The "Best" RPG Ever-71

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It was really surprising that having wings didn't make lying on one's back significantly less comfortable, as long as one was careful about their positioning. Mira, tired of sitting down, had decided to continue reading on the bed in her room. It was truly fascinating how well she seemed to understand the descriptions and methods for casting the spells in the book, although there were varying responses on whether or not she actually felt able to cast them herself. It was enlightening anyway; if they ever needed to fight a mage or something she might even be able to tell which long-winded—therefore powerful—spell they were casting before they finished casting it, and prepare everyone else appropriately.

There was a knock on the door, so she sat up and swung around to the side of the bed, setting the book down still open and running a hand through her hair. That was one thing lying on the bed like that didn't do any favors for, but the 'wild' look was decently cute on her anyway, she thought—at least under the right circumstances. "Come in."

Aria stepped inside, waving a little awkwardly. "Heyy. There's something I've needed to talk to you about all day, but didn't really get a chance to," she said.

"Yeah?"
"Okay, I know you probably weren't paying much attention to this last night but—right when we were about to summon the demon. You said something about getting off track, I mentioned a trainwreck and then Murphy's law."
"I remember that. It did seem a little weird," the witch nodded.

"I was watching Rose the whole time. Uhh—so, yesterday, when I was talking to Loren I said something about the conversation going off the rails. He was very confused by that, and I was pretty sure why. This morning I made sure.

"They don't have trains here," she said with an emphatic, sweeping motion of her hands. "Why would you waste a bunch of metal and wood and whatever laying down tracks, and come up with steam engines, when there are magic crystals and people who can teleport you back and forth between them? And they don't have anyone named Murphy famous for a law about everything going wrong."

"Only what can go wrong," Mira corrected. "So, you were watching our dragon friend at the time and—"
"She didn't react! She didn't look confused or, anything. And I could tell she was paying attention too. I think she might be from Earth."

"Mmhm." Mira gave a pointed pause. "So, why are you telling me this instead of waiting to ask her yourself?"
"Because—okay look. There are three possibilities for why she didn't react to me saying that stuff." She counted on her right fingers: "One: She's from Earth and doesn't know we are. Two: She's from earth, knows we are, doesn't want us to know about her for some reason. Three: She's not from Earth and just took what I said in stride because she's barely interacted with people at all for centuries and is completely used to not understanding every expression she hears. If it's one then sure, fine, I could handle it. But if it's two or three then—nooo, bad idea."

"How come?"
"Well, I'm not—I can't really."

Aria took a moment to get the words together. "Ever since I got here, I've been terrible at putting anything the right way," the shifter said. "Half of what I say I didn't really want to say, and the other half I don't say it right. Or—I dunno, maybe I've always had trouble with this stuff and never noticed it because I was around people who always 'got what I meant' or something."

"You seem to communicate fine around me," said the witch with an encouraging smile. "Maybe I'm just that sort of person, though."

"Sure. Um." Something about the way Mira had said that flustered the shifter for a second, with the slightest tint of red to her cheeks even. Cute. "Uh...th-the point is, if something needs to be handled tactfully, or talked about delicately, I am the wrong person to do it. We're talking about an extremely lonely dragon who might be keeping a secret from us for, like, an emotionally upsetting reason for all I know? Or possibly asking her something that's complete nonsense to her and then needing to skate by that confusion carefully so she stops thinking about it."

"That's fair. Rayna might be a little more persuasive than I am though, if that's what you're going for," Mira suggested.
"Maybe? But it seems like you're a little closer with Rose than she is. Right? You've got a—thing going," she said, putting her index fingers together in an attempt to express what said thing was. "Maybe you can get her to admit to something she wouldn't to someone else. Orr, you know what she'd be ready to accept as 'just joking' if that needs to be it."

"I suppose you're right about that," the witch nodded. "Well, I'll try and get her alone to talk with her the next time she's in town."

"Good. I guess I'll probably find out what the results are one way or another."
"Yep. But no need to spread it around to everyone until we are sure," Mira said.

