2 - Book of Choices (Patreon)

Phoenix felt groggy, like she had slept for far too long. This in turn made her panic slightly that she had slept through her first round of treatment for the morning and she pushed herself up to try and check the time.

The first thing she noticed was that she was not in her bed, the hard packed dirt beneath her making that very clear. No, she appeared to be in the center of some sort of scorched symbol in the earth with wisps of smoke rising from it.

The second thing she noticed was that she was able to move more freely on her own accord. The pain had stopped completely and she felt better and stronger than she ever remembered feeling before. Then her memories of the night returned; or had it been a dream?

The fact that she was obviously not in her hospital room was the biggest indicator that it had not been a dream or a hallucination but that she really had seen magic. Did the night witch truly heal her and then somehow managed to teleport her somewhere?

She looked down to assess herself. Her first thought was horror at the discovery that she was naked and she quickly wrapped her arms around herself, bending forward to try and get her long hair to help cover her exposed body. The second thought was that she must have seen incorrectly and this was some cruel dream threatening to dangle her most desired wish before her only to be snatched away when she awoke; there was no possible way that her body could have changed that drastically.

When her hair didn’t act as a curtain to shield her, she reached up with a hand and found that she was completely hairless which sent another wave of horror coursing through her. This was definitely some twisted nightmare that taunted her with fixed biology in exchange for the only part of herself that she did like. In her panic, she scrambled away from the center of the small runic circle. Stumbling as she tried to remember how to walk, the physical therapy only having helped so much the older she got.

After some tripping across the smoldering ground, she managed to retreat into the nearby brush of a forest… which hadn’t been anywhere near the hospital.

‘What in the abyss is going on?’ she wondered to herself as she hid behind a tree, still trying to cover her nakedness.

She almost screamed in surprise as a large open book appeared floating in the air in front of her. It was glowing slightly as the open pages faced her as though in offering for her to read, which she did.

At the top was scrawled in a pretty script “Phoenix’s Guide Book” and below that was a message taking up the center of the soft cream of a page of parchment.

New Quest: Choose Your Path

You have arrived in a new reality! Choices need to be quickly made.

Objective: Choose your new path in this world within the next 5 minutes.

Path 1: Battle against the approaching Casters and any who might seize control of your fate.

Path 2: Flee the approaching Casters and take control of your fate.

Path 3: Abstain from acting and allow your fate to take control of you.

Path 4: Capitulate to the approaching Casters and relinquish control of your fate to others.

Reward: Common dress.

Phoenix just stared at the obviously magical book for a few moments, reading it over and over before asking aloud, “Guide book?” She was startled by the sound of her voice, much higher pitched than it normally was, but was further distracted by new text appearing below the quest prompt.

Natural Talent: Guide Book

Conjure a book that guides you and can inform you about items, creatures, or people that have been touched by your aura.

Phoenix’s eyes went wide. This seemed similar to some of the JRPGs and MMOs she had played during some of her alone time, except less video game tutorial pop-up and more… well, magic spell book. As she re-read the quest she found herself slightly annoyed by the name of the ability as she mumbled, “More like Book of Choices. There’s nothing in the description actually guiding me on what to do…”

Despite her anxiety over the situation, she couldn’t help the smile creeping across her face; did she really get sent to a magical world? Then she asked in confusion, “Wait… how did I get this ability? What’s a ‘Natural Talent’? This isn’t a nightmare? What happened to me?”

As she had hoped, more information appeared on the next page.

Hint: Natural Talents are the abilities you are born with in this reality.

Profile: Phoenix Fraser

Species: Wayfarer

Current Caste: Mundane

Attributes

Strength: Mundane

Agility: Mundane

Fortitude: Mundane

Mind: Mundane

Magic: Mundane

Natural Talents

Astral Traveler

Beacon of Hope

Collector

Guide Book

Waypoint

Aspects

No Aspects currently bound.

No Class currently unlocked.

