I know, I know, no one wants to follow the exploits of a seven year old. But this is all important later. At the very least it’s important to me. Don’t worry I know how to tell a story and the time skips are coming. Everyday this happens until this. Well I have to talk about what became my every day.

  …..

  I don’t know how many nights I cried for my family or even when the first time I didn’t was. I know I cried that first night though. Whatever bravery had been instilled in me was washed away once I was alone. I slept in the tent until it threw me out, not heading the warning that Hecate gave me. Returning to the new world had been too much to handle.

  So my real first day starts around noon with my being callously dropped on my stomach from the height of my bed onto the hard cold ground. Luckily the ground was dry. My system created clothes were warmer than the originals, light blue sweat pants and shirt, puffy purple coat and matching sneakers. But my head and face were cold. I hadn’t been wearing my toboggan in the car, it was just a little too warm. Quite luckily my patron goddess had decided to include that and mittens in my bag. Digging deeper than the bag seemed to be I also found a pot, matches, 8 packs of Ramen and a bag of beef jerky. A day before this would have been an overwhelming amount of food, enough to last for a long time. I was more aware of the limitations now.

  The world of a child is tiny. Home, school, friend’s house, relative’s house, maybe a park or library. Middle places are ephemeral in the mind of a child, marked more by a specific memory of a swing or book nook than a wholistic view. That day I added a new place: the woods. I didn’t even really know how big trees were supposed to be outside the ones at the park or near my house. We may have lived in the suburbs but they weren’t too far from the city and any forest from my perception was one of only a few blocks. The idea of getting lost in the woods barely made sense to me.

  That was the world before the change, now the forest was my entire world. Already the changes in stats were beginning to affect me. I could conceive of the routes taken to the places I knew, put together a map of the world I had lived in. Things I payed little attention to like the fire department or the post office suddenly seemed interesting in how they stood out from the grocery store or clothes store, things I knew more as concepts than actual businesses.

  In a way it was maddening. I suddenly had uncountable questions about the world I was from and couldn’t think of a good way to get any answers. I didn’t even know enough to know what questions to answer. The only thing I knew were these trees were really tall. The lowest limbs were way too high to reach and I was too scared of falling to even attempt climbing them.

  As I pondered many things I kept stumbling over new sources of grief. Was Nana ok? Would her doggy Roscoe help her? Roscoe was a big dog, surely he could keep Nana safe. Would I ever see them again? What was Nana’s Name? I had only ever known her as Nana Almeida. She lived alone in her apartment and we went to see her on holidays. I knew she lived in a different city than I did but I couldn’t remember which one. I tried to remember what I could about her and where we went but I hadn’t ever paid any attention, either reading a book or sleeping most of the drive. I remembered she gave us chocolate candy that she called Brigadeiros. She would swat at me playfully when I called them “bridge rows” and tell dad he should be teaching us Portuguese. It took me forever to realize he didn’t because he grew up here too and his Portuguese wasn’t very good.

  I had never met Mommy’s parents, they lived in Canada and sent Christmas cards but she didn’t like to talk about them. I remember asking her if we would ever go visit them at Christmas and she just shook her head and turned away. We had done family trees the year before and I tried to remember who else was there. Mom’s sister who I was named after had died as a kid. Dad had a bunch of what he called cousins, but I think they were either distant relatives or just friends he grew up with. Then there was uncle Mac and uncle Jimmy. I’m not sure which one we were related to but they gave the best gifts. Including my new bicycle that I hadn’t even gotten to ride.

  I shook my head and started trying to pay more attention to my surroundings. None of that mattered right now and thinking about it made my chest hurt and my throat tight. Unfortunately despite what cartoon explorers had taught me I wasn’t finding bananas and coconuts and berries everywhere. I saw some mushrooms, but they didn’t look like the ones on pizza. I found one bush with berries on it but the leaves were all prickly and it looked more like a Christmas ornament than food. Luckily I had jerky, so I wasn’t really hungry yet.

  Remembering what I was supposed to do when I first got here I started trying to find a cave, unfortunately there didn’t seem to be any lying about. In fact there was very little difference in elevation at all as I walked. The ground being mostly flat made walking easy but I still got tired quickly. It felt like I had been walking all day, though I was sure it had only been a couple of hours when I heard something new. Running water. It wasn’t very loud, but it seemed close.