---

Katherine left the door unlocked, since she was standing nearly right next to it, and so was able to 'see' Jacob's mind as he came toward it. The main thing that kept her from opening the door before he even arrived at it was a strong desire to not be like Tsaron toward other people; she (im)patiently waited for him to come and actually knock on the door, and then waited a second or two longer before opening it up.

Zack, the guy's here.

Got it. He set the wooden sword in the rack it had come from, and started toward the door into the house. The wolf raised its head, then stood up and shook itself once before coming up next to him. "We have a couple of visitors. Don't scare them half to death this time if you can help it," he said. The wolf grunted once, a slightly displeased agreement to that much.

"Hey there. C'mon in," Katherine said, waving the elf inside. Jacob nodded, coming inside.
"Where is this, exactly?" he wondered aloud, looking around at the size of the place.
"It's out east of the city proper. We were offered to have this place built in exchange for helping defend this side—well, along with a few other favors."

"I thought it looked a little big for being where it looked like it was. So—the door's a link portal, then?"
"Yep."

"This far out...couldn't have been cheap to set up. But I suppose can see how the benefit might be worth it for them."

They headed for the living room, and Nora sat up from leaning forward as she saw them coming in. Fazren, following her eyes, turned toward that side and saw them too. "Oh, hello there," he said with a small wave. A few introductions followed; Katherine noted that Jacob introduced himself as a scholar but didn't say exactly what he was studying, evidently uncertain how a priest of Haestra would take the news that it was 'monsters' or 'chaos magic'.

After that, Zack came in, the wolf following. "..And this is Zack, and that's the dire wolf," Katherine said, gesturing toward them.
"I..see." Jacob seemed to visibly resist an urge to take a large step back while he looked at the animal, especially since it greeted him with a quiet, slightly suspicious growl.

"You need to get close to scan him?" Zack asked.

"Er—that would be best, I think."
The knight turned back toward the beast, and pointed to a spot near one of the room's walls. "Sit, please." Then he knelt over to come face to face with the wolf once it obeyed. "That guy's gonna wave his hands over you or something. I want you to stay still, and not threaten him, okay?" The wolf's response was close to a 'hmph' but its tail wagged some, indicating its willingness to obey.

Zack stood back up, turning toward Jacob and Katherine. "He should be good for you now. Or if he's not, tell me." Then he moved closer to the center of the room, having noticed Nora with her visitor present by now.

"Er, hi Zack. Th-this is uh, Fazren. One of the priests from my temple," she said. Then, toward the Vulpin man: "Uh..Zack."

"Pleased to make your acquaintance, miss," he said with a friendly grin, putting out a hand to shake. Zack came just close enough to reach it and made one up-down motion before pulling his hand away again.

"You're not planning to take her back," he said, more of an imperative than a query.
"Oh, of course not," Fazren nodded. "There were merely a few things to discuss, besides wanting to catch up of course..." Now that his eyes were on the knight, his head tilted slightly sideways as he appeared to notice something.

"Hmm. If I am not mistaken, something seems to be binding your appearance," he said.

"Yes, I have a curse," Zack said, crossing his arms. "It's a long story."
"Form-locking? I'm not sure I understand how a form that appealing qualifies as a curse."
The wolf-girl's ears folded down as far as they would go. "I'm a man."
"Oh! Well, that clarifies the matter some," Fazren nodded. "Although, it can't be all bad if your curse lets you live among so much beauty, can it?" Nora had practically seen this response coming, but couldn't think of a good way to warn him against it quickly enough. The knight just glared at him silently, visibly repressing an urge to growl only because that would probably have agitated the wolf nearby.

"My...I'm trying to be friendly, but it's clear I've only offended you instead. I do apologize," Fazren said.

Meanwhile, Jacob slowly approached the wolf, and when it didn't open its mouth to bite his head off, raised his hands near it. Its eyes watched him, ears lowering some in suspicion, but it didn't move, as per its alpha's request. Katherine could see him trying hard to concentrate against a persistent fear that it would snap his hands off, and subtly shared a little of the mental load of the spell he was casting to ensure nothing would go wrong.

