Storm Strider

Maybe her mama would call her reckless for wanting to jump glaives-first into the thick vertical vines, but Marisol really couldn’t afford to shimmy down at a snail’s pace—it was either go or die, and losing her mama’s book would kill her inside.

Sucking in a sharp breath, she leaped down down the hole, stabbed her glaives into the vine, and gravity did the rest.

… Oh.

This feels wrong.

Fifty metres was a long way to the bottom, but her glaives carved through the vine as gravity dragged her down, a funnel of wind rushing through her hair. It was almost a free fall, though not quite; for a second her brain scrambled to make sense of the suddenly rising ground, but before she even knew it, she slid all the way down to the bottom and began sliding down an extremely steep slope instead.

She regained her bearings and focused on keeping her balance, eyes widening at the underground coral-crystal forest around her.

What is this place, anyways?

[I have no explanation.]

As she skated after the crab boy, her eyes caught on the giant coral lumps sprouting from the sandy ground like trees. It really was a peculiar sight; it was an entire world hidden beneath the island where the ceiling was fifty metres overhead, the walls were nowhere in sight, and giant aquamarine crystals rose everywhere like braziers lit with bluish-pinkish light. Vibrant shrubs, discarded giant crustaceans shells, and tons of what looked like aquatic vegetation were all around her, making her wonder if this massive underground cavern used to be submerged—if it was one of those ‘low tide, high tide’ things she’d read about as a child, then it was all the more reason for her to catch the boy and get out quickly before the entire cavern could flood.

… But she was also constantly distracted by the scenery. As she skated across vines and roots, chasing the boy’s skittering shadow, her eyes latched onto the schools of fish swimming in the air. She looked at the vibrant corals growing upside-down on the ceiling like chandeliers. There were shimmering bubbles floating everywhere, and on more than a few occasions she felt like jumping off to poke one with her glaives–

[Please refrain. Focus on your target.]

Right!

Right. Poking and admiring the scenery could come later. Chasing the boy down had to come first, but damn if he wasn’t a dozen times faster than his tiny body suggested; she had to be skating as fast as she’d been on the stormy seas, but the boy’s sideways skittering was just as agile, if not even more so. She had to make sharp turns a couple times as she skated along the vines, but since her glaives were technically carving through the vines as she moved, turning was extraordinarily difficult. She had to slow down just to avoid flying off the vines during especially sharp turns, and her momentum just wasn’t there—she was speeding up, then slowing down, then speeding up again over and over. The boy was skittering away at a consistent speed.

The straw that broke the camel’s back was when she chased him into the denser parts of the coral forest, and walls of vines started appearing in her way. Every time she faced one head-on, she had no choice but to brace her arms in front of her and ram through; wall after wall after wall, her forearms started bleeding and the pain started to get to her. Her skating balance was beginning to falter. Her average speed was dropping drastically. The boy was always just ten metres ahead, but the distance between them was growing steadily.

At this rate, she wouldn’t just lose him. She’d probably break her body ramming into the vines over and over, and then…

The crabs will get to me. They’ll eat my corpse–

[No, they will not. Look to your left thirty metres away. Do you recognise that lump of flesh?]

Hissing through her pain, peeking through her bracing forearms, she spotted a familiar white ball just growing out the side of a coral. Her eyes widened immediately.

Point fruit!

Passing by, she shot her arm out and clawed off a small chunk of the fruit, stuffing the tasteless blob into her mouth as she continued skating.

[Unallocated Points: 0 → 14]

What do I put the points in, Archive? I ain’t got enough to level up my speed again, right?

[You do not. I would recommend either increasing your toughness or strength by two levels. Both options would cost thirteen points, but considering you are running headfirst into every single wall of vines, I would recommend tough–]

Talking to Archive while skating at insanely high speed broke her concentration. She crashed into a particularly thick wall of vines, but she didn’t break through this one and continue skating as usual; something tripped her up and she fell off her vine entirely, plummeting a whole metre down into the sandy ground.