  Following the sound I soon arrived at a small creek, maybe six inches deep and only a few feet across. I didn’t need the water but in my mind the creek had to come out of a cave. I’m still not sure where I made that connection, but I followed it nonetheless. As I walked I wondered if the moss on the rocks might be edible but decided that maybe eating random moss I found was a bad idea. I had also seen patches of moss under the trees as I walked but something about the water made the idea alluring.

  The terrain finally changed slightly after who knows how long of walking as it gently sloped uphill. At this point I was exhausted, I was half dozing off and walking too close to the creek. I tripped.

  I never liked getting dirty or wet at the best of times. The trip woke me up and my hand splayed out to catch myself as I fell towards the creek. There was no stopping this, I was about to fall face first into the creek in the middle of winter with no change of clothes. Time seemed to slow down to taunt my mistake and I did something without even thinking about it. I made a shield and fell right into it.

  On the one hand I was still mostly dry. On the other hand, the parts that weren't dry were my shoes and socks. Benji had been yelled at enough for me to know not to wear wet clothes in the cold. He had never seemed to mind getting covered in mud or being wet. I managed to get out of the shield without making things worse and walked away from the creek. I looked at the tent zipper on my bag.

  Tent of Temporary Sanctuary (Good, Charge 29%)

  Using the ambient mana this tent opens into a bubble of space. While anchored to this universe it cannot be opened from the outside while in use.

  Oh that was bad. No way was that long enough to dry my stuff out. I pulled the zipper off and put it up to a tree anyway. I could plan inside, and at least dry my feet off. Stepping inside I took off my shoes and socks and after a minute to think, my pants. I held the socks outside and squeezed the water out as best I could and then did the same with the pants before ultimately putting them back on. That’s when I started trying to come up with a plan.

  I had matches, maybe I could learn to use fire? Then again if I set my socks and shoes on fire I didn’t have a backup. I didn’t need full on fire, just warmth. Wait what had Hecate said? Moving hot to cold and cold to hot. Could I move wet to dry and dry to wet? I zipped the zipper all the way up and sat down with my wet socks. I could do this. Probably.

  Taking off my gloves I sat criss-cross apple sauce and started with my breathing, trying to get back to where I was when I was practicing with Hecate. I pushed some mana out and tried to make the fog again. It took a few tries but I finally surrounded my wet socks with mana. OK what next? When she showed me lightning it had been moving so it was easy to see. She already told me mana moves different for different elements. If fire and ice were elements, water had to be too. This was just like those picture puzzles where you have to find what’s different except I didn’t have a dry pair of socks. Slow as I could so I didn’t mess up my mana fog I took my toboggan off and placed it near my socks. This had to work, both were clothes only one was wet and one was dry.

  There was something in my socks. I could feel it, and it felt like my mana fog but, better? Like it was what I made but all put together into something. I liked my mana to be something instead of nothing. Maybe if I made my mana like the water I could pull it all out. So I tried I thought real hard on what the mana in my socks felt like and started putting the mana I had out into the same shape.

  *DING*

  Create Water

  Never Be Thirsty Again! Create water by mixing internal and ambient mana. Amount per mana based on intelligence. Upgradeable.

  Splash.

  And then I was sitting in water, my hat and pants and gloves no longer dry. It wasn’t fair, I did something good and made things worse. Also, I didn’t need water, I had a water bottle and a creek and I’m sure with my luck it would rain soon. There was no point in ringing anything out again, I had to figure this out before I got kicked out of the tent again. I wished Hecate was here to tell me what I was doing wrong. All I did was look at the mana and then match it.

  Oh. I wasn’t trying to make water, I just wanted to use it. She didn’t show me that, I made electricity, kind of. But even that was just making a place for electricity to go and I still shocked myself sometimes. But wait, I could make things with my mana. Oh, and I could move other mana around.

