Jon stood in their newly forming home, Oregano still laying off to the side.

  Their new guardian was working swiftly, and the ring of trees forming around the marshy ground were already touching, the crowns arching slowly to form a dome overhead. Jon could picture the final structure, looking almost like a woven hut. Louis interrupted his musings:

  “So, we’ve got a lot of ground to cover. Tell me about that first fight: why did the last bunny get the tenderizer treatment?”

  “Before we get to that, I’d like to get a quick explanation on why I don’t have to worry about the army we left behind in the cavern.”

  Louis seemed a little irritated by the change in subject:

  “Well, for one thing, most of those creatures couldn’t fit through that tunnel, much less survive the journey. But even if they could, the quest would have terminated when you left, and they would have no incentive to follow.”

  Jon pressed him on this,

  “But couldn’t they just track me like they did before? Why would the quest end?”

  “That chamber is a birthing suite. A monster breeding chamber. While you’re in there, the people who brought you here have special control over your environment. They still do out here, but it’s more complicated to interfere here. The quest can’t follow you out of the birthing suite, and even if it did, out here I can disrupt it with my own abilities. Is that enough for you?”

  The tone told Jon Louis wasn’t willing to give him much more on this right now, whether it was enough or not. He decided to drop it for the moment.

  “I suppose so.”

  “Good. Now, once again, why did that bunny from the first fight get pulped?”

  Jon thought on how to phrase this before answering,

  “I was trying to kill it in a humane way.”

  “Well, that explains why it didn’t work very well, you’re a spider now. Stop doing things humanely.”

  “No, that’s not what that word means. It means with compassion or mercy, benevolently.”

  “Huh, a lot to unpack there, isn’t there. First, your planet’s iteration of the species has poor insight into their own nature. You humans exist out in the wider universe, and in decent numbers, but you’re a bunch of ruthless mercenaries. Think the Pinkerton’s, but on a galactic scale. Moving past all that though, why would you be trying to kill the bunny ‘humanely.’ Hadn’t they just tried to eat you?”

  “Herman said there was an audience. If I end up on a show I’ll probably be cast as a hero or a villain. I figured I am more likely to survive as a hero, so I decided to act like one. If a hero has to kill, they try to do it painlessly.”

  “Uhhhhh huh. So, let me get this straight. We can take it point by point. You are a giant, hairy, bulbous-eyed spider who emerges from a cavern.

  “Yes.”

  “You then slaughter a group of smaller, primary colored, adorable bunny rabbits with big teeth.”

  “Yes.”

  “You think to yourself, ‘ho shit, I’m on T.V.! Better make myself look like a nice murder-spider!’ So you decide you’re going to wring the bunny’s neck. You know, humanely.

  “Yes.”

  “Then when that fails you go into a rage, smash it repeatedly against a cavern wall, then eventually just say ‘fuck it’ and smash its head to goo with a rock?”

  “Yes.”

  “Annnnnd that sounds like a hero’s story to you?”

  “…..Yes.”

  “Big sigh buddy. Big sigh.”

  “You don’t actually say the word sigh, you just let out a breath, you know, like this.”

  Jon sighed mentally.

  “NO. NO YOU DON’T. STOP DOING THAT! There’s no actual breath involved, you don’t have a diaphragm or vocal cords anymore, and it’s fucking annoying to hear that oral-mental flatulence over and over in my mind. If you must do it in your head, just say ‘sigh.’”

  Jon sighed mentally.

  “Fuck you.”

  “Never.”

  “…..Ok, we’re moving on. Suffice it to say, if you ever find yourself thinking, ‘how could I make this execution more child friendly?,’ it isn’t a hero’s arc. Further, if your next thought is, ‘I know, if we make the axe blunter, then there will be way less blood on the chopping block!’ That’ll make me the good guy!.’ then just know it’s just not going to work out. Ok? You spider. Spider bad guy. The end. That’s how its going to go on any show.”

  “That brings up a question I’ve had for a while, am I ever going to be impacted by the audience, like am I going to be expected to interact with them in some way?”

  “Yes and no. Don’t do stupid shit like intentionally antagonizing them. I know of one subject who was integrated and started making fun of crowd-sourced names. You know how he died? Impaled by a rhino-like creature named horny-mchornface that appeared from nowhere while he was taking a dump.”

  “Holy shit!”

