't know what I mean, you're not."
"Well, I might be thinking of a different meaning from yours that that applies to, though..."
"Were you recently in a blank white room having your body and clothes forcibly rearranged for no good reason?"
"Oh! Yes. I guess. Well, I mean, maybe there was good reason for.." she trailed off, looking intently at Zack's foot again. "Ah..okay," she said, before sliding one hand over the other as if pulling a piece of string across it. Surprisingly, Zack's foot started feeling better. It wasn't hurting nearly as much, though it didn't look like it had actually healed from the burn at all.

Nora held up her hand, still pinched as if holding onto a string, and a small fire appeared floating above it for a few seconds. Then she let go, and the fire disappeared. "So, what exactly did you just do?" said Zack.
"Oh, um, I picked Spirit Weaver. As my class. Which means I can sort of push and pull elemental spirits around. And..sense them, too, so I'm not just blindly groping around."

"And..they look like strings in knots?"
"Um..sort of? It's..hard to explain," she said. "They don't really look like anything, but they don't have a sound or smell either. And they're intangible..sort of..I mean, they either make up or are in everything, I can't really tell which, but they.." she trailed off, not really sure how to explain beyond that.

"Well, thanks, anyway." Zack stood up, testing his foot. It still seemed vaguely sore, but definitely would work for standing on it. "I've met a couple of other players so far. You want to be in our party?"

"Sure! I mean, if you're okay with that. Um, I might be kind of a burden since I can't really do physical stuff all that well.."
"Well, I'm a Knight, so I can handle that," said Zack. "We really need someone who can heal, actually."

"Oh! Well..I can definitely do that. I think."

It took Nora a few seconds to realize that Zack was holding out a hand for her to react to. She awkwardly took it and shook it for a second, simultaneously noting that Zack was..slightly shorter than her? The wolf-woman looked at least the height of an average guy compared to the pile of stuff in the room..had Norrin actually gotten taller?