  Trying to ignore the icky feeling of being half wet I started breathing again. I made the mana fog on the first attempt. This time I imagined tiny little scoops that were just the right size for the water mana and pulled hard. A trickle of water came up from my socks, little by little I was pulling it like a thread. I stopped pulling when it was in front of my face, What was I going to do with the water. I sat facing away from the zipper, could I turn around and open it without dropping the water? Probably not. My bag was right beside me though. My bag with a pot in it.

  Keeping my eyes on the string of water I reached with my left hand and felt around for the remaining zipper. Slowly I unzipped it and reached inside, finding the matches first and then the handle pot. I pulled it out and started moving the water into it. Time stopped mattering as I pulled the excess water from the floor into the pot, soon realizing an issue. The pot was getting full. Letting go of the string I turned, unzipped the zipper a little and dumped the water outside.

  It didn’t seem to use much mana, but it was SO SLOW. Two more repetitions and my clothes were finally dry. I started to throw out the last pot when I got another announcement.

  *DING*

  Create Water has Upgraded

  Basic Water Magic

  Make it rain! Or at least a little drizzle, make water and exert minor control over it. Amount per mana based on intelligence. Can also exert minor control on existing water. Upgradable.

  What did that do? Didn’t I just do that by myself?I reached down to get the pot and stopped in surprise. I could feel the mana in the water. I didn’t even have my fog out. I tried to pull it towards me and it came so easily. The water thread was more of a water rope. It was still slow but I could move so much more. Not fair, this was like giving me a shovel as a reward for digging a hole with my hands.

  Letting the water down I picked up the pot and unzipped the tent, throwing out the water. I was immediately met with a loud chirping sound. Oh no, I drenched a poor little grey squirrel with water! It’s important to note at this point that I had not seen or heard another living creature since the Tutorial. The earth was now much bigger than it previously was, which meant very little to me, and it was a single day after integration. This wasn’t a super doomsday squirrel, or a mega mutant, it had not gained sentience and become the mastermind of all beastkind ready to dominate humans. This was a cute little grey squirrel who had just had water dumped on it from nowhere. Seeing me it had two choices, run away or the thing it actually did. It jumped straight at me.

  Shield up. It bounced off and I zipped up as quickly as possible. Why was it so scary? Squirrels were cute and fluffy though soaking wet that one had started looking more like a rat than a squirrel. I shivered at the thought. For half a second before it jumped at me I had the strangest thought about making a woodland friend. Now I just wanted to make sure it didn’t bite me. How much time did I have left anyway? Could I check from the inside? I stared at the inside zipper.

  Tent of Temporary Sanctuary (Good, Charge 2%)

  Using the ambient mana this tent opens into a bubble of space. While anchored to this universe it cannot be opened from the outside while in use.

  “Shit,” I said. Hearing my voice out loud was kind of startling, but I managed to not even giggle at my own outburst. I wasn’t sure I would have a lot to giggle about anymore anyway. What was I going to do about the squirrel? Maybe I could just scare it off. Or maybe I could use my shield to launch it away?

  I summoned the shield on the ground and stood on it. I started to make it rise and it broke almost immediately. I checked my Mana.

  Mana: 0/41

  Oh right, I’d been using it a lot. OK I had like nine minutes. I kind of knew how long that was based on youtube videos. Ok think. Wait, meditate while you think, regain mana. I counted to 60, using Mississippi to count seconds.

  Mana: 2/41

  That was so little. A single minute for the shield. Come on, go faster. I tried to pull all the mana I could feel into me. Pure nausea overwhelmed me and my head swam. That was a mistake.

  *DING*

  Intelligence +1

  Mana: 6/44

  Three minutes that’s a little better. Also that worked, and it wasn’t exactly pain so I could do it again right? I really, really didn’t want to do it again. My brain was feeding me information, with the time remaining I could get half my mana back doing this and waiting for it the bad part to wear off. Or at least I could if I was willing to face that nausea again. I still kind of felt like throwing up. Maybe just one more. Come on Marie just do it!

  Mana: 9/44

  Don’t throw up, don’t throw up, don’t throw up. Wait, why was it less? The intelligence point. So my math was wrong, I couldn’t get half back. I wasn’t doing that again for a stupid extra point. When I had time I had to figure out a way to get mana back faster.

