Bog Standard Isekai

That night, his nightmares spent hours torturing Lumina. She was slowly overcome by her curse, growing more and more monstrous as the blackness crept from her hand, down her arm, and into her heart. Or she’d be torn apart by Awnadil’s cruel and cackling familiars, or blasted to ashes by the dragon. “She’ll leave you. She’ll always leave you.” The words repeated over and over through his mind.

The only thing that helped was knowing that wasn’t real. He watched it all silently, feeling the dream-emotions push into him and knowing this was all in his head.

The worst part was that inside his little dreamworld he had no idea how much time had passed. He felt like he'd been suffering through these nightmares for days or weeks, but in reality it might have only been an hour or two. There was nothing to do but lay there and suffer as his mind sent him every horrible image it could think of.

Eventually, something changed. In the middle of having her intestines devoured by wolves, dream-Lumina suddenly stopped. Her face went blank and she stared at Brin with an inscrutable expression. Her skin paled, her hair went dark and her features started to shift.

He felt a sudden burst of panic. Different, somehow from the dream emotions, this felt more real. He allowed himself to wake up.

He half expected a monster to be creeping into his room, but there was nothing there except Marksi sleeping at the foot of his bed, softly snoring with little squeaks.

He’d only slept for three hours. Today was going to be a rotten day. He tried to get back to sleep, but his heart was racing and his head was swimming. He lay there until dawn.

In the morning, the house felt empty. Hogg got up and made breakfast, which summoned Brin to the dining room, but they ate without speaking. Hogg’s eyes were distant, thinking about something.

When Hogg finished his eggs and fried mato, he jolted as if realizing Brin was there for the first time. “I’m going to talk to the caravan leaders today.”

“Sounds good. I think I want to work on those spells you gave me for my birthday. I’ve been focusing so much on glass recently that I’ve kind of neglected illusions,” said Brin.

Hogg shrugged. “You already have the main things. Dulling sound for sneaking up on monsters and bright lights for distractions; that’s all I had until I got [Split Focus].”

“Fair enough, but I just want to have every tool ready in case I need it. Speaking of neglected Skills, do you think there’s anything I can do with [Know What’s Wyrd]? I have resistance against Wyrd abilities, but I wonder if it’s something I could improve with practice. I also have a part of [Survivor of Travin’s Bog] I haven't used much. It should give me a warning if someone is about to deliver a fatal wound. I think I felt it go off once in the fight with Siphani, but I haven't felt anything from it since then.”

“Because no one has tried to kill you recently. Most people would call that a good thing. As for [Know What’s Wyrd], maybe Bruna would be willing to help you practice? But I honestly wouldn’t go there. [Witches] aren’t a Class to fool around with. Their hexes work off real spite. She can’t curse you unless she actually has animosity and believes that you deserve what she’s doing to you. You’d be asking her to toe a thin line.”

Brin grunted. “Maybe not, then.”

Hogg left, and he turned his attention to his birthday present. He’d been pretty excited to get started on the illusions that Hogg had written out for him, but now that he actually had time for that, he found himself strangely unmotivated. He spent a long time staring blankly at the papers, running his eyes along the words without reading them.

Pathetic. They’d only lived together for two months, and suddenly he couldn’t function without her? He activated [Directed Mediation] and got to work.

He started with the shortest one, Fire Starter. It was only four sentences long, and he was able to activate it the first time, a little pinprick of light that was hot enough to slowly light a candle after leaving it on the wick for twenty seconds. If he pumped more mana in, it would burn a little faster. He could get a fire started much easier by creating a lens with his glass magic and hanging it in the air, but still, he was using his light magic for something and that was a start.

He also knew he could do better. With his newly broadened understanding of the Language, he could add more meaning into each of the words and shorten the spell. Honestly, he could probably start fires with just at this point, but it wasn’t very mana-efficient. After an hour or so of experimentation, he settled on a happy medium.

“” The resulting concentrated dot of light was hot enough to light a candle after only two seconds.

Satisfied, he started on the next one. Copy Light looked fairly easy to cast, only about half a page of Language, but he also didn’t have any illusions to copy. He didn’t know if Hogg’s hard light would work for this; he assumed it probably wouldn’t. He decided to leave that one for later.

He also passed on Self-Invisibility. That one would be incredibly useful when he could get it working, but it was dauntingly long, three pages front and back. He was in the mood for something lighter.

Invisible Eye was a good compromise. The spell was only about as long as Mirror Image, which he’d already proved he could handle.

Reciting the spell for the first time went a lot quicker than he’d expected. When he’d first learned Mirror Image, it had taken him hours upon hours of effort to learn each of the words well enough to put them all together into a spell that would activate. This time, he got most of them on the first try, after only a little bit of study and thought. Lumina’s tutelage had borne serious fruit here. His spell power had increased by leaps and bounds, but he was starting to see that his increased ability to learn was the real prize. He’d have to tell her so in his next letter.

Soon enough, the spell activated for the first time and his awareness shifted to a small eye, floating invisibly in the air in front of him.