A small gasp escaped her as she landed hard on her chest, and she lay curled up on the white sand for a few seconds, trying to breathe out all the pain.

She had to get back on the vine and start skating again, else she’d run the risk of losing the boy’s shadow entirely.

… No.

Toughness ain’t right.

A Sand-Dancer has no business getting hit by anything while dancing.

A surge of strength rushed into her, ignoring her in mind, body, and spirit. There was more power still. She shoved herself onto her glaives, jumped back onto the vine, and began speeding after the boy once more.

This time, she stopped thinking about toughing it through the walls of vines. She recalled her mama’s techniques, the many bedtime stories she’d been told while lying on the shared bed next to the window, staring out at the starry night sky—there was a sand-dancing technique to overcome every obstacle, and while she’d never had to get too technical with her routines while entertaining a crowd for donations, this was a scenario where she had to remember her more special skills.

She did know a way to get through the walls of vines.

… ‘Sand-Dancers were not always mere performers for children and guardians for caravans’, she thought, her mama’s bedtime story so clear in her head. ‘In the far, far east, where the mountains pierce the skies and the lands are shrouded by an eternal fog as dense as a brick wall, the Mori Sand-Dancers were warriors against the Swarm. They developed jump techniques for the sole purpose of war.’

[Marisol. Focus. Another bad fall like that and you may break a bone or two–]

There are hundreds of different jumps a Sand-Dancer can perform, but the fundamentals of every single jump boil down to the same four parts, she thought, interrupting the Archive as she gritted her teeth, skating straight ahead at the next wall of vines a hundred metres away. There’s the ‘lead-up’, which is where you build momentum. Then, there’s the ‘launch’, which is where you gather up all your momentum by clenching every muscle in your body. After that, there’s the ‘flight’ where you have to control your spin while maintaining your balance, and then there’s the ‘landing’, where you hit the ground with only one foot while the other is stretched out parallel to the ground.

I can already do a double spin jump on sand, but on solid ground like this, and with powerful glaives for legs…

If I can build up enough momentum and do a double spin jump, wouldn’t I be able to bash through any wall standing in my way?

She inhaled deeply. Around her, all became clear; she smelled freshness in the air, tasted salt on her tongue, and listened as the winds funnelled through her hair. She imagined the wall of vines as just another wooden board she had to kick through, like she’d done hundreds and thousands of times before for scraps of donations, and just as she kicked one leg back, launching into a double-spin right before she could crash into the vines–

Deposit all my points into strength!

[Strength: 2 → 4]

[Unallocated Points: 14 → 1]

–she made herself spin an extra half-turn, smashing through the wall of vines with her shoulder as she landed.

Without losing a single bit of momentum, she continued skating along the vine, and now she grinned with wind battering her cheeks as she chased down the crab boy’s shadow.

Now that’s a ‘bashing jump’, Archive! A technical jump I can use to knock donation thieves into the next desert over!

[... Impressive, indeed,] the Archive muttered, sounding slightly disappointed, [but you could have just put your points into toughness and continued crashing through the walls of vines head-on, no problem. Your momentum was only slowing because you were unconsciously flinching and braking whenever your forearms were scraped.]

Thick skin ain’t look good on a Sand-Dancer! I’m putting all my points into strength and speed from now on!

[The attribute levels do not affect your surface appearance. Increasing your toughness level will not change how your skin looks, not to mention… ah, whatever. Do as you will.]

Having bashed through a vine wall once, she bashed through a second wall, then a third, then a fourth, her momentum nigh-unstoppable as that giddy feeling started bubbling in her chest again; that sensation of speed. It was exhilarating. She couldn’t see what sort of smile she was wearing on her face, but the fifty metre gap between her and the boy quickly became forty. Thirty. Twenty. Ten. She was skating so fast it almost felt like fire was sparking in her trail, and when the boy eventually glanced around, likely curious as to what was making the horrific screeching noise behind him–

She launched off the vine, did a double spin, and bashed into the boy’s back with her shoulder.