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

  I didn’t want to run out of time so I stopped, made sure my stuff was back in my bag and prepared to face the squirrel. I was going to have to open the zipper, protect myself from the squirrel, put the zipper on the bag and run. OK. On the count of three.

  One.

  Two.

  Two and a half.

  THREE!

  Down went the zipper, shield up. I ran out shrieking as the squirrel jumped at me again. I was really hoping it had wandered off. Zipper up. Block the squirrel. Zipper up. Block the squirrel. Put on the back pack. RUN!

  Why was this Squirrel so mean? What did I ever do to it? Ok a little water in the middle of winter but it was an accident I swear. I kept looking back as I ran, having to throw the shield up or really down behind me. My wisdom let me know I should watch where I was going. My intelligence told me the Squirrel was faster than me. The root sticking out of the ground told me how gravity worked. My face hit the ground and I tasted blood. I rolled on my back in time to see the stupid squirrel jump to land on me.

  “NO!” I shrieked and swiped at the squirrel in a karate chop. Mana covered my hand, extending slightly outward to an edge on both sides. I hit the squirrel dead center and suddenly there were two squirrel halves and blood on my face and coat. A short scream immediately turned into sobbing. The System tried to tell me something but I ignored it. Stupid squirrel, why couldn’t you just leave me alone? Or been my friend. I didn’t know anything about deductive reasoning or the scientific method yet but my brain let me know the difference between a wild animal and a cartoon in real time.

  I saw myself from the squirrel’s point of view, a big monster attacking it with water and magic. It was probably as alone as I was, lost in a forest different from the one it knew. I think I still would have ran away but maybe it didn’t think that was an option. A monster that could appear from nowhere at any time? Maybe it just wanted to scare me off, it couldn’t have thought it could take me right? It was weird to think of myself as big, and I laughed a little thinking about Benji tormenting me when I would build things out of blocks and he would pretend to be a giant monster come to wreck it all. It didn’t matter how many times dad told him off he’d do it again as soon as he forgot. I missed him so much already. He could knock over all the blocks he wanted. Still curled up I checked the system message.

  LVL 1 Squirrel defeated

  Experience Rewarded

  Somehow that didn’t help me feel better. There was no one to pick me up and tell me everything was going to be ok. No one to dry my tears and help me get the blood off. I took my gloves off and put them in my coat pocket. Mana protected my hand from getting bloody. The squirrel I left in two pieces, carefully trying to avoid looking at it. I had killed it. I had never even killed a fly before, too uncoordinated to hit one. Thinking about it made a lump in my throat so I went to the creek and focused on washing the blood off of me.

  The water was so cold. Freezing. It kept me focusing on what I was doing so I kept at it. My mouth still hurt from hitting the ground, I spat blood into the creek and noticed an odd feeling. Feeling around with my tongue I found a loose tooth.

  “Dammit”.

  Daddy wasn’t here to pull it out. He was always quick, though I really didn’t like having anyone’s finger in my mouth. Mommy did it once and she was terrible at it. No way would I have ever let Benji do it.

  I reached in my mouth and touched it. Ow. It hurt but I still remembered having a tree through me. After that, what was a loose tooth? I grabbed it as hard as I could and yanked. It came right out. Carefully I washed it off and put it in my pocket. I told my brain to shut up, if magic was real then the tooth fairy was absolutely real. Even if I knew who had put money under my pillow before.

  Putting my gloves back on I took a look around. Now what? I was still walking uphill but the creek was winding and the forest was so thick I couldn’t really see how far it rose. I needed a map or something. I didn’t have any paper or a tablet or anything to write anything down. Plus, I’d been walking for a while and I had no idea where I was. Wait, that wasn’t actually true. The part where I was running was a little fuzzy but I was still following the creek. Thinking about it I could remember every step I took all the way back to where the tutorial ended. I didn’t need a map. I just needed to be able to see more.

  I pulled out some jerky and chew on it looking up, thinking. Those trees are really really tall, I thought. If I fall out of even the bottom branch that might be it for me. I hated that thought. How many children question their own mortality? Not that I was really doing that yet. No amount of intelligence is going to make a sheltered seven year old think there’s not some way out. It was my story after all. That's when I came up with a really stupid idea. A completely necessary, dangerous, stupid idea. Putting my bag down on a tree that had clearly fallen pre-System based on the size I got ready.