He tuned out the conversation just behind him, and a faint glow appeared from his hands. His expression turned slightly confused, and he moved his hands downward, still glowing, and continued doing so, kneeling himself, nearly down to the floor. Then back up again, to the top of the wolf's head, before he finally ended the scan, dropping his hands to the side.

"Something wrong?" Katherine's voice drew Zack's attention back away from Fazren, and he turned around to see what was going on.

"I'm just not sure what to make of what I'm seeing," Jacob said. "The evidence of my eyes tell me I am looking at a dire wolf, which can't be this big without the help of chaotic magic. But my scan sees no more than the ambient concentration...in fact, I think it's a little less."

"So what's that mean exactly?" Zack said.

"Well, ah. It's not much use for my research in particular, but it certainly explains why he's so...friendly." Jacob took a careful step away from the wolf as he said this. "Now that I think of it, I believe I saw a higher concentration of normal magic in there than I'd expect from an animal too..even accounting for size. Hmm. How exactly did..ah...?"
"'Joining our pack' go?" Katherine supplied—not the words he'd been about to use, but the ones that would probably offend the wolf the least. "He was leading around a big pack of dire wolves, and after we killed a lot of them he walked up and challenged Zack to a one-on-one fight."
"I suppose you read this off of his mind?" said the elf; she nodded. "What sort of mind is it?"

"It's not too different from a person's. I guess that is pretty unusual for an animal now that I think of it..."

"Right. Well, whatever's going on, I would guess it started before you met him then. Maybe someone tried something to reverse the effects of chaotic magic on him, and decided the experiment had failed, let him back in the wild—when in fact it merely worked more slowly than expected?"

The wolf barked once, startling Jacob.
"Uh...he says he's never been captured by anyone," Katherine said.

The scholar stood himself upright and brushed off a sleeve, trying to pretend he hadn't jumped quite so high a second ago. "That, would make such an experiment more difficult, but not necessarily impossible. Maybe even explains how they could've lost track of him before noticing it was taking effect...?"

"Either way, this doesn't really help with what you wanted to figure out," the psion concluded.

"That's correct," Jacob said with a small nod.
"I guess we'd have to actually take you along to scan a real animal-monster, then. Have someone hold it in place, maybe. Or—would a just-killed one be good enough?"
"Perhaps? I-I'm not sure my presence would be a very good idea, though.."
"If I may," Fazren interrupted, "what is it you're studying, exactly?"

"Ah." This was a question Jacob feared, particularly from him. "Well. Hm." He was trying to figure out how to put it.
"He's trying to figure out how chaotic magic affects creatures to turn them to monsters," Katherine said. "Or where monsters come from in general. It'd be nice to fix the frontier's main problem at the source, wouldn't it?"
"Well—that's a bit idealistic. What I'm after might be a small puzzle piece of an eventual solution, however," Jacob said, immediately agreeing that this was the right angle to approach it from.

"I see," the priest nodded. "Just be aware that some undertake that sort of research hoping to harness chaotic magic, with usually disastrous results for everyone involved. You might not be able to trust just anyone with what you find."

"Of course," he said.

---

"...Huh."
"Huh?" Having decided it was probably best not to overwhelm the guests with a bunch of other people running around, Lynn and Rayna were sitting in the library, across from each other.
"Guess what I found in my inventory, that definitely wasn't there before?"

"A note from Tsaron?"
"Uhh—good guess. I mean that's a thing that could've happened but—no. A map!" Rayna stood up, producing a folded piece of paper bound in some string. She moved straight to the nearest table and spread it out over it. "Map of the world...well, as much of it as we've been to, at least."

Lynn got up and moved over to it, noting her own familiarity with the countries, cities, and even some of the geographical features drawn on it. "So, you didn't have this before?"

"Conflicting memories. I checked my inventory when Aria noticed the crystal and note from Loren, and there was nothing unexpected. Now, this," she said with a slight gesture toward the table. "But I also remember working on this the whole time we were travelling, using my power's unique ability to judge distances accurately and know the names of a lot of things by just looking at them to make it as accurate as possible. I did also use some existing references to fill in areas we've not been to ourselves."