Ow!

[You could have just grabbed him normally. Are you trying to kill him?]

She didn’t have time to lament her mistake. Adrenaline had gotten the better of her, and the two of them started tumbling down a small slope, coming to a halt as they rolled into the shallow end of a little lake. Pain stung her body in every direction—the sudden deceleration was killing her—but she managed to scramble up first, spitting freezing water as she pounced at the boy trying to claw to his feet.

With how fast he’d been skittering away, she thought he would try to dodge or something, but instead she just tackled him and they started rolling again. So many spins. So many stars in her eyes. Eventually, they came to another halt and she found she was straddling him on the sandy beach; she recovered first again and immediately shot her hands around her mama’s book, trying to yank it out of his arms.

But the boy wouldn’t let go.

“Just… let go!” she said, almost snapping at the boy underneath her. “Give me mama’s book back! It ain’t yours! Don’t go around stealing other people’s stuff!”

The boy may not understand her words, and he may not understand what was inside her book, but it felt as though he understood the emotion behind her voice—quite suddenly, his arms relaxed and she was able to yank out her book, falling flat on her back as she did.

Ow!

[You have the strength of four average adult men. There was no need to pull that hard against a little boy.]

He wouldn’t let go! What was I supposed… to do…

…

While she sat up in the shallow end of the lake and checked to see if her book was damaged in the tussle, the boy stood up and stared at her, not even bothering to shake off the sand on top of his crab helmet.

The way his eye stalks looked at her felt so incredibly… sad.

And lonely.

If she could see his face underneath his helmet, she was sure she’d be looking at a pair of sulky, teary eyes—and before she could reach a hand out to ask if maybe he was injured, he turned away and sprinted off into the coral forest, leaving her utterly alone next to the sparkling emerald lake.

… Dammit.

Why do I feel like the bad guy here?

The Archive shrugged on her shoulder. [You crashed into him at the speed of twenty metres a second. I believe you may have broken a few bones of his.]

She gulped, her lips twisting and quivering a little. Should I… maybe go after him? See if he’s alright? I… I didn’t really mean to–

[Leave him be. You retrieved your book, and he is a native. He must have ways of mending himself,] the Archive interrupted. [Now, please make sure to secure your book around your waist properly. You were lucky the boy did not run off into some coral crevice you could not follow him through.]

…

She stared in the direction the boy ran off to for a few more seconds, and then she let out a small sigh, clapping her cheeks to wake herself up.

… Alright.

While she did just that, securing the cord on the leather book behind her waist, the Archive cleared her objective and gave her a new one.

[Objective #5 Completed: Pursue the boy and reclaim your book]

[Reward: The Vellamira Sand-Dancing Technique Book]

[Objective #6: Find a stable food source]

[Time Limit: Undefined]

[Reward: Survival]

[Failure: Starvation]

… And, you know, now that you’re mentioning it–

Her stomach growled, and she held her belly as she swivelled her head around, looking to see if the crab boy was still hanging around. She’d be sorely embarrassed if he heard her make such a noise, but thankfully, he didn’t seem to be around anymore.

And the Archive was right. She was still hungry, and that little chunk of fruit she’d eaten mid-skate was nowhere near enough to fill her stomach proper. The last time she’d eaten a full, stuffing meal was back on Captain Antonio’s ships—the fruits didn’t count, because for all the points they gave her, they had the texture of slop and felt like weightless air in her stomach.

She needed food.

Real food, preferably cooked over a proper campfire.

…

She was just about to ask the Archive for help when she spotted movement in the deeper end of the lake she was dipping her glaives in.

Now, she’d already seen schools of them swimming through the air, but to think there were ‘normal’ fishes swimming in the lake as well…

[... While you may not have a fishing rod, you have two glaives for legs,] the Archive said. [Hailing from a land of sand as you do, do you know what ‘spearfishing’ is?]