  Making sure my mana was full again I started to experiment. Pushing some mana out of my left foot I raised it and hardened the mana. I took a step up. I took another step with my other foot and stopped. I checked my Mana

  Mana: 42/44

  A mana per step. OK, I had to reach the bottom limb in 44 steps. Or 40 in case of a problem. Easy. Left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot. I stop after 16 steps. I’m not half way up. Carefully I step back down. I still have mana left so I try some other ideas. First I jump and catch myself with mana. No good, I don’t jump much higher than I was stepping. Why am I so weak?

  OK maybe I can climb. I can’t hold on to the bark very well and the trees are too big around. I could use mana maybe but that leads to the same issue. My mana is low again and I don’t like the idea of sitting around recovering it, it’ll just have to come back on its own. I know what I have to do. Well I know what I want to happen. I have to get stronger. I go over to the creek and start messing with the rocks, I find one about half the size of my head and dig it out. Oof, still pretty heavy. I keep looking till I find a smaller one. Ok this isn’t too bad, about as much as a gallon of milk. I hold it and start walking up the hill.

  …..

  My arms hurt. My back hurts. I’m tired and I just want to stop. The sun has gotten a lot lower but it’s still definitely daytime. I’ve stopped a few times and put the rock down to rest but I’m pushing myself. I’m not gonna stop until I get that ding. I tried running with the rock at first, remembering the squirrel being faster than me. That was dumb and I ate dirt again. One thing at a time. I had kind of made up my mind I would switch off. First I get stronger, then faster. Maybe I should find some music or something to listen to while I did this?

  I dropped the stupid rock on my foot. I didn’t mean to let go, my arms just decided they weren’t going to work anymore. My palms and fingers have little tears on them. There’s not a lot of blood but it still stings. My toes hurt really bad though. I’m afraid to actually look so I just keep walking while I check my health.

  HP: 10/14

  Four whole points! I broke it. This is it, I’ve killed myself with a stupid rock. I take my bag off and look at the tent zipper.

  Tent of Temporary Sanctuary (Good, Charge 53%)

  Using the ambient mana this tent opens into a bubble of space. While anchored to this universe it cannot be opened from the outside while in use.

  I just want to rest. I’m tired and hungry. I’m already sick of jerky and it hasn’t even been a whole stupid day. I have Ramen but I don’t have a stove or anything. Ok time to take a risk. I go inside the tent and lay down on the bed.

  Legacy of Earth (Archive)

  Read books, watch movies, play games. enjoy all the riches of the human imagination. I hope you’re happy, this was supposed to be a centennial surprise. All information is pre-System and cannot be edited or otherwise changed.

  “How do I make fire?” My vision is filled with a browser. Tabs on the top saying things like ‘books’, ‘articles’, ‘videos’, 'websites’. “Videos please,” I say. The last thing I need is for the System to be mean to me, better be nice. Now there’s a scrollable list of videos on making fire, I see one where someone is heating up stew on a campfire. “That one!”

  Five minutes later I’m outside piling up rocks to create a makeshift stove top to hold my pot. I don’t have anything to hang it off of, it’s just a pot with a handle. I try not to get frustrated at Hecate’s lack of thinking here, she was just trying to help. Now for the next problem. Fire. Making a fire is easy, I have matches. There are leaves on the ground and dead wood but I need something bigger. I thought about trying to cut a limb down but the video I watched said green wood wouldn’t burn very well. I closed my eyes and thought about what I’d seen.

  “Shit.”

  I had seen what I needed hours ago. I had set my stupid bag on it. It wasn’t all bad, I definitely wasn’t going to carry that stupid rock back, as if I even could. That would take hours off the trip. It was still going to be a three hour trip back on a broken foot. What should I do? I needed to protect my foot to stop it from getting worse. It was already throbbing, but I kept comparing it to the car accident and reminding myself I’d made it through that. When people broke stuff they got a cast. Cindi had a cast on her arm for weeks when she broke it.