Seeing her species listed as Wayfarer was only slightly disconcerting as it made a bit of sense from a magical world perspective. Not only was she no longer human, it seemed, but she had been completely healed and given new abilities that apparently included a magic book.

She glanced down at her hands, as though they might reveal exactly why she wasn’t considered human anymore, but her gaze continued further down her body. It was then that Phoenix realized that it wasn’t a mind trick and her body had been healed more thoroughly than she had ever dreamed possible. It wasn’t a nightmare or a cruel dream; her body had been transformed into what she had desired since realizing it was all wrong.

Recognizing that her body actually matched her soul was the thing that ended up slamming home that she had actually been transported to another world and transformed in the process. As she stared at the female biology that she had always wished for and now belonged to her, she began to cry.

She was finally whole. Her body now truly matched her soul and for once in her life she actually physically felt like the woman she was always meant to be.

The newly made Wayfarer sat there for a while, staring and just mentally sensing the changes as tears of joy and relief ran down her cheeks. She didn’t even care that she was naked, for in that brief moment she felt like she no longer had anything to hide; at least from her own eyes.

After a few calming breaths and wiping away the tears, she noticed her new magic book was floating in front of her once more with new words.

3 minutes remaining on the quest: Choose Your Path.

“Aw, crap,” Phoenix muttered as she glanced over the options again and recognized the correlation: Fight, Flight, Freeze, or Fawn. She looked back around the tree to try and take in the sight again. There was still smoke rising from the edges of the magic circle that she had appeared in but more worrisome were the people she saw moving through the forest on the opposite side.

People wearing armor or what looked like wizard robes were soon going to swarm the area and Phoenix knew that fighting was simply out of the question for her. Being barely better than a baby foal, she wasn’t about to take on a small squadron of obviously armed fighters and mages.

She also wasn’t really a fan of becoming some sort of lab rat to be studied. She preferred to be the one doing the studying and she figured option three and four would land her under a microscope; or whatever magical scanning devices they had in this world.

That left fleeing, or more likely stumbling away, but she wasn’t certain of her odds out in the wilderness; alone and naked with only a magic book to guide her. While she had read a great deal in her abundant spare time, putting what she had read to the task wasn’t always easy… or so she had read. Maybe it wouldn’t be as hard as people made it seem in all those online videos people made for clicks?

What struck her as odd when rereading her quest, was all of the options talking about her fate and she realized that in this moment, in this new world, that was the real choice she had to make. Who would control her fate? Who would be the master of her destiny?

For so long she didn’t even get the chance to make that choice. She hadn’t been strong enough to fight for control and she couldn’t just flee from her sickly body. Fawning usually ended up being the most beneficial to getting things she wanted but even that had its limits.

Her usual stress response would be to freeze, at least for a moment, in order to give her mind time to process and decide logically on the actual best course of action for herself but she didn’t always get the time to fully research solutions before needing to make a decision. This seemed to be one of those times.

Out of curiosity, she asked her new guide, “Which choice do you think I should take that would result in maximizing the chances of my fate being what I really want it to be?”

Her attention was momentarily distracted as she heard the voices behind her from the burnt landing zone getting closer, “Can you believe this?! The research paper I’m going to be able to write on this arrival point is going to be the talk of the OOM!”

“Better hope the AOA pricks don’t try to steal whoever landed here from us. They always try to protect these Wayfarers by making them Adventurers which usually just gets them killed before we can get any good data out of them.”

She hadn’t really expected an answer from her new ability, so she was slightly surprised when she turned back to see it had written her a single word.

RUN.

Phoenix ran.

After about twenty minutes of awkwardly stumbling through the forest, getting scratches all over her exposed flesh, especially her feet, she collapsed against another tree that had a large enough root jutting out at its base and covered in enough moss to not be painful on her bare backside to sit on.

She took deep breaths as she tried to recover some stamina. Despite being perfectly healthy now, she was not accustomed to running through the underbrush. As she rested, her book appeared in front of her once more to provide updated information.