  “It most certainly was not holy shit. Particularly after what that rhino did to the body after. They really went on the nose with that one.”

  “Ok. Don’t talk shit about the names out loud. No follow up questions.”

  “Good. As to the other part of your question, no, you will not be interacting with the audience. Don’t expect anything to be shown to the audience that casts you in a positive light in any way. They’ll do all that in retrospect after you get some success, assuming they don’t decide to just fuck you over continuously for being a spider. In general, try to forget about the audience altogether. We’re not talking about it today, but just being with me will help avoid their attention for a bunch of reasons.”

  “That’s not at all suspicious or ominous.”

  “Take it for what you will. I am embedded in your central nervous system and we’re in it for the long haul. Remember point 3 of our deal? The parasite stays. I will tell you eventually, but there’s too many other things to talk about now and we don’t have forever.”

  That gave Jon pause. He tried to think of anything urgent, and came up with a blank.

  The mangroves had finished the dome overhead. The branches were much more loosely woven up there, but the leaves filled in the gaps and grew dense enough to make it quite dark. He gave up on guessing.

  “Why not? We’re out of the cavern, you just said your weird tracking disruption keeps us safe now right?”

  “It does, but nothing is perfect. No one can put an exact pin on your location anymore, but they still know where you started. That’s not why though, the reason is that path you’re on. Don’t you feel the hunger yet?”

  “Yeah, it does feel like it’s gotten stronger. It’s strange though, it doesn’t seem to be as invasive as it was. I can think clearly.”

  “That’s because I’m holding a lot of it back. I can’t influence the world outside of you much anymore, but I can help with some of the mental burdens here. I don’t have limitless energy, hence the timer on our discussion. When it hits you, you’re going to need to go out and hunt or deal with the guilt of eating our spicy mutual friend.”

  There were disturbing implications to that statement. Jon tried not to think too carefully on them, he knew Louis could hear at least some of his thoughts.

  “Shit pun, point taken though. What’s next on your docket?”

  “Well, I’m a bit partial to knowing why you considered letting me die, and why you decided to save me.”

  There was a long silence.

  “Well, like many people, I didn’t find the violent possession of my body to be especially appealing. The coerced contract after didn’t help much either. I was a bit miffed.”

  Jon paused, waiting for a retort. Louis continued to wait in silence, so Jon continued,

  “However, the context matters. You very nearly died, spent a poorly defined but very long time in that darkness, then grabbed onto the first bit of driftwood you could find. It happened to be me, but you were dying, so it was you or me.”

  Another pause, more silence.

  “After that though, you saved my life twice. Once by getting me out a prison I would probably have died in, and then again by fricasseeing den-mother and friends.”

  Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

  “Den mother and kits if we want to be accurate.”

  “They were babies? Even the alphas? Those things were huge!”

  “I told you it was called a birthing suite right? That’s just one of many, but it will be the starting zone for a lot of this area’s monsters. We’re getting off topic though. Continue.”

  Jon couldn’t decide how honest to be with this next piece. He told the better part of what he hoped was the truth:

  “So, all in all, you were a dick, but you were just trying to survive. As soon as you realized I was sentient, you let me go. Even at risk to yourself. Then you saved my life twice, and clearly demonstrated you had a lot to teach me. Letting you die would have been ethically questionable, and more importantly, fucking stupid.”

  During this last pause, Jon got a moment to appreciate the home the mangroves had made for them. The final form looked like a yurt, with the roof woven like a wicker basket with twigs and leaves forming a dome overhead.

  “Good enough,” Louis finally said.

  “Glad to hear it. Why did you make the terms of our agreement so generous? And why a friendly contract?”

  Louis hesitated, then answered:

  “I was desperate. I had almost nothing left after all that time in the void. My options were to continue the possession or make a contract immediately. I had seconds to come up with terms, and I needed a friendly contract to avoid stupid gotchas. An ongoing possession might have gotten me out of that hole, but it would definitely have torched your body. There was too much of a discrepancy in power levels between what I was and what you are. I might have made it out of the prison before your body collapsed, but it would have been just barely. If any of the bunnies were stupid enough to come close after I got your smoldering remains out of that hole, I could have nabbed one of them. But there was no guarantee of that, and I would have had to keep hopping from one to another in hopes of finding a higher-leveled creature before I ran out of energy. This was better for both of us.”