  Cindi. I hadn’t thought about my friends at all since this started. Cindi and James and Mia. Stop it. I didn’t have time to be sad again right now, I could be sad in the tent. When I made things with mana it cost mana but then it cost less mana for it to just be. I made a mana cast around my foot and took a step.

  “Aaah.” That was better but no way was I walking that far like this. I needed something. A stick! Benji was always finding cool sticks and showing me. Of course I had found the best one, a stick that looked like a space gun. I hid it under my bed so I could give it to him on his birthday. He found it two days later. I needed a stick to lean on while I walked. I looked through the sticks I had found, none were big enough. I was going to have to make a stick.

  I couldn’t reach the bottom limbs, that was for sure. I could maybe do something with water mana? No, that would take too long. Electric mana wouldn’t work. Mana construct it was. Maybe I could throw a ninja star at a limb and bring it down? I made one in my hand and threw it. Oh right, I’m weak and not super good at throwing things. The star hit the tree and went right through it, leaving a hole.

  “Whoa,” I said. Then I realized I was being stupid. I walked over to the tree and made a knife with my hand again. I cut the bark away from a little section and started cutting out a me-sized stick. It wasn’t pretty, it was lumpy and weird looking but it was a stick. I leaned on it and it held. This would have to do.

  …..

  *Ding*

  Strength +1

  Vitality +1

  “Really?” I said to the air. I had been walking for all of ten minutes.

  …..

  Three hours and a lot of painful steps later I made it back to the log. The sun was getting low now, definitely in the evening. It was gonna be dark soon. I had already realized three issues. The first was that I couldn’t stay in the tent the entire time it was dark. The second was that I was absolutely beyond exhausted and was struggling to stay awake. Finally, there was still several hours until the tent was fully recharged.

  I splashed some cold water in my face from the creek. It wasn’t the first time and it seemed to work for less time each time I did it. OK time to make a fire. I started pulling stoned rocks into a circle, ignoring the dull throbbing in my foot. Once the circle was complete I checked my health again.

  HP: 13/16

  “What?” I was getting better? Oh I had gotten a point in vitality. But still the number was higher than it should have been. Wait, if I had just stopped and rested would it have healed on its own? Did I make it worse every time I walked on it? Shouldn't someone have told me about that? Whatever. I used my mana knife to cut some pieces off the log and put them in the middle of the rock circle. I got some leaves to put there too. Forget the Ramen, beef jerky was fine tonight. I'd try that later. I pulled out the box of matches and tried to light one. Not hard enough. Not fast enough. I broke it!. Why is everything so hard? I pulled out another match and tried again, putting my fingers close to its head. “Ow!” I managed to half drop it, half throw it on the pile of leaves as the match made my fingertips hurt. That woke me up.

  “Oh fire I love you” I hadn’t realized how cold I’d been. As feeling came back to me I stretched out my feet towards the fire. The day wasn’t even over. I’d slept for a lot of it, fought a squirrel, broke my foot, made it worse, built a fire and there was still more day before I could use my tent. I had fire now so the next thing I needed to do was learn how it’s mana worked. In just a minute. First I was just gonna rest my eyes for a minute. I laid down on the forest floor using my back pack as a pillow.

  …..

  WHOOOOOOO

  “I’m awake,” I lied sitting up. What was that? I shivered, the fire low but still red. The moon was above me and I heard the sound again.

  WHOOOOOO

  I knew that sound, an owl. Nope, nope, nope. No more animals for me today. I checked and saw that the tent was fully charged. Holding it up I went right in and zipped it back up. OK I’d have to play with fire tomorrow. I giggled at that thought sleepily. Taking off my shoes, coat and gloves I crawled into bed. Then immediately got out again to retrieve my tooth. No way was I gonna forget that.

  I almost made it to sleep before I started thinking about my family. Almost.

  …..

  On another plane a greenhaired woman sat in a plush recliner watching a flat screen tv in the middle of the woods. Taking a sip of her big gulp and putting her popcorn bucket down she sat up as someone approached from the woods.

  “Hecate I’m surprised you’re still here.” Hecate looked back at the dark haired, chalk white visage. Looking entirely out of place in a floor length cocktail dress the encroacher sipped a deep red liquid from a chardonnay glass. “Twelve hundred or so people in my tutorial. How I got so few and yet that Kami Mizuhanome ended up with three million makes no sense to me. No offense to her of course, but I hope we drop this lottery thing next time. I heard Quetzalcoatl only got a hundred and twenty something. What a waste, he always does so good with his blessings. How did you clean up?”