Quest: Choose Your Path

Objective Complete: Path 2 chosen.

[Simple Dress] has been added to your collection.

Quest Completed.

10 [Mana Bits] have been added to your collection.

“Collection?” she prompted, “Is that another of my new talents? I think I remember something like that on the list.”

Natural Talent: Collector

- You have a personal dimensional storage space.

- You automatically loot slain enemies that have been touched by your aura.

- Loot automatically goes into your collection.

- You can use material components for spells, rituals, or enchantments directly from your collection.

Phoenix stared in shock at the ability. A storage and loot power rolled into one? This was definitely feeling more like a video game now. The title seemed appropriate for what it encompassed and how she normally leaned towards when playing video games, wanting to collect every treasure and achievement. She was already liking her chances of survival much more as she asked, “How do I access my collection?”

Hint: You can mentally access items from your collection by thinking of the item you wish to withdraw and where you wish for it to appear within your aura’s area.

“Wait, what kind of aura are we talking about here? Is this some kind of wuxia cultivation world?” She had only peripherally dabbled in the genre so she wasn't quite sure if the rules were similar but she recalled most of them involving auras and meditation.

Hint: Your aura is currently inaccessible to sense or control until you unlock an appropriate ability. Being limited to your physical body.

“So how do I loot things? Or make them appear?”

Hint: Try your hand.

“Is that snark? This better not be one of those snarky tutorials that all the books and games think are funny but are actually annoying when I’m in a new world with no idea what I’m doing!” Phoenix said in a miniature rant before she processed the words then thought about holding the new [Simple Dress] that she should have just gotten, which she realized that she instinctively knew was there, along with her new [Mana Bits], whatever those were.

Just knowing something that she had never learned was the oddest sensation Phoenix had ever experienced and she had experienced some truly odd sensations in her short life, mostly involving pain.

The dress seemed to materialize in a silver shimmer in her hand just as she had hoped and she quickly slipped it on over her head, feeling better now that her skin wasn’t so bare. It was a long green homespun dress that matched her eyes, with long sleeves that offered her much more protection from the slight chill in the misty forest.

With another thought, she focused on holding one of the [Mana Bits] she had gotten. What appeared looked like a smooth river stone about the size of an American quarter but thicker in the middle, like a large Skittle or m&m. However, unlike the colorful candy, it was a translucent grey like dusty glass.

Phoenix wasn’t sure what these Bits were used for so she returned it to her inventory, practicing the movement a few times to try and get comfortable with it, which was surprisingly easy to do.

Cautiously, she reached out a hand towards the book which seemed to intuitively respond to her desires and moved towards her so that she could hold it in her lap. It was surprisingly solid but seemed weightless as she grasped it and gently turned the page back to glance at her ability list again before turning back to the next empty page and asking, “What is Astral Traveler?”

Natural Talent: Astral Traveler

- Increased resistance to negative Dimension effects. Dimension abilities have increased effect.

- You are a Natural Translator, allowing the understanding of languages you are exposed to.

- You can directly use Aspects and Spirit Gems without need of a ritual.

She was relieved that she wouldn’t have to worry about learning the local languages and she wondered if natural translating was something that all Wayfarers were granted to help them survive in a magical world. Then she wondered if these “natural talents” were something everyone received, perhaps they were all the same and based on the species itself which would make her less special and unique than she had originally thought. Those people earlier seemed to know what Wayfarers were, after all, and that she was one.

Phoenix had never heard of Aspects or Spirit Gems before, though she remembered seeing the former listed on her profile page, simply stating that she didn’t have any.

The Wayfarer heard a noise coming from the way she had arrived and quickly stood up from her spot, groaning at the pain in her feet, and began moving again. She may have completed the quest to choose a path but she still needed to get as far away as possible from the people wanting to imprison her just for existing. The thought made her grimace and wonder if this world really wasn’t that different from her old one after all.

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