The Mimic in Monsterland

I rose from my slumber, cracking my back and rubbing my fatigued muscles, while a few gremlins slept in crude bedding a few feet away from me. I yawned, a gremlin snarled, and I readied myself for a fight.

Most mornings started this way. With a sore body and a tired mind. My training, as Len has cutely described it, started the day after our run in with the jackanapes.

I woke up in the dark. Which was strange considering I went to sleep outside the night before.

“What happened?” I whispered, running my hand along the surface I was surprisingly next to. Rough and stony to the touch, must be a cave. I heard some familiar grumbles coming from close by. I strained my eyes looking for an exit, but it was nowhere in sight, not much of anything was in sight.

It was pitch black in the cave, but as I rubbed my eyes to get rid of the sleep, the darkness lessened. I could see everything around me. And by everything I mean rocks, more rocks, three sleeping gremlins, and a smoldering campfire in between them. But it was all in grayscale, even the dull red embers of the fire looked like bright gray lights. Just how was I seeing all of this?.

Once my eyes finished adjusting, I peered over the slumbering creeps and saw an exit about 15 feet away. I wanted to ask Tutor about my eyes and how I got here but stopped when one of the slumbering gremlins burped in his sleep. I stepped towards the entrance of the cave. Carefully, slowly to not wake…and I stubbed my toe on a small rock jutting up from the ground. I swear I only yelped for half a second. I turned towards the groggy gray dudes. They were all up and grabbing the weapons they slept next to.

“Shit.”

After a scuffle that ended in a violent and bloody Ursa rage, I made my way out of the cave. My eyes itched for a moment as color returned to them.

Len was sitting outside, wheat in mouth, writing something in a crude leather-bound book. Beaten, bruised, and covered in gremlin blood, I turned off Ursa mode and walked over to him.

“How the hell did I end up in there?” I asked.

Without stopping his writing, he responded. “I put you in there.”

“How and why?”

“How is not important, why is because you need to level up.”

I stared at him in disbelief. I was about to say something else but before I could make my complaints known he pointed at the cave, never taking his eyes off the book.

I followed his finger and saw more gremlins walking out. A chorus of grunts and growls began as the little green men streamed out of the cave. Five revealed themselves rubbing their eyes. Trying to adjust to the sunlight I guessed. I looked at my health bar. 90 percent full. The Ursa timer showed 58 minutes. I cursed myself for turning it off early but I didn’t know how to stop the rage without turning the form off. Well I still had two battle worthy forms.

“Oh, I almost forgot.” Len said, still not looking away from the book. Flames sprung up in front of me, surrounding a brilliant silver sword. It was the sword that the leader gremlin was carrying back at the river. The flames flew over to me and extinguished as I reached for the sword. The blade was surprisingly not hot, or even warm. I gripped the blade, it was light and still had that beautiful silver sheen. I was about to activate the gremlin form when Len spoke up again.

“Do not use any forms this time.”

“Why?”

The gremlins didn’t care for my question. They got their bearings and looked over towards us. Their gaze focused on me, to be fair I was covered in their brethren’s blood. They screamed and shouted as they rushed at me.

My grip tightened on the sword as I prepped myself for the assault. The first gremlin had a wooden spear, as per usual with this lot. He aimed for my head, which seemed to be the initial strategy for these guys. But I remembered my first encounter with them. They liked to circle around their target.

I dodged out of the way of the spear and swung the sword behind me. I caught the side of the gremlin creeping behind me. Blood sprayed into the air. The blade sliced about halfway through him. Its screams turned to a nasty gurgling sound as dark blood filled its mouth. I pulled the blade out of him and turned back to face the next onslaught.

The spear gremlin was running towards me readying another attack while another swiped at me with a dagger. The dagger caught the side of my leg as I dodged another stab from the spear. While the spear was close I awkwardly slashed at its wielder. My attack landed on his shoulder cutting deep into his collarbone. It dropped the spear and its hands instinctively grabbed the wound.