  “One.”

  “One?”

  “One.”

  “Well did you at least get a good one? I assume you had to have it if you're still here.”

  Hecate got up out of her chair and walked over to her guest. “ I don’t know yet. Morrigan this feels awful, the System gave me a dying child.”

  Morrigan looked at her askance, “You can’t die in the tutorial.”

  “That’s what I said,” Hecate replied loudly, throwing her hands up. “Yet she was dropped practically in my lap, hole through her middle blood everywhere and the System would only let me save her if I made her my disciple. Which means I’m stuck here until she can leave.”

  “Or she dies.”

  “Don’t be morbid please this whole day has been nerve racking.”

  Morrigan looked at her, “Oh no. You greeted her as the matron?”

  “Her whole family had just died,” Hecate replied. “Her whole family is gone, one of them barely missing the opportunity to be saved by the tutorial. All gone and she pops up and I KNOW I look like her mom. Thankfully her eyes were closed and I managed to change. I don’t dare shift until she can leave either.”

  Morrigan cocks an eyebrow, “Not to the Mother but-”

  “No. It’s too late for that and you know I’ve never been a child killer, it’s not part of my myth and I’m thankful for that. No judgement, your path is your own.”

  “I mean let’s not make it sound like I go around killing children on a whim. I’ve put some out of their misery but I do try to help when I can. Or I guess I did. It’s pretty easy to help now outside of integrations. So you’re gonna stick around here for a while I guess? That kind of sucks. You know I would stay if I could.”

  Hecate just nodded. “You have a whole empire to run. I know this was more of a mini vacation for you. I can do my thing from here, it’s not like I was ever into conquering.” She threw a worried look back at the tv, showing a small girl putting a tooth under her pillow.

  Morrigan tilted her head at the display, “Is she expecting the tooth fairy?”

  “Yes. She’s so young.”

  “You know I could hang out for a while, I don’t need to head back immediately. You took her as your disciple meaning that any communication with the rest of the newly integrated has to go through her. But she’s not strong enough to even handle your presence. Have I missed anything?”

  Hecate narrowed her eyes, “No, why? What are you planning? Don’t mess around with her now she’s been through a lot and it’s not about to get easier.”

  “Oh I’m going to mess with her a little. But I think you’ll be ok with it. Five or six years to lose all her baby teeth right? You gave her a goddess who saved her. What she really needs is a fairy godmother.”

  “You’re going to put a quarter under her pillow?”

  “Give me permission, appoint me. You’re now the only family she has left as far as my path is concerned. Taking her as your disciple is basically emancipation so you have to do it.”

  “Morrigan…”

  I swear not to harm the child for any reason other than her own good, look out for her until her age of majority and love her like my own.”

  “No turning her into anything without her express permission. I’ve half a mind to make it written permission. No Fae deals. No taking her into whatever the local version of Fae is without her permission and understanding of what will happen there.”

  “Fine, fine. But let me use her as an anchor for Fae. Her teeth would make an excellent reagent to get them established”

  Hecate stopped at that and thought. It wouldn’t hurt the girl, in fact it might increase her luck. It certainly couldn’t hurt her pursuit of magic. “This child is either going to die young or become a force to be reckoned with. I’m honestly not sure which she’d prefer.”

  Morrigan laughed, throwing an arm around her friend. “Come now, we all know which we’d have preferred. And what’s the point of having grownups make all your decisions if you don’t make good ones.”

  “OK,” Hecate said, “Morrigan, Queen of the Fae, would you take the responsibility and honor of being the godmother of my disciple Marie Almeida?”

  “By hearth and home and tomb and stone so it shall be.”

  …..

  Several hours of sleep later I stretched my hands out hitting something smooth and cool under my pillow. Excitedly I sat up and pulled the object to me. It was a clear bottle filled with a red liquid.

  Poor Mana Potion

  Trade from the fae, a tooth for a treasure. Restores 30 mana.

  “I knew it!”