Chapter 11: Chapter 11. Enter the Magical screen

3 days later

I watched in fascination as Carolinus muttered something to herself, and a small flame seemed to appear between her cupped palms, which dropped into the carefully-shaved tinder and ignited it.

“All things have a spirit. The most basic principle of shamanic magic is to call out to those spirits and offer them a gift for their service. The simplest, elementals, also require the simplest gifts. A bit of water, a stone, fuel, a breath blown out, these are the gifts that encourage spirits to come to your hand long enough to have an effect on the real world

The hunters had taken one look at me and basically said to come back when I grew up, as had the warriors. It was a bit humiliating, but as I was, I doubted very much that I could take one of them out, as my ability to strike with my tail, powerful as it was, didn’t put me in the league of the kobolds who were big and strong enough to not only carry spears made of solid iron ore, but wear armor that likely weighed three times as much as I did.

I was fairly decent with a sling, but apparently hunters relied, not just on their slings, but also on their talents. Without the right gifts, they couldn’t teach me any lore, and even they required a certain amount of sheer strength or special abilities to hurl pellets that could hurt creatures that often had heavy pelts or armor of some sort.

At least my healing abilities seemed to work with my self-imposed daily exercise. Juveniles were not tubby like I had been when I first woke up, which implied that this body had been raised in captivity, in a cage, without exercise or activity, but the slight potbelly and weakness were disappearing as a short rest seemed to be enough to allow me to bounce back strong with a few hours of rest even from burnouts.

Once Nem had a clean surface, we had worked hard to assemble a sort of road map of my abilities. It still didn’t look much like a graphical interface, but it sort of seemed to get the point across.

“The thing is, even the tiniest of spirits, the minimal amount of energy spent to call them, can have great effect. Kobolds do not have the deep wells of magic that many of the commons do, so we get the most out of every bit we have. An elemental like that is enough to ignite a pool of blackwater or powdered blackstone, activate a trigger, or cause a carefully-balanced pile of stone to tumble on invaders when a non-kobold approaches.”

Carolinus seemed to be very disappointed that I couldn’t call spirits like she did. I think that she enjoyed the fact that I gazed in wonder at nearly every shamanic ability she displayed. Juveniles usually lacked much in the way of curiosity, responding to little more than fear or hunger, and adolescents were usually dull-eyed and incapable of much beyond responding to the instructions that adults had drilled into them, with little judgment and trained techniques.

But no matter what I did, I couldn’t communicate or beg favors from spirits, elementals, or whatever. She had tried several different ways, and I simply did not have that gift. Today, she was taking me over to the master trap-smith as a bit of a last resort, although she was confident that, if worst came to worst, I could probably perform well as a crafter.

It was kind of cool, though, I had more-or-less perfected dropping into the zone over the last three days, and time spent in my soul space seemed a lot longer than actual time spent outside. It felt like Nem and I had spent at least a week creating a clean surface to display what we came up with.

I was not planning to spend the rest of my life as a kobold crafter or whatever, but this was a good way for me to absorb a little of the history of this world, as well as kobold customs and potentially the ability to gain advancement. I was a human, I didn’t want to settle down and grow tadpoles. This was a world of magic, my own existence proved that, there had to be some way to become human, whether it be some godlike influence, the blue fairy, a polymorph spell from a sorcerer, or something. I wouldn’t even mind not becoming myself again… human, male, and reasonably healthy were my only requirements.

I spent a moment checking the semi-complete framework Nem and I had constructed. I don’t know if it were my perceptions or personal creativity, but the whole thing felt like untangling a giant knot… the Gordian solution was obviously a non-starter, since it would probably kill me, but I was able to fish out a lot of useful information.

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