Chapter 19: 19: Answers Provoke Questions

Danika's egg was transferred again, and then seemingly floated in something cold, that made her shiver and worry about her ongoing quest to survive until hatching. Fortunately before it got too bad she was placed somewhere warm again, unfortunately, her egg was then spun like a top.

Quin commented worriedly, "It's wobbling a lot, and the sparkles have turned such a sickly green… I don't think it likes this."

Justin replied a bit sarcastically, "You're worried about its feelings now? But you were carrying it so very considerately, tossed over your shoulder in the basket of your rapier hilt?"

"Well, it might be something dangerous, you know, that suddenly hatches and devours the closest source of protein… or something," Quin said defensively.

Danika shuddered and wondered if she'd underestimated the difficulty of surviving until she hatched.

"Poor thing," Terri murmured.

When the test finally ended, Danika laid limply at the bottom of her egg and Justin said, "How odd."

Danika wanted to tell him sarcastically, "No this is perfectly normal," but she still couldn't speak aloud.

Justin continued, "The only enchantment on the egg seems to be a space type, like a pouch of holding."

"So something very large might hatch out of it?" Quin asked.

Danika hoped that it was her storage ring being detected. If her item was detectable, it increased the chances that it would function after she finally hatched. She looked around her egg and thought about how she'd seemed just a bit smaller than the wizard's cat though. They'd said she could have been inside a chicken's egg, so maybe it was just that the egg was bigger on the inside.

"Maybe?" Justin complained, "There aren't any other spells on it though, so there shouldn't be anything preventing us from placing it into our inventories."

"What if Quin is right and it's going to hatch into something really big? Something too big to fit in your inventory space?" Terri suggested.

There was a contemplative silence.

Quin was the first one to reject the notion, saying, "But I have enough room in my inventory for 12 barrels of mead plus some. How big can anything that's half pixie be?"

Terri said dryly, "Well, maybe Justin is right and it'll be half dragon? That's the biggest thing I can think of right now."

"A whale would be bigger I think?" Justin chimed in.

"Do you think a fairy dragon would be big enough to ride?" Quin asked curiously.

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Danika snorted.

"No idea," Terri replied. "But a pixie is about 1/20th the size of a human, so it might only be about 4 feet long when it grows up."

"Half breeds in this game don't work that neatly," Justin interrupted. "They usually just have shared characteristics, and are matched to a mythical monster. Like griffons are half bird and half cat, and the result is bigger than both of those added together."

"I guess that's true," Terri agreed, "and the dragon halves are even weirder, since elves and dwarves don't even look anything like dragons, they just have pointed ears, innate magic, and long lifespans."

The three continued to argue the possibilities, but Danika logged out. The enchantment test had been her worst VR-medi pod experience so far. It made her wonder why there weren't VR roller coasters, but when she looked it up, there were already half a dozen theme park games being developed for the system.

She ate a late supper, and then played on the old account that she was leveling up. It lacked a lot compared to "Living Jade Empire", but it never spun you like a centrifuge. For once Danika could kind of understand the people who claimed that even if they could afford VR, they preferred less immersive interfaces.

Danika logged back in on her phone after a bit, to check on her egg. Her egg seemed to be somewhere still and quiet now. She decided, after a while, that the three adventurers had stored her somewhere and logged off for the night.

--

After completing her morning routine, Danika resumed leveling the old account while monitoring her egg on her phone. She was glad that she'd logged on when she realized that her "Survive until Hatching" counter hadn't counted down at all while she'd been offline, it still said 30 hours remaining.

Since she was definitely sitting as still as possible most of the time, she occasionally had ZipZing waste energy by throwing out a spell or a skill.

Binding, identify and appraisal wouldn't work since she had no targets for them, and she was afraid to try her wind slash in case she hatched too early and failed to survive. The impartation skill that the traveling merchant had gifted her also seemed to be a targeted skill, although she wasn't entirely sure what sort of target it ought to have until she read the skill description and discovered that it was a skill used to teach a skill to someone else.

She found it amusing that both stealth and evasion would let her trigger them, but had no effect that she could discern. Maybe she was hiding in her egg.

Danika settled into a routine where she alternated between dazzling, light, and featherweight, since she could see some effect from those three. Dazzling was ridiculously easy to trigger through the phone interface, it was just a few button taps. Casting featherweight on herself made her float in the center of her egg. She could only cast her light within the confines of her shell, but her practice was rewarded a couple of hours later when her light gained a skill level.

She couldn't figure out how to move the light particles individually through the phone interface, at first. Eventually she discovered that if she zoomed her view in far enough, she could see each particle and a little control ring around each. Even at the highest magnification it was very difficult to move a particle without touching the selection rings of the others. After playing with it a little she decided that it was taking too much of her focus and just cast it normally.

Her hatching timer had counted down to 28 hours left when a dialog popped up suddenly.

Justin: "Hmm, now how did you move over there little egg?"

Danika echoed his question, her egg had moved?

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