Lynn crossed her arms. "So that confirms: Whoever's responsible for what's happened to us can put stuff into our inventory at will if it 'needs to be there' for the 'backstory'. Not that I'm surprised about that.."
"Yeah, anyway. Here's where we are," Rayna said, pointing to a dot near the far edges of the map, with very few markings of any kind nearby. "Aaand, there's the capital of the country that 'owns' this town," she swept her finger over to another dot, far off in a much more detail-filled portion.

"I want to say 'I knew that'," Lynn said. "I guess I did know that. This is kind of disorienting: I went from wondering about how this world worked to just having a ton of lore readily accessible in my head in, what, two or three days? You too, right?"

"Seems so," the fox-girl nodded. "With who we 'are' it makes sense to know all this stuff, but it's kind of surreal to learn something and then feel like you learned it ages ago."

Lynn leaned over the map for a moment, then stood up straight again and sighed. "I have fond memories of a lot of these places. Makes me wish I'd taken more opportunities to travel back on Earth."

"You were planning some trips," Rayna reminded her. "Not like either of us knew how little time we had there."

"Not that anyone ever does," Lynn nodded.

She looked down at the map again: The edges, where borders stopped and little in the way of landmarks was present. "Hmm..."

"What?"

"Is there just one frontier? Not a bunch of different places that each get called that?"

"Yeah, pretty sure. Nations' border claims sort of tendril out into it and there are some conflicts as to whose is what part, but it seems to be one contiguous border."
"Curious. And—this world is clearly spherical, like Earth."
"Right. All my measurements match up with that, plus the really obvious fact the horizon still looks the same..."
"Any idea how big it is? I mean, surface area, pretending it's a ball."
"Um...hmm." Rayna closed her eyes for a second, trying to remember some distances and angles, some half-forgotten formulas she'd always have relied on the Internet to remind her of. "I'd have to go measure things and have a think about it. I'm sure it's in the supermassive ballpark of Earth, though, since walking around this one doesn't look or feel noticeably different. Why?"

"Well, I'm wondering just how big the frontier actually is. How much of this world is claimed by monsters and the brave, adventurous few who fight them? Has anyone ever circumnavigated this globe, or is there so much frontier that there's always some of it in the way?"

"That seems like the kind of historical minutiae that I'd have read at some point, if someone had." Rayna put a finger to her chin. "But I also don't remember reports of anyone trying. Well, instant teleportation magic maybe makes mechanical marvels of transportation that are capable of doing such things less culturally important?"

"Still, this world must've had some point in its history where people thought it was flat, right? That you'd drop off the edge? Unless..well, unless the gods knew it wasn't and told everyone before they had the chance to become superstitious."

"I think an entire race of people capable of seeing the world from a literal bird's-eye view might've also had something to do with it," Rayna suggested.

She stared down at the map herself for a long moment. "..To answer your question, though, I think the frontier must at least be...'pretty big'."

"What d'you mean by that, exactly?"
"Well...if I imagine placing this onto a sphere...try to account for the stereographic warping...proportionally speaking you'd get a hole that would be sort of like a circle this big," she said, using her fingers to make the shape. "Well—not exactly a circle, but a big blob sorta shape that would fit one yea big. You could stuff maybe three of the biggest country in that circle. Now, we don't have anything the size of Russia here, but..."

"Yeah that's, pretty big," Lynn agreed. "And the monsters get bigger and nastier the farther you go out, right?"
"That's what they say. Not that it's easy to bring back records of such things, especially if it's true."

"Monsters come from chaotic magic. So bigger monsters means more magic. Therefore: Deeper in the frontier, more chaos."
Rayna tilted her head for a moment, then righted it. "Ooh, I see what you're saying."
"It's all over the world—there are monsters everywhere, basically, but when you sort them by size.."
"The whole thing looks like some kind of localized phenomenon spreading out to the rest of the world," said the fox-girl. "It makes you think...something happened, in the middle of the frontier."

"Right. No telling what, though."