  Jon gave a small shudder,

  “Would not have been my favorite way to go out.”

  “If you provide me a list, I can try to be accommodating when the time comes. No death by pedo-bears though, I’m not into that.”

  “Pedo bears?”

  “You know, the bear that was chasing you? Didn’t you notice the bear he was after was a little small?”

  “I thought it was just because she was female.”

  “Nope, pedo bear.”

  “....This place sucks.”

  “No argument there. If you want to get back home, gotta get stronger though. That brings us to affinities, skills, stats, upgrades, levels and paths.”

  “Sounds convoluted. And what about classes? I only got turned into a spider because of mine, it seems like an important thing to skip.”

  “It is convoluted. I skip classes because while gaining a class is an extremely important milestone, it’s only a starting point. One which you have passed. The majority of things living in this world are ‘null classes’ in system terminology. They have no starting abilities, and no directed assistance from the tree in their growth. Gaining a class places you in alignment with the power of the tree, and is the starting point for real power you gain moving along a path.”

  Louis stopped, then clarified:

  “I always suspected the classes offered to newly integrated beings were a form of compensation given by the tree. It gives you classes to survive during the initial phase of life here, but it also gives them as an opportunity to change paths during the transition. As you make your own choices and begin working on your skills, the original class will become less important. The system will still give you a class title, but next to your path it’s mostly flavor text.”

  “That sounds pretty pointless, and I still don’t understand why someone would make things so complex. It seems like a system with too many moving parts.”

  “There was never really a good understanding of why these things exist the way they do. The system itself is a construct we made, but it is purely descriptive. The system doesn’t give the power, that comes from the tree.”

  “Again, you say ‘we’ made it. Who is ‘we’? And what the fuck is the tree?”

  “I know I’ve been cagey about this, but that deserves its own dedicated conversation. Trust me, I will explain it someday but right now we have bigger fish to fry. We have to figure out how to get you off that path you’re on. In order to do that, you have to understand the basics. We can start with affinities. Do you remember that room you started out in?”

  “The one with all the posters?”

  “Yes. Do you remember how it felt when you looked at the posters?”

  “Yeah. For most of them it was just like looking at pictures, but there were a few where I felt like I knew the scene, and others where I got shown a whole little story.”

  “The ones where you got a story, how did you feel after?”

  Jon thought for a few seconds before answering,

  “Like it was something familiar. Like I was recalling something I had forgotten.”

  “Those are the ones you had the strongest affinity for. I can see you pausing at certain posters in the memories you shared, but I can’t see anything you saw. Herman might have, it’s hard to be sure. Could you tell me more about the memories? I can probably guess what the affinities are if you do.”

  Jon described the vision of the wave and the tree, and finally his vision of what he now assumed was Louis on the retribution poster. Louis pushed him on a few others he had stopped by, and Jon told him about the flaming warrior and the woman in the cave shouting prophesies.

  “Water for sure, maybe a gravity component for the first one. The tree is definitely life. We should talk more about that poster at some point. Not sure on the fire based one, it doesn’t sound like a simple flame affinity though. Divination is more a skill than a true affinity, but it’s hard to interpret that lady in the cave any other way.”

  “What about the one with you on it? Retribution.”

  “I assume I represented a psionic affinity, but honestly, I don’t really understand why you resonated so strongly with that one. As far as I can tell from your memories on earth, you might have had some weak psionic affinity, but nothing strong enough to have gotten a vision of me. It’s possible I am missing something due to the difference in species though; you had a vision of one of the Oracles at work. That type of divination is the province of a few different types of magic, and psionics are certainly on that list.”

  “What were your affinities?”

  “Mind, time, soul. Had some talent with air and fire too.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s actually a lot. At most, people get three biggies and two or three minors. Many have less, with only one major affinity and one minor. You got lucky. You have a very powerful life affinity, and probably lesser or moderate affinities for water and mind magic. I’m not sure, but I think there may be some earth affinity in there too, though it’s weak. Life is a confluence of other affinities, so it may be responsible for the earth affinity I am feeling. Life usually is accompanied by a combination of water, fire, and earth.”

  “The categorization system for these seems all over the place. Water is one thing, but earth could be any of a few thousand things.”