I was shocked how easily the blade cut through its body. I swung from a terrible angle and couldn’t get much leverage. But now ain’t the best time for analyzing. Another slash from a dagger was coming my way. The blades clashed, but the gremlin’s dagger was crudely made. It shattered almost immediately upon the collision. The gremlin’s face twisted in anger before my blade sliced through it. I hopped backwards to get away from the blood geyser and reorient myself. Idiot move.

I jumped straight into the last two gremlins. Another stab incoming. I parried the blow but pain bursted at my foot. One of the little bastards bit me. I ran the blade through Chompy’s back while it was still munching but it took a chunk out of my heel. Flesh tearing from your skin is a pain unlike any other and another new horrible experience.

I left my sword impaled in the gremlin and dropped down, my hands instinctively holding the source of my pain. Blood gushing from the wound. But that last gremlin didn’t care about my troubles, seemed to revel in it actually. He yelled out a triumphant cry and rushed towards me. My foot couldn’t support my weight as I tried to rise back up. I needed to heal now, so I turned into a log.

Just as the gremlin’s spear was going to pierce my clothing, it splintered against my bark skin. As it recoiled from the blow, I reverted to my normal form, grabbed the sword from the toothy bastard’s back, and sliced right through the confused gremlin’s chest.

 

I planted my sword back into the ground and rolled onto my back, panting. My health bar was sitting at three quarters full. Not so bad I thought. After catching my breath I got back up. I rubbed the chomped foot. It was smooth, strangely smooth. Like baby-skin smooth.

It still hurt, now it was more of a sore feeling. It reminded me of that post workout soreness. There wasn’t even a scar from where the chunk was taken. Seeing the new flesh made me wonder how it worked. But this might be one of those don't look a gift horse in the mouth moments. Just be happy that I have a regeneration like ability.

I thought about the fight for a minute. How did I manage to beat five gremlins? I had to use Ursa form to beat two of the green assholes when I first encountered them. But I didn't have nearly as much of a problem this time around. Sure, one took a literal bite out of me, but I beat five this time. I didn’t even use a form, well aside from the log but still that was to heal. I stood up and walked over to Len, who was still writing.

“You used a form.” Len said, completely flat.

“I know but it beats dying.” I said in defiance, half-expecting a lecture to start.

“Good. It was stupid advice. You shouldn’t listen to stupid advice. It will get you killed.”

“Then why the hell did you give it to me?”

He stopped writing for the first time this morning and looked over to me.

“I wanted to see how your base form would fare at level one. Never seen a level one in an actual fight before. I was curious.” He finished and went back to his book.

Seeing the dead end in this conversation coming, I opted to move on to another topic. My eyes moved over to the sword sticking out of the ground.

“Thanks for the sword.”

“Why? It’s yours anyway. I was just holding it.”

“How is it mine?”

“You killed the monster who dropped it, meaning it's yours. The rule of thumb on Kniyas. Your kill, your loot. You killed the gremlin which carried that mithril sword, so it's yours. Hell of a drop too.”

When he said drop, an image of blue electricity arcing along silver flashed into my mind.

“Hey, what happened to my feather?” Panic rising in my voice.

“What feather?” Len asked.

“It dropped from the Roc the other day. I had it when those gremlins attacked me on the beach. Damn, tell me I didn’t leave it on the beach.” I started scanning the immediate area. Running around wildly, anger flushed through me as I searched. Did someone steal it? Did Len steal it? My lips twisted in a snarl.

Through gritted teeth I said, “Did you take it Leonard?” I laced my word heavily with threat as I stared at the immensely powerful mage. This was enough for the man to look up from his book. His face carried an unreadable expression.

He placed the pen on the page he was writing on and closed it. He walked over keeping eye contact with me the whole time. A spark flashed in his eyes for a fraction of a second as he descended upon me. A weight dug into my shoulders as he walked. He looked larger as he walked over. No, that's not right. It was more like I was getting smaller or the world around me was growing. Fear welled at the edges of my psyche but anger at the loss of my feather was still at the forefront of my mind. So I stood my ground, however small compared to the giant that stood before me. I licked my teeth.