Now he had a new problem. The spell was simple to use while [Directed Meditation] kept his focus on it, but while was using that he couldn’t concentrate on actually looking around. He had to let the mediation state go, but when he did that the spell collapsed.

He cast it again, this time without [Directed Meditation] and kept it going for a minute, but when he started to notice how strange and warped the world looked through his new eye, he lost concentration and it fell apart.

It took several cycles of trial and error before he found the right balance. He had to keep just enough attention on the spell to keep it going, while at the same time having enough brainpower left to actually direct the invisible eye and think about what it was looking at.

Hearing also took a minute to get used to. It was like having a third ear, far separate from his body. Not as jarring as having a third eye, but it was a distraction when he wasn’t expecting it. This was a spell for spying or scouting, and it could both see and hear despite its name.

It was sort of like driving a car. When he first learned, all his attention was absorbed with remembering each of the steps. Left pedal to break, right pedal for gas–never mix them up! But after a while it became second nature and he could move the car without thinking about it. Same concept, this was just a matter of practice.

His first trial sent the eye through the wall, down the road and into town. The eye careened down the road at a blinding speed, the trees and landscape blurring by. When he got into town he sent the eye high up into the air. That image updated his mental map; he had a pretty good understanding of every street and corner in Hammon’s Bog by now, but something about seeing it all at once firmed the map in his mind the way that nothing else could. It also drove home how small it was, and how widespread the damage from the undead army had been. More than half of the town was still being rebuilt.

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Before he realized what he was doing, he started spying on everyone. He found Hogg first, in the town square. He was chatting with the caravan master, and after a few boring minutes of listening to exactly where the caravan had picked up their last shipment of beef tallow, Brin decided to move on.

He found Zilly next, practicing her swordwork. She was in the area behind Toros’ shop practicing against a sparring dummy. She danced around, dodging invisible enemies, and delivering punishment to a wooden log that had been roughly decorated to look like a man. He wondered how long she’d go on, after all no one was around to watch her, but as the minutes dragged by, Zilly showed no signs of stopping.

He drifted away to find Davi instead. The big guy wasn’t at his farm or the family’s house in town. He checked the public house, but he wasn’t there either. He widened his search, and only found him half by accident.

Davi was creeping down the alleyways, lute case in hands, looking decidedly suspicious. He avoided eye contact, kept to the side streets, and doubled back two or three times to make sure he wasn’t being followed.

He made his way to the walls, newly cleared away and not yet rebuilt, and then sprinted the entire way into the forest. Once inside the cover of trees, he turned around to watch the town to see if anyone was following.

Throughout it all, Brin’s curiosity only increased. What was Davi up to that he was so afraid of letting anyone see? Could this have something to do with Bruna? Brin still didn’t know if Davi knew that his mother was a [Witch].

It might actually be something even more private, and Brin wondered if he better not just cut the illusion here.

Davi knelt on the ground and pulled open his lute case. Inside, lay the big lute, what Davi had called an Oud. But on the lid, there was a netting full of books. Davi glanced both ways, took out a book, and began to read.

Brin checked the cover. A collection of myths from Ithmal. He looked at the other titles. Histories, a book of songs, and a book on persuasive essays.

Davi was just… reading.

Now he felt bad. Brin had teased Davi for being smart one time and he’d given the big guy a complex over it. He’d make sure to be in the middle of a book the next time Davi came over, just to show that there was nothing to be ashamed of.

Lumina had made a few comments to Brin that he should spend a bit more time reading, which was still crazy to him. In his old life, his parents had urged him to spend less time reading and to go outside once in a while. Why was he so different now? Had he become a jock in this life?

Recently, it was hard to do anything that took a lot of mental focus while sitting still because of how tired he always was. But what about before that?

Well, Davi was boring, so Brin moved on.

Myra was next. He found her in her [Weaver’s] hut. Whether it hadn’t been destroyed or if it had been rebuilt he wasn’t sure. All he knew was that it looked exactly like it had the last time he’d snuck inside, with the exception of the strange fate weaving that had been hanging in the middle of the room.

Myra sat alone, winding and unwinding the unbreakable string she had. After a minute, she let the string fall, wearily made her way to her bed and fell into it face first. Her shoulders shook, and she quietly wept into the covers.

The utter shamelessness of what he was doing finally caught up with him. Brin stopped the spell.

[Call Light through Glass] has leveled up! 31-> 32

The fact that the System felt the need to reward him for that just made him feel even more like a creep. He’d been so excited to try out his shiny new toy, he hadn’t stopped to think about if he should.

Yes, it was too powerful to ignore completely. He would definitely use it for things like scouting. Even espionage, if he ever found himself with another enemy that deserved it. But some things had to be across the line. Spying on girls while they were alone in their rooms, for example.

He felt dirty, but at the same time he’d caught himself before he’d done something even creepier. Should he make it up to them somehow? No. But at the very least, he could check on Davi.