  “The physical object the affinity is based on means very little. The tree works in concepts. Metal is one thing for you, and a different thing to me. The tree will let either of us have the affinity. We’ll have slightly different abilities, but the same affinity.”

  “That’s confusing.”

  “Then roll with it. It will make more sense as you actually use it than it will if I try to explain it. Going back to your affinities, I think they got changed when you chose your class and changed species. At this point, you have a powerful life affinity, a decent mind affinity, with weaker affinities for water and maybe earth.”

  “I don’t understand where that flaming guy fit in either.”

  “I’m not familiar with him, but like I said before, life has fire in it. That might explain him appearing for you.”

  “So what does that mean for me?”

  “Those are the places you will want to focus on learning magic in, because that’s where you have talent.”

  “Can the affinities be learned or changed?”

  “Yes, they can be changed at lower levels. Having said that, you have to do it while surviving in the real world, and you lose an affinity for something to gain another.”

  “Why do you have to lose one to gain another?”

  “The same reason you can’t play two notes on the same string. You have to change frequency to resonate with something different. Under some circumstances at higher levels, you might ‘gain a string,’ but for now you’re stuck with what you start with. To be clear, you can still use magic from other domains eventually, but it will be much less efficient and less powerful. A person with a wind or fire affinity can still use their energy to manipulate water, but they won’t do it nearly as well. At low levels, it’s functionally a non-existent ability.”

  “So the affinity is like a force multiplier?”

  “Sure, you can call it that. It’s more like if you aren’t on the same wavelength as the thing you’re trying to manipulate, you’re going to waste a whole lot of energy in the conversion. If you lack a fire affinity, for now you’re better off using flint and tinder than wasting energy making a spark. It is less force multiplication than missing a force reducer.”

  “What about telekinetics? How do they come in?”

  “Affinity-less magic. It will never be as strong as something you work with an affinity, but anyone with magical ability can do it with enough power. The staff you carry just acts as a crutch to reduce the energy loss, think of it like a dial with a lot of common object wavelengths on it.”

  “Is that what a skill is? Something that finds wavelengths?”

  “Nope. Skills are manipulations of the energy you’ve drawn in, and serve to shape the affinity into useful forms. The ‘threads’ you saw me make with the mental magic were an example of a skill. The contraption you used to attack the pedo-bear’s mind could eventually become your own skill if you practice with it enough, and you should. You can mimic what someone else does, but it will never be as good something you custom make for yourself.”

  “It seems weird that some shit I slapped together in a few seconds will be stronger than something you honed over a much longer time.”

  “It isn’t that its stronger, its that its stronger for you. Think of it like a runner’s gait, there are cues and actions in common, but the most efficient stride for each individual is based on their leg length, foot shape, etc. You can prompt them with things to focus on to be more efficient, but ultimately each runner has to feel for the most efficient way for them to run. Every mind mage has to find their own way to achieve a connection to other minds. It always involves breaching the defenses. For psionic healers, or others who aren’t so focused on combat, this is less pressing and won’t be an area they excel at. For you, it’s the highest priority by far. No connection, no mind magic.”

  “If you walked me through it though, couldn’t I feel what you did and just use it?”

  “Yes, and in the short term it might be a bit stronger, maybe ten or twenty percent. However, long term, you want to get used to using your own thing. It will work better and be more intuitive. A highly efficient and well practiced skill is more effective.”

  “It’s the Bruce Lee thing: I don’t fear the man who practices a thousand kicks once, but the one who kicked one way a thousand times?”

  “Sure. For each affinity, you’ll end up with two or three things you can do exceedingly well. It’s like tools that you get used to. You can play around with things at the lower levels, but as you fight stronger opponents it will become more critical to use your more powerful skills. The more you use them, the more efficient and powerful each skills will become. If you get good at producing concentrated jets of water, you can use them to cut someone in half. If you’re not practiced at it, you’ll just give them a shower. You’ll still be able to do it, but the effect won’t be the same unless you put way more power and energy into it. If you get especially good, you’ll be able to use a skill with multiple affinities.”

  “So how do stats play into this?”

  Jon felt a rumbling stir of hunger burn through him. He found his gaze drifting to Oregano, still sleeping in the corner, twitching sporadically. Then the hunger faded, and Louis let out a little embarrassed cough.

  “Woopsie, let a bit through. Might be running a bit short on time, but yeah, let’s get stats next, paths last.”