Finally he paused. He was maybe a foot in front of me physically, but mentally it felt like his entire mass was bearing down on my soul. The force pushed upon my very being and the anger began to melt away. The benign fear, what was shoved down by that anger, rose. Just as the rest of my spirit felt the crushing weight, Len stopped and sat on the ground, crossing his legs and his arms. He sighed. A tired sigh.

The world normalized as I fell to my knees and then face first into the grass. I pushed myself off the ground and sat up. My mouth opened but it couldn’t form any words. Before trying once more, flames danced into existence in front of me, cutting the attempt off. Floating in the center of those flames sat my feather. They died out and the feather gently fell to the ground in front of me. It looked just as perfect as the day I found it, a beautiful shining silver plumage with sharp blue streaking through it.

I found my voice once again. A bit creaky though.

“S-Sorry about that Len. I don’t know why I got so… upset.” I said while staring at the ground.

“No, it’s ok. It was a poor joke. I don’t make it a habit, stealing items from new splicers. No, I wanted to mess with you a bit before returning it. Sorry for that feeling. You will probably feel strange for the rest of the day.” He leaned back as he spoke and looked into the sky.

“You said your world had knowledge of mimics right.” Len said, not looking away from the sky.

“Yeah, we didn’t have them running around or anything but they were in….”

I paused there. Something told me saying they were in video games wouldn’t be helpful. So I elected to finish with “recorded.”

He nodded his head but continued gazing at the sky.

“Tell me about them. In as much detail as you can.” His head twitched slightly before I could go into more detail. “Actually wait till later, you have some more guests to tend to.” He said as he moved to retrieve his journal.

Four more gremlins emerged out of the bushes around the cave. I rose to my feet and grabbed my sword. This time I went into Gremlin form and walked over to them.

 

That evening I asked Tutor about why the gremlins were so much easier to fight. And why I could see in the cave.

An exasperated “Dude.” was the response to my queries.

“What? These are valid questions.”

“Yeah, just dumb ones.” She sighed. “You have the power to mimic monsters. Maybe, just maybe, this means you have some understanding of how they fight. And that would give you an edge. And for your second question, refer to Mr. T’s first rule.”

“Pity the fool who doesn’t read his character sheet. SUCKA.” I said with a smile.

“God you’re dumb.” And even though her words were pointed, I could hear a smile forming behind them. Taking the advice to heart, I pulled up my sheet and looked through it. I found the answer in the gremlin page.

 

GREMLIN - Proficiency Level: 1

Type: Creep

Timer: 45 min

Stat Changes:

STR - 2

DEX + 5

AGI + 2

CON - 2

INT - 3

WIS + 2

CHR - 2

Abilities:

Fight and Flight:

Gain a +10 boost to your DEX and AGI at a significant cost to stamina. If use of this ability will cause you to run out of stamina, you will receive EXHAUSTION(-15 to all stats until removed). Stat boost will increase with proficiency.

Learned Behavior:

Dark Sight - See in the dark. Up to 10m.

 

My stupidity annoyed me to no end. This was the first time I even looked at the Gremlin page. Dark Sight, that would be the answer to why I could see in the cave. It’s a Learned Behavior, the first I gained, which meant its use wasn’t limited to one form. All of my other forms, including my base form, could benefit from it. It also explained the exhaustion debuff from that night when I originally fought the gremlins.

Fight and Flight was kind of an insane ability. A direct 10 points to dexterity and agility could only be good, you just had to be careful to not overuse it or use it at the wrong time. Only annoying thing was I didn’t know how much stamina it used. I had 250 stamina to play around with but none of the abilities came with a number attached. I sighed.

Stamina was a mystery. It didn’t change much throughout the day. It only seemed to drain while I was in a fight. It was almost completely empty when I was stuck in the tree with the Tempest Roc. I was holding on to that tree for dear life, but I wouldn’t call it a fight. It also drained while I fought the first crew of gremlins. My Ursa form turned off after I ran out of stamina. I guess that’s one way to gauge the time limit on the forms. A crappy way but a way nonetheless.

My best reasoning was that stamina is only involved in combat, and that day to day living wasn’t affected by it. I shook my head. I hate not understanding a system in a game. Especially when that system is directly tied to my life.