He made his way to the patch of forest where he’d followed his friend with the invisible eye. Davi was still sitting on the grass with his nose in a book when Brin arrived, and Brin told him it was good that he was reading and there was nothing to be embarrassed about.

Davi laughed in his face. “You think I’m embarrassed to be seen reading? I come all the way out here because it’s the only way I can get some peace and quiet.”

“Oh.” Feeling foolish as well as embarrassed, Brin decided to find something else to do before he put his foot even deeper into his mouth. “Well, I was just wondering what you were up to, but obviously you’re busy. I think I’m going to go work on glass or something.”

“Alright,” said Davi, bemused. “Hey, how’d you find me anyway?”

Brin promptly ignored that question. “Do you mind if I sit?”

“Uh, sure, as long as we don’t have to talk. I kind of came here to–”

“No, yeah, you’re good. I brought my own thing.” Brin sat in the grass under a tree and brought out the last spell. Self Invisibility was the longest of the spells Hogg had given him, and this looked like a good time to get started on it.

He read through the spell, word by word, moving his lips silently so as not to disturb Davi, making sure that he’d be able to bring out the meaning of each word in such a way as to connect it to everything before.

The spell wasn’t just longer than the others, it was also more complicated. He went into [Directed Meditation] and pushed through, losing track of time and the world around him in order to put everything into learning the spell.

He finally got to the end, rattled off the last words, pushed mana into [Call Light through Glass] to activate it and… nothing. The spell failed.

The frustration of failure pushed him out of his meditative state, and he became aware that the sun had moved across the sky, near sunset. He also vaguely remembered Davi saying goodbye and leaving towards town. He’d been working on this for hours.

He was close; he had to be. One last push.

He activated [Directed Meditation] again and looked through the spell, trying to figure out where he’d gone wrong. He found it, about three quarters through the first page, he noticed a word that he’d pronounced, but it hadn’t activated. He tried it a few more times, finally getting magic to take hold.

He started over, recited the entire spell carefully and precisely, pushed mana into it and then… it activated.

[Call Light through Glass] has leveled up! 32-> 34

He saw his body disappear, felt a wave of vertigo as his mind struggled to come to terms with being unable to see his hands that should be right in front of his face.

The feeling was disorienting enough that it pushed him out of the spell and he became visible again. He tried again. This time he could follow along with his first attempt using [Memories in Glass] so there was no chance of failure.

When the spell activated a second time, he stayed in [Directed Meditation] and snapped his eyes shut.

He felt his mana drain at a steady pace. The spell required his complete concentration to hold together, and just like his initial moments with Invisible Eye, he couldn’t spare any other thoughts, not even to look around.

Unlike Invisible Eye, that didn’t seem to get better with time. Even after ten minutes of holding the spell firmly in place, he didn’t seem to be getting any better with it. He knew that even the motion of opening his eyes might be too much.

Carefully, slowly, he lifted one eyelid and… the spell immediately collapsed.

Brin sighed and stood to his feet, feeling a complicated mix of triumph and frustration. He’d done it! He could make himself invisible! At the same time, he couldn’t do anything else. This would be a good spell for hiding in one spot without moving, but he was far from being able to use it for anything else.

Really that just went to show how neat that armband Hogg had given him was. It only gave him five seconds of invisibility, but even that much was a miracle now that he knew how difficult the spell was.

He brushed off his pants and stretched out his limbs. Sitting around in one spot all day had left him stiff.

The sun was just starting to touch the horizon, and he could tell there was a glorious sunset out there, but it was blocked behind the trees. From his position, there was just enough light to mess with his darkvision and make the shadows deeper and more impenetrable.

He began the walk home, shivering against a chill wind. It wasn’t really cold, but he’d been sitting for so long that it had slowed his circulation. Should he run home? He might as well. It wouldn’t make up for the entire day, but he needed to get some kind of exercise if he was to have any chance of sleep that night.

He took a few steps and–

Fear.

A jolt of writhing, horror, screaming panic crawled up his spine, pouring electricity into his brain, making him want to scream and jump and cry all at once. Pure, raw, unadulterated fear coursed through him.

The fear had a direction, coming straight towards his heart from behind. He dove to the left.

Nothing happened. The feeling subsided. He spun, finally giving voice to the scream building up within him, but nothing was there. The forest was quiet.

He laughed at himself. What was that? A panic attack? He’d heard of those, but he’d never really asked anyone what they were like. “That can’t be a good sign,” he said out loud, just to hear his own voice. “Maybe I really do need to see a [Mind Healer].”

He heard a man’s voice. “Don’t say that. You have very healthy instincts.” A figure stepped out from behind a tree.

No, not a panic attack. That had been his death sense. At least now he knew.

Brin felt around for a weapon, and found only a glass knife. He pulled it from his belt and projected light into it, pointed towards the shadowed figure. He pushed enough mana into it to blind his attacker while also giving Brin a good look at him.

He saw a middle aged man holding throwing knives, squinting and holding up an arm to ward off the light. A new arrival from the caravan, because Brin had no idea who this was. All he knew was that he was real, and he was here to